11th hire staff cost to high or wrong?

[Kamado]

Disclaimer: I love the game and I know it's in early access. Discussing different topics can help everyone in the community.

Staff Requirements:

When you reach 10 staff members, your 11th staff member requires up to 500 Adept Scrolls.

Crafting vs. Gathering Smokepearls:

Crafting enough Adept Scroll for 1 staff hire requires 3,000 Smokepearls.
You can gather Smokepearls by digging crystals or using the Wandering Mage.
Current Limitations:

However, there are some issues with this system:

The fog mechanic limits your ability to gather enough Smokepearls for crafting.
You can only have one active ghost at a time, and its travel time depends on the distance between the grave and the fog. This further restricts Smokepearl collection.
Graduate Student Path:

Let's analyze the "graduate student" path (assuming some incorrect data):

We assume each Tier 1 Wand student provides 10 Adept Scrolls. You need to graduate 50 students.
This seems manageable at first.
Challenges with Graduate Students:

However, there are additional challenges:

You need Mana Crystals to hire students (starting around the 9th student).
Mana Crystals are not guaranteed drops, and you cannot target-farm them.
To run dungeons or crystal battles effectively (3-4 skulls), you cannot use a full team of Tier 1 Wand students.
The Problem:

Therefore, your school needs students with different wand tiers. However, the Tier 1 students you need for scrolls are almost useless in endgame dungeons.

You can use potions to help them in dungeons, but it's a clunky solution.
Overall, acquiring 500 Adept Scrolls is a significant bottleneck.
The Issue Goes Beyond Early Staff:

Even after obtaining the first 500 scrolls, acquiring the next 500 scrolls becomes a major obstacle for hiring later teachers (12th, 13th, etc.).

The game forces you into a situation of waiting for materials with limited options.
Proposed Solutions:

Here are some suggestions to improve the gameplay:

Allow crafting Mana Crystals.
Remove the Mana Crystal cost for student summoning.
Enable crafting Smokepearls.
Base staff hiring costs on Savant Scrolls (which offer graduation bonuses and student medallions).
Reduce the Adept Scroll cost (200-300?).
Endgame and School Expansion:

I hope the developers can create a more complex endgame scenario where schools can have a large number of students and classrooms. This could involve:

Different dungeon types offering extra bonuses and materials.
Ways to expand your staff and school without being limited by material scarcity.
Conclusion:

Currently, building a large school with many classrooms and speeding up student graduation may not be worthwhile due to staff and material limitations.

Questions and Discussion:

Am I missing something?
Are there any suggestions for improving the current gameplay experience?

Bye!

[Philtre]

I suspect this is not a balancing issue so much as a way of deliberately but subtly discouraging large colonies. From a strictly functional standpoint, the more people you have in your colony, the more expensive the AI computations are and the harder your computer has to work to handle it all. This can lead to lag or glitchiness, especially on less powerful computers, which makes players unhappy and causes complaints. So there's a benefit from the dev end on putting a limit on how many people you can have. But on the other hand, an arbitrary limit of "you can only have X number of people" also makes players upset. So many colony sims have mechanisms where it is -technically- possible to have a lot of people, but it is -functionally- extremely difficult to do so.

[Othobrithol]

I'd guess it's a temporary placeholder while the game still develops, and will be adjusted as late game meta solidifies. They probably are not yet anticipating large numbers of players to go that far into the endgame.

[Kamado]

Originally posted by Philtre:

I suspect this is not a balancing issue so much as a way of deliberately but subtly discouraging large colonies. From a strictly functional standpoint, the more people you have in your colony, the more expensive the AI computations are and the harder your computer has to work to handle it all. This can lead to lag or glitchiness, especially on less powerful computers, which makes players unhappy and causes complaints. So there's a benefit from the dev end on putting a limit on how many people you can have. But on the other hand, an arbitrary limit of "you can only have X number of people" also makes players upset. So many colony sims have mechanisms where it is -technically- possible to have a lot of people, but it is -functionally- extremely difficult to do so.

Performance will surely be a problem if we build large colonies but still i suppose i should be able to build a "large enough colony". What's the point of have all end classroom if they are empty because i graduate student to fast in order to get extra staff?

i hope they somehow find a goodway to balance performance and game design.
Imho i should be able to build a 56 members school. 1 teacher for each type and 7 students each.
And i actually can, we can just hire more student with mana crystal and ensure enough conviction for the fully graduated student. But since i need the adept scrolls too is kind of useless to keep fully graduated student.
If i want to graduate and hire more i'm depending from mana crystal.

Originally posted by Othobrithol:

I'd guess it's a temporary placeholder while the game still develops, and will be adjusted as late game meta solidifies. They probably are not yet anticipating large numbers of players to go that far into the endgame.

I have the same idea, in order to get decent feedback on the early part of the game we are forced to play mid game.
And i think that because of the design interface. U can store lvl 4 wand tier (never dropped 1) u have extra slot for abilities in the magic section of student.

I have no idea on how it can evolve, but i hope we can have larger colonies and a complete dungeon design system that encourage me to continue with the dungeon also after completing the research, and probably kind of "forcing" me to the dungeon part with different student team in order the get this extra value.

We'll see, i'm waiting for the next patch, i hope and think we will have the endgame unlocked somehow that can also change some game mechanics