Burianek's Econ Fix v3 (The big one! Fixes every factory!)

[Burianek]

I'd also like to throw out a plea for assistance. Don't worry, this one's easy. In my mod, you may have noticed that I've added a few race specific differences to factory price.

These were thrown in at the last minute and are admittedly not as well thought out as I'd like them. A few were easy, like giving the paranid cheaper missile factories, and the split cheaper weapon factories on average. However, I'd like to put some thought behind them to make them more coherent and fun. If anyone has a good idea for a race specific difference with a short story / explanation why it fits in the x-universe and would be fun, please post it. I'll take all the ones I like and rework them into an econ fix v3.1 with new racial factory price modifiers and thoughts behind why they are the way they are. Tell me what you'd like to see, but try to keep the thought of game balance foremost in mind.

Thanks in advance for the creativity!

[kryptyk]

I'd also like to throw out a plea for assistance. Don't worry, this one's easy. In my mod, you may have noticed that I've added a few race specific differences to factory price.

These were thrown in at the last minute and are admittedly not as well thought out as I'd like them. A few were easy, like giving the paranid cheaper missile factories, and the split cheaper weapon factories on average. However, I'd like to put some thought behind them to make them more coherent and fun. If anyone has a good idea for a race specific difference with a short story / explanation why it fits in the x-universe and would be fun, please post it. I'll take all the ones I like and rework them into an econ fix v3.1 with new racial factory price modifiers and thoughts behind why they are the way they are. Tell me what you'd like to see, but try to keep the thought of game balance foremost in mind.

Thanks in advance for the creativity!

How about cheaper shield factories for the Boron?

[easternblocrobotcowboy]

it would certainly be possible to hard code in differences in productivity between racial factories with scripting. The idea is actually extremely simple, I cant belive noone has done it yet. Aside from my continued inability to add slots to existing NPC trading docks, my computer fabs work perfectly. This is a basic overview:

I added Nividium and microchips as secondary components. without them, the computer fabs work just like a regular computer fab - no changes at all. However, fed with microchips, they can convert microchips to computer parts at a rate of 8 microchips per hour on top of their existing productivity, just more than one chip plants output. It silicon, energy, and the already present meatsteaks to convert 1 microchip to 20 computer parts which in total are worth double the value of the fed microchip. To top it all off (and to encourage the player to explore the universe) if you install 2 units of Nividium, the fab will convert silicon food and energy much more efficiently, even retaining some slight produtivity if the fab runs out of meatsteaks (but not energy or silicon).

In my game I pretend Nividium is a rare crystalline metal that is so valuable because it is superconductive at room temperature. That is how the factories achieve the greater efficiency. It is a one-time upgrade, you will not need to continually feed the fab with more nividium after the initial 2 units have been installed.

This is a summary of the IN-GAME operation of my new fab (already tested today! btw I cant remember the exact proce of microchips, but it is about 13,500. I dont feel like booting up the game just to find out)

THE OLD COMP FAB (for reference)
Cost about 600,000 + resources and transports
IN: 24 energy-16 meatsteaks-1 silicon : 2088 credits
OUT: 2 computer components : 2696 credits
NET: 612 per cycle, cycle length 1:36
TOTAL: about 24,000 credits per hour
(extremely lame considering the difficulty of aquiring all these resources. SPP: 34,000 per hour with just crystals and its supposed to be the 'bottom' of the factory ladder.)

THE NEW COMP FAB
modded cost (not in script, needs to be in Twares) 2,200,000 (note: about 10 times the cost of a split SPP)
base primary productivity: exactly the same as above.
WITH MICROCHIPS:
IN: 36 energy - 16 meatsteaks - 2 silicon - 0.2 microchips : 5436 credits
OUT: 6 computer components : 8088 credits
NET: 2652 per cycle, cycle length 1:36
TOTAL: about 106,000 profit per hour (time to pay off base factory cost: 20 hours - note that that is more than double the time an SPP pays for itself but eventualy pays off with higher profit)

now the real kicker.. with the superconducting nividium upgrade (just load 2 units of nividium into the factory. Finding the nividium is up to you. hint: explore the ENTIRE galaxy. it is only found in one extremely dangerous place)
IN: 48 energy - 16 meatsteaks - 3 silicon - 0.2 microchips : 6127 credits
OUT: 8 computer components (about a 20% increase in efficiency): 10,784 credits
NET: 4657 per cycle, cycle length 1:36
TOTAL: 186,000 profit per hour. 6 TIMES the profit of a single SPP as long as you can sell all the computer components. (wow, what just a little 20% increase in efficiency can do! exploration pays off!) plus the nividium will allow the factory to maintain a minimal level of productivity even without manpower (meatsteak cahoonas) although it is only a fraction of the profit the fab makes going full tilt.



SO that is what I have done. It works very nicely. havnt encountered any problems yet although the mod needs to be re-headed as I gutted the cystal-free SPP mod and put my mod in its place. (it is still called init.mod.crystalfreeSPPs; I dont know how to make a mod from scratch) BTW. thanks to OlisJ and Gnowar for the work they did on the original scripts - this is essentially their ideas put into another application)

TW

[kryptyk]

That's a great idea!! A real reason to explore and build up a combat fleet. You know in the first lines of your post about changing the factories and products for different races....I hit my head wondering why I didn't realize that.....doh!!!
I would definitely use nividium since it is so rare and doesn't really have a use for the player until now.

[VVNZ]

On a slightly related note I've been chipping away at the TShips and TBullets files trying to balance things up a bit and make the ships handle better (to my mind anyway) next on my list is balancing pricing, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas here?

So far I have come up with these basic premises (I'm not looking to change anything drasticly):

Split: Very fast, manuverable, small cargo holds, good acceleration the hit hard and run types of the X-universe.

Argon: Slow, heavily armed and armoured with good sized cargo bays Argon ships are a brawlers of the X universe.

Paranid: The most balanced ships of all the Paranid ships are well armed, reasonably fast and have good sheilding. However they have smaller than average cargo capacity.

Boron: Fast ships, maunverable reasonably well sheilded, poorly armed and with large cargo capacity the Boron are traders not fighters, reserving the right to run.

Teladi: Very slow, heavily armed and sheilded the Teladi put great stock both in trading and in building flying fortresses, unfortunately the battle might be over by the time they arrive.

The two obvious changes I think are to the Boron Hydra and Teladi Osprey in terms of pricing.

I also think the TS class ships need more speed and a bit more spread between to make players choose a bit more carefully between them and the TP class. Please add your own comments about prices/performance.



PS sorry for hijacking the thread, I thought it'd be good to get some ideas from people trying to balance the economy.

[Mad Hatter]

How were you able to get the factory to consume the secondary resources?

When I played around with that, the secondaries just sat there and were never consumed. I ran SETA for about 35 cycles and the stock levels never changed.

[easternblocrobotcowboy]

no thread hijacking. start a new thread about the topic. BTW editing thie ships will only work for player ships, depite all your mods, the computer will not alter its speed, etc. furthermore mods do not affect OOC combat resolution. if yuo ask in another thread I can mention more about it.

TW

[easternblocrobotcowboy]

to Mad Hatter -

easy - just timed an 'add ware to factory' command with a negative number of wares conditional upon the presence of a minimum number of primary resources, so that the subtraction would stop if primary production stops.

TW

[Mad Hatter]

Oh, I thought you got the system to do it automatically like the NPC factories. Does it run on a loop? And if so, does that start to eat up too much processing power when you add a lot of factories?

[Burianek]

@ebrc: Ok, I get it, you can disregard the second pm I sent you. I thought you added the secondary resource via the script and that was it. Then I thought the game automatically took over and calculated new production data based on using the secondary resource as per some egosoft calculation just like regular factories.
Now I understand that what you've done is 'hijacked' the production cycle, by looping a script that checks every x sec (coincides with production cycle) if secondary resources are available, and if so, decrements them and adds/subtracts extra inputs output from the factory manually, completely bypassing the egosoft production run. (or at least laying on top of it.) HOLY CRAP IS THAT A GOOD IDEA!!!!!!

Ok, there will definitely be a version four of my econ fix. It will not need a workaround due to the screwed up price issues in the current economic model because prices of goods will go back to the original egosoft ones. (although variations will stay wider than original) Factory prices will be rebalanced (prob just keep the ones I have in v3) Profit / min of each individual factory will be adjusted by setting up looping scripts on player factories that continuously alter the input and output rate of the factory by manually adding / consuming resources.

OMFG the possibilities are endless!
You can set up scripts that allow you to purchase the ability to use extra resources (add ons for factories): Ex: when you buy a factory it comes standard, but buy the crystal upgrade for your Alpha IRE fact and every cycle one crystal will be consumed but yield an extra x AIREs. (or the cycle will take half as much energy, or ....)

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, that's probably version 8 or so.

There's plenty to do in the meantime.

At any rate, I wonder what the performance hit from running these looping scripts will be? My initial guess is that it wouldn't be that bad, as IIRC the Xai trade scripts that I use run looping logic to decide which ware to buy / sell and I haven't noticed a hit from them.

[easternblocrobotcowboy]

I dont think it would be that bad. When you open up the scripting editor you can hit pagedown to see all the scripts running. At any given time the computer is running thousands and thousands of scripts for all the NPC TSs and well as military ships. I think this is why x2 gets poor framerate - not graphics cards, but pure processing power. a few extra scripts for the player factories which are relatively small in number compared to the NPC factories shouldnt slow the whole process down appreciably.

Nevertheless, the key is not to screw around with the bottom tier fabs that everyone is accustomed to like SPPs and wheat farms, but adjust the top tier fabs to be so profitable when running at maximum capacity that the player will want to buy all those weat farms, etc. just to keep their top tier going full tilt. That way the economy would have the impetus we all want yet not be running TOO many scripts :> For me, I was planning on incorporating your price variations as well as some of your factory price differences, but I was going to overhaul only 4 fabs - computer plants, chip plants, quantum tube fabs, and spaceweed fabs. I might play with the top tier weapon fabs as well, maybe not, I dont know. your weapon fab 'upgrade' script sounds pretty cool. Gamma PPCs might not take 20 hours if an upgrade could let you pour enough nividium and snails (or whatever :>) into them... for a price of course.

TW

[Burianek]

Nevertheless, the key is not to screw around with the bottom tier fabs that everyone is accustomed to like SPPs and wheat farms, but adjust the top tier fabs to be so profitable when running at maximum capacity that the player will want to buy all those weat farms, etc. just to keep their top tier going full tilt.

Agreed, except for rebalancing the prices of the factories themselves, I think low end fabs are already fairly balanced and require no changes.

For me, I was planning on incorporating your price variations as well as some of your factory price differences, but I was going to overhaul only 4 fabs - computer plants, chip plants, quantum tube fabs, and spaceweed fabs. I might play with the top tier weapon fabs as well, maybe not, I dont know. your weapon fab 'upgrade' script sounds pretty cool.
TW

I'm gonna do them all (high tech), but many of the scripts may be as simple as adding one output unit per production cycle and nothing else, just to break from the default profit per minute and add some variety. No huge changes, just small changes that have a dramatic effect on core gameplay, that's my motto. I may only add secondary resources for high end weapon fabs for now. Don't want to start out biting off more than I can chew. Just to clarify, it is possible to have these scripts only run on player factories right? and exclude NPCs? and is it a separate script that adds the slot for secondary resources from the one that actually handles the production run from the buying and selling of wares?
I'm sure I'll have a ton of questions when I take a look at your script. The math tends to be my strong point, the coding is shaky.

[Mad Hatter]

The problem with using this method for high end weapon fabs, is that you can't adjust the stock limit. First, you would have to only increment the stock levels once every few cycles (or else you just double production), and as soon as you add the extra 'bonus' product on top of the 'standard' product, you hit 2/2 (assuming you started with 0 - otherwise you're at 3/2) and the factory immediately shuts down.

Though maybe you could have a ship docked, and spawn the new product directly to the ships cargo hold?

[Burianek]

or you could make the factory cost half as much and consume resources at half the standard rate. That's a diff way to double stock limit and halve cycle time. kind of.
Place two factories instead of one.
but you're right, it will take some creative thinking to deal with low stock limit factories.
Hmmm... I don't want to churn out massive amounts of weapons into the universe though because we cant change the 'consumption rate' of equip docks. Would like to keep production rate fixed. I'll think about it.

[Burianek]

Here's a thought:
for the 10 or so factories w/ very low stock limits, just add a small set amount of money per minute, representing spinoff technology applicable to the private sector from all the scientists and tech around. This bonus is applied regardless of if the factory is producing. Dirty fix, but something to consider.
Certainly gives a nice feature / reason to buy the really exp fabs. They make a small amount of money regardless of production.

[easternblocrobotcowboy]

thoughts on the economy model:

there is no real way to mod the weapon fabs significantly, as they are so limited in their stock, but in big weapon fabs you could mod it to build those to gamma PPCs in half the time or half the price so you arn't waiting hours and hours for the factory to finish.

For the most part, however I think the weapon fabs are fine. I see them more as contracted government factories rather than for-profit fabs. The building and use of wepaon and shield fabs is one of convenience - so can build a 25mW fab, set it to not trade with other races, and have a convenient place to go where you have a full factory worth of shields for outfitting captured orinocos. This is made more useful, by keeping an extra manta at your weapon fabs for overflow production.

My goal is to make the 'non-useful' fabs desirable. What reason would you ever make a computer fab before now? but now, as a factory that in itstelf is like 6 SPPs in one (with the nividium upgrade), I am willing to save up for it, as well as the fabs that supply it so that it can keep going non-stop. Suddenly cahoona fabs and wheat fabs fit into a profitable picture - as fuel for meatsteaks which in turn is fuel for your ultra-profitable chip plants and computer fabs.

And by putting a hefty price tag on the the top tier fabs, as well as a slightly slower pay-off time, the SPP is not made obsolete as a entry-level factory. but towards end game where you have an extra 5 million just to burn on a computer fab with 2-3 associated resource producers, it is pretty attractive to place one or two fancy fabs rather than finding places for 6 new SPPs, even if the SPPs would techinically pay for themselved a bit faster.

So with a simple mod to relatively few factories - bam - instant long-term economy goals. not to mention by placing nividium as a permanent efficiency enhancing upgrade, it effectively places these fabs as true late-game fabs, while at the same time rewarding the player for exploration.

In my model I am trying to balance the factories with computer plants and spaceweed fabs at the top of the tier of profitability with 6 times the profit (fully decked out) of an SPP. The fabs right below them like chip plants, tube fabs, etc. I want to balance at 3 times the profitability of an SPP. Furthermore I would like the option of tubes to speed the production of PPCs and HEPT, but with a smaller profit margin than simply selling the tubes off.

Anyway, thats my idea, hopefully I can get it finished in a few days, but I am having a b*(& of a time debugging scripts. *sigh* course I have not done this before, so I forgive myself :>

As another example, here is my (in process) chip plant:

ORIGINAL PLANT
IN 120 energy - 80 meatsteaks - 5 silicon - 10200 credits
OUT 1 chip - 13476 credits
NET 3276, cycle 8 min
24,500 per hour (SPP 34K per hour)

NEW PLANT
nividium and majaglit as secondary resources (majaglit is said by the ship computer to be in high demand in producing microchips)
Effects of majaglit: add 50% output (and extra chip every 2 clycles) at the cost of 186 majaglit (1/2 the value of the chip)
Effect of nividium - increase in resource efficieny - returns 40 energy, 40 food (automation of robots vs. feeding people), and 1 silicon per cycle.

IN - 80 energy, 40 cahoonas, 4 silicon, 93 majaglit - 9617 credits
OUT - 1.5 chips - 20,214 credits
NET 10,500 per cycle, cycle length 8 min
79,500 per hour (a little more than double the profit of a SPP, but the use of a chip plant primarily comes from feeding computer fabs)

cost: profit of non-nividium max production (49,000 per hour) making a 20 hour payoff: 986,000 credits for the fab.

TW

[Mad Hatter]

You could also consume secondary resources, and have them give their benefit as bonuses to primary resources - saving cost.

eg. 100 credits worth of secondaries consumed = 150 credits worth of primary added to stock.

[easternblocrobotcowboy]

precisely.

what I think we shoudl do here is if anyone has an idea consistent with the level of power discussed here (ie no SUPER FACTORIES) go into the game, buy one and determine the exact resource usage, and just play with the math on paper till you get something you like with regard to secondary resources. keep in mind the already existing production rate of the secondary resources to calculate the consumption rate so it is appropriate (like 1 wheat farm has just enough to feed to bakerys for example). Then share with us your idea with the precise math details such as in my post above and in previous pages of this post.

I would like to use this forum to keep our organized ideas together. what I hope doesnt happen is people spouting a zillion ideas without helping to do any of the math or figure out the basic factory statistics (I have never seen a spreadsheet of all factory stats). If we have just 'brainstorming' ideas, perhaps we can put it in a new thread.

what do you all think?

[Burianek]

I have a spreadsheet developed that is very easy to use.
Download it from my sig.
Called X2EconModv2.
Models all factories in the game and shows ripple effects of changing prices etc. Makes it very easy to play with the economy.
Download it and pm me. I'll teach you how to use it if it isn't immediately evident.
For God's sake don't buy factories and run them and figure the stuff out for yourself. I did that already months ago, and it was painful.

[easternblocrobotcowboy]

SUCCESS!!! Chip plant script is done, installed, tested, and safely removed with no problems! I am emailing it to you Burianeck. feel free to post these on your download page, but the titles of the script will eventually need to be fixed. I am deathly afraid of messing with the scripts titles untill I know what I am doing. dont want to rename something and cause a crash.

Thanks to Olis J for his original work and Gnowar for his help as well.

TW