[Feedback] 7.00 Economy

[geldonyetich]

Some feedback regarding the Recycling economy...

One thing I noticed is that it's hard to drop off scrap at TEL Scrap Processing Facility FME-610 in the Bright Promise sector. So I scanned the station to get a good look at its logistic screen, and it seemed that the jam was that they were full of scrap metal almost constantly. If there's no place for additional scrap metal to go, the Scrap Recycler can't run.

The issue may be that a single Scrap Recycler can process about 1,800 or 450 Scrap Metal/hr depending on if it's outputting Claytronics of Hull Parts, but 1 Scrap Processor can produce up up to 9000 Scrap Metal/hr. So a station that hopes to process that input smoothly would need around 4 Scrap Recyclers per processor, and the NPC station designs don't seem to recognize that, as FME-610 only has one of each.

[Scoob]

I have a station with three Scrap Processors feeding a station in another sector with three Scrap Recyclers. The former gives a very slight over-supply Scrap Metal to the latter. There is a CONSTANT supply of scrap cubes going into the Processor, BUT the delay between deliveries when a Processors becomes free means things balance out. I will ultimately build more Recyclers though as the Stock of Scrap metal is slowly increasing both at the Processor station (ready to be shipped) and the Recycler station (input).

Note: I could drain the Processor's stock of Scrap Metal by assigning more M-Class Miners to transport it (repeat order) to the Recycler, but things are fairly well-balanced currently, with the option to expand Recycling as needed.

Basically, each Scrap Processor will have a down-time of between one minute (if cube is nearby) and several minutes (if further away) each cycle. This vastly reduces the efficiency, so having three of each module works pretty well in my game, leading to a gradually increasing stock in both stations.

For NPC stations, as in your example, the balance of Processors vs. Recyclers does seem off. Is there demand in your game for the produced Claytronics and Hull Parts?

If Egosoft change it so Tugs return to the Processor right away, rather that wait potentially several sectors away until a Processor is free, this will likely exaggerate the NPC issue. Seems they need to change the ratio of Processors to Recyclers in the Faction's build plans.

I still think that Tugs returning to the proximity of the station right away, would remove some headaches (ships being destroyed) and reduce Processor down-time between cycles. I like things to be efficient.

[fermiredshirt]

Recall Subordinates still broken
command issues even when canceled
Ships will be stuck for hours waiting for subordinates to recall. need command override or command to abandon subordinates. ships not moving are not participating in to economy. might as well be destroyed when they get caught in recall subordinates loop .

[donzi]

One aspect I have until now forgot to mention with the betas..

I get the feeling that the NPC traders and miners are doing more for some reason.. Maybe my imagination, but some of the player difficulty might be the NPC are working a lot better/more or something in the seemingly more calm universe the fresh (base) games I've made.

[Scoob]

Recall Subordinates still broken
command issues even when canceled
Ships will be stuck for hours waiting for subordinates to recall. need command override or command to abandon subordinates. ships not moving are not participating in to economy. might as well be destroyed when they get caught in recall subordinates loop .

I find that it'll often re-issue after I cancel it, but if I cancel it two or three times in turn, it eventually obeys. Forced automatic Recall Subordinates orders are a pain at times. For example, I've NEEDED a group to get the fudge out of there ASAP, only to have it stuck in a Recall Subordinates state.

One aspect I have until now forgot to mention with the betas..

I get the feeling that the NPC traders and miners are doing more for some reason.. Maybe my imagination, but some of the player difficulty might be the NPC are working a lot better/more or something in the seemingly more calm universe the fresh (base) games I've made.

Yes, we were talking about this previously. It appears that the improved economy can leave less opportunities for the player. However, this also means that key resources can be a bit more plentiful - except Advanced Electronics, there's never enough of those. I think any changes made to reduce the need for this ware, need to lessen the requirements further. Or simply allow for more to be produced per cycle for the same resource cost.

There are two sides to this balance of course. One, it's good sometimes that the economy isn't very efficient, as it give loads of money-making opportunities to the player. I recall making vast profits on Hull Parts in the past, not really viable now. This does mean though that an economy can stagnate if the player isn't actively supporting it. Two, an economy that's quite robust even if the player isn't supporting it is great to keep the AI factions going. Plus, it enables the player's initial Station builds to be solely supplied by Faction traders, and for the player to generally be able to buy any ships they want. I've noticed it have the odd shortage here and there, but it will eventually sort its self out.

Which is "best" depends on how you play. A player who loves building stations to supply the market is going to love the opportunities a weaker economy presents. One that actually wants to buy a lot from the economy - so, building fleets for example - might find things a bit harder.

This fresh start for v7.0, I've taken advantage of the relatively strong economy to build my own stations. I've generally captured ship to build my military fleets, but have bought a few Miners.

I personally am at the stage now where I supply my own station builds through a solid recycling set-up. I've not paid for a station in a while now. In the meantime, I have some stations selling off excess produce - usually Energy Cells - as well as income from Mining. I did have several local Auto-Miners in places that both had the raw resource and the stations that consumed it. I've since started consolidating this into a couple of Ming hubs, that cover multiple sectors. Miner Mine, other Miners sell. Allows me to cover several sectors easily, with Stock levels being a good indication of demand.

[donzi]

..I gotta defer to egosoft. I can imagine the challenges with trying to make economic simulations.. We live in one too. hehe

The state it's in presently for the game from start is new and how it plays out or is intended to evolve I imagine ES has laid it out for a run.

Toss in the import of mature saves and how it reacts to them Vs fresh starts, with and without extensions.. Going to be like raising a child perhaps.

Sweeping and small changes, sometimes good sometimes only known the effect in hindsight.

I'm just gonna ride the bus and let them know what I see out the window, they have a bit of experience in eco sims, perhaps the best in the game biz so I'm honored by them being open to outside participation at any level.

[geldonyetich]

I have a station with three Scrap Processors feeding a station in another sector with three Scrap Recyclers. The former gives a very slight over-supply Scrap Metal to the latter. There is a CONSTANT supply of scrap cubes going into the Processor, BUT the delay between deliveries when a Processors becomes free means things balance out. I will ultimately build more Recyclers though as the Stock of Scrap metal is slowly increasing both at the Processor station (ready to be shipped) and the Recycler station (input).

Note: I could drain the Processor's stock of Scrap Metal by assigning more M-Class Miners to transport it (repeat order) to the Recycler, but things are fairly well-balanced currently, with the option to expand Recycling as needed.

How strange, because it absolutely isn't for TEL Scrap Processing Facility FME-610 in the Bright Promise sector. They have no lack of energy cells, but a constant Raw Scrap backup with a 1 Scrap Processor / 1 Scrap Recycler balance.

[TheDeliveryMan]

I have a station with three Scrap Processors feeding a station in another sector with three Scrap Recyclers. The former gives a very slight over-supply Scrap Metal to the latter. There is a CONSTANT supply of scrap cubes going into the Processor, BUT the delay between deliveries when a Processors becomes free means things balance out. I will ultimately build more Recyclers though as the Stock of Scrap metal is slowly increasing both at the Processor station (ready to be shipped) and the Recycler station (input).

In theory one processor is able to supply four recyclers. Three processors for three reyclers producing only a slight over-supply looks suspicious. There must be a major inefficiency in your setup. How many energy cells do your processors get per hour?

[Scoob]

In theory one processor is able to supply four recyclers. Three processors for three reyclers producing only a slight over-supply looks suspicious. There must be a major inefficiency in your setup. How many energy cells do your processors get per hour?

I see that they can, in theory, but the game's own inefficiencies reduces the production rate due to module down-time. That down-time being caused by the module being idle while waiting for a fresh wreck / scrap cube to be delivered. The Scrap Metal levels on both the Source station (three Scrap Processors) and the Destination Station (three Scrap Recyclers) have remained steady for hours with my current set up. The source station has been holding around 180k Scrap Metal during this time and the destination station has steadily increased to 66k stored, likely gaining about 6k an hour. I have expanded storage during this time. Energy cells are more than ample, the limitation is purely due to the delivery of scrap to the Scrap Processor. It'd have a significantly higher rate without those delays.

From some basic observations of how the Scrap Processors are working in my game, I can see that they run for one minute per scrap cube (1,000 scrap) delivered. However, they will be idle for at least a minute while the next Tug returns. This means they have an, at the very best, 50% up time. So, their output is less than 50% of what it could be, if those Tugs were waiting near the station for a Processor to become free.

So, while as mentioned, I am certainly over-producing for my needs - source storage levels of Scrap Metal staying steady, destination slowly increasing - this is going up FAR slower than it could, if Scrap Cube deliveries weren't taking so long, with the Processors being idle at least 50% of the time.

It's these deliver issues that are the key here, as I mentioned earlier. Tugs waiting near the station would help, as would a scrap "buffer" of sorts initially, but that buffer would eventually fill. It would ensure that the Scrap Processors can run at 100% capacity though.

Ideally, Tugs would fly back right away, so they can unload quickly when a Processor becomes free AND those Processors would have some sort of buffer. I'd imagine the former would be an easier change as it's just behavioural, vs. the latter which is a fundamental change to how Scrap Processors work.

Note: as my stations are separate, I could add more traders which would see source storage DROP and destination storage increase rapidly. However, I've balanced it deliberately this way.

Bottom line: Tug deliveries are VERY inefficient, due to how they wait for a free Processor before returning. Meaning the Processor has to wait 100% of the travel time from where the Wreck or Cube was collected. This might, potentially, be several sectors away and Tugs ain't fast.

[Arisaya]

It would be nice if the scrap processing stations could leave orders open for as much wreckage->scrap, so the tugs will at least wait at the station. I often see the tugs waiting off in the system where the scrap cubes are being produced rather than returning to the station - even if they are assigned as subordinates to the station

On the note of QoL economy changes would also be nice if you could directly order a station to buy/ship goods to/from another station and it will use its assigned traders to fulfill that request rather than have to manually click on every subordinate to do it

[geldonyetich]

From some basic observations of how the Scrap Processors are working in my game, I can see that they run for one minute per scrap cube (1,000 scrap) delivered. However, they will be idle for at least a minute while the next Tug returns. This means they have an, at the very best, 50% up time. So, their output is less than 50% of what it could be, if those Tugs were waiting near the station for a Processor to become free.
[...]
Bottom line: Tug deliveries are VERY inefficient, due to how they wait for a free Processor before returning. Meaning the Processor has to wait 100% of the travel time from where the Wreck or Cube was collected. This might, potentially, be several sectors away and Tugs ain't fast.

That's interesting that scrap cubes are processed at 1,000 scrap per minute. I'm delivering Xenon PEs (worth over 3000 raw scrap each) to my processor and they can only process 150/minute. Consequently, my processors are busy for over 20 minutes every delivery, and my tug deliveries don't seem inefficient because 20 minutes is more than enough time fro the tug to pull in another.

[geldonyetich]

I've started in 7.00 Beta 2 as the jailed Tides of Avarice start with a few rules to make restarting a little more interesting:

• Don't do missions.
• Don't sell personal inventory items.
• Don't use autotraders or autominers. (Manual remote orders are fine.)
• Don't pirate L-sized ships or larger.

I now have about 30 hours in this game, and I don't think I'll be doing all three rules again, as it made early game progress kind of excruciating. I guess those handouts I was eschewing with these rules are there for good reason. Until I could secure some good traders or miners to manually control, I only really earned money from vaults with credit crates, bounties from stations whose enemies I killed nearby, and piracy.

Combat was no longer all that rewarding since I was not selling the personal inventory items or doing missions. The occasional pirated M-sized ship was quite lucrative, but fighting off waves of Xenon was not quite as euphoric when I didn't have those programmable interface sales to look forward to. There was also significantly less incentive to mine because crystals and spacefly eggs were not going anywhere. (Although I did forget my mission restriction once and accidentally made 2,000,000 credits with a caviar procurement station scan mission.)

But I had one get-rich tactic involving teleportation and manual mining between several miners that I thought I would try. I would teleport between ships, order them to sell and return to the field, and buy another M-sized miner when I could afford it. I didn't bother switching to ore because anything mined is effectively unlimited anyway, and ore would never be valuable. With satellite coverage all around the main superhighway and a few neighboring sectors, it was soon impossible to find a station that offered more than 130 credits/unit (mid-price) for silicon. However, I mined it anyway, because mining is free and easy.

I quickly bored of mining and set them up on repeat orders instead - not automining, but close to it. I had a plan from the start of this run to make most of my money from recycling scrap, and decided I now had enough money to try doing that. I stole the blueprints for solar power, scrap processing, scrap recycling, and large solid and container storage. Then I started work on a station in The Reach that would try to use that almost 367% solar output for recycling.

I supplemented my income and handled ware movement with a couple of Prometheus I stole from BUC. As with 7.0 Beta 1, it's rare to find a profit margin of more than about 133% for any ware there is to trade, but I can occasionally find an obscure deal between two stations very far apart. It's a good thing my Prometheus are heavily armed and fast, because it would be impossible to trade anything if pirates were successfully intercepting them, they seem to attract notice instantly every time.

As for my station in The Reach, in a way, 367% solar power was not nearly enough solar output, I would need 3 solar panels per processor (about 33,000/hr apiece) to keep them fueled (they eat around 90,000/hr). But it hardly matters, I suppose, as The Reach is a very safe sector with access to plenty of scrap from the constant fighting in Haktivah's Choice. After losing a Manticore to it stupidly loitering in the path of a Xenon K, I opted to manually supervise ordering Manticores to snagg Xenon PE while fighting Xenon.

I feel somewhat stalemated at the moment. While my new station may be self-building for free as long as it's being fed scrap, it's doing do at a very slow pace. After all, the scrap recyclers only put out 200 hull and 60 claytronics every 20 minutes, and my scrap processors take over 20 minutes to work their way through a single Xenon PE.

I'm stuck manually supervising the Manticores since I can't let them wander unsupervised and may get separated from any guards I assign them. I my mind, I imagined I would be running a lucrative scrap empire by cleverly scavenging battlefields. In practice I find that scrap processors and recyclers work far too slowly.

It's not particularly lucrative to rely on battlefield scrap, either. In my current 7.0 game, there's a near-universal energy cell purchase cost of about 15 credits/unit that makes paying this many cells for 200 hull parts a relatively poor deal. I suppose I'll have to stick to Avarice or Mercury. (Most likely Mercury, I'm not bothering with that whole Protectyon routine.) But if I really want hull parts or claytronics, it's probably just easier to rely on the infinite resources available in relative abundance everywhere already.

[Myrath]

When loading my game all my factories were out of energy, and massively so.
My HQ required another 60 (!) solar pannels to get even close to positive.

I admit that a small reducation in energy generation is plausible, and that it would not hurt many of my factories to require 1 or 2 more.
but the large factories currently require rediculous amounts of energy.
The problem is that you cannot "cleanly" get all those solar panels in, without clipping over parts of your base.


So yeah. Increase in energy demand (or decresae in production) is OK, but in a FAR FAR lower scale then just done.

[Scoob]

That's interesting that scrap cubes are processed at 1,000 scrap per minute. I'm delivering Xenon PEs (worth over 3000 raw scrap each) to my processor and they can only process 150/minute. Consequently, my processors are busy for over 20 minutes every delivery, and my tug deliveries don't seem inefficient because 20 minutes is more than enough time fro the tug to pull in another.

Perhaps I'm working it out wrong? I mean, I see a 1,000 scrap value Cube delivered, the processor does its thing for a minute, then it's empty and the resultant scrap metal is placed in Solid Storage. I'll then watch the next tug start heading back to the station. I now have three scrap processors on the station, so don't see them running in isolation now. I'll double-check next time I'm in. Regardless, even with each processor being idle 50% of the time, I'm producing enough Scrap Metal for my needs. I added two more Scrap Recyclers to the other station last night, and might expand on that further. I also added another M-Class miner to move the Scrap Metal to the Recycler. Not watched for long enough, but my Processor Scrap storage levels are almost topped out.

Thought: are Scrap Cubes perhaps able to be processed faster than a regular wreck, even if both are similar scrap values? That'd make sense, as the cube has been partially processed already. I did notice that my scrap processing really took off, once I had the Teuta deployed. The most obvious delay (50% of the cycle at least) is the Tug deliveries of course.

[Karmaticdamage]

The split do not use their war forge. It sits full of resources while their normal shipyard is queued up and starving. It's is nice way to supply the player with raptors but I assume its original purpose was to help the split fend back the xenon better.

Trade stations that flip factions in plots no longer buy/sell wares other then medical supplies and food. They have to be destroyed and then rebuilt again to function properly.

AI pathing simply will not pass between holy order and faulty logic jumpgate even after the xenon have been removed. This is especially annoying when doing frontier edge and atiya's misfortune terraforming projects.

Some of these economic issues have been around awhile now, please fix.

[Ketraar]

Trade stations that flip factions in plots no longer buy/sell wares other then medical supplies and food. They have to be destroyed and then rebuilt again to function properly.

If you saw this in 7.00 then please provide a save. There was a fix already that should have addressed this.

The split do not use their war forge. It sits full of resources while their normal shipyard is queued up and starving. It's is nice way to supply the player with raptors but I assume its original purpose was to help the split fend back the xenon better.

This is not an accurate assumption, the Warforge is there to allow raptors to be replaced if needed as the main Shipyard is mostly busy building smaller ZYA ships.

MFG

Ketraar

[PersonyPerson]

Feedback: ZYA/Split in general have always (I've been playing since 6.2, so not that long) had transportation issues with their Buffalo/Boas/etc. dying in droves in Tharka's Cascade. This is still true in Beta 2 of 7.0. But hey, now FRF and CUB have a lot better economy to the point where they've purged the Xenon from their borders. ZYA starts with some raptors, then loses and is never able to replace them. I've noticed both FRF/ZYA being bottlenecked in engine parts now, not hull parts. If you place an order, it will generally fill after a while even with shortages, but I am noticing that some stations just a sector or two over will have the needed materials but there simply isn't enough transportation.

I don't know of a solution to this besides player intervention, otherwise what eventually happens is (without player intervention) Xenon overruns the Dominion sectors. Meanwhile, HOP/ANT/TEL and even FRF have almost purged all connecting Xenon sectors with zero player input.

I'm in the middle of a Split playthrough for 7.0 and have a similar experience when it comes to observing the natural state of Zyarth's economy (though it's still Hull parts for me).

The Split's main dilemma is that their ships are twice as expensive than the other CoP factions, whilst their freighters have least capacity tier for tier despite being the fastest. They don't typically go to the same destination twice, so that speed efficiency can't be taken advantage of, so stations don't get as many resources per trip.

Zyarth can replace S/M ships reasonably enough, but they lose Buffalos/Wyverns often enough that they prioritise replacing those (since they're the cheaper L ships) and never build up a stockpile of hull parts large enough to replace their capital ships. In my game at least, this is because their Hull part (and other advanced factories) that need Refined Metals, aren't getting any. Family Nhuut has Ore refineries swimming with refined metals (-50% average price), but for some reason they aren't coming into Zyarth's Dominion in sufficient quantities. Zyarth's Dominion I is so much more quiet than it should be.

In my Argon start 6.2 save, it got even worse since they lost control of Family Zhin, which meant the Zyarth economy was split into three, their economy was very close to collapse and it allowed the Argons to take parts of Zyarth's Dominion. In my 7.0 save, I'm fairly sure if I didn't intervene, then Zyarth would have met a similar fate.

The trade that goes through Tharka's Cascade originates mostly from the western portion of Zyarth and trades with Hatikvah and the central Teladi sectors (Eighteen Billion and Grand Exchange) going through Silent Witness. It's more common for miners to take this route for some reason. It's also important to note that many other factions also take this route. Ships going through here is not the problem, the problem is that there's a balancing issue where Zyarth can't naturally and reliably sustain themselves when they've taken losses. It's currently the only major faction that experiences this downward spiral.

[geldonyetich]

I'm noticing a lot of these unbuilt Xenon eggs seem to have ore and silicon in their build storages, but relatively little energy. It suggests a lot of the reduced threat we see from the Xenon might be either an energy shortage or an energy transport problem.

[Crovaxo]

Advanced Eletronics are still at a massive deficit it seems, after the initial 10 hours orso the major factions excluding Terran now have almost no military ships left and there are a handful of plants producing advanced electronics. HOP is completely overrun, Argon has little fleets, I havent scouted Split properly yet but I can imagine a similar situation.

Everything still just seems to grind to a halt for a lot of the factions, HOP being absolutely crushed. I then get forced to get production for these plants underway as fast as possible, but that was not my intention yet and forces me to save money to get blueprints and start building factories asap.

Save: https://file.io/Y5yDTKm30Ox8

Note: I do use sector satellites and some other mods, but nothing that should stop the save from getting looked into.

[PersonyPerson]

Advanced Eletronics are still at a massive deficit it seems, after the initial 10 hours orso the major factions excluding Terran now have almost no military ships left and there are a handful of plants producing advanced electronics. HOP is completely overrun, Argon has little fleets, I havent scouted Split properly yet but I can imagine a similar situation.

I'm not sure how exactly station generation functions precisely as to what stations start off as a completely random spawns or if some are semi-random spawns where there's a set number of x type of factory that must spawn in a certain sector, but the ware that's the main one in deficit isn't always the same because of this.

In my game, there's 3 Advanced Electronics factories in Zyarth's Dominion (2 in IV and 1 in I), the wider universe doesn't seem to have much of a deficit of them. I did a new test start and that generation didn't have any in ZD IV. The natural limiting ware for me was Hull Parts, for castleberger, it was Engine Parts. in my 6.2 Argon save it was Advanced Electronics.

It's quite difficult to see what is common occurrences across multiple saves, because most of us stick to only a few at most and those saves can take days to incubate and see what's going on.