Ridiculously high REing times of Armoured Transporters.

[UnknownObject]

Pirate Centaur (M6) - 01:49:51
Argon Centaur (M6) - 02:35:52
Argon Mammoth (TL) - 07:36:41
Argon Cerberus (M7) - 11:52:57
Argon Consus (TS) - 13:43:31

So, it means, a simplified version of Argon Centaur, the Consus, is 5+ times more complicated than the original version and even more complicated than the Cerberus, a capital ship.
I guess it's by design, but wish to know how it's explained.

[fireanddream]

These things never make sense. The L can be REed in like 40 mins while an LX is like 5 hours. A Xenon I can be REed faster than almost every other M2 IIRC.

[Hwitvlf]

I noticed this too. I guessed it was for balancing, to prevent players from having trade empires too early in the game, but it would be interesting to know if there was an underlying formula which decides the speed of RE.

[UnknownObject]

I noticed this too. I guessed it was for balancing, to prevent players from having trade empires too early in the game, but it would be interesting to know if there was an underlying formula which decides the speed of RE.

Armored TSes can be just extorted from NPCs by force - so balancing seemingly went wrong.

[atroces]

I noticed this too. I guessed it was for balancing, to prevent players from having trade empires too early in the game, but it would be interesting to know if there was an underlying formula which decides the speed of RE.

Armored TSes can be just extorted from NPCs by force - so balancing seemingly went wrong.

This. I was struggling to make money right away, until I thought "Man, those armored TS are worth so much, I wonder if I can make one bail... 10 bail... 50 bail...

[Raptor34]

I noticed this too. I guessed it was for balancing, to prevent players from having trade empires too early in the game, but it would be interesting to know if there was an underlying formula which decides the speed of RE.

Weird, in another thread it was mentioned that these are simply based on the amount of resources and maybe costs. And that its impossible to balance them individually.
Of course they were talking about build times but I don't think they are different.

[Hwitvlf]

I noticed this too. I guessed it was for balancing, to prevent players from having trade empires too early in the game, but it would be interesting to know if there was an underlying formula which decides the speed of RE.

Armored TSes can be just extorted from NPCs by force - so balancing seemingly went wrong.

Very true, and the same for most capital ships as well. You can board a dozen in the time it takes you to make one.

[Utsuho Reiuji]

One of the devs said that these times will be slightly reduced in 1.2.

I wished that RE/production would not take longer than 2 hours. These times scream pride and accomplishment almost like there's a store with TiMeSaVeRs.

[Ramdat]

One of the devs said that these times will be slightly reduced in 1.2.

I wished that RE/production would not take longer than 2 hours. These times scream pride and accomplishment almost like there's a store with TiMeSaVeRs.

Yeah, that's why I've abandoned vanilla and begun modding it myself. Numerous mechanics take way longer than they should, and seem intentionally designed to waste time.

[Hwitvlf]

In mods which have a fast HQ speed, I find that I don't use shipyards or piracy at all- which kind of makes them a wasted feature. As it is in FL, I use the HQ as more of a supplemental source than my primary. It pops out a good ship now and then as 'icing on the cake', but I mostly use other sources.

At least FL adds a lot of other functions to the HQ so it's still very useful.

[Ramdat]

In mods which have a fast HQ speed, I find that I don't use shipyards or piracy at all- which kind of makes them a wasted feature. As it is in FL, I use the HQ as more of a supplemental source than my primary. It pops out a good ship now and then as 'icing on the cake', but I mostly use other sources.

At least FL adds a lot of other functions to the HQ so it's still very useful.

As it currently stands in vanilla, I'd say the HQ is a wasted feature. Production-wise, it is generally only useful for unique ships and certain stations that have low timers. A normal ship every now and then is ok, but you could either buy or capture a dozen of the ships in the time it takes to build one. Everything I've wanted to use the HQ to build (aside from uniques) is better served with purchasing or piracy due to the huge difference in time investment. For me, even with the increased HQ speed, piracy and shipyards are still viable. The best choice varies depending on various factors such as time/money/reputation/rarity/game progress. It is definitely a difficult balance to strike though.

Ideally the solution would be to greatly reduce the HQ time scaling on the high end. For example, currently you can build about 25 Enhanced Mercury in the time it takes to build 1 Mule. The Mule is certainly better, but is it 25x better? Clearly there is a problem with scaling.

It could also be served better if the bottleneck was shifted from time to resources. Then, the player can scale up the production of their empire to meet whatever shipbuilding demand they need. It is a sandbox empire management game based upon production/logistics, so it seems a fitting change. However, doing such a thing would likely require a large rebalance which is certainly not expected for a free DLC.

[Midnightknight]

It could also be served better if the bottleneck was shifted from time to resources. Then, the player can scale up the production of their empire to meet whatever shipbuilding demand they need. It is a sandbox empire management game based upon production/logistics, so it seems a fitting change. However, doing such a thing would likely require a large rebalance which is certainly not expected for a free DLC.

I don't agree with that at all. In a classic X3 game, ok, in FL god no.
The economy is broken and the fact you are forced to chose a side makes some resources pretty boring to get. The PHQ would become the shipyard for neutral players ... After getting the blueprint everywhere, what is also a non sense. I mean look what ressource are requires to build a ship. Rastar, Rimes, Teladianium are ressource exclusives to a race if you are at the same time enemy of the argons and the splits good luck building anything at your HQ. So you need to have already plenty of factories to be able to sustain your PHQ before even trying to seriously build anything.

This is already wasting time for nothing to my opinion, and say, we reduce time and increase ressource means "Ok let's reduce time here but increase it there". And the ressource issue is really variable and random, when we talk on the forum, sometime people can't find Rimes in the whole universe, sometime it's crystals and always for microships, they costs already a lot and when you compare the price of a ship at the PHQ and a shipyard, raising the price even more would mean you pay less a ship at another race if you are max rank + discount, and it would be still instant and save you a headache to gather everything.

[Ramdat]

I don't agree with that at all. In a classic X3 game, ok, in FL god no.
The PHQ would become the shipyard for neutral players ... After getting the blueprint everywhere, what is also a non sense.

The PHQ becoming a shipyard is the ideal situation. What is the point of having the ship/station blueprint system, the agent system supporting it, and the production/logistics challenges if we can't actually use them because the production time is static and prohibitively long? As it stands we can scale up weapon/shield production to equip our fleet, but never ship production itself. Instead we have to rely on money-making stations to purchase ships from other factions. Rather than only spending money on stations to make more money to buy ships, we can spend the same money on stations to produce resources to build our own ships. We should have a choice to be self-sufficient.

[the resources] costs already a lot and when you compare the price of a ship at the PHQ and a shipyard, raising the price even more would mean you pay less a ship at another race if you are max rank + discount, and it would be still instant and save you a headache to gather everything.

I didn't say only the resources would be increased. I said that the system should be more weighted towards resources than time or money. Under this system you would reduce the raw credit cost of production alongside the material increase so that the relative balance is the same.

The economy is broken and the fact you are forced to chose a side makes some resources pretty boring to get. I mean look what ressource are requires to build a ship. Rastar, Rimes, Teladianium are ressource exclusives to a race if you are at the same time enemy of the argons and the splits good luck building anything at your HQ. So you need to have already plenty of factories to be able to sustain your PHQ before even trying to seriously build anything. This is already wasting time for nothing to my opinion, and say, we reduce time and increase ressource means "Ok let's reduce time here but increase it there". And the ressource issue is really variable and random, when we talk on the forum, sometime people can't find Rimes in the whole universe, sometime it's crystals and always for microships, they costs already a lot and when you compare the price of a ship at the PHQ and a shipyard, raising the price even more would mean you pay less a ship at another race if you are max rank + discount, and it would be still instant and save you a headache to gather everything.

Changing the system to be more weighted towards resources does not mean that you are moving the same amount of time from one place to another. It is a scale that players can impact. In the current system, if you want to build a Mule, it takes 12 hours. There is absolutely nothing you as a player can do to change that. It doesn't matter if your economy is 100x more than the entire universe; it is always 12 hours. You can't build more HQs to add more ship production lines. You can't reduce the timer by providing more resources or money. You can't research technology to produce more efficiently. It's just always 12 hours. Why would you ever wait 12 hours to produce a Mule if you could capture it or earn the money to buy one in a fraction of the time? Plus, it has the opportunity cost of locking your queue for 12 hours, preventing you from building anything else during that time. If the bottleneck is shifted more towards resources instead of static time limits, then the player can actively engage in the game's systems to work towards their goal.

The motto of X3 is TRADE, FIGHT, BUILD, THINK. Use this combination to overcome the problem. Trade resources you can't produce, fight for resources you can't trade, build stations to supplement and eventually satisfy demand, think to make it all come together. If your HQ does not have enough crystals to produce a ship, then you think about how to acquire crystals. Trade crystals with one of the races. Steal crystals from a TS. Build a crystal fab. If you are enemies with Split but need Rastar, use agents to steal the Rastar Refinery blueprint or intercept some Rastar traders. Or, plan ahead by acquiring the blueprints before becoming their enemy. Under this system you are gated by how effectively you as a player can extract resources from the game. Under the current system, you are gated by how long you can leave the game open. Since, nothing you do can improve the situation. Your only options are to seldom use it, or afk with SETA enabled.

However, as I said, changing to this system is perhaps too much to expect, so simply reducing the time scaling on the high end is a decent bandaid.

[Raptor34]

It could also be served better if the bottleneck was shifted from time to resources. Then, the player can scale up the production of their empire to meet whatever shipbuilding demand they need. It is a sandbox empire management game based upon production/logistics, so it seems a fitting change. However, doing such a thing would likely require a large rebalance which is certainly not expected for a free DLC.

I don't agree with that at all. In a classic X3 game, ok, in FL god no.
The economy is broken and the fact you are forced to chose a side makes some resources pretty boring to get. The PHQ would become the shipyard for neutral players ... After getting the blueprint everywhere, what is also a non sense. I mean look what ressource are requires to build a ship. Rastar, Rimes, Teladianium are ressource exclusives to a race if you are at the same time enemy of the argons and the splits good luck building anything at your HQ. So you need to have already plenty of factories to be able to sustain your PHQ before even trying to seriously build anything.

This is already wasting time for nothing to my opinion, and say, we reduce time and increase ressource means "Ok let's reduce time here but increase it there". And the ressource issue is really variable and random, when we talk on the forum, sometime people can't find Rimes in the whole universe, sometime it's crystals and always for microships, they costs already a lot and when you compare the price of a ship at the PHQ and a shipyard, raising the price even more would mean you pay less a ship at another race if you are max rank + discount, and it would be still instant and save you a headache to gather everything.

I don't see the problem with that.
It just means shipbuilding is moved towards a mid/late game thing when you can start acquiring your own factories to feed it.
With that said, there could also be a resource rebalancing so that Argon ship only uses Argon materials and all that. How else do the Argon build their ships if part of their production chain is owned by their enemies? Makes no sense.

[bounty_hunter66]

I have said this in the past in another thread.

If you build your trade empire enough to make lots of money, you can instantly buy ships at a fraction of the rate at which you produce them at your HQ. Which makes the HQ redundant and a wasted feature in this regard except for building unique/rare ships. It wastes your time for no reason, there is simply no good reason why it should take this long to build stuff. Everything you do, can be scaled up except for the HQ.

What would make the most sense is to shift the balance away from time(and maybe credits) and more towards resources. Yes it means you spend the same time building the infrastructure to support the faster build times with a larger resource requirement but this is a one time investment, whereas the HQ wastes your time every time it builds/RE's a ship and there is nothing you can do about it. I would rather spend that time in the BUILD aspect of the game rather than AFK.

Why not apply the same upgrade mechanic for station to the HQ?

[Midnightknight]

The motto of X3 is TRADE, FIGHT, BUILD, THINK. Use this combination to overcome the problem. Trade resources you can't produce, fight for resources you can't trade, build stations to supplement and eventually satisfy demand, think to make it all come together. If your HQ does not have enough crystals to produce a ship, then you think about how to acquire crystals. Trade crystals with one of the races. Steal crystals from a TS. Build a crystal fab. If you are enemies with Split but need Rastar, use agents to steal the Rastar Refinery blueprint or intercept some Rastar traders. Or, plan ahead by acquiring the blueprints before becoming their enemy. Under this system you are gated by how effectively you as a player can extract resources from the game. Under the current system, you are gated by how long you can leave the game open. Since, nothing you do can improve the situation. Your only options are to seldom use it, or afk with SETA enabled.

However, as I said, changing to this system is perhaps too much to expect, so simply reducing the time scaling on the high end is a decent bandaid.

If you don't have enough quantum processor to build a ship then think ... Ah wait it does not works ... So you like farming, you like to spent hours and hours and hours of time in seta to build your empire before actually starting to play, respect the fact it's not true for everyone? I'm sorry but no, i want to be able to build my first TOA before having a complex building each type of resource 1000x / hours, i want to be able to replace those suicide mining drones (that are already damn expensive) before 100 days of game. Once again you are moving the issue somewhere else where it is more convenient to you, and you think anybody not on your opinion is stupid, telling them "You don't know how to play, i'll tell you".

Yes the PHQ stuff is way too slow. Yes a mule shouldn't be needing 12H to be produced, that do not mean resource cost should be increased cause that would make a lot of other issues but you don't want to hear that because it suits your play style well and you don't give a sh** about other's way to play. A M7 or a TL would still be faster to produce than a Mule, what would still makes NO SENSE at all to only speak of this particular case. But i could also speak about the increased in cargo space needed to produce an Aran or a Valhalla increasing resources needed, and maybe have them again cost more than the PHQ can hold?

[Ramdat]

If you build your trade empire enough to make lots of money, you can instantly buy ships at a fraction of the rate at which you produce them at your HQ. Which makes the HQ redundant and a wasted feature in this regard except for building unique/rare ships. It wastes your time for no reason, there is simply no good reason why it should take this long to build stuff. Everything you do, can be scaled up except for the HQ.

What would make the most sense is to shift the balance away from time(and maybe credits) and more towards resources. Yes it means you spend the same time building the infrastructure to support the faster build times with a larger resource requirement but this is a one time investment, whereas the HQ wastes your time every time it builds/RE's a ship and there is nothing you can do about it. I would rather spend that time in the BUILD aspect of the game rather than AFK.

The above is a good summary of my position. It takes too long, and there is no way to improve it. Changing the bottleneck to resources instead of an unchangeable timer gives players the opportunity to improve it over the course of the game through the game's mechanics.

If you don't have enough quantum processor to build a ship then think ... Ah wait it does not works ... So you like farming, you like to spent hours and hours and hours of time in seta to build your empire before actually starting to play, respect the fact it's not true for everyone? I'm sorry but no, i want to be able to build my first TOA before having a complex building each type of resource 1000x / hours, i want to be able to replace those suicide mining drones (that are already damn expensive) before 100 days of game. Once again you are moving the issue somewhere else where it is more convenient to you, and you think anybody not on your opinion is stupid, telling them "You don't know how to play, i'll tell you".

Did you read what I had wrote? You are completely missing the point of what I am saying, and I'm not understanding why you are hostile about it. You are telling me to respect your position, but are mischaracterizing my position with an absurd hyperbole.

I never said anything about quantum processors. It should be self-evident that I was talking about the normal resources such as crystals and rastar. I mentioned these two specially and was talking about scaling production. Quantum processors spawn in a finite number and can never be produced at a station. How can you scale production of something that you can never produce?

I don't like spending hours and hours in SETA. That's why I want the HQ to be able to produce ships in a reasonable timeframe. I earn money to build my empire through gameplay, not AFKing in SETA with UTs or whatever. My proposed system reduces the total time, it doesn't increase it. It does not move the problem to another place, it changes the problem to be one that the player has the ability to solve through gameplay. A static timer cannot be interacted with or solved in any way, whereas a resource bottleneck can be. Read what I and bounty_hunter66 have said again.

Yes the PHQ stuff is way too slow. Yes a mule shouldn't be needing 12H to be produced, that do not mean resource cost should be increased cause that would make a lot of other issues but you don't want to hear that because it suits your play style well and you don't give a sh** about other's way to play. A M7 or a TL would still be faster to produce than a Mule, what would still makes NO SENSE at all to only speak of this particular case.

Rebalancing the system to weigh towards resources and oddities such as the Mule's production time are separate issues, but you would fix outliers like the Mule in the rebalance. I used the Mule's time as an example to easily demonstrate that the current time-based system is broken. If you fix the Armoured Transport times, most other things still take too long. Both should be reduced, but the Armoured Transporters times are rebalanced alongside the other ship changes so that they are no longer a strange outlier. The Armoured Transports should be rebalanced even if the resource-focused system is not used. However, the point of the resource-focused system is to preserve some form of balance, but be a variable that players are able to influence.

[Midnightknight]

Did you read what I had wrote? You are completely missing the point of what I am saying, and I'm not understanding why you are hostile about it. You are telling me to respect your position, but are mischaracterizing my position with an absurd hyperbole.

Yes you are the one using the hyperbole here, using the "Motto" of X3 to show i'm stupid and my opinion is irrelevant, and what you were saying could be easily used against you. Think, you want a mule, you can buy it in mission at discounts, you can force them to bail, you can use an agent to raise your rep to +4 with split, send 1 or 2 ozias in split core system, stuff them full a mules you bought and jump back home. Yes that's annoying, yes that wouldn't fit every gameplay and but it's exactly the same than what you said. Resources are not an issue you could have plenty of them, use your brain. Ships aren't a problem you can have plenty of them. Yes i'm hostile to your position cause you are mocking people with biased statement just to prove you are more intelligent and your point is the only one right, i'm simply returning you the favor.

I don't like spending hours and hours in SETA. That's why I want the HQ to be able to produce ships in a reasonable timeframe. I earn money to build my empire through gameplay, not AFKing in SETA with UTs or whatever. My proposed system reduces the total time, it doesn't increase it. It does not move the problem to another place, it changes the problem to be one that the player has the ability to solve through gameplay. A static timer cannot be interacted with or solved in any way, whereas a resource bottleneck can be. Read what I and bounty_hunter66 have said again.

You don't like SETA but you will force people to use it to build complex they will never benefits from cause a full feeding complex for a PHQ is millions of millions credits. And you want to increase this even more, meaning more time passed into SETA or stupid farming to be able to get your HQ working. So once again, YOU want to mass produce at PHQ, and you want to harass people that actually are not especially using the PHQ except for a few extra ships. Read this topic, you will see some people actually use the PHQ as a bonus to get a few special ship here and there while they are playing. So you increase the resources needed, so they will have to farm those resources even more while they simply don't want to, and have better things to do while the time needed wasn't a that big issue for them. Fun fact, the devs mentionned they wanted to make the player less overpowered in end game to have more challenge and a bit stronger at the beginning, so you are just going completely against that.

Rebalancing the system to weigh towards resources and oddities such as the Mule's production time are separate issues, but you would fix outliers like the Mule in the rebalance. I used the Mule's time as an example to easily demonstrate that the current time-based system is broken. If you fix the Armoured Transport times, most other things still take too long. Both should be reduced, but the Armoured Transporters times are rebalanced alongside the other ship changes so that they are no longer a strange outlier. The Armoured Transports should be rebalanced even if the resource-focused system is not used. However, the point of the resource-focused system is to preserve some form of balance, but be a variable that players are able to influence.

So you are telling me your proposition have nothing to deal with the OPs topic? Yes that's true, you are completely off topic from the very start. What you offer solves no issues and brings new ones. The issue with RE times are mostly how badly they scales, and a few oddities like the I being pretty fast to RE while some M6 takes forever. Reducing global RE time won't change this, raising resource needed won't change this, only a global rebalance of the RE time calculation formula will.

[CBJ]

Calm things down and stop making it personal, otherwise this entire topic will be closed.

[Raptor34]

I mentioned it earlier and I'll mention it again. The solution to dealing with increased resources is to make it so that faction ships only take faction resources.
That way if you befriend the Argon you can then take the resources off their economy instead of building your own supply chain.
This is also logical because why would the Argon build their ships off their enemies supply chain?
This way for minor production, the increased resources wouldn't be a problem because the local economy can supply it.
And tbh even for medium production the local economy should still be able to supply it assuming you aren't pumping out hundreds of M3s.