Nerf Building Quality Progression

[nightslaysanta]

perhaps we could bring back the tl grinding to help speed things up is that we could run a quality research and if succeeded it would up the ql for that building for a price

[AnrDaemon]

perhaps we could bring back the tl grinding to help speed things up is that we could run a quality research and if succeeded it would up the ql for that building for a price

wat

[Deantwo]

I am against removing building quality of operation. The poll might provide a poor selection of choices, though (Leave unchanged / remove completely with no improve option). I do believe that the player should play a role in advancing their empire's technology, and that increasing the quality of materials harvested (The main progression in the game), is the best way to reward that advancement.

In my opinion, the issue isn't the building quality, but the year-long wait to reach Q255. A discussion focused on how to best involve the members of an empire with the process would be a good one to have.

Yeah you have made it clear that you like the side-effect of having the current system. I do agree that increasing the quality of production slightly is a nice reward for being technologically advanced, but it can be implemented in other ways that both make more sense, more engaging and easier to control.

The issue with the current system is indeed the one-year wait time for many, but that is not the only issue. The idea that buildings are what gets better hasn't really made much sense for a while. With the old TL system it was only acceptable because the wait of doing so was fairly short and it felt fun to raise the numbers.

The community as a whole has never fully agreed on what would work best as a technology system, but the few points Anr once layed out still ring true (see the bullet points I posted in my previous post).

A simpler way of increasing the quality of production would be as a new optional tool bonus. Kinda like computers currently increase manufacturing speed or manufacturing output quantity. If you have that tool the manufacturing output's quality is increased slightly, for example a static Q10 point higher than the source. The tools could require advanced resources, so it feels like an advancement or reward when you aquire those resources.

[Mr. Mortius]

I agree with most of your points other than this one:

"Require constant maintenance, so you can't just get "enough" and never worry about it again"

This would work fine for certain empires that produce a single ship every few years, and makes sense from that perspective. Anything else, and the maintenance for tech would probably just prove to be tedious if it required direct player involvement.

[Deantwo]

"Require constant maintenance, so you can't just get "enough" and never worry about it again"

This would work fine for certain empires that produce a single ship every few years, and makes sense from that perspective. Anything else, and the maintenance for tech would probably just prove to be tedious if it required direct player involvement.

Yeah, that was poorly worded I guess. I didn't mean that a player should be forced to press a button every day. I meant that it should constantly be supplied with government funds and resources, and if you stop that supply the technology advantage should slowly diminish.
For example if you stop producing tongs, you eventually stop being able to mine radioactives once the stockpile of tongs is gone.

That example is why I like tools being used for unlocking new resources. If extracting Magmex required Cryo Heatsinks, and mining Vulcanite required Magmium tools, then we would have an obvious line of progression that requires you to have and maintain control over those resources. Losing access to a resource in the chain would not be an instant lose, you would have a stockpile of tools to relay on.

Having a starship hidden in deepspace with a cargo hold full of Vulcium mining equipment might make rebuilding an empire after a total defeat a lot faster, but you won't have unlimited supply of them until you reach that level of advanced resources again.

[Vectorus]

I've thought about this some more overnight. I have a simple idea which might help keep the best of both systems, while finding a use for Mass Media. Not sure yet.

What a new player finds obnoxious about the current system is the loyalty wall - a simple expanse of time which locks him out of the most fun game features, which he can do nothing to accelerate. So let's eliminate that, as you suggest: if you find a resource, you can use it.


What a middle-game or late-game player likes about the system is that your empire's experience and know-how can improve the quality of resources you find in the field, and they've been waiting a long time for this reward. It lets a large empire cut down on the logistical bloat, and it lets a middling empire run a potent manufacturing sector just off their home system and neighbours. My suggestion: 

Eliminate operational Q except for one building: Mass Media. Mass Media is renamed "Quality Control" (I would have called it "Refinery" but that's taken). If Quality Control is built in a city, it averages up that city's resource output, the way buildings do now. If it's lower, it does nothing. So no more wall, but benefits kept. It also adds an incentive to build cities rather than morale-defying independent buildings - currently, there is no incentive. 

You could reduce the volume of resource output, I suppose, if it's affected by this building (you could add controls to exempt certain resources). Otherwise it's slightly odd that Q254 and Q255 have absolutely no functional difference. But I don't insist on this. 

The Quality Control can be bettered in an active way: maybe by throwing money at it, the way we did with old TL. An empire that does the core 4X stuff will have money to burn: and nowadays, if you can afford to spend $1 billion every ten seconds, you could just throw a million workers at the research and finish it in a few hours. Or, it could be module based: a QC module which, like spaceships, inherits the quality of its parts. It could use mid-tier resources like electronic parts. Obtain one from some future quest system, or from a friendly empire,  or by feeding in salvaged tech from enemy ships, and you're set to make more. The details could be worked out later. Existing empires would simply keep the current Q of their Mass Media, which will soon be at max.

Any good?

[AnrDaemon]

your empire's experience and know-how can improve the quality of resources you find in the field

No.

It lets a large empire cut down on the logistical bloat

It lets large empire grow even larger with little to no effort.
Just plain no.

[Vectorus]

AnrDaemonNo.

Please elaborate. The idea of refining resources for a reduced but higher quality output has been suggested before. It was usually rejected because it was too wide-ranging, turning infinitely abundant lead into gold; but a quality-averaging system is much more limited in scope. Since it is actually the current system and no one has strenuously objected to that aspect of it in the year we've lived with it, I think it needs more than a one-word dismissal. I'm sure you're able to provide one, but you haven't yet. 

It lets large empire grow even larger with little to no effort.

Sorry, but this is just not true. Until a year ago, you were able to achieve the pinnacle of technological development with any of 8 qualities, 248-255. We are now proposing to slash that to just one, Q255. You are suggesting that under the TL system, finding resources was 8 times too easy, and that it is currently 2 times too easy: "little to no effort".  And look at the quality curve - even the difference between 254 and 255 is significant. Empires which formerly had access to everything at Q248 were suddenly no longer able to reach maximum volume, crew berths etc., through no failure of their own. They had to grow larger, scan more systems - is that really so great? You seem to be against that, in principle.

Notice that a very small number of empires have much over 100 worlds. The standings page is down now, but I think it's 2 or 3. That means that a tiny number of players have more than 2 or 3 high quality copies of each shipbuilding or strategic resource. Your comment would be truer if large empires actually raced to control dozens of copies of everything, exploiting every possible candidate; but simple experience shows that players prefer to find one or two good sources of everything, and are content with that.  Making high quality resources more readily available does not reduce the amount of city building you have to do. It just reduces the amount of AFK scanning. Is that such an important part of gameplay, a great example of meaningful difficulty?

All my proposal does is allow empires to reach full capacity while scanning fewer systems, which makes our lives less grindy and reduces the number of systems which need to be held in memory. It gives some value to having "high technology", cultural expertise. Everyone who originally said that 32 tech levels had just been replaced with 255 tech levels should understand the value of this. You could achieve the same effect by reducing the number of Q levels, but that wasn't part of the original proposal and would constitute another major upheaval. I'm trying to make suggestions within the parameters we've been given and people have supported: eliminate process Q, keep averaging bonuses, find use for Mass Media.

[AnrDaemon]

Please fix your article visibility.

[Vectorus]

Dean just mentioned it in the Discord. It went black and invisible, so I made it white.

Is it possible to restore the default colour, which changes based on your theme? The BBCode tags are not visible in the editor, the colour palette has no default option.

EDIT: There is a "remove formatting" button next to the colour palette. You can't seem to change the colour to default, independently of other formatting.