RE: Making Money in 1.04 (Full Version)

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alexalexuk -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 6:43:18 PM)

ignore this post.




DasTactic -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 7:42:31 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: jscott991

It strikes me that the bulk of your feedback is coming from micromanaging players.

Any game that listens to players who want more of a challenge always risks alienating those that do not. I've had this problem with every Matrix game I've purchased (which is, in fact, why I can't seem to stay interested in them for very long). That's my own fault for repeatedly sticking my hand in the flame seeking a different result, but it would be nice if a game lauded in reviews for its automation doesn't make using that automation impossible as it tries to cater to those who want more of a "challenge."

As I've said in this thread repeatedly, if you want us to micromanage, tell us how; make the information necessary to evaluate planets and mines more accessible (or accessible at all); and simply be clear about the direction the game is heading.

In my opinion, you won't be able to have it both ways. If you make the automation AI marginally profitable, you will make it too easy for micromanagers to be wildly profitable. But if you can strike that balance, you will have a wonderful game.


Well said. My feelings exactly. :)

My preference would be that if everything is automated the AI will manage your economy adequately. For those of us that just want to focus on a small aspect of the game, the AI should be able to do a reasonable job of the rest. For example, I've been considering playing a game where all I control directly is a fleet of ships leaving the AI to manage everything else.

If the die-hards want to micro-manage other aspects then the rewards/punishments should be subtle so the economy doesn't crash uncontrollably into the red or blow out the other way.



Sliverine -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 7:45:23 PM)

seems like the problems most have been facing would be involved with the AI...hmmm



Lorini -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 8:19:37 PM)

I'm sorry, but the game is boring when you have no money. How long are we supposed to stare at the screen, waiting for something to happen? I did it for 10 minutes and quit. And I agree, I think you are not going to be able to achieve a state where the game is challenging for both the automaters and the micromanagers unless you greatly improve the AI.



Druthlen -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 8:24:23 PM)

Well I must confess that I control everything. I moniter the pirvate sectors profits constantly and adjust taxes accordingly. It is a challenge to keep the private sector in the black but by doing so I costantly succeed in the state sector of the game. If the private sector goes red then trading in my spaceports suffer. If they are in the black then I get cash from them investing in new ships. What is frustrating is this info is not accessable without going to the empire info screen. Also whats annoying is having to scrap alot of ships becuase somewhere else in the galaxy demand for calson and polymer skyrocket to 90k demand but my stock is huge and my demand is 0 but it still increases my maintance costs to unreasonable lvls and I have to scrap ships to survive the economic turmoil. However it is easy to make money in patch 1.04 but you can nolonger have a huge military like in 1.03. Just fleet your ships and respond to pirates with a fleet large enough to destroy it but not to big as to kill your economy. Oh and patrol independent planets if pirate blockade them your state will go into the red. One escort per independent doesnt cost much and will give time for your small fleet of destoryers to respond. Also resorts are required to survive. The patch is fine and survivable its just a different game then 1.03.....

I think someone mentioned he played without pirates. This is not good as to the morale bonus pirates give to colonies when you blow them up. Without this bonus it is very difficult to get positive income. IMO a game with no pirates is a game on very difficult setting and you must really know how the game works if you expect to survive. I play with many pirates. More pirates more morale bonus more income. Its basicly an easy button :P Good luck.



Gargoil -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 8:39:56 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Druthlen
1) What is frustrating is this info is not accessable without going to the empire info screen.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Druthlen
2) Oh and patrol independent planets if pirate blockade them your state will go into the red.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Druthlen
3) This is not good as to the morale bonus pirates give to colonies when you blow them up. Without this bonus it is very difficult to get positive income.


1) Agreed... but then you go on with stuff that I really don't know how you know exactly...
2) How do you know how much an independent is profiting your empire? I tend to just colonized (or if they are not cooperative, invade them). So I should leave them be?
3) Again, how do you know how much this bonus is?



Erik Rutins -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 8:40:24 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Lorini
I'm sorry, but the game is boring when you have no money. How long are we supposed to stare at the screen, waiting for something to happen? I did it for 10 minutes and quit. And I agree, I think you are not going to be able to achieve a state where the game is challenging for both the automaters and the micromanagers unless you greatly improve the AI.


This feedback is really not all that useful to us, FYI. As I've noted above, this Public Beta is about getting feedback on the economy changes so that we can tweak the balance. While I now know that you are unhappy with the balance, there's not enough info here to inform any tweaks except in a very rough sense.

This is a single player game, so balancing it for both playstyles is not the same challenge it would be in a multi-player game. Micro-managers will always be able to do better, but the goal is to make it so that people do not feel like things are not working if they have all the automation on.

Making generalization is almost pointless though, as the experience with one combination of race/government/galaxy settings can be very different from the experience with another.



jscott991 -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 8:40:27 PM)

I won't play with pirates.

If they are critical to success then I'm screwed. I won't rant about pirates here, but interstellar buccaneers are somewhat hard to accept and still maintain immersion in the game world.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 8:46:30 PM)

Just a heads up that 1.0.4 Beta 2 is now available.



jscott991 -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 8:53:14 PM)

Does it affect the economic balance? :)

I know it had an impressive list of bug and design screen fixes.



Gargoil -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 9:22:07 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: jscott991

I won't play with pirates.

If they are critical to success then I'm screwed. I won't rant about pirates here, but interstellar buccaneers are somewhat hard to accept and still maintain immersion in the game world.


It is your choice. I would never insist that anyone play the game any other way. But I do not understand your reasoning. How do pirates (which have been around since the beginning of seafaring), which are still in operation today, lead to breaking of immersion in a game that supposes:

1) Faster than light travel
2) Extraterrestial intelligent life
3) Huge space monsters



jscott991 -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 9:29:08 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Gargoil

quote:

ORIGINAL: jscott991

I won't play with pirates.

If they are critical to success then I'm screwed. I won't rant about pirates here, but interstellar buccaneers are somewhat hard to accept and still maintain immersion in the game world.


It is your choice. I would never insist that anyone play the game any other way. But I do not understand your reasoning. How do pirates (which have been around since the beginning of seafaring), which are still in operation today, lead to breaking of immersion in a game that supposes:

1) Faster than light travel
2) Extraterrestial intelligent life
3) Huge space monsters


If I could turn the monsters off I would.

This isn't the thread for a rant on pirates or other things that exist outside the "normal" rules. Frankly, even if pirates were held to the same economic rules for designing, building, maintaining, and developing their ships as me, I still would find them implausible.



Druthlen -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 9:37:37 PM)

I only make assumptions based on trial and error. If I play a game and dont colonize the indpendents My space port income on empire screen is much higher. If I allow a pirate to blockade an independent and then reload and protect it my income is higher. The morale bonus is easy go into editor give yourself no reputation. See income. Editor increase reputation. See income. It seems to me that this bonus is huge to the private sector and therefore huge to you based on alot of income comes from them reinvesting capital back into new ships which you get 100% of.

So I am changing my tune however. I played a game 7 yrs into and still even though I was profitable with around 100k in private sector cash reserve and around 85k state sector reserve. I could still only afford 4 destroyers and 4 escorts. This did not scale as expected. At 11 colonies I can only afford 4 destroyers??? Something is off there. Seriously off. I would like to make an observation. 1.04 is not as much fun as 1.03. In 1.03 I had access to alot more ships and therefore more was going on. in 1.04 After 11 colonies I can only afford 4 destroyers and at 1 colony I can afford 3. Corruption is to much of a problem. This is running a democracy where corruption is supposedly low. Also I have to agree that this game is much harder as the prices are a min of 1 per resource. May I suggest reducing that price to .75 as the min. only a 50% increase over the 1.03 patch. I feel 100% increase in resource pricing is to much.

As to pirates not being realistic. Observe earths social organiztions, the taliban and other Pirate like organizations. Somehow they have huge cash reserves and can accomplish alot of misery. If earth has such problems why is it so hard to imagine a private violent organization getting enough cash to build a base on a gas giant and then taking commercial ships and converting them into semi warships. Heck suicide barges would cause untold damage to a mining installation. Lets be thankful that isnt in the game. Remeber you may have a empire but inside that empire are private organizations that have their own agendas and funding or creating a pirate like gang to harrass a government they dont agree with is completely realistic.



Astorax -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 9:48:12 PM)

Druthlen, if you never colonize independents, aren't you then basically cutting your arm off in that now you won't be able to colonize different type planets until you actually research them and now research is 50% slower? Do you think the AI is doing this same thing?



aprezto -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 9:53:48 PM)

I cannot provide a save, but I have also noticed the economy going into the red. I had to micromanage removing a few troops but didn't do much more than that.

What I did note was that I would have a red income, but there would be a sudden bulk injection of cash that kept putting my treasury up. This is not:
payment for tech
payment from other races
pirate income - either destroying or otherwise
payment from colonising a populated independent planet.

I thought it might be from the private sector - they are running well in the black, it is the state in the red (total from economic breakdown is the same as the one shown in the top right corner of the main playing screen).

Playing Human republic, 400 star, spiral, restless aliens, starting and v slow tech, 11 other races, normal pirates.



Gertjan -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 9:56:21 PM)

Jscott, I deeply symphatise with you. I dont like to micromanage a lot in 4x rts games. That's why I am so enthusiastic about DW. The automation is very promising and I"m very confident that the devs will balance this game in the right way. Unfortunately, I dont have the time now to test the beta (perhaps this weekend). I am also a player that likes to keep most things automated (even ship design). I will however conduct my own diplomacy and fleet combat. I love this macro/grand strategy approach. I really dont want to be bothered by all kinds of micro management issues.

I hope that as a result of future updates this game doesnt become only interesting for those that are the best in micro managing the economy. It is tedious and no fun, imho. Please devs, make the game so that with most things on automation, empires develop well (with game normal settings) and ensure that micromanagent is not excessively rewarded (the AI should do good micro on automation, it should not be replaced by human ai). Of course some reward for tedious mirco oriented players should be there. But please keep that advantage limited, otherwise you devs have to make the though choice to either balance the game in their favour (by making the economy more difficult) or keep us, macro/automated players, happy (but not the micro players).

I also sense that the most active players on the forum are those that are the micro oriented players. I hope that we macro oriented also get sufficient attention in future updates. I am cautiously confident that we will both be served. Thank you in advance!

Keep up the good support!



jscott991 -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 10:18:40 PM)

There's a definite problem in 1.04 in terms of military size. It is not just that you can't support the fleet level you could in 1.03, but it is a drastic reduction. This does make the game less fun. I feel like the game has shifted towards GalCiv, which emphasized individual ships and not really what I would consider a "realistic" number of warships to police a giant interstellar empire.



Druthlen -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 10:20:10 PM)

Astroax I am sensing that you dont have a true appreciation for how expensive colonizing new worlds is in 1.04. It consumes luxury resources that could be being sold for profit, they give no taxes or very little, a desert planet with 1.5 billion max pop is basicly not worth colonizing. It will take a long time of the colony costing you money and then will never really reap huge benifits like a conotential or marsh world. Honestly if your busy paying almost 8k for colony ship then almost 5-6 years of it consuming luxury goods it will take forever for a desert planet to pay for itself. IE the ability to colonize desert worlds is almost a negative not a positive. Couple this with an already struggling economy and your empire will bankrupt itself easily. No, thoughtlessly colonizing planets in this game(1.04) is very very bad. You have to make sure you have enough cushion saved up to survive the initial 8k purchase the almost 3-4k maintaince you will pay while its being built and flying to the world. Then the huge unseen cost of it eating up luxury resources. Colonizing in 1.04 is very trumatic to an empire. Honestly even at 11 established colonies you still cant just colonize anything and everything since corruption is such a problem now. I am only speaking from experience. I dont know the underlining mechanics of the game. I just know that I can play a game and colonize desert planets like mad and I wont get very far or have much fun. Then reload and only colonize planets above 25k size that are contiental or marsh worlds and I do much better. Like I said 1.04 is a completely different game then 1.03. The rules have changed and I am only adapting to that rule set. In 1.03 I would colonize anything and everything.

Druthlen



Erik Rutins -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 10:20:51 PM)

I'd like to just remind everyone that it would be really helpful if, when you comment on balance in 1.0.4 Beta, you tell us what race/government and settings you are using.



jscott991 -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 10:24:48 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I'd like to just remind everyone that it would be really helpful if, when you comment on balance in 1.0.4 Beta, you tell us what race/government and settings you are using.


I only play Human monarchies. I'll remember to say that from now on.



Gertjan -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 10:30:26 PM)

Why?



Astorax -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 10:38:51 PM)

Druthlen, wow, ok thanks man. No, I don't have a handle on 1.04 mechanics as yet because my computer with it on it is at another location. I'm just browsing the forums [;)]

So, it does really seem like a brand new game now. I'll have to unlearn all the things I was doing right off in 1.03. Colonize/invade all independents, any worlds that could be colonized would be colonized, a fleet (well of a couple/few ships) for most every system.

The 50% slower research thing I'm not liking already though I know a lot of people have wanted slower research. Even with crash researching, its still that slow?



Druthlen -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 10:42:48 PM)

I played 1400 star galaxy, human/democracy pirates many, life rare, space creatures rare, v slow research, restless with 15 opponents. After 7 yrs I had researched 1 component had 11 established colonys was at around 2-3k positive income(85k cash reserve) with 4 destroyers, 4 escorts, 2 cruisers(found) 10 small space ports 1 large space port 1 resort base(1 is enough) and 3 research stations, 3 monitering stations(found but neccesary for the super long range scanners on them). That is all I could afford. Mind you this was with almost 25k income from space port income. If that evaported by pirates blockading the independent worlds or somehow trade getting disrupted i went to -23k income. So my empire was very fragile and it took constant supervision and hunting pirates to have the marginal success I was enjoying. I meet a empire that had 7 destoryers it declared war on me and I gave up. I also did a run on that game colonizing independents and my empire went bankrupt around year 3 with 3 destoryers and 1 escort. My only compliant is that resource pirces are a min of 1 vs .5 in 1.03 This is 100% increase in pricing and really changes the dynamics of the game. I feel this increase is to aggressive and should be scaled back to .75 min prices. Also corruption should be looked at. It to was aggressively increased as well. Prehaps to much.

Druthlen



Astorax -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 10:50:51 PM)

[X(] 7 years in and 1 component researched?! Man ...thats, wow. Did you try crash researching?



Druthlen -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 11:06:46 PM)

Have you guys thought about increasing the wealth generated per 1 bil citizens by 5%-10%. This small increase would reflect in the state side by almost 2.5%-5% depending on tax rate. This small adjutment may swing things just enough for an empire to survive and it wouldnt give resources funky min prices. .75 is such a mathematically unclean number. 1's are so much easier to work with when I am breaking down cost comparisons.



Druthlen -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 11:08:09 PM)

I dont crash research. I have played several games in 1.03 where crash research killed the fun of the game. So I pretend like it doesnt exist. With cash being such a problem in 1.04 it may as well not exist. its to expensive.

Druthlen



jscott991 -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 11:08:31 PM)

Hopefully, I'll be able to post the screenshot.

Fully automated game aborted (everything set to auto) in 2763.

My usual settings: Human monarchy, rare alien life, agreeable homeworld, no pirates, everything else default. 1000 star galaxy. 6 other empires, all placed average or distant.

I have 27 colonies in 22 systems and my income has been red for about 10 minutes straight (dwindling cash reserves to 3k until a 19k gift from a new colony). I have only 11 warships total (fun).

I'm now fairly certain that unless you micromanage luxury mine construction or do other things, the economy in 1.04 is far too harsh.



[image]local://upfiles/31707/5DE16E23B3864C0398EB7991D116F4C0.jpg[/image]



Druthlen -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 11:16:11 PM)

at 27 colonies you could support 2 resort bases. that would give at least 16k income. The AI doesnt build resorts?? I dont know cuz I never use the AI.



jscott991 -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 11:17:42 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Druthlen

at 27 colonies you could support 2 resort bases. that would give at least 16k income. The AI doesnt build resorts?? I dont know cuz I never use the AI.


Apparently it does not.



ASHBERY76 -> RE: Making Money in 1.04 (4/21/2010 11:20:25 PM)

Show a screenshot of the colonies screen.



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