Posted June 19, 2021
I think those two fields need some balancing. I have some ideas, thoughts on this.
Pre-consideration:
Assuming you can get the same demand bonus on any type of item, the only relevant value to compare resources becomes its base price. Unless you have a map generated, where there is no demand for a said resource. But that is another category of problem we ignore here :D
1. Refining and fabrication should never increase the size of things, but reduce it. This is currently the case for refining ore, but not for refining salvage and when fabricating.
While one can debate whether a product can potentially increase in size compared the resources used (implicating size means volume), by reducing density... I think this makes especially fabrication very impractical. The size increase of products is at times immense. You have to use less of your available fabrication space, because it will overflow otherwise. In order to know how much resources you can drop for the fabrication process, you need to check the size of the end-product and compute the difference of the sum of all component sizes. For each intermediate product you fabricate if you target a high-tier item. Which is crazy and nobody will do it. So you have to babysit it swap the storage and specs all the time and make sure you don't craft to many items to overfill your general storage. Also consider, there is not even a skill to increase the fabrication storage. But even adding it, would leave the same issue and even require you skill points to offset a litle bit. My proposal in other post to give the ability to pick how many items are fabricated also combines well with this.
2. Fabricated products should be of more base value, than its components.
For example I salvage torim ore and the base value goes from 41.4 to 59.7, which is a 44% increase! Even with the refining cost, its still around 32% increase.
Fabricated goods always have 1:1 base price value related to its components. On top of that you have to apply the fabrication costs. This explode at the lower tier products, because they require many small t1 parts. For example 1x Basic drone Bay costs 230 to fabricate. Its base price is 2128, which means fabricating did cost you time, skill and you'v lost 7.5% value there. You can dump even more skill points, so that this value is lower, but it will never be positive after spending lots of skill points and you can reduce the cost for refining as well, so that is no real gain compared...
I think for balancing it, the numbers should all be tweake something like that:
1. Refining reduce size 50%, value increase: 10%. Fabricating reduce size 10%, value increase 10%. Especially to note on fabrication is, that now it makes sense to produce heigher tier products, because they get more valuable and compact, compared to lower tier products as the effect multiplies (on size with dimishing effect, on price increasing). Currently, if there a station with a demand for any tier of drone command bay, it does not make any sense to produce the prototype one, because the base price does not change compared to its "parts", so the only thing that matters is the demand bonus. It can be heigher for prototype, but as well heigher for the basic one. And even if its slightly heigher for the prototype, you will ask yourself twice whether you want to go the way of burden produce them. In my opinion this mechanic does not make any sense.
2. Make refining cost based on base price, 10% (with skill and reputation lowering it). Yes, that means initially only benefit is size reduction -> which is good already. To get more money from refining, you need to skill or increase reputation. Make fabrication cost be based on base price, 10%. Same as with refining here in terms of benefit on the price, but still advantage of size reduction. Being able to haul a lot and sell is also a win.
3. Optional, just an idea popped up while writing. Two variants:
3.a remove fabricator storage, only leave UI for dropping spec and then pick amount to craft. Resources are used from storage
3.b same as 3.a, but instead of dropping the spec, you can pick one you have in storage, without removing it from there -> makes sense if you have all your specs in a sub-container in storage and don't want to pick it out and place it back in all the time ;P
I'v also thought about how to adjust and balance it all. It also depends on whether this should be game-settings values or fixed into the item config. Currently its the latter and I think it should stay that way, should it be implemented.
I was thinking myself writing a tool that goes through items and balances the values automatically. This way you can tweak numbers and see what the outcome is and wether it makes sense. Obviously it only works if there is a hierarchy you can go on stepwise and no circular dependencies in component -> product. Also the question is whether the rock/salvage is the base, because at some point you need to decide what the root values are and from that point you go either up or down the hierarchy.
Pre-consideration:
Assuming you can get the same demand bonus on any type of item, the only relevant value to compare resources becomes its base price. Unless you have a map generated, where there is no demand for a said resource. But that is another category of problem we ignore here :D
1. Refining and fabrication should never increase the size of things, but reduce it. This is currently the case for refining ore, but not for refining salvage and when fabricating.
While one can debate whether a product can potentially increase in size compared the resources used (implicating size means volume), by reducing density... I think this makes especially fabrication very impractical. The size increase of products is at times immense. You have to use less of your available fabrication space, because it will overflow otherwise. In order to know how much resources you can drop for the fabrication process, you need to check the size of the end-product and compute the difference of the sum of all component sizes. For each intermediate product you fabricate if you target a high-tier item. Which is crazy and nobody will do it. So you have to babysit it swap the storage and specs all the time and make sure you don't craft to many items to overfill your general storage. Also consider, there is not even a skill to increase the fabrication storage. But even adding it, would leave the same issue and even require you skill points to offset a litle bit. My proposal in other post to give the ability to pick how many items are fabricated also combines well with this.
2. Fabricated products should be of more base value, than its components.
For example I salvage torim ore and the base value goes from 41.4 to 59.7, which is a 44% increase! Even with the refining cost, its still around 32% increase.
Fabricated goods always have 1:1 base price value related to its components. On top of that you have to apply the fabrication costs. This explode at the lower tier products, because they require many small t1 parts. For example 1x Basic drone Bay costs 230 to fabricate. Its base price is 2128, which means fabricating did cost you time, skill and you'v lost 7.5% value there. You can dump even more skill points, so that this value is lower, but it will never be positive after spending lots of skill points and you can reduce the cost for refining as well, so that is no real gain compared...
I think for balancing it, the numbers should all be tweake something like that:
1. Refining reduce size 50%, value increase: 10%. Fabricating reduce size 10%, value increase 10%. Especially to note on fabrication is, that now it makes sense to produce heigher tier products, because they get more valuable and compact, compared to lower tier products as the effect multiplies (on size with dimishing effect, on price increasing). Currently, if there a station with a demand for any tier of drone command bay, it does not make any sense to produce the prototype one, because the base price does not change compared to its "parts", so the only thing that matters is the demand bonus. It can be heigher for prototype, but as well heigher for the basic one. And even if its slightly heigher for the prototype, you will ask yourself twice whether you want to go the way of burden produce them. In my opinion this mechanic does not make any sense.
2. Make refining cost based on base price, 10% (with skill and reputation lowering it). Yes, that means initially only benefit is size reduction -> which is good already. To get more money from refining, you need to skill or increase reputation. Make fabrication cost be based on base price, 10%. Same as with refining here in terms of benefit on the price, but still advantage of size reduction. Being able to haul a lot and sell is also a win.
3. Optional, just an idea popped up while writing. Two variants:
3.a remove fabricator storage, only leave UI for dropping spec and then pick amount to craft. Resources are used from storage
3.b same as 3.a, but instead of dropping the spec, you can pick one you have in storage, without removing it from there -> makes sense if you have all your specs in a sub-container in storage and don't want to pick it out and place it back in all the time ;P
I'v also thought about how to adjust and balance it all. It also depends on whether this should be game-settings values or fixed into the item config. Currently its the latter and I think it should stay that way, should it be implemented.
I was thinking myself writing a tool that goes through items and balances the values automatically. This way you can tweak numbers and see what the outcome is and wether it makes sense. Obviously it only works if there is a hierarchy you can go on stepwise and no circular dependencies in component -> product. Also the question is whether the rock/salvage is the base, because at some point you need to decide what the root values are and from that point you go either up or down the hierarchy.
Post edited June 20, 2021 by ysor123