Drox beta patch 0.920

[Shadow]

Beta Patch 0.920 of Drox Operative is available over on the Drox Operative patch page. Changes can be read here. This patch increases the frame rate especially in larger sectors and fixes a bunch of small things.

[DarkTraveler]

Installed the patch. Promptly tested out a protect the planet quest.

The ship build estimate timer started out around 18 minutes from the look of it. I checked it periodically and it seemed to go down at a standard pace. However, after the timer reached 1:91 it became chaotic and bounced around from times like 20:33 to 8-something minutes, then back up, back down, etc. I didn't time the duration (wish I had) but it took about 20 minutes overall.

With all due respect to your game-making skills, Steven, that ship build estimate timer is really just a symptom of the true problem; the quest simply takes to long. The player can sit at the planet for almost 30 minutes. I doubt anyone would even notice the timer if the long wait was seriously cut down.

While I was sitting at the dryad planet, protecting it, I saw dryad ships flying past me they as the explored the solar system. That brought back up an earlier suspicion I had. Getting a new ship to a planet a player is protecting might not be top priority to the race who you go the quest from.

[Roswitha]

I might have found the problem with the protect the planet quest.

The time is inversely proportional to the number of credits the planet has. If the planet has lots of money, it has a small amount of time to build, and vice versa. It has nothing to do with building the ship, it's simply a reflection of the current value of the planet.

I would suggest that you set a credit value for the ship, e.g. 5000 credits. Every N seconds, check the number of credits the planet has, and subtract some fraction of that from 5000. When the 5000 reaches 0, the ship is built.

[sbach2o]

Do planets have money?

I had that mental image that all planets of a race draw from just one central pool of credits when it comes to funding their building. However, I am not certain about this, there are only some indications that this is the case from watching the wealth of a race in the trade screen when I visit several of their planets in quick succession.

If this central pool of funds for each race is a reality, then we probably have a culprit for that erratic behavior of the time estimate for shipbuilding. This should happen when a race is short of cash and has several planets about to build a ship. Or something else requiring cash intervenes (like the player selling expensive loot).

What DarkTraveler describes, shows that the situation should have improved with this patch. Maybe it could be improved further by prioritizing ship building for planets which offer a "protect me" quest? But I guess this may be exactly what the game does now. A time of ~20 minutes after an initial estimate of 18 isn't so bad.

Edit: Sorry, I wasn't aware of the additional info posted here.

[kizune]

My "player-bad"-solution for the planet problem is, give the race enough money to build a ship. For me problem is solved but... it's expensive in that way.

I think the main problem is that the Ki canceld the build-project because they run out of money. In my test i wait for very long and no new ship pops out of the planet, too.

Oh by the way, it's without the new patch i not played the new patch actually but im downloading it now.

With a powerful race with lot's of money i never have problems with the planet-protection quest.

[Shadow]

To build a ship they need enough minerals (planet resource) and enough credits (race resource) to build the latest version of their ships. Minerals pretty steadily goes up, but credits can be pretty erratic which is most of the issue now.

[Roswitha]

Originally Posted by Shadow

To build a ship they need enough minerals (planet resource) and enough credits (race resource) to build the latest version of their ships. Minerals pretty steadily goes up, but credits can be pretty erratic which is most of the issue now.

I think the credits are only erratic when the planet has low starting resources.

If a planet has 13K credits (a number I kept running into), it's not affected by fluctuations of a few hundred credits, or even a few thousand credits (like when I sell my loot). In those cases, the timer started at 0:59, counted to zero and built the ship.

Last night, I had a planet with about 1K credits and the timer bounced all over the place. I sold my loot and the timer went to 25 minutes. I bought a bunch of potions and it dropped to 1 minute, but it never made it to zero because during the minute countdown, something else took some credits and bounced the timer up again.

[Crisses]

Credits/funding is only part of the issue. A race sometimes has PLENTY of ships already built, and the quest implies that they'll send someone OR build a ship -- but instead we're ALWAYS waiting for a ship to be built.

It takes too long when you're in a low level game, and you're constantly bankrupting races to sell loot... 20 minutes+ is plenty of time for them to send over a spare ship...

Sometimes I purposefully bankrupt races to attempt to slow their expansion. I sell them everything possible -- tech, planet data, race contact, etc. as well as loot, just to keep their cash low. It's player-economics to slow down the game without the -15% experience hit

The bad side: If there's a second group of races I haven't met yet on the other side of the multiverse (usually the case even on a Tiny map), I'm not controlling their expansion. The races I've been helping/befriending, etc. are then under-powered when we meet group B of races... They'll have more planets, more funding, more ships -- come by, kick my friends' butts soundly, and I have to scramble to make friends in the 2nd faction. LOL Anyway, long protect planet quests is quite probably a symptom of this economic disorder caused by players looting the races for everything they've got. There's far more loot than the economics of the races can support....so why aren't prices reflecting supply/demand very well?

[PixelLord]

Originally Posted by Crisses

It takes too long when you're in a low level game, and you're constantly bankrupting races to sell loot... 20 minutes+ is plenty of time for them to send over a spare ship...

There's far more loot than the economics of the races can support....so why aren't prices reflecting supply/demand very well?

I've been starting new ships (as if I just bought the game and am playing for the first time). I've been playing this new ship now for about 3 hours. The most credits any race has had is 47 credits. I can sell almost nothing, buy nothing. I'm forced to leave loads of loot floating in space. Also I've not come across even a single cargo bay of any type.

If I were a new player and this happened... well, I'd be pretty upset.

[Chumpy]

Would the game fall apart if you just removed credits from the equation?

Is the player supposed to spend time managing race credits?