Poll follow-up: the future of manufactories. And M+C.

[Diazo]

Actually, for any ratio, you should turn conversion off if you start stalling both resources. Otherwise it will be converting M when you build a Metal-heavy ship, then convert M back to C a minute later for Crystal-heavy ship. This is noticeable when you are building starships.
Its a guaranteed loss of resources, but if the ratio is not too bad, losses are not very high.

I guess it depends on the situation, I'm not sure I'd want the conversion to stop when both resources are floored.

Keeping the conversion going will result in the shortest possible individual build times for ships. Quite often my situation is that I'm fine with the total build time taking longer if it means I get the ships from the early part of the build done faster.

I'd usually rather have one starship at the 2 minute mark and one at the 5 minute mark then one at the 3 minute mark and one at the 4 minute mark. (Numbers pulled from nowhere, do not try math on them.)

There is no cap on resources so I essentially ignore the loss due to conversion and I would prefer getting individual ships as fast as possible rather then configuring it so the total build of the fleet finished faster.

Now we are getting into playstyle differences though so that is my $0.02 for what it is worth.

D.

[Hearteater]

With M+C likely getting merged, the conversion mechanic is likely to be largely unimportant soon.

[keith.lamothe]

With M+C likely getting merged, the conversion mechanic is likely to be largely unimportant soon.

I'm no longer planning on doing the merge soon.  I wouldn't want to leave a "gap" on the resource bar because it would feel a lot like I was dumbing the game down (though as we've just discussed there's not much complexity actually being removed by that change).  So I'd like some idea lined up to replace it, that sounds like a good move forward and has been through some peer review.

[Hearteater]

Fine, make that a Blizzard Soon^TM

[_K_]

Although I could derive the math myself, to save time, do you have the formulas you used to compute your example?

Uh, i just grabbed the nearest spreadsheet and made the calculations in a sketchy manner. As result, they are all gone now.


So, if we get the conversion ratios nerfed, and making a proper fleet composition becomes (relatively) important, we want that task to be interesting, right?
Right now, most M/C values seem very arbitrary and random, so for a large fleet the uneven ratios will generally cancel out, resulting in a total fleet cost ratio close to 1:1.
We dont want that for every random fleet, right?

I think we should pick some duality, and make one side very metal-heavy, with the other being crystal-heavy.

At first i thought offence-defence, but that probably wont work. Defences are more of a one-time inestment, while fleet needs replenishing more often. So it wont be possible to balance at all.

So, how about fleet ships - starhips duality? Fleet ships cost mostly M, starships cost mostly C. Highly specialised starships and fleetships have very skewed ratio; more universal ships like fighters and flagships stay closer to 1:1 ratio.

That would cover mobile things, and for defences... how about large buildings mostly cost M, small turrets cost C.

[keith.lamothe]

Right now, most M/C values seem very arbitrary and random

The totals or the M:C ratios?  The totals are fairly carefully balanced to yield a certain cost-for-cap for the different categories of stuff (that you can build; AI-only stuff has wacky m/c/e values that only rarely matter).  The ratios I've also tried to keep reasonable.  Look at the base starships, for example.  But yea, I haven't paid as much attention to the ratios as to the totals.  As you've said, they're basically the same resource

[LaughingThesaurus]

Right now, most M/C values seem very arbitrary and random

The totals or the M:C ratios?  The totals are fairly carefully balanced to yield a certain cost-for-cap for the different categories of stuff (that you can build; AI-only stuff has wacky m/c/e values that only rarely matter).  The ratios I've also tried to keep reasonable.  Look at the base starships, for example.  But yea, I haven't paid as much attention to the ratios as to the totals.  As you've said, they're basically the same resource

Well now that we have reprocessors, the resource count of AI only stuff actually does matter quite a bit more.

[keith.lamothe]

Well now that we have reprocessors, the resource count of AI only stuff actually does matter quite a bit more.

Right, that's why I said it only rarely matters

[_K_]

Right now, most M/C values seem very arbitrary and random

The totals or the M:C ratios?  The totals are fairly carefully balanced to yield a certain cost-for-cap for the different categories of stuff (that you can build; AI-only stuff has wacky m/c/e values that only rarely matter).  The ratios I've also tried to keep reasonable.  Look at the base starships, for example.  But yea, I haven't paid as much attention to the ratios as to the totals.  As you've said, they're basically the same resource

The ratios, of course. I know the total values are a serious subject to balance.

What these ratios need is to make some sort of sense. The ratios should have some easily observable pattern, so the player can think "if i focus on this aspect, i will be needing more Metal". Right now, i dont think anyone even remembers the ratios for any non-triangle fleet ship. Or most of the turrets. Except maybe for sniper/spiders, because they used to cost loads of...hm was it crystals?

The problem, i guess is that there are so many ships, that are fit in so many categories, that picking which ones to use for ratios is very tricky.

[TechSY730]

For me, it sort of seems that units that focus on "science fiction-ish" tech seem to focus more on crystal (many, but not all, of the spire fleet ships, ff generators, many of the more fanciful fleet ships), while more "traditional" tech seems to require more metal, except for the most trivially of "simple stuff" (standard fighter, laser gattling), which requires low amounts of both in about the same amounts. Similarly, "mega" stuff like golems and many of the higher end trader toys require a large amount of both in about the same amounts.

There are of course exceptions to this (the zenith starship and the parasite ships are two exceptions that stand out to me), but this seems to be the trend I feel when looking over ships.

Of course, thanks to the relatively good fleet ship balance (it isn't perfect, but it is pretty dang good right now, especially considering how many there are), the high tech isn't really more desirable than the traditional overall, which means that one resource isn't really more important than another (except for early game, where you are trying to get more forcefields and thus need lots of crystal)

[keith.lamothe]

Often the ratios were set by "players are complaining that too many units are crystal-heavy, let's go make some of them neutral or metal-heavy".  I'm not sure it occurred to us to make which-was-which thematically appropriate.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I think there were ships with polycrystal hulls and stuff that cost a lot of crystal and that made me happy and then I just kind of ignored it.