Merchandising is good for two things at the moment.
Income from sales to the local population and the fixed income. In some cases you have got more merchandisers complexes then you can ever sell to the local pop. But you keep building them, because you need the fixed income. So, you actually invest stellars/minerals/factory output in new stellars gained.

In my eyes both are equally important. But the fixed income (per merchandising complex) goes first.

I think its important that an new base doesn't have got the financial impact (=income from the complexes) and the sales oppertunity then old established starbases already got.

The number of complexes is also an financial drain to your system, as they need employees...

But basically, the basic income and the oppertunity to invest money into new sales-possibility is whats important from me.

My main consideration when building an extra merch complexe is what I could do with those modules - if I can get more profit from something else, then I would build that.

All a merch can do is supply money - either directly in the weekly income, or indirectly through allowing the sales to the population, so the only other concern is the cost to run them.

So from a cost point of view (number of employees, number of modules), yes I care how many I have

Only sacred in the sense that they generate 99.99999% of your income. I'd assume that everyone maxes out their local merchandising values as a matter of course. Never really had an issue with how much I can sell/week to the population as most of my colonies worlds have a couple of hundred MU capacity at best.

Isn't that what they are doing right now??

I always assumed that they sold some stuff to the local pop in the region and that they did that by producing some goods which can only be made in starbases...

Excellent point.

So to summarise.

Not important as long as at least same dosh is forthcoming and a restructure does not improve any other faction

Which is a bit obvious :-)

Maybe it would be smart/helpfull to tell what the problem is, or the suggestion, this way we can *all* think loudly on possible solutions/idea's.

You get an load of smart people here, and although we mostly tend to disagree on almost everything you might pick up some smart idea's

I might suggest, to take this is a bit slower then the last change, as some of us are still recovering from the last major change :-)

No problem, just gauging opinion before even bothering to think about things.

No more negative change we hope. We are just having to rethink what to do with merchandising after the stight realisation that it can not raise merch output on a planet if you improve the infra structure (we are trying to think through lots of stuff you can actually extract from a planets population without production or cash being the result.....).

Also we do like to take things slower, hence starting to discuss stuff now. When playign with combat.... note i did start the same thing with combat a while back and the result was the wirlwind changes after thigns became apparent.

Speaking personally, around the time of conversion most of my merch complexes came from the great "balancing act" ... and I had next to no opportunity to increase merch complexes at the starbases I held at the time. I don't feel that I should benefit from all those complexes. In fact I very much doubt I'd get any of the compensation I suggested might be needed. Perhaps it would also be worth specifying "complexes built after conversion from modules built after conversion" but then everybody before the conversion had production building ships/mines/factories/SOMETHING I expect.

That is why I suggested that David/Mica "compensate appropriately" - not "compensate"... I don't have a crystal ball, and can't see what was happening in that kind of regard across the game as a whole....but I do have great respect for Mica's ability to spot a situation where somebody has been taking the piss or exploiting a loophole

Dan

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I assume this is directed at the current changes ? The one to restore the balance ? Rules wise nothing much has changed, to be fair most of the changes are +ve just based on how much time i spend on them compaired to how much time i had to spend on the resent balance.

I don't think there can be a second phoenix game but there will certainly be no phoenix 2, we will just continue to improve the current game.

Ah, the logic of On-line gaming at its finest - "If it has not started yet, it must therefore be the best game ever written."

Good luck, hope it all works out for you.

Providing its not been running long it will be balanced These damn games have a tendency of growing very fast, especially if there are few real world money constrains.

Polaris was a typical example of this - it looked balanced and wonderful on the surface but when you start to think that there had never been a major space battle you have to wonder how well it would have worked if it had run more than a 1.5 year. Certainly we had the game is a terrible spiral situation, the amount of cash and materials we had were insain..... The only thing that held it back was complication - which we removed by writing utils to run colonies automatically. So moral is that balance is easy to pretend you have but difficult to really get.

whats that then ? Seems to turn up nothing on a search

Hopefully improving infrastructure will give something comparable to investing your time/mus in different fields - like war fleets, for example

I would like for the return to have a value (not necessarily production or cash) - say, a Reputation figure for that planet. What that can be used for could be determined by SA, as each population will give something different depending on its culture, location, race, etc. But it could still have quantifiable returns. As an example, you could find out that if you have a Reputation figure of xxx, the population will defend your base if its attacked (sending a local militia on day 3 or something - it takes them a while to turn up). Or there could be certain items you can research/build that need a minimum Reputation value for them to be useable (because of the unique nature of the planet it needs their cultural knowledge and support). Or you could spend/reduce your Reputation by getting them to do things for you (spend xxx Reputation and learn the location of a high mineral yield for yyy resource, for example). It keeps it fluid to allow roleplay, but gives definable targets to achieve something (you will be told how much Reputation you need).

You can do most of these things now, without the reputation value (by just giving the modules, mus in return for something), but for me having that defined Reputation gives a goal to aim for.

The return has to be equal (though different) to what you could have gotten through building weapons, ships, etc

Mark

If the game had been reset what aff would you have joined? (and wouldn't it have been a bit claustophobic with all the players affs being stuck in Capellean system again?)

And just to set the record even straighter, SOME of us do basically agree with him. I think the recent changes were designed not to upset the 'big payers and power players' in the game, and seem to have failed even in that. I'm still trying to work out what to do now that the GM has made the 6-8,000 heavy hull battlefleets, held by some individual players, unmatchable. It's now just a question on what power block to join.. or whether to bother at all. I'd join a restarted phoenix, even under the new rules, like a shot. I'm just not sure about playing on as a permanant underling against players who've taken advantage of a different set of rules than are now in force.

TonyH

I agree. I just think the changes as implemented were about the worst possible way of doing it. They preserve the 20,000 hull 'mass fleets' of the existing factions, but make it four times harder for anyone else to replicate them.

I was just talking to a pd on irq last night who summed it up precisely : "Now, instead of well matched enemies, all we can do is go against people with no fleets at all". Exactly one aspect that these changes were supposed to avoid - the hoarding of military resources for use only with overwhelming odds, because they're too valuable to risk.

I would like to see some statistics - what proportion, roughly, of the "hard earned" battlefleets were the benefits of just the last eighteen months, rather than six/eight/ten years of dedicated play? Should be an easy figure to acquire - heavy hulls total with a position number > 9999 as a proportion of the total, for each aff.

As for adding depth to the game - all we've had so far is endless combat refinements and long term goals for other 'infrastructure/trade' stuff with no date and no progress. And now the prospect of another 'blitz' change on merchandising complexes, with GM-assessed compensation for the change.

Mica, I assume, is paid for this. David does it for FREE?

TonyH

Hi Tony,

Well, in some sort of thing, I agree with you. The decrease from 8-4 was an perfect example... And I am very much pissed off with the fact that the Light/Xlight are not modified downwards.. Even an 10% decrease would have made me happy.

The free maintaince was also almost exclusively in the benefit of the heavy-hull owners. Which I don't really like. But on the other hand, the fact that an maintain visit will cost you a lot of stellars or factory production is a good thing. I think that making warships easier to destroy also would be an better solution. I hope that the new war-rules will help on this, especailly as it introduces new possibilities inside the battles.

I do got another little problem.. The neverending stream of modifications of the last couple of months.. which got the habbit of only TAKING away.

Lets recall some of the last changes:
1. Increase of control complexes for platforms
2. Decrease of periferies modifications.. (I haven't seen an single INCREASE!!)

3. The last increase of Heavy Hull/Normal Hull production.
4. The last increase of patches costs.

In all of those cases, stellars/production income is reduced and costs are increased.

I have also seen some players dropping out due to those chances, which is in my view an even worse situation. We already need more players (some affls only got 1 or 2). So every player counts. Peter and I compensated for the loss of Dan inhouse, but if we loose another player I am not sure if the last one remaining will be able to compensate...

Lets say it clear and obviously. The income of the merchandisers is my lifeblood. If this get reduced, I won't be able to compensate for the bases who are making an loss., and I will turn then back into outposts, fire the employees and probably scrap the factories. This means that the uniques which I produce there, will ofcourse be taken off the market (as there is no market anymore) and will be sold inhouse.

I can only assume that I won't be the only players, making sure that only bases on big fat green planets (or those who make profit on other ways) will be left alone. I am not sure what happens if multiple players start reducing the number of bases, but I don't think it will be an good sign.

Ofcourse I got some idea's how to transform the current merchandisings into something differently, and I also figured out how to make sure that the current crop of income is kept in place. It will mean an considerable effort on the part of the GM"s... As they need to compensate on a structural base and that means some database changes. But it can be done.

No i get paid a little for phoneix, currently i'm considering going to work at tesco as on the tills as it gives more job satifaction, money and prospects . Being told that in 2 years that nothing has been improved is really not nice.

However although i get paid for phoenix - i get paid the same if i ignore it as if i do work on it. So really all my time is spare time.

It does occur to you that the change in merch is part of the infra structure changes and noone will lose a penny in max revenue at a starbase. Now i have said this once already and i'm appalled at your lack of respect for what I have said. I'm only human, i make mistakes and thats why the compensation words always come up - but since you have a total lack of trust for what we do then i can never be enough.

Now you make a lot of noise on these forums but i suggest that you reread the forums rules because i find your lack of respect distressing.

Yes that would be nice wouldn't it but it is a non-starter. If we had it all over then merch income woul dbe a lot lower, but 'sadly' that not going to happen.

Well i was just looking for ppl to perhaps notice that there have been changes for the good - but the online/offline order editor changes have been totally ignored because the pixies did them.

I also know what has been changed in the game as i document every change as they are sent to KJC and there has been a lot of stuff done.

All i want is to see sensible argument and not just constant uninformed griping, which make me less motivated to do stuff.

Also i will quote somehting from the forum rules :

I think that *this* is the main point which needs to be addressed. Most people will understand the reason for the changes, but still won't like it.

For warlike affs, which already got an massive fleet, the increased cost of production is a bitch, but will effect everyone involved. They probably need to do some major restruction in their production (which costs time) but it is an one time event.. if rules don't change again.
For players who just got their warship production started thats is a major cause of frustration, but I think they might be able to swallow it. Not all of them, but nothing you can do will make everyone happy. :-)

Merchandising income is an total different problem.. It will effect everyone and those with an very low net cashflow already might not be able to survive it.

Lets face it, the reason why 'garden world' are such in high demand is not the fact that you can sell lots to it (you need to get the goods first) but the fixed stellar income. Decrease that and you will see that profitable starbases (which fund the research, ships etc) will not be able to sustain the loosing outposts and starbases.

Real money won't make it possible to compensate it with more starbases, so their total expansion will have major problems.

Oh yes, I noticed the changes in the online editor and the increase information available was greatly appriciated...

Which is probably why i have said repetively that:

THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE IN MERCH INCOME.

I went further and said they will be no change in the maximum merch income. Here it is:

I put applled in bold on this one. I'm sick of ppl not bothering to listen to what i put here. I'm happy to answer question etc but when the answers are ignored the delete button will be pressed a lot more.
</rant>

The point of this thread was to ask if ppl cared if the merch complexes changed nothing was ever suggested about changing the revenue.

oops!

Okay. Thats now absolutely clear... Looks good to me... Now lets try to add some more 'atmosphere' or 'options' in those 'boring' complexes.

Anyway, think of my last message as an way to think with you about how we could enhance the basic idea of the merch.complexes. This is the best I can come up with... Feel free to sabre them down, but please tell me WHY you don't like them.

Populations is ofcourse free to move.. But giving free transport to the starbase will give the same effect.

For me I don't like the local goverment idea's... I am not sure what they add to the game, it only makes it more difficult to get an footing and it might give the local base a too much advantage. But I am open to suggestions..

What I am thinking is giving players options to spend the current merch. complexes with an second task. We just assume that the basic income will stay the same, but you start to fiddle with the sales of your goods.

Now, people try to dump their goods in a more concentrated way. The base owner is free to decide what the local pop can buy. Which is ofcourse a bit silly. In the current economy custumers can choose what to buy and when.

An alternative idea would be that the basic income only gets produced in the starbases, but that you can offer the other options in outposts. The more advanced the system is, the more less transport is needed and the more free the civies are.

And to your complaint that it will make the game more simcity like, well, the new battle options are really much welcomed by the warlike affls. I do think that this is also an way to overcomplicate things, but untill now you haven't heared me complaining. I do think that another way to play with the merchandising side of the game would be appricated by the traders..

That is already proposed in the last changes announcement. Local trade goods will be bought by the local population from the market. The local population will choose what they want to buy (and presumably they won't buy anything if there is nothing they want).

Changes to battles only affect those who participate in battles ("warlike" affs) or affects them a lot more often anyway. Trade affs only need to worry about battles defensively (and I believe a lot of the changes give you more defensive options).

However, *every* aff needs merchandising not just trade affs. Trade affs *may* sell more trade locally and warlike affs may just rely on automatic merch income, but I don't think that's entirely true.

Well David, here's a perspective guaranteed to kill the idea of "consolidating" the quantity (not quality) of Merch Complexes at a Starbase (the basic assumption I'm making as being the original point of this thread):

It makes the Operative Close Complex order actually useful...

...I'm all for it

Cheers,

Rich Fanning
aka
Lord Lawrence Scrimm
CIA Intelligence Director

So like resource complexes you can assign them to different taks ie extraction of resource / commerce etc. Would you be able to interchange the task ie more from resource to merchandising?