-->Grind Does Not Equal Interesting Game Play...

[XGamer]

Wow, 14->180? Really? What on earth were you doing? If I had to guess huge mega-complex supplied entirely by a single low-yield core sector, totally reliant on the bug which meant that miners would continue to gather resources even in sectors which were utterly depleted?

This was in a medium ~250 module station along the highway ring, which didn't have an issue before 4.0.
The game never displayed the yields of anything pre 4.0 or I have never seen it. Ships were doing their thing and the world was fine.

Eventually the ultimate downside will end up being the fact that these changes require the simulation of that many more ships, slowing things down well beyond what used to happen, effectively limiting the scale of what you can do.
Also the ship limit per station, causing a cluttered property list with stuff that ought to be assigned to a station.

If you've spent billions on top of billions then you were already rich and therefore not making money at an accelerated pace really doesn't put you out does it? I mean you already spent billions to put up the shipyard...those billions could have been spent on fleets or other stations so I'm failing to see what the issue is here. The shipyards are not unprofitable...they are simply not as profitable as you want/believe they should be...two very different things.

I didn't have the billions when I started obviously. I don't think I ever had a billion in my account in that save.
It started as a small station that produced goods, being advanced into a shipyard over time.
Also a billion is easy to spend on blueprints. The S/M module blueprint itself is north of a hundred million credits. A single XL blueprint is north of 100 million.
So no not really.

They nerfed an option that was too good to something on the level of the other options. And you can absolutely enjoy the game in your own way...it is simply not sanctioned officially by Egosoft.

That is highly subjective. I can also say that capturing ships is way too rewarding and has not nearly enough of a downside. Quite a few people would likely object.
The fact of the matter remains that one style to play the game got nerfed hard, whereas others haven't been touched, despite also making the player billions of credits.

crystal mining, shipyards, 3 star pilots, autotraders, mining.... some people cannot adapt, cannot figure out new ways to do things...

What makes you say that I (or others for that matter) cannot adapt or figure out other ways to do things? Quite presumptuous.
Regardless it's less about not being able to adapt than it is to being forced into a certain style to play (at least if you want some kind of ROI / efficiency). Especially considering we're talking about a single player sandbox game that prides itself on player choice and there being many ways to play the game.

Personally I couldn't care less about the asteroid crystals for example, as I find it way too boring and tedious finding them in the first place. Others may enjoy it, which is fine. I can ignore them.
Pilot levels are meh, gave up on those ages ago as it's way too much of a grind getting them (or the seminars for that matter) for my taste. They either get there on their own or they die before that ever happens.

the nerfing down to 5% of original values on the resources around the "ring" (and even those are already "in use" by NPC's).
It shows some "lack of thought" for all kinds of players who use the game, vanilla should not be "accommodating" to only one (maybe two) types of players or the "sandbox" should be taken out of the description.

Especially considering they did that mid game, rather than on a new game properly balancing it there with the rest of the stuff. Also wouldn't screw people over that way.
Definitely shows a lack of thought.

there was no lack of anything to do to make money. What I found myself encouraged to do was to try different things at differrent times to make my money. But really...after you have enough for a couple mining ships and a large trader, what money woes could you have?

Good for you. But having the more sane shipyard of pre 4.0, or crystals, or mining efficiency doesn't change any of that. You still could've done the same thing you did with the same rewards and experience.
That is kind of the problem with all of it really. It's detrimental to one way of enjoying the game which didn't even have any effect whatsoever on other ways to do the same. In the end it's forcing people that enjoyed to play the game a certain way to doing stuff they might not enjoy quite as much, or at the very least deal with a worse experience and way more micro.

Just because something doesn't affect you does not mean that very same thing isn't bad.

This is my argument as well. Ultimately this is a single player game and it is up to you yourself to control the experience. That being said, if you found that a Wharf made too much money and kind of cheapened your gameplay experience, you could always choose to not build a Wharf or reduce your margins on sales. I mean I do tons of things like that.

You could opt to sell at 50%, or you could opt to not sell any ships to anyone and just produce your own ships only, if you so choose. Perfectly valid and doesn't hurt anyone. The point is it would be each individuals **choice**, which now we don't have anymore.

they left the Shipyards making the I am going to call it, the "correct" amount of credits. I call it "Correct" because it is very unrealistic and immersion breaking to be selling ships at 10% of what you could buy it for.

Exactly, it's just stupid to see that you sell ships including equipment for less than 90% of a single piece of equipment on that very same ship. Effectively you're offering that piece of equipment at a discount, and give away a bunch of other equipment, the entire ship and a bunch of weapons and time for free on top. That is just stupid.

Of course I felt that the mechanics behind Wharfs and Shipyards was broken in the first place because it should have been a rare occurrence to be able to sell ANY ships at 150% mark up. Instead is should have been demand based and you would have found your actual sell prices range between 10% (which it is hard locked at now) and 150% depending on how desperate the NPC factions were ships. I expect if it had been working correctly, 10-30% markup would have been the norm which would in general mean you earned more than you do now but significantly less than you used to earn. Personally I am less opposed to earning less than the immersion breaking and unrealistic locked 10% markup.

I don't think the slider ever was a markup on top of the regular price. It rather is the percentage of the regular ship price you want it to sell at to other factions. So your choice was always selling it at a discount (of up to 50%) or at a markup (or up to 50%). Selling a ship that was worth 100k could be sold anywhere between 50k and 150k. That made perfect sense, either you give them away for cheap to a faction in order to boost their military / economy (or your sales volume), or you wanted to make some extra money.
As such I wouldn't outright call it flawed.

That being said, I can agree on it seeming weird at times how they flocked your shipyard. It could have been more demand based, and they would prefer to use their own shipyards, then order at the players wharf when their own are low on resources (and thus cannot produce) or they just need a few ships right now. Whether you were selling at the regular price, 20% markup or 50% markup would dictate whether they'd rather wait for their own wharf to be stocked or done building, or pay the extra price and order the ship with the player. If you were to sell discounted, they could then even prefer yours over their own depending on resource levels.
Your standing with them could also play a role, so that when you're a good friend they would be more willing to order at your wharf compared to when you're just some other random person.
Of course it would still have to be reasonable, in that they would still order at your own. If they're in a war or have Xenon knocking at their door they would even be willing to pay the 50% extra, as it's either that or get their rear kicked for example.

[XGamer]

You're not being coerced... Ego is making changes to the game that they believe are for the better. You may disagree, and that's fine... but you're not being coerced.

Sure you can ignore the fact that what you enjoy is no longer possible, an economic choice, feasible or even just requires a ton more grind.
On the other hand, you could've also ignored crystals, shipyards, or core sector mining before. :shrug:

you could always choose to not build a Wharf or reduce your margins on sales.

Unfortunately neither of those options is a good one. Know this because have been stuck with that choice for my last couple of games. Not building a shipyard means you miss out on a fairly significant chunk of the game, if you want to be able to support a favoured faction by providing shipbuilding facilities to help them in a war. However building one in a 3.0 game ruined my enjoyment of other aspects of the game, particularly Trade (made it utterly pointless). As for reducing margins, even setting prices for NPC's to the absolute lowest the game would let me still made me ludicrously wealthy in a VERY short amount of time (about 300 million per hour, despite only selling to 2 factions & with prices set to 50%). Frankly I'm very grateful they have adjusted the profitability of shipyards. Might actually risk building one in my current game, though still a bit wary of them.

You could've bought all the resources at top dollar. Of course if they flock your station and you produce a ton of ships then you make money. But that's the point of going through the effort. Ships are expensive, sell a lot of them makes a lot of money naturally. That is fine and frankly expected.
If you have an aversion to making money then you can always mod the profits down if buying everything at top dollar and selling at minimum would still make you too much money for your taste.

The way it is now is just stupid and does not make any sense whatsoever.

[GCU Grey Area]

You could've bought all the resources at top dollar. Of course if they flock your station and you produce a ton of ships then you make money. But that's the point of going through the effort. Ships are expensive, sell a lot of them makes a lot of money naturally. That is fine and frankly expected.
If you have an aversion to making money then you can always mod the profits down if buying everything at top dollar and selling at minimum would still make you too much money for your taste.

The way it is now is just stupid and does not make any sense whatsoever.

I don't mod. Need to keep the game vanilla for beta testing purposes. Would have been perfectly happy to sell those ships at cost. Unfortunately couldn't, 50% is the lowest possible setting. Have been avoiding shipyards since then but definitely missed them in my last game where I was trying to support Zyarth. Not being able to build them ships definitely hampered my efforts to help them against the Xenon. I don't have an aversion to making money, quite the opposite, the Trade & Build aspects of the game are my favourite parts (also enjoy mindlessly shooting stuff, but not quite so much). Problem with shipyards was that even doing everything possible to restrict profits so I could still derive enjoyment from running my trade fleet & building stations I ultimately failed - all of that stuff becomes pointless when a single shipyard is making orders of magnitude more money than all the other assets I had put together. In the end abandoned that game shortly after they shipyard became operational. Game just wasn't fun any more.

[XGamer]

So just allow to adjust anywhere from 1% to 150% from the 100% baseline of 3.3.

[GCU Grey Area]

So just allow to adjust anywhere from 1% to 150% from the 100% baseline of 3.3.

Made a request for exactly that several months ago. Very unpopular idea, few responses, don't recall any of them being positive. Thread sank like a stone.

[grapedog]

So just allow to adjust anywhere from 1% to 150% from the 100% baseline of 3.3.

Made a request for exactly that several months ago. Very unpopular idea, few responses, don't recall any of them being positive. Thread sank like a stone.

The factions have infinite money, so the slider is mostly irrelevant anyhow.


Make the default price the cost of base materials at near max price(3/4ths max price for example)

Id get rid of the scale, add triggers for prices....

Is faction at war
Is faction losing territory
Is faction at a certain rep with you, 20, 25, 30(29 rep, max buy price is 115% or something. Argon caught one of my drug smuggling ships, -1 rep, now im losing some profits till u get 30 back)
Have you positively assisted them with a plot/story.(siding with zya means zya will buy higher price but FRF wont. Did you lay down the bread crumb trail for yaki, TER wont buy max price ever)(id make this a big one)
Do you assist their economy(must have 5 or 10 stations operating in their space)
Do you assist with war/trade missions(doing 1 mission every 24 game hours)(id make this one a big one)

All these things can get you to 150% of max price of materials...

[Raptor34]

So just allow to adjust anywhere from 1% to 150% from the 100% baseline of 3.3.

Made a request for exactly that several months ago. Very unpopular idea, few responses, don't recall any of them being positive. Thread sank like a stone.

The factions have infinite money, so the slider is mostly irrelevant anyhow.


Make the default price the cost of base materials at near max price(3/4ths max price for example)

Id get rid of the scale, add triggers for prices....

Is faction at war
Is faction losing territory
Is faction at a certain rep with you, 20, 25, 30(29 rep, max buy price is 115% or something. Argon caught one of my drug smuggling ships, -1 rep, now im losing some profits till u get 30 back)
Have you positively assisted them with a plot/story.(siding with zya means zya will buy higher price but FRF wont. Did you lay down the bread crumb trail for yaki, TER wont buy max price ever)(id make this a big one)
Do you assist their economy(must have 5 or 10 stations operating in their space)
Do you assist with war/trade missions(doing 1 mission every 24 game hours)(id make this one a big one)

All these things can get you to 150% of max price of materials...

Interesting, though I would make it do a check in a certain timespan instead than constantly fluctuating. So minor annoyances against a faction won't matter as long as you rapidly make up for it.
Probably lighter on the CPU too.
But for that matter I would also do a check on how many stations are actually open trade or at least trading with the faction rather than just operating in their space. Could be interesting if there is a check that also takes into account who the station trades with. Like if you have completely player internally traded stations there is no benefit. Player supplied but selling out has a small benefit. Supplying both the ZYA and ARG has a small benefit. Open trade but only supplying ARG has a big benefit. After all assisting economy has to be actually assisting economy.
More or less agree on the rest as you don't want it to be too restrictive.

[GCU Grey Area]

So just allow to adjust anywhere from 1% to 150% from the 100% baseline of 3.3.

Made a request for exactly that several months ago. Very unpopular idea, few responses, don't recall any of them being positive. Thread sank like a stone.

The factions have infinite money, so the slider is mostly irrelevant anyhow.

Not to me it isn't. Don't care how much money the factions have, I don't want it if it's going to spoil my enjoyment of other parts of the game. Takes all the fun out of finding a particularly lucrative trade run if I know my shipyard's probably made several times more than that in the few seconds it took to setup the buy & sell orders. Makes building any other stations to trade with the NPC factions fairly pointless too. Having the slider start at 1% would have been my preferred solution to the issue of excessively profitable shipyards (because it would not have affected anyone who still wanted to gouge the NPC's for every credit they could get). Will have to see if the recent changes are sufficient to make it possible for me to play a part in the strategic side of the game (by supplying cheap ships to my favourite factions) without it ruining my fun with the Trade & Build parts of the game.

[XGamer]

So just allow to adjust anywhere from 1% to 150% from the 100% baseline of 3.3.

Made a request for exactly that several months ago. Very unpopular idea, few responses, don't recall any of them being positive. Thread sank like a stone.

Ah yes, instead lets just hardcode it to 10% much better than giving the player the choice to not make money

Is faction at a certain rep with you, 20, 25, 30(29 rep, max buy price is 115% or something. Argon caught one of my drug smuggling ships, -1 rep, now im losing some profits till u get 30 back)
Have you positively assisted them with a plot/story.(siding with zya means zya will buy higher price but FRF wont. Did you lay down the bread crumb trail for yaki, TER wont buy max price ever)(id make this a big one)
Do you assist their economy(must have 5 or 10 stations operating in their space)
Do you assist with war/trade missions(doing 1 mission every 24 game hours)(id make this one a big one)

All these things can get you to 150% of max price of materials...

These are terrible ideas tbh, at least you're making them sound terrible. For the sole reason of forcing the player to play a certain way.

The factions have infinite money, so the slider is mostly irrelevant anyhow.

Just because they have infinite money doesn't make the slider irrelevant. The player would have a choice not to take it if they don't want to, while still able to supply factions with ships.
Also just because factions have infinite money does not necessarily mean they have to spend it.

[jlehtone]

Having the slider start at 1% would have been my preferred solution to the issue of excessively profitable shipyards (because it would not have affected anyone who still wanted to gouge the NPC's for every credit they could get).

The slider start could as well be at -100%. It would still affect only those who opt to use it. Of course, some appreciation from the NPC clients would be expected for such charity.

It makes no sense that your suggestion got negative comments.

[XGamer]

It would still affect only those who opt to use it.

That's the entire point: Player choice.
But apparently that is somehow a terrible idea in a single player game...

[grapedog]

Is faction at a certain rep with you, 20, 25, 30(29 rep, max buy price is 115% or something. Argon caught one of my drug smuggling ships, -1 rep, now im losing some profits till u get 30 back)
Have you positively assisted them with a plot/story.(siding with zya means zya will buy higher price but FRF wont. Did you lay down the bread crumb trail for yaki, TER wont buy max price ever)(id make this a big one)
Do you assist their economy(must have 5 or 10 stations operating in their space)
Do you assist with war/trade missions(doing 1 mission every 24 game hours)(id make this one a big one)

All these things can get you to 150% of max price of materials...

These are terrible ideas tbh, at least you're making them sound terrible. For the sole reason of forcing the player to play a certain way.

So what isn't a terrible idea? At least I'm trying to bring something new to the conversation.

As opposed to bringing back old shipyard profits, why not just put in a button, that when the player presses it, it gives him cash.... or is that forcing the player to play a certain way? The argument of forcing a player to play a certain way is ridiculous... it's a game, with boundaries, they're forcing you to play a certain way in many many regards.

There are zero good arguments you can make to support how ridiculously OP shipyards were before the changes to profits. Single player or not, it was a vastly broken mechanic. You may not like my suggestions, but your biggest suggestion to date I think has been, put it back like how it was. Clearly that was broken...

You're like a JG Wentworth commercial, it's my money and i want it now...

In NO way were the old shipyards healthy for the game as a whole.

[XGamer]

I think we had quite not so terrible ones a few posts back tbh.

As for shipyards right now: They're outrageously stupid and nonsensical. Nobody ever would sell a ship worth 1.3 mil for 130k when one single adv sat the ship carries in its cargo hold, is already being sold for 150k. As I have said before: You're offering a piece of equipment at a discount, and give a shitton of stuff including a ship to carry said equipment away for free basically.

Ships are expensive, as such if you sell them you make a ton of money, same as you pay a ton of money if you buy a ship.

The issue never really was with the price you get for a ship I don't think. More that your wharf/shipyard was instantly overrun by factions as soon as you have blueprints they're interested in, resources to build said ship and allow them to buy said ship. If you manage to keep resources in stock, your shipyard would (and still does afaik) spit out ships as fast as it can make them.

There are ways to nerf player profits and then there are ways to say F*** U and pull a huge ass middle finger right into everyone's face. Egosoft obviously decided for the latter, which is why we have all these threads and why they're rightfully getting trashed for it.

[grapedog]

Nobody ever would sell a ship worth 1.3 mil for 130k when one single adv sat the ship carries in its cargo hold, is already being sold for 150k.

Where are you getting these numbers? I have 2 shipyards, that buy every single thing they need to build ships, and they're still making me a billion+ in credits every day.

How am I making billions in credits, buying everything(including foods/meds for my workforce), if I'm always selling ships for less than what I'm buying components for?

Something is wrong with your math....

[XGamer]

How am I making billions in credits, buying everything(including foods/meds for my workforce), if I'm always selling ships for less than what I'm buying components for?

How you are making several billions with just 2 shipyards is indeed beyond me. Are you making excessive use of SETA and it thus feels like you're making crazy amounts of money in no time?

As for the Adv Sat example: HOP paid me 120k for a ship that had an adv sat on it (among a bunch of other stuff), at the same time me buying an adv sat at HOP would cost me more than what they paid me for the entire ship including all its loadout.

[grapedog]

How am I making billions in credits, buying everything(including foods/meds for my workforce), if I'm always selling ships for less than what I'm buying components for?

How you are making several billions with just 2 shipyards is indeed beyond me. Are you making excessive use of SETA and it thus feels like you're making crazy amounts of money in no time?

As for the Adv Sat example: HOP paid me 120k for a ship that had an adv sat on it (among a bunch of other stuff), at the same time me buying an adv sat at HOP would cost me more than what they paid me for the entire ship including all its loadout.

No, I don't use SETA at all, and these shipyards each have restrictions on which factions can purchase... so they could be making even more.

I don't know what you're doing wrong... but I'd need to see hard numbers aside from anecdotal evidence. Was the shipyard nerf needed, yes, totally. Was it done in the right way... I don't know about that. I'll agree it could have been done differently.

[dtpsprt]

How am I making billions in credits, buying everything(including foods/meds for my workforce), if I'm always selling ships for less than what I'm buying components for?

How you are making several billions with just 2 shipyards is indeed beyond me. Are you making excessive use of SETA and it thus feels like you're making crazy amounts of money in no time?

As for the Adv Sat example: HOP paid me 120k for a ship that had an adv sat on it (among a bunch of other stuff), at the same time me buying an adv sat at HOP would cost me more than what they paid me for the entire ship including all its loadout.

No, I don't use SETA at all, and these shipyards each have restrictions on which factions can purchase... so they could be making even more.

I don't know what you're doing wrong... but I'd need to see hard numbers aside from anecdotal evidence. Was the shipyard nerf needed, yes, totally. Was it done in the right way... I don't know about that. I'll agree it could have been done differently.

He isn't doing anything wrong... and the numbers are there... even if there is a small (probably ridiculously small) amount of profit (the cost of a whole ship less than the retail price of an Advanced satellite), when was it the last time you checked on actual profit instead of just money coming in? Most obviously not all income is profit eh?
I was one of the biggest advocates of Shipyards needing to be less profitable (I did started a new game right after I was able to buy and built y first Wharf, see previous posts of me on the subject) but this is "over the top" to use a mild expression... Egosoft could have "farmed" ideas if they had run out of them, through a meaningful "ballot" that they would pay attention to and heed instead of just putting an arbitrary profit percentage without, apparently, a second thought...

[grapedog]

He isn't doing anything wrong... and the numbers are there... even if there is a small (probably ridiculously small) amount of profit (the cost of a whole ship less than the retail price of an Advanced satellite), when was it the last time you checked on actual profit instead of just money coming in? Most obviously not all income is profit eh?

These two shipyards make nothing on their own. They import EVERYTHING, including food and meds for my workforce/ship crews... so the left over money it deposits in my account every 2-3 hours is nothing but profits.

[exogenesis]

Personally I think the shipyard profits reduction was a very good change,
I don't think it was an 'over the top' change at all...


This graph shows shpyard ship-sales returns over the last 2600 hours in my game
(total of 308,000 ships built, 423 billion credits in sales),
it starts at the time the shipyards were 'opened to NPCs'
(I've been tracking all ships sold since then via the log-book in the game-save files)

http://www.Exogenesis.co.uk/ShipyardProfitsOverTime.png

You can see when X4 v4.0 (beta) was changed to reduce shipyard sales profits,
i.e. at about 1800 hours, so been playing a further 800 hours since then.

Profits are still pretty good, I mean I've received somewhere between 20 & 40 billion since the change.

Also, looks like a recent profits-upturn after the Yaki started building ships in CoH

Always had the slider set a 100%,
however this is with completely self-sufficient shipyards
(mining or making all the resources/intermediates/products).

[RoverTX]

Shipyards making a bunch of money was a bug... I was able to set mark up to like 175% and NPC still buy from me instead of their own shipyards which are full of wares. Something was really really broken.

Also mining too was actually broken before. Resources never actually depleted ever. Now fixing that bug has clearly lead to some more bugs being surfaced, but honestly this is better. Mining now requires you to drop probes and think about where you put stations along with the population changes.

My main complaint is I wish the resource probes better showed the level of depletion. That way you could better plan and move miners around when levels start to fall and/or recover.