2019-11-26 Brains, Server Deadlocks

[jakbruce2012]

I think 5 days total for intergalactic wormhole is fair. Should ideally max out the home system before going too far anyway, at least if standings are to continue to be based on # of worlds controlled.

[Deantwo]

Gunpowder / explosive / kinetic weaponry can reasonably be their own things endgame though: they do different damage types, have a much different creation method, etc. 

What reason does a person have to patent anything higher than a Q1 'P' drive?  Does it improve the game? Is it fun? Does it effect ship design any way?

Exactly. Gunpowder weapons have a purpose whenever your empire doesn't have access to the advanced materials required for laser weaponry. And there are many cases where you might lose access to the advanced materials and have to go back to gunpowder.
By the way a more modern alternative gunpowder recipe would still be nice.

The wormhole P FTL drive however has the exact same material requirements as the wormhole PN FTL drive. This means that there is exactly zero reason to ever use the P drive once you have the PN drive researched. Experienced players will only ever use the P drive by accident, and new players will only consider it a trap that they had to learn the hard way.

Or, bigger idea: just have a P+ Drive, a N- drive, and a N0 drive, and slot them all into the ship independantly, then you simply start research with P+, N-, and N0, and add the modules in, and then you can balance them seperately, and let players choose what they need to add

That indeed seems like a better solution. Expect that it requires an engineering station for each.
Also I like the P+, N- and N0 notation.

[AnrDaemon]

It took EVE ten years to realize that every usable ingame item should be useful at all times in a sandbox game.
And another two to really nail the balance between them.
Purposefully creating an item that everybody will skip and even write guides "how to not repeat my mistakes in game X" is a bad idea. Really bad.
It gives a game an instant negative score.

[Haxus]

every usable ingame item should be useful at all times

Lol, those darned infinitives; be careful with them. Your assertion is false. A nuclear fuel rod is not useful if you don't have a nuclear power plant. A gravity drive module is not useful to someone without a spacecraft or the ability to make one.

an item that everybody will skip

This assertion presumes that a one way wormhole drive is of no use to someone who would otherwise have to deadhead each way. I respectfully disagree.


In some dungeon game, I had a rusty dagger -1. Was it useful at all times? Yes. Was it a desirable thing to carry around? No, unless your alternative was your hand. Would everyone skip it? As soon as practicable.

It didn't ruin the game.

[jakbruce2012]

wormhole P surely beats deadheading, even if you need to explore to find a loop back home.

Or build ships cheap enough to use as one way transit, then recall home.

[Deantwo]

every usable ingame item should be useful at all times

Lol, those darned infinitives; be careful with them. Your assertion is false. A nuclear fuel rod is not useful if you don't have a nuclear power plant. A gravity drive module is not useful to someone without a spacecraft or the ability to make one.

That is not what Anr meant. Those things are materials used to get something. As long as gravity-drive is useful, the materials used to make it will always be useful. Same with nuclear fuel rods, they will always be useful while nuclear power plants are useful.

What Anr means is that end products should be useful. For example some gunpowder/kinetic weapons could be good against some armor types, and energy weapons could be good another others. Same with ship weapons.

There will likely always be some beginner equipment that won't have a use, especially in a game that wants a progression like we have in Hazeron. But they can be made to be somewhat useful in special scenarios.

[Haxus]

That may not be what Anr meant. Your explanation does not help clear it up.

What item is it that has no use? A Wormhole P Drive?

I could have a warp ship with one of those, just so I could use the occasional ringworld stargate. So what if I can’t come back.

Maybe I only stargate between ringworlds. Then I would never need a wormhole PN or PNN drive.

[Ikkir Isth]

The "rusty dagger" comparison is somewhat interesting: typically in games of these progression, there are a set of "in between upgrades" for progression that serve as catchup mechanisms (among other things), where a rusty dagger might get replaced with a finely polished steel dagger +2, a tarnished crumbly adamantite dagger might still be better than the +2 steel, and more readily available in a higher level zone (or, more commonly, as vendor trash, or weapons for pets/followers/summons, etc, with often the "uncommon" version of vendor trash being the real upgrades... aka, the "enchanted tarnished crumbly adamantite dagger" version. Basically, a very tiered, level based upgrade system for each progression step.)

In this game of material quality though, there appears to only be a direct route up: there is orphaned upgrade routes all along: you don't care about upgrading the quality of "useless patents". So, really, we have a weird tech tree thing then that has some things that continue to progress and others that stop. How it really looks
Q1 to Q255, but realistically <10Q Wormhole P drive. Options to convert to Q255? not useful.
This links to Q1 to Q255 Womrhole P+N-, also probably <15Q, with upgrade options negligible.
And then we have the P+N-N0 drive, lets say start it at Q15 for when you unlock it. This is the final drive to make, so you would research additional patents to upgrade here later.
The tech tree then looks like this:
Q? P+ -> Q? P+N- -> ~Q15 P+N-N0 -> Q16-20 P+N-N0 -> Q21-Q30.... 50.... 100... 200.... 255 P+N-N0 drive, for wormhole tech.

This is why I suggested the separate drives completely, so you end up with a branch like this instead:
P+Drive : Q1|-> - 2 .... 10 .... 30 .... 100 ... 200 ... 255
N-Drive:........|_>Q ? (above),|-> 5.....10....30....100....255
N0Drive: ...............................|_>Q?(above)->, 10...30...100...255

Of course, warp already has its own problems with its patent progression system too, in which the quality itself doesnt seem to make much difference, but thats a different subject anyway. In the end, of course, balance how you will, its your tech system, all the fun problems you get to solve :)