Economy balancing

[Moper]

When the game first released - we didn't get loot from enemies and recycling cost money. This was too hard and it was annoying that the camp NPCs never paid us for our resources. On this patch I got soft-locked at B03, because I couldn't research enemies (no loot) - they evolved, because I was playing slow - I couldn't move forward.

We went through a few patches and now we get loot AND we get money for the resources we return to camp. On this patch I had 100 000 credits at B05 and never had to worry about resources again. Additionally - enemies were easy, because of research.

I think there is a handful of balance changes that can be made, that will balance out the player economy in a meaningful way - keeping it challenging, but without soft-locking players:

1) Less starting resources at the camp
- We start with a lot of resources in the camp menu and we don't have to worry about it for a long time. I think the starting amount should be about 40%-60% of the current one so we have to make some decisions and work with the system earlier on.

2) Less loot from enemies
- We have too many NanoStones dropping. I was always selling half of my nanoStones, which is a lot of credits, and I still had enough to make all the modules I ever needed. I think we should get about 40% the droprate we have now, so we have to make decisions and not just make a new belt with 2/3/4 of the same module without even looking at what we have in storage.
- Bodyparts droprate is just a bit too high. I played a scientist and I never needed the organic materials that I start with until B04+, in the meantime I was stockpiling a very big amount of bodyparts, when I finally recycled - I had over 350 of each of the 3 types, and made a lot of money from making fertilizer. I think we should get ~70% of the current droprate. This will also work well with the change above, as we will start thinking early in the game about how much to recycle for camp resources.

3) Researching bodyparts should cost more
- The buffs against enemies are VERY powerful. Right now there are no choices to make in this system. Everything costs 10 and there is almost no cost to researching them non-stop. I think a very good change would be to set the cost to 100, then we have to think a bit - maybe rat research is not worth it, as we can kill rats easily, but Spitter research is important, because they can kill us. A scaling system can work as well - where a Rat part research cost is 10, but Spitter part is 200, but that still doesn't create many choices until the late-game, and will be almost automatic again.

4) Researching plants and ores should cost less
- The benefit is low and 150 is a lot of money. New players, who don't understand the codex (like how I was) will research the plants and ores and hope to get new equipment options for craftng - but are really just wasting their money. I think the cost should be reduced to 50 or less.

-----

Personally - I don't think the game needs difficulty settings. I think it just needs to be a bit more adaptable to different play-styles. I wrote more about that here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1573100/discussions/0/7056650397736520587/

[Zigger]

very interesting insight. we can certainly take this to the team. Thanks!

[stretch]

All of these comments very much depend on how you choose to play and this is not how everyone chooses to play.

Lets just take point 1. I tend to agree but not for the same reason. What it does is allow you to ignore the need for those resources until such time as you do need them and err like I did by not taking it seriously enough - so when it does become a problem it becomes a huge problem very quickly. If you need to pay more attention to this from the start it might well take time away from making money which is point 2. If you need to spend more time mining you will eat up your turns which means you will take longer and need more ore to cover this time and/or spend less time killing so you make less cash.

Point 2 says money is too easy and then point 4 says 150 is a lot of money? Which is it? If you raised the costs in point 4 it would be a sink for point 2 but also contradict point 4.

It's nowhere near as straight forward as these comments make it seem.

I don't have any answers and I also don't have a clue if those comments have any merit or not but I just wanted to add a different perspective before conclusions were jumped to.

[Von Herbst]

Honestly, I dont think that the whole Credit mess can be saved. What is kind of ironic because one of the obliviosly reasons Mines of Titan is what it is, Quasimorph, has right now exactly the opposite, problem namely no currency.
There is neither a narrative (besides of antagonise Tau even more) nor a mechanical reason Credits should be a thing on Titan.

[Moper]

Originally posted by stretch:

All of these comments very much depend on how you choose to play and this is not how everyone chooses to play.

Lets just take point 1. I tend to agree but not for the same reason. What it does is allow you to ignore the need for those resources until such time as you do need them and err like I did by not taking it seriously enough - so when it does become a problem it becomes a huge problem very quickly. If you need to pay more attention to this from the start it might well take time away from making money which is...

It won't really change that. It will just push you to open the camp screen earlier on, rather than forgetting about it after the tutorial section. Mining isn't something I suggest changing so we should still have enough to stay afloat. If you had to do some recycling at the very end of the camp tutorial section - that would probably make the player learn best. A bunch of people here engaged with that system for the first time when their elevator stopped working - hence the change that you can always go up, which is a band-aid fix, that bails out people who weren't paying attention (like me and maybe you too?).

Originally posted by stretch:

... point 2. If you need to spend more time mining you will eat up your turns which means you will take longer and need more ore to cover this time and/or spend less time killing so you make less cash...

I don't think point 2) will make you need more mining time. Like I said above - "Mining isn't something I suggest changing...". We get enough methane for the camp and a LOT of cellulose (or whatever the phytochemical was made from is called). We can even sell some, and I think that's great, as we have to balance it, and make sure we bring gathering tools to make enough.

Originally posted by stretch:

...Point 2 says money is too easy and then point 4 says 150 is a lot of money? Which is it? If you raised the costs in point 4 it would be a sink for point 2 but also contradict point 4...

NanoStones are easy money - I hope we can agree. We get so many of them that we can sell them for a big profit, as there is nothing else we can do with them, after we have made the belt modules we want. That kind of sucks as then there is less choice for you to make, you just always sell it.
Point 4 is about avoiding a noob trap, while compensating for the other 3 points. Inexperienced players will often go for these 150 credit research project, and hope to get some new cool gear, not realizing what they are investing in. Remember that they used to cost 30! It's a slow economic advantage, but if a new player invests in that research too heavily early on they will not have enough for gear. This way you save yourself a couple of angry negative reviews too :D

Originally posted by stretch:

...It's nowhere near as straight forward as these comments make it seem.

I don't have any answers and I also don't have a clue if those comments have any merit or not but I just wanted to add a different perspective before conclusions were jumped to.

Have some faith. I know that it would suck if the game got ruined due to bad feedback, but we're here because we like it. I promise I thought about it for a while. I'm a game designer and coder myself, so it's not just random thoughts. Finally - the devs! They'll take the feedback and consider the effects themselves. You like the game I'd bet, so let's trust them :)

[Vardis]

I haven't sold any nanostones, and still have way more credits than I need. That's even after building and researching weapons I won't ever use, just because. I stopped selling the shards a while ago, and haven't bothered mining geodes since I initially found them.

[Nneu]

Coming from Sub 1, I initially thought we were supposed to recycle everything because that's what you did in the first game and went broke. That did make the game much harder initially since I could have had a lot of extra money for research and items, but I was still able to push through. Like mentioned above, I think players are artificially increasing the difficulty wasting by blowing their money on research and recycling, too.

I think the problem is it's not clear what people should sell and save, because you don't know what materials are going to be needed later down the road. If someone is reading the tooltips, hopefully they at least learn they should sell the shards, but even stuff like iron, methane and the herbs can be sold early for a decent price. Especially because I think you get enough iron from recycling for the entire game. even if you just loot the town.

I was also hoarding my twigs and had about $6000 worth at the end of the game. I noticed each sold for $6 each, but if you spent money to recycle them into planks, you end up losing $4/twig because it costs $2 to recycle to 1 plank which now only sells for $2. This should definitely be looked at again since they can't be broken down to sell to town anymore.

I do also think you get way too much junk and loot from chests. By the end of the game I had over 100 medkits, like 30+ of each of the status effect reducing items like bandages/splints that I never crafted any medical items the whole game aside from a few anti nano.

For fun, I recycled all my junk at the end of the game and I had 8k+ machinery, electronics, plastic, and 15k+ fabric. I also had 20k refined iron, thousands of all the other refined ores and 2k of each mutant extract.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3197740656
If I sold/recycled everything I would have over 300k. I didn't want to wait the couple thousand turns, but here's a screenshot: