Post
by Pax Empyrean » Tue, 27. Mar 18, 14:19
Love the mod so far. Got a couple of questions, a request, and some balance analysis and suggestions.
First, is the amount generated by taxes at each sanctuary level documented anywhere? I know it's $150/person at level 2, $200/person at level 3, $300/person at level 4, and $500/person at level 5. I'm starting a new game and planning things out, wondering what the rate of return is at each of the higher levels.
Second question: what does subjugation do?
Now for the request: is it possible to implement the ability to rename sectors? This would be super convenient.
Now for feedback, specifically the balance of various station perks: manufacturing weapons to sell beats all other perks for generating income (except maybe tax, if it really ramps up at higher levels) by a wide margin. One population building things produces 12 work per minute, and weapons have a profit ratio of about $60 per work spent before specialization is factored in, meaning you can expect about $720 per worker per minute making weapons before specialization comes into play, which can increase your profits by either about half or more than double them if you get the improved specialization perk as well. Call it $1000 per worker per minute making and selling weapons at 30% specialization.
Compare this to the energy cell perk, which boosts energy cell production of idle workers from 4 per minute to 12 per minute. If we assume an average price of $16 for energy cells, that's $192 per minute with the perk, and you need a level 5 sanctuary to take it. Now, energy cell production doesn't require a TS to run supplies, but even so it's really weak. Energy cell production on the order of about 60 per person per minute would bring profits on par with making weapons. That's a lot of energy.
If you'd rather compare the energy cell perk to the extra factories perk with factories committed to the supply chain for self-sufficient energy cell production, that perk is worth about 500 energy cells per minute, meaning that it's worse than the energy cell perk with a population of about 62 or more, and has startup and TS costs besides.
Tax at a level 5 sanctuary is a measly $50 per person per minute thanks to the revenue only generating every ten minutes. If taxes were capped at level 5, you could have it trigger every minute and still only get half as much as what you get from making weapons.
Making shields is surprisingly lossy. Without specialization, only the 1MJ shield can be manufactured at a profit. If you have 50% specialization you can make any shield at a profit, but it's nowhere near as profitable as making weapons. With recycling at 100% efficiency (which I do like, by the way) you can buy 1GJ shields for $275,235 and recycle them for $364,000 worth of materials.
One last thing: the station support footprint of a single solar power plant is huge. Running one in a really good sector takes about a dozen factories (costing ~$4.5 million total) to produce all the crystals needed, and after the energy costs of your various stages of crystal production are taken into account you're looking at about 1500 energy cells per minute excess. The whole thing pays for itself in about three hours, and you need a little over a third of your total infrastructure dedicated to energy cell production to keep other factories running.
What I suggest is using the smallest solar power plant for players and removing Crystals as a resource for them. Adjust the cost of the station so that it still pays for itself in about three hours. With an output of about 300 energy cells per minute, that would be about $864,000 worth of materials. Or you could cut the output and cost by half, thus keeping costs and output per station support similar to its present state, but simplifying the logistics and making it worthwhile to capture more than one high energy output sector. As it stands, I'd much rather have a dozen solar plants with the same combined cost and produce the same combined output as the dozen factories supporting one solar plant right now. It would just simplify things tremendously. I'm not sure if this is possible, since my only experience modding any of the X games was some work I did on the Firelance mod for X2 a dozen years ago.
