New wealth system in B19

[vampiresoap]

Is making sculptures always a "bad" idea? Because it just slightly increases pawns' moods but insanely increases the colony wealth.

[Wanderer_joins]

No, i think it's worth it on merciless to get the beauty mood buff up to +15, but you've to be strategic. Just put enough art to get a buff in a few places, bedrooms, workshop, dining room, don't overkill and trade the surplus constantly.

[BLACK_FR]

I actually consider that VERY cheesy, and resent you for making me aware of it. (only half sarcasm).

What is your opinion for a fix? Tynan appears very aware of the tendency of players to optimize the fun out of a game, and actively takes steps to prevent that. What if item wealth was independent of sell price? Ie. you damage your items to 10% health, they will only sell for 10% health, but still count for full wealth? Then it is less likely to be abused, but punishes players that 'legitimately' had their base raided to [near destruction], but not destroyed.

In b19 there were MANY fixes for OP strategies. For example you can't train shooting on mad animals (by peeking out of door, making few shots, going back, repairing the door and repeating it until you got your 4k xp). Or you can't make "defensive doors" instead of sand bags (open doors were best cover). Or more hard times to have fighting animal squad and so on and so on. But that is GOOD. That improves balance. So I will share all my "cheesy ways". If they will be fixed - good, I'll find other ones.

Getting all your items to less health is part of current game mechanics. I think you should use all benefits that game mechanics provide (unless it's a clear bug). If Tynan doesn't like the way players use than mechanics - than he should change it (which he often do and in the good direction).

Considering fix of health thing. I agree with idea that item health should affect item efficiency (like it do in weapons or apparel). So food should have less nutrition, meds should have less tend quality multiplier, and so on.

There's a reason strategy discussion is dead on this forum/reddit, and general community skill level is low. Because people know not to talk about interesting strategies, as they will typically be fixed in ways that make the game less skill based.

In any case, 10% is pretty low health for things like mollydrop. Though with blacks pawn count he probably won't ever see a drop pod raid, lol.

Better to switch to food option that requires little to no stockpiling imo but that's an exploit too?

Curious about your base design, black. Space optimization is obviously the key here, curious how you approach it. Do you typically even end up facing sappers in late game?

I actually disagree about bad fixes. B19 fixes were pretty good imo. And I think that we should  share all "interesting strategies", because if they were really cheesy and were fixed out - than it's a good thing.

In my game I can easily get all events, including raid drops (ruined me first time though), but only in mid-late stages of the game (when you have to increase your wealth in order to make better defense and 1-2 advanced research tables with multi-analyzer).

I completed full playthrough only in B18. I will attach screens (there were traps in bottom-left corner and turrets behind those walls in the middle; as you can see it's all simple and easy). My current colony in B19 is pre-electricity (I just restarted after discovering that reinstalling traps is always wrong and you should uninstall-install them instead). It's just a big room 14x8 with 4 doors in the corners, 2 traps near one of the door (I open it so raiders go there) and attached room for prisoners. Although I disabled all good events to make game harder (attached my current scenario too).

Is making sculptures always a "bad" idea? Because it just slightly increases pawns' moods but insanely increases the colony wealth.

I actually disagree with Wanderer_joins. I think making sculptures is always bad idea. It's too hard on the wealth.

No, i think it's worth it on merciless to get the beauty mood buff up to +15, but you've to be strategic. Just put enough art to get a buff in a few places, bedrooms, workshop, dining room, don't overkill and trade the surplus constantly.

It's especially bad idea on Merciless. Even if you got permanent buff of mood up to +15 it wouldn't worth it (and you don't). Also don't forger that apart from increased raid size you also lose your "low expectations buff", that another solid reason not to make sculptures for mood management. You can make them for sell though. Just don't finish them (let them lay with 1 unit of work remaining) until trader arrives.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[Wanderer_joins]

Ok, i'll just tell you this, removing all the art in my end game base dropped the building wealth by ~14000 and threat points from 13612 to 13520...

Art is awesome, you've just be careful not to go to much to soon. I've seen thriving colony fall on mood issues rather than threat issues, and i put breaking during a raid on a mood issue.

[BLACK_FR]

Ok, I'll just tell you this. In my B18 run all my wealth for fully prepared base (without a ship) was less than 20 000. To add 14 000 just for slight improvement (very slight) is very questionable choice.
Especially if you consider all other option (psychoid pekoe or even plants). Art just add too much wealth for it's usage.

[Wanderer_joins]

In a 20 000 base and your example, you would barely need 1 000 art in your common workshop, dining room/ rec room to turn it from slightly impressive to extremely impressive (+3) to (+6) and to give a beautiful environement mood boost (+10) for people in the room (eating/ relaxing/working).

The 1 000 art at this wealth even on merciless will only add ~6 points, for comparison a basic tribal warrior is worth 60 combat points.

Art is always worth it in the main rooms where pawns eat/ relax/ work or in your hospital. You just have to make sure you reach the desired threshold and don't get ahead of yourself.

[attachment deleted due to age]

[BLACK_FR]

Good points man, I like it. You made me test sculptures and change my opinion about them a little. Now I think that they are generally bad, but can be good in some cases.
So let's get to details.
Sculptures are good when they add beauty, all other properties are irrelevant. It means that you should try to get sculptures for yourself made from Jade. Other sculptures can be good too, but they much less beautiful for roughly the same wealth.
Secondly, bad-quality sculptures are bad, but still add substantial amount of wealth. For example large jade sculpture with normal quality has price of 650 wealth and 260 beauty but large jade sculpture with excellent quality has price of 975 wealth and 780 beauty. So for 50% more wealth you get 3 times more beauty. That means that you have to have pawn skilled in art to make good sculptures.
Thirdly, you have to get direct benefits. So installing a sculpture should get over thresholds of mood buffs. If it gives nothing or just 1-2 mood buff it may be not worth it.
Fourthly, they are very work-intensive. In early game you basically can't afford to spend so much time training your art-maker.

Also you have to understand that with new wealth system wealth is not only give direct raid points but increase wealth generated by pawns. So effects of wealth are higher that your estimation.

How did you estimated 6 points from 1000 wealth? I know general algorithm but don't know exact formula.

So my conclusion: art has some limited utility, in mid-lategame you can place good quality jade art in your common workshop to reach some mood buff thresholds, but you have to be very careful about it. More you struggle with mood more you should consider it.

[zizard]

Exact formula is in this post:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43206.msg427423#msg427423

I made progressive simplifications in this post; the first equation should be correct for wealth of 14-400k.
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43206.msg427444#msg427444

[BLACK_FR]

I read that post earlier.
Am I right that it means that 1k of item wealth adds about 8-11 raid points? My calculations give me around this number (with 1-2 colonists). In that case if 6k of wealth adds 1 raider it means that by the cost of 1 raider you can upgrade your colony substantially (and sculptures that Wanderer mentioned are even more good).

Also am I correct that if you start naked brutality with 6k ancient ruins than you have 11k "free wealth" to grow your colony (because ancient ruins are buildings and it is halved)? It means that stat "colony wealth (this map)" from statistics tab in history is calculated wrongly (because it doesn't halve building wealth).

[zizard]

For 1k item wealth, the base value (everything apart from the F factors) would increase by 6.22 + 0.32 * num colonists. With 1.5 colonists, this is 6.7. Then this is multiplied by extreme difficulty factor 2.2 and adaptation factor 0.76-1.24. So the end result will be about 11-18 points.

Yes, I think the 11k value is correct for that. The colony wealth with full contribution from buildings is still good to know because it determines the mood expectations value. Sometimes I call the wealth with buildings halved "raid wealth" to distinguish them.

[BLACK_FR]

Then it's about 15-18 raid points for each 1k of wealth for me. 4k wealth for 1 raider. Still pretty good.

Does amount of skills of pawn affect his raid contribution? From formula above it doesn't seem so, but I tested it and new skills definetly are adding pawn wealth. Does that pawn wealth affect anything?

[zizard]

Colonist value gets included in the raid wealth. So a colonist contributes as if he were an item, plus the colonist specific amount.

[Wanderer_joins]

Sculptures are considered as buildings as soon as they're installed, and the contribution to storyteller wealth is halved. In the example above at 20k wealth, 1k of art adds: 3.11 * 2.2 = 6.8 points on merciless

Then you actually add .32 * 2.2 per colonist and factor in adapatation. Which would end up between 6.8 and 11.1 points to be perfectly accurate.

[BLACK_FR]

You are right, we should count art on half of it's value. But you forgot about adaptation factor, if you play it good it's usually 1.24.

Also I just checked that if you damage your sculptures their wealth is going to near-zero but their beauty stays the same. That way art is super-useful.

I will use it until it fixed. And I really think it needs to be fixed.
The reason that I will use it is that current balance is made with this mechanics of health, so you can't just ignore mechanics without creating artificial difficulties. It's like saying "killboxes and animal army are broken, I won't use them".

[bbqftw]

Adaptation factor is not overwhelmingly influential. As far as I can tell, true adaptation multiplier on merciless is 1+(.4*(adaptation factor-1)), where adaptation factor is displayed in the storyteller (value from 0.4 and 1.5). This is a 37%~ difference between max and min, but it's quite challenging to remain at min adaptation even if you're doing things like letting every refugee die.