Building upgrades vs improved buildings

[earl_parvisjam]

I just started playing today and a couple things I've noticed about buildings just feel way off.

The system used to handle how buildings upgrade is counter to every other version of city builder I've played. While it makes sense that improving buildings might need to take the old one out of commission during upgrade. I've encountered games where structures become inactive for the duration of an upgrade and the upgrade requires additional cost, but they usually charge whatever the cost requires at the time of upgrade.

Okay, they warn me that upgrade will demolish the structure and now I know that I have to have the upgrade materials before I click upgrade, but now I'm wondering why I always have to demolish the lower level structure to create the improved version.

Once I've researched speedy recycler, why do I have to waste time constructing a recycler just so I can demolish it to build a speedy recycler? Can't we just get an option in the construction interface to skip the pointless first step? The reality is that we're not upgrading anything. We're constructing the 2.0 version of a recycler, so just let me construct that.

There's plenty of room on the screen when pulling up the build interface to stack improved versions of the structures on top of each other. Can we just do that?

All in all, the research tree confuses things. For example, the research tech Ice Fishing requires a fishing pier to create a fishing hut, and is considered an upgrade. Whereas, the sister upgrade is called Wider Piers, which sounds like something that would require construction, is an "Unlockable" and applies immediately to all fishing structures. To me, it makes more sense to have Wider Piers a purchasable upgrade to a fishing structure, that doesn't require demolition, and have the Fishing Hut a separate structure grouped with the fishing pier.

Trash Evaluation is even sillier. According to the description, this upgrade is just improved sorting techniques, yet this results in an Upgrade that requires demolishing a Recycler in order to rebuild it from the ground up into a Speedy Recycler. If it's just a matter of making better organized sorting bins, once I've researched the better way shouldn't the settlers be smart enough to do it the better way first time?

Talk about measure once, cut twice.

[Smashing]

I've also found that the resource requirements of some "upgrades" are vastly out of proportion with the improvement they give. Unless you are really stuck for space, there is little reason to upgrade your power distribution for example as it's cheaper to simply build another structure. The higher capacity water structures are also far more expensive for poor additional storage. As they can be placed anywhere and don't require anyone to actually access them, there is no point. Likewise wells. So many "upgrades" are just not worth it.

[iceflake_joanna]

Heya!

Really good feedback here - I have passed this on to the rest of our team and we will consider your feedback - no promises or guarantees that changes will be done based on this, but it will be taken into consideration.

I can say that the main reason for some buildings to be available from the Build Menu is that these buildings all have a work area that is beneficial to see before updating - this is why they are available, our original idea was to have all available only after building the first version.

Thanks for your post and of course, thanks for playing!

[earl_parvisjam]

There is a large difference in pacing between the two methods of construction. As it exists, it is greatly less efficient to construct a base structure so it can be replaced by the upgrade. Essentially, the cost of an upgraded structure is its cost and half the cost of the building it replaces coupled with the additional construction time involved.

Forcing a replacement makes it so workers have to port materials to the site to build the base structure, build the structure, and then port materials to the site for the upgrade before building the upgrade. That's a significant amount of time and resources invested in a structure that's completely inoperable during its construction.

Additionally, because of the requirement of a resource only provided by the structure being upgraded, the safest and most efficient way to actually upgrade a structure is to construct a second rather than upgrade the initially built one. Due to all costs involved, a player that researches upgrades would be better off avoiding upgrades in favor of unlocking instant upgrades or new structures until they have enough resources and manpower to handle multiple versions of these structures.

Instead, the research trees push players toward upgrades that they shouldn't be using right away. Rather than boost productivity, upgrade techs result in massive drops in manpower and resources when researched. I'd be interested to find out how many new players didn't encounter the situation where they upgrade their only producer of a material, only to find out the building will never finish because they didn't have enough of that material.

[The Worthless Gamer]

the upgrades are kind of expensive vs what they give you. plus the downtime for upgrading on the structure itself actually devalues it even more >_> at least throw us some increased durability as an added bonus

[Smashing]

I can't understand why we can't go straight to a toilet, instead having to build an outhouse first.

[Eventide]

And, how good should an upgrade be?

I think its silly that upgraded wells (and irrigated farm plots) aren't affected by soil quality, making placement not that important, if you Tech toward drilled well upgrade ASAP.
(solves water problems through the mid-game.)

It would seem more realistic if these upgrades were 1.5x or 2x better than the non-upgraded base value, not a fixed amount that abandons soil quality - which is so important, pre-upgrade.