Farming food? Thoughtful commentary and concerns for Cataclysm.

[Dragon]

SO curious on a small pit fall for food/combat issues with food farming. I can't test it yet so just curious more then anything.

As you cause more cataclysms ships stay the same static "baseline" and it takes longer and longer to clear a galaxy and subsequently farming food. If you don't farm enough food that will just extend your time to conquer the galaxy. There is no way out of this rut if you can't clear the planets out OR farm food.

The blessings ( I don't remember specifics after the 3rd cata as they are not recorded anywhere) Don't really boost your ship stats enough or food gain significantly (they looked minor or convoluted in text from my memory). Which i find counter productive as it keeps you from wanting to use cataclysm when i can just stay and farm food to raise my combat ability. Only a small concern if you get stuck with ships to weak to even clear more then 1 or 2 planets, as there is no "rewind" feature if you need to go back and farm food for a smoother cata. You could potentially use cata with almost not food and get "Stuck" in combat. Kitchen changed function and distance from start makes this harder to supplement as well.

Suggestions to counter:
1) Add in a "Time Rewind" (I'm to lazy to try harder, Send me back!)
2) Stronger blessings associated with combat, including a way to reset blessing/curses if stuck! Essentially ability to restart your cata timeline to adjust based on your food.
3) Alt way to farm food not reliant on conquering
4) Inherent bonus to combat after Cata similar to your Black Candy: (We don't learn any faster or try harder, we just remember how we blew ourselves up)
5) Curve the combat strength for the first 5 planets to be the same prior to cataclysm. to allow some room farm if needed.
6) Blessing/inheritance to reduce level cost for ships to make combat food more effective (level 10 vs 20+ may make a larger impact in starting curve and make it go back to normal to not effect your endgame curve in your game design)

Non related suggestion:
1) Add an achievement to clear/reset a Cataclysm without ascension and conquering the Galaxy "I'm too Lazy to do this again, push the red button" (would require a LOT of food! might not be possible honestly so just a funny thought, as you would have to do this after the first Cataclysm with excessive food farming)

SOOOO... Anyone else have any thoughts?
For the record the energy reduction curse hurts alot on the first cataclysm, with no/low food. Bug gave me that wonderful experience but it was fixed quickly and probably sparked this chain of thought.

[galactus]

Still on my first Cata and I already am having concerns (related to this)
I have 7 more planets to conquer and am topping out at the ship level that I had pre-Cata.
To be more clear, I thought I could clear a galaxy with Wasps at the same level, each Cata, which is clearly not the case.

What I DON'T want to do is grind for food each Cata until I can clear the galaxy at the same wasp level (110), so I can be sure I can complete the next.

What I would expect is that the ability to clear each galaxy gets easier (or the same) per Cata BUT the blessings/curses make it more "difficult"

[Dragon]

I farmed a LOT of food prior to the update. It's fine that it takes a higher ship level to clear as that is expected for the combat side of things. But i just worry that it might have an a point of no return where you can't farm food for combat ability. I Did use Wasps to clear all 3 Cata though, but i was using close to 80-90 Chocolates and 60 Noodles. It Didn't take that long to clear but i think i had an extreme amount of food.

[Alex (Coldwild Games)]

Interesting thread, always happy to see players chime in with design ideas & concerns. Some clarifications from the designer perspective here:

1. Cataclysm is essentially aimed more in the direction of "New Game+" rather than a part of the main progression of the player. This is a subtle distinction, but the general idea is that the game is finished once you reach first Cataclysm (which should take a rather long time anyway), and Cataclysm is for players who really want just more stuff to do. Unfortunately, it'd be impossible to keep providing more and more content indefinitely, so we have to slow it down a bit at this point, in terms of how much new content you see (which is why you'll have seen most upgrades and achievements when you reach Cataclysm).

A side effect of this way of looking at it is that you're not really supposed to get too far into them. I haven't managed to do it myself (because tier 8+ upgrades are not finished) but I would guess that after the third cataclysm you should have all in-game achievements done (or at least, that should be the case after full release). The game supports doing a maximum of 10 Cataclysms (there are 10 curse levels and 20 blessing levels), after which it goes into free play, but this was made with the intention that only a tiny, tiny handful of players will reach this point, as it's well past the mark where we just run out of content.

The optimum would definitely be to get through each subsequent Cataclysm slightly faster than the previous one. However, difficulty is a different thing - higher difficulty is definitely intended, otherwise players will blast through cataclysms exponentially faster and faster due to the finite & static amount of nodes in a galaxy. Admittedly, though, it's a bit too harsh, considering the prices of player ships.

2. A thing to note is that this will inevitably be experienced in a very distorted fashion by people who have been playing the game since the beginning, and even current players will have a very different experience than that of people who will start playing after full release. A lot of current players have ungodly amounts of food and a general mindset of relying entirely on food, which should be somewhat ameliorated with the new lunchbox rework, but also, the reduction of lunchbox chances in combat only appeared in the new update - keep in mind that for the full release, the food rework will be pushing the players towards Cataclysm, as Cataclysm resets lunchbox chances.

3. One of the things I'm trying to do is put more emphasis on regular progression (getting more resources in your base) and less on food. Other features / further reworks should also help take the focus off of food a little bit. For example, automatic combat should change the overall feeling of acquiring food. New content (~50 more upgrades are planned for full release) should also help - it will mean that what you call.

This is, however, difficult, due to how ship levels work, but not by any means impossible.

There's unfortunately a lot of other moving parts here, some of which really weird, so, to stop this comment from getting extremely long, I'll now talk about the planned solutions here (keep in mind that most of these are not set in stone and rather are things I want to investigate):

1) I really like that "wait no, take me back" button idea you have - mostly not because of the potential for getting stuck, but because Cataclysm is a massive change and people might not be happy with it after taking it, no matter how many warning screens we place before that. Will look into implementing something along those lines.

2) Implement idle combat to make progression less tiresome after the point where you're tired of combat.

3) More content, especially new upgrades, to place more emphasis on regular progression rather than food farming.

4) Look into increasing the progression boost each primal candy grants.

5) Look into increasing the amount of primal candy you earn per Cataclysm to make the process a bit more interesting and game-changing (from 1 to 2, most likely)

6) Look into rebalancing blessings/curses.

7) Look into a +1 or +2 fleet size bonus per primal candy, or an analogous bonus.

8) Look into some more ship rebalancing to make them more sustainable to upgrade in the very-very-late-game.

9) And this is very important - communicate more clearly that the game "ends" once you conquer the whole galaxy and that Cataclysm is essentially tucked on for people who want to extend playtime past the intended.

Probably something else too, this is just what I have written down right now.

Cataclysm is a massive feature, and, as such, we unfortunately didn't have time to explore it in testing as much as we would like to - it would take an obscene amount of time. Not to even mention that it's built with the full release in mind (as I mentioned, it's greatly affected by some missing content). Balancing something like this is inevitably iterative - it'll require a few rebalancing attempts to get right :)

For now, we'll work actively to rebalance it according to internal testing & player feedback. Thanks to our players for being patient - these changes might take some time to implement, a few iterations to balance correctly, and they may not work correctly for people who have already gotten this far before the full release (same as how your save files will have more food than is intended, and we won't take it away). Feedback is very valuable here and I'm looking forward to continuing the discussion if any more concerns or suggestions are on the table :)

[Dragon]

Thank you for the insightful response!
I never expected any specific action as i was aware that cataclysm was more fun then expected content. If it's there or an achievement, people will try so I'm happy that you are taking that into consideration. For example, now that I know you planned out to 10 cataclysms I might just start up again!

Also there is ONE achievement i have not finished, 2500 Health Packs. But i hope that is solved by the auto combat, or auto health pack upgrade. The last 250 just feel monotonous at the moment.

[Remmy]

Thanks for the developer insights.

I'm close to starting my 3rd cataclysm. I haven't had to do anything unbalanced to progress. I slowly build my food supply and have a stack size of 20 or 25 of the best several foods. Progression has been smooth.

Since balanced food has meant balanced game play (for me), the underlying game mechanics are probably close to what you want. Because of that, at full release, I'll probably wipe my save and start fresh.

One of the things I liked best about the first Lazy Galaxy, was the ability to raise the level of food. It meant I could tailor the end game to lean toward how I liked to play. The current food in LG2 does a good job of allowing that freedom too. I'm hoping that the upcoming enhancements to Cataclysm will further the player's ability to tailor their experience.

[YAmADa]

I want this feature too.

Originally posted by Dragon:

Thank you for the insightful response!
I never expected any specific action as i was aware that cataclysm was more fun then expected content. If it's there or an achievement, people will try so I'm happy that you are taking that into consideration. For example, now that I know you planned out to 10 cataclysms I might just start up again!

Also there is ONE achievement i have not finished, 2500 Health Packs. But i hope that is solved by the auto combat, or auto health pack upgrade. The last 250 just feel monotonous at the moment.

[ksb]

"would guess that after the third cataclysm you should have all in-game achievements done (or at least, that should be the case after full release)"

I have completed 3 cataclysms.
The dark candy gains effectively decrease over time (1st one is x3 (+200%) 2nd is x5 (+ ~100%), 3rd is x7 (+~50%)
I've done all of the 'do things' achievements, but the upgrade buildings I'm still waay off for many of them.

I get to 1T candy, but only have lvl 500 Mine, Lvl 60 solar, lvl 500 academy and fuel pump. lvl 25 scanner and lvl 12 fusion. Lvl 50 asteroid miner. lvl 20 kitchen lvl 75 hydrogen and lvl 15 particle accelerator, lvl 10 admin chamber and lvl 10 replicator. Achievements.

I'm also missing the 10C resource unlocks.

So for most of them I'm still missing the last unlock, some of them the top 2, and more for fusion reactor and asteroid harvester.

[Dragon]

Sooo, i might be the reason they fixed the combat exp and the combat exp getting buffed by asteroids AND the mules changes. I was using that to jump start ascensions and use mules to get massive resources.

I got like 1e21 candy and 1e45 in each resource. you need about 2e42 to finish most of those building achievements. which was not possible before this last patch due to the infinity bug they fixed.

You would have to spend a lot of time in a single cata to get close to that value as the building themselves start to lose effectiveness even with the new upgrades.

[Spimmy]

i am quite new to the game 20 or so hours but i find so far cooking to worst part of this game . The grind needed to cook is pretty zzzz .

[fraudulentAlchemist]

Scientist has an upgrade that gives a lunchbox if you active a Strange Asteroid while under the effects of another. Build up the find chance and reduce the calibration cooldown enough, this could be a slow but reasonable way to farm lunchboxes.

[Spimmy]

honestly i just hope someone makes a workshop mod that makes lunchboxes a 100% droprate . :P

[gmclucabel]

I use the blessing of "start with this X upgrades unlockd" to start with kitchens already unlocked, for farming out that first few sectors too.

I'ts also very useful for getting hydrogen generators for the advanced synergy