they of course have the choice to use the same amount of extractors, if they dont think they can ration out those commods.

your point stands, but it is inconsequential.

i could just as easily make the point that finite energy reserves on ships means elec runs out, and you would say it is a game feature.

why then should finite resources not be a game feature? elec would be less versatile if you only had regen, without any elec bank. finite resources is "elec bank" for commods, no more than an extention to the game.

your argument consists of "people will run out", but they will only run out if they use more than they would otherwise be able to, and fail to secure other sources, which is the entire point of the suggestion. an increase in the total "productivity" of bases, which players can choose to take advantage of, or not take advantage of.

oats would be infinite, everything else would be finite.

and i included the bit about "rationing out" to shut max up, because he's complaining about having the opportunity to move his bases and extract more than he otherwise would be able, i see no reason to waste time trying to explain to him something that should be extremely obvious.

and galaxies tend to be "claimed" on a first in, first served basis, the total amount each team would get wouldnt change unless they were unable to defend their territory. so i dont see a problem with people stashing away as much as they can. it would only make those resources matter, because currently they're more like "obligations" which have no effect other than increasing the amount of work one must put into their bases. if the supply runs dry early on, then all it does is give more value to what has already been extracted, giving those commodities a meaningful role in the economy and the game.

its basically the difference between having a "turn based" income, or an "age of empires" style resource management system. the latter gives more options and control for players, while enriching the game experience, and giving players new ways to "make war" against each other.

by increasing the "involvement" in resource management, it would allow the admins to reduce the player "workload" in base management, making the system more user friendly and less tedious/frustrating. bases have an inherent "awesomeness" that new players can instantly recognise, and the current base system tends to destroy that enthusiasm. if it could be sustained by having a less tedious/frustrating system, it would dramatically improve the playability of the game

"im not saying we should weaken bases, or make them cheaper. im saying that bases shouldnt be so time consuming, a simpler "set and forget" system which only requires players to choose what they want their bases to do, would be better, because it wouldnt force players to put so much time into them, and it would make players much more willing to build more, especially when it is an advantage to do so. "

This makes no sense to me. Where on earth do you figure that bases take a lot of work? I build my bases at reset. Most unis I lay 12-16 bases. They take me 8 hours to set up, and then I don’t have to touch them again all uni – this is “set and forget” exactly. If you are spending lots of time managing your bases on a day to day basis outside of perhaps a central proddy, you really haven’t figured out bases. I really don’t see how they can be simpler without dumbing them down past the point of requiring any thought whatsoever.

"basically, the change to the bases system i am suggesting, is that bases cost the same, take the same time to build and gear, but without the player needing to be there, incessantly clicking and organising until the very thought of building more bases becomes horrible."

Again. This makes little to no sense. Building bases could hardly be easier. Take an SS. Put 8-12 sets of everything each base needs. Lay your bases. Move one of each over into each base. Bam you have 8-12 bases. If you’re well organized you have it done in 4 hours. If you have lots of big stuff like Achilles laser Zs you’ll just need to change your SS out at some point for another, pre-organized SS.

"because launching the attack would require the same investment, and the same time spent defending, but without the massive amount of tedious clicking and organising that is currently needed. it would make it easier to build defences, but on the flipside it would make it easier to launch an attack"

I simply don’t understand this at all. “Tedious clicking and organizing”? You mean 2-3 minutes of moving a pre-decided list of gear into an SS? I fail to see how that is prohibitive or discouraging.

"in the war with SP, we had the resources to counterattack, but we didnt, because we didnt have anyone good enough at the "clickfest" of setting up an attack base in enemy territory. numerous players stepped forward to fund such an attack, but noone stepped forward to do the actual setting up, because as i mentioned before, it is tedious, boring, time consuming and when you put several hours work into something only for it to fail, it tends to kill your motivation to play."

You do realize I was director of RE at this point? I stepped back up a few hours after the attack when Matlin dropped off the team. I have a pretty good idea of why we didn’t counter attack since the ultimate decision was mine, and this isn’t it. The decision to not attack was based on various factors and was the result of a discussion among senior officers.

"the players who quit didnt quit because they lost all their credits, they had plenty left. they quit because they put all that time and effort into their bases, only for SP to steamroll them. it wasnt the cost of rebuilding which dissuaded them, it was the time and effort required to rebuild."

No. They quit because they thought there were much deeper systemic problems in SS. They didn’t think the behind enemy lines system was fair, and they thought the game leaned unfavorably towards the long-term veteran, tycoon players who had a massive and difficult to surmount advantage due to their long-term ability to accumulate and control resources (which by the way your suggestion offers them such capabilities). Matlin and Jazzyone quit as a result of a much deeper disagreement with the game – I know quite specifically from conversations in the days after the decided to quit. Also, you might recall Sofa King’s admin team thread which expressed some similar views (just in Sofa King’s ways)

"and yet, we couldve afforded all the nice gear and bases that SP had, we just didnt build them, because the players able to build them didnt want to put in all the time and effort to do so. because building bases is tedious and boring. "

Wrong again. We had limited ada up until that point and had decided that UZ ships were a greater priority. Matlin sacrificed building ada base gear in order to focus on getting RE Olympus ready.

"hence the need to make it less time consuming and tedious to launch an attack. the costs would be the same, it just wouldnt be as frustrating and tedious, and therefore players would be much more willing to fight"

The one part of an attack – other than the length of the battles themselves, that is tedious is getting the SS out to the attack site. Otherwise, it really is actually quite easy. If you simply build extra gear, an attack can be organized in an afternoon if you cared enough to do it.

"and yet, matlin and jazzyone probably wouldnt've quit if the base gear they lost didnt represent enormous investment of time. credit wise, they could afford to rebuild. it was the "time and effort" which made them unwilling to rebuild (and rightly so. i dont build bases for the very reason that i dont have the spare time to do it. "

Nope. They quit because they thought long term players had an insurmountable advantage due to the length of time they played and that it was not fun to “compete” in a system they believed they could never get to the top of. Sure, losing the gear was influential, but they were having major misgivings before that point – the loss of the gear was simply a breaking point.

"its like writing huge forum posts, very few people do it because for them it takes a very long time. i do it because i can hammer out 100 words per minute with ease. that gives me an "unfair" advantage over other posters because it takes them longer to do the same thing, and that is similar to SP and other teams advantage because they have experienced basebuilders, for whom the "tedious boring waste of time" has been reduced to an easily repeatable set of actions that they've done 100 times before, and so it isnt as frustrating or boring."

I am not sure I see where the problem is. It is not too difficult to work out the basic gear a solid base needs, and it is not difficult to realize you can equip that gear MUCH faster by putting it alone in a storage ship (as opposed to a storage ship full of random augs, weaps, bps, etc.) I had a basic checklist for bases set up by the end of the first uni. I had it refined by the end of the second. I don’t think it is too much to expect people to have to think things through a little before they become fully effective players.

".true. though the players unable to build thousands of extractors would, as a result of the new system, be far more able to defend their own territory. "

How so? Those exact same players are the ones who lack the creds and commods to build the gear they’d need to defend their territory – otherwise they could build the extractors.

"and you do also need to take into consideration the fact that once the big teams have extracted all the ada and other tier 3 commods they can get, they may be far more likely to focus on other commods, or colonies, since after those commods are extracted, their value, and the motivation to spend billions to steal them from other teams, would be drastically reduced."

No – In my opinion, you're wrong again. They’d do the economically and strategically intelligent thing instead. They would select an essential commod such as ada or rubi, and they would do nothing that uni except dominate that resource. Then, they could ignore all other resources because no one but them would be able to develop further in the game without buying the commod from them. They could then either charge exorbitant prices or simply refuse to sell.

for example, under the new system, a smaller team would be far more able to prepare an attack base of equal strength to the ones deployable by rich teams such as SP. this would discourage those stronger teams, since it would give the smaller teams the ability to strike back and do real damage to the colonies, which must be defended for the entire universe.

So clarify exactly what changes you think should be made to bases. I must have missed this, because all I’ve seen is you suggest the elimination of the limit on the number of bases you can build. You’ve said you don’t plan to change the cost or time investment of gear in places – how exactly are weak, poor teams going to get all the creds and commods to build all this new gear? The only thing I can think is that you want bases totally and completely redesigned from the ground up. Should ada gear no longer take ada? Take a week to build and have the same build cost? Should you not need a GnT for anni gear?

purely out of spite, a smaller team which has had its ada moon stolen, could run an "LC" style war of attrition which would severely harm the larger team over the course of an entire uni. without the "clickfest" time constraints, that smaller team could work out a cheap attack strategy, and constantly harrass the larger team

The clickfest argument just utterly kills your point to me. I just don’t see it. all you have to do is think through how your bases work, invest in a pencil and a piece of paper and make a list of the thing your base needs. Bam. You’ve simplified the process.

the last thing you said does it all.

you made my argument for me.

you went most of the way in suggesting a solution to the problem i've been trying to convince you exists, something which is undeniable.

surely you can see the logic in NOT deterring half the players who sign up, by NOT forcing them to do this tedious bullshit.

My SS has 4 Lasers, 4 Trans, 4 Chargers, 4 Capacitors, 1 set of 2 aug sets, 4 Protectors, 4 Energies, 4 Radars, 320 Dims, 100k Nukes, 100k Rats, 80 MRE's, 80 Harvesters, 80 Nuke Collectors, 4 Hydros, 4 sets of Damps, and 400 workers.

Lots of multiples of 4. Hence 4 bases.

Each universe, thats what my SS has. All I need for my station master bases. Is that hard to understand for a new person?

I haven't even specified what type of base gear it is (besides not being Adonis/Avalon ofc). Minimum of t12.

the complexity of bases makes me think ive done something cool when ive set out a galaxy, I certainly couldnt be bothered to do all that more than once a uni.

If they was made simpler so we could chase resources round the galaxy the overall experience would be shittier for me cos I'd lose that pride of making something complex.

I like the idea of this as an addition, but not as a subtraction.

IE, infinite wells should always exist. But that doesn't preclude temporary wells of commodities, either. For example, there could be a random chance of a planet having, say, "A Lava Flow of Molten Metal" appear on its surface; something that would either have a certain amount of metal in it, but be able to be harvested as fast as you like, or alternatively just be there temporarily and have many more harvesters be available.

So, for example, if you suddenly are building something that takes 200 billion metals, it couldn't hurt to check your gals and see if you have a new planet you can mine for 4x the normal amount of metals for maybe a week. The names would be kinda fun too; "A Bloom of Space Oats", or "Extreme Coniferous Growth", or whatever.

The higher teir commods would have to come from rarer sources, of course; I've always thought that a Comet would be a cool idea. Moonlike objects on extreme parabolic orbits that are too far out to see for the majority of the universe, moving at maybe 50-100 speed. As they draw nearer to the center they glow brighter and brighter, and you can build a base on them and mine out a limited number of commods. But be careful to get your stuff off it quick unless you want to go out 2 million distance in a carrying ship

Imo they should actually put in the prospecting skill that was discussed for a while - if you want alternate sources of commods, having to prospect in pspace or something like that would be more interesting.

my assumption is not in that "fun" is a concept with absolutes.

it is in the idea, that the vast majority of people would not consider it fun.

and assumption is heavily supported by the fact that most people are unwilling to move their bases.
so unwilling in fact, that they dont even want the OPTION to be able to do it

not even if it means more resources than is currently possible.

now that there, thats a logic smackdown. they happen when you take things out of context. its like attacking a galaxy with enemy players in it, and forgetting that they have bases set up.

This ^