[MOD] (Alpha 7) MaterialCrops - Grow stuff and things

Started by skullywag, October 07, 2014, 09:49:21 AM

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Smasher5523

I like the mod, but... only 1 metal from growing 4 ironweed, building 2 machines and putting the crops through them both... all for 1 metal?

MisterLock

Quote from: Smasher5523 on October 11, 2014, 11:43:50 AM
I like the mod, but... only 1 metal from growing 4 ironweed, building 2 machines and putting the crops through them both... all for 1 metal?

That's what I was saying :D
To each his own.

skullywag

Good point on the silver I keep forgetting its a currency. Guys I'm getting to the balancing, please give me time, as stated this was released to garner feedback.
Skullywag modded to death.
I'd never met an iterator I liked....until Zhentar saved me.
Why Unity5, WHY do you forsake me?

thrakkemarn

#33
Love the mod.

As far as balancing goes, I would simply make it so that the end result of each of the IronWeed, GoldRoot and SilverLeaf chains results in the same <baseMarketValue> (so 1 gold = 18 silver = 5-6 metal). These are all easy to get from traders, so rarity shouldn't be a major factor. (Maybe have silver yield less since as mentioned it's used for trading).

You could even do this for plasteel and medicine, their rarity and usefulness are balanced by the extra research, materials and production step. (Plasteel and medicine are both ~double the cost of gold).

Request - could you add a way to grow hyperweave?

Keep up the awesome work you are doing!

p.s. You could either change the yields on growing, reduce the number needed of plants to combine into the material, or both.

p.p.s. You could also make the yields have ranges (even a small range of 1-2, but also HUGE ranged like silver could yield 1-10) for some variety/gambling!

p.p.p.s. You could also make it so the centrifuge accepts inputs of 4 and outputs 4, this will help reduce the work time and makes sense because of the way a centrifuge works.

skullywag

ok so heres the numbers/changes im thinking:

All plants take 4x longer to grow (4x potato speed)
Each plant drops 1-5 crops
you need 4 crops to press to 1 solution
1 solution nets you:
15 Aspirin
15 Resin
150 Metal
30 Gold
72 Silver

how does that sound?

The point of this was to reduce the amount of time colonists spend doing this stuff as its currently too much.
Skullywag modded to death.
I'd never met an iterator I liked....until Zhentar saved me.
Why Unity5, WHY do you forsake me?

shadowstreaker

So 8.32 days of growth, roughly? mid size field of say... 8x8 so 64 (My average size field), 64 x an average of 3 crops per growth cycle, so you get 172 crops, thats 44 solutions, so in just over 8 days + processing time, on average you'd get about 7200 metal or just under half that in silver, seems a bit powerful to me (And sorry I spammed with all that maths, just wanted to show how I'd value the plants), maybe make it 1-3 crops per plant instead? Just my thoughts

thrakkemarn

I like this solution, I never even thought about longer growing times!

Using hydroponics, you'll have the plants in lots of 4. On average that will net a crop of 12 after ~5 days?. Which distills to an average of 3 solutions. So for an average yield you're looking at 45 aspirin, 45 resin, 450 metal, 90 gold, 216 silver (I'm guessing this would overall take ~1 week in game time, but your colonists only have to work for about 2 of those days). Then you can create 15 medicine and plasteel 22.

You got a ratio of 2 gold:10 metal:5 silver:1 medicine:1 plasteel. I think the value of metal:gold:medicine:plasteel is perfect.

I think you should increase silver based on its value to traders or simply remove silver as something you can grow. Currently there's no point to grow it, it's cheaper to grow something else and sell it for silver! Gold you grow for beauty, metal, plasteel and medicine are all REALLY valuable to use for building, silver is only good for trade, so let it be it's full value for trading! To this end, 1 solution should create ~400-500 silver (which is absurd, so I kind of think it should be removed).

p.s. and yes I agree the values overall are too high as the poster above suggested, but the ratios are on the right track!

skullywag

Thanks both, very astute maths there.

I am debating removing silver...it does seem...wrong, growing stuff to trade is ok, but growing money...

So the question here is given the 8 and a half day growth cycle (plus work time to craft) whats an acceptable amount of metal/gold/plasteel/medicine to get over that time.
Skullywag modded to death.
I'd never met an iterator I liked....until Zhentar saved me.
Why Unity5, WHY do you forsake me?

shadowstreaker

#38
I'd say about hmm 2000 metal?

Edit: Actually, accounting the very low number of actual colonist time put into it, I'd say closer to 1500

thrakkemarn

I think removing silver is good, we have so many things to grow to sell.
We already have cotton as a fast growing high yield cash crop, so let that keep its place.

Instead lets compare to devilstrand, which sells for ~double the value of gold.
Your gold plant grows 5 times faster than devilstrand (it's 20x slower than potato), and devilstrand yields an average of 2 per crop.
So to be balanced, I think 1 solution yielding 2 gold is probably balanced (unless you want to adjust crop yields).
Using hydroponics, this will yield an average of 6 gold per table per week (or 30 gold, worth 540 silver, in the time it would take for a table of devilstrand to grow, which would have yielded an average of 8 devilstrand cloth, worth 320 silver).

This makes devilstrand less valuable to grow than gold, but as always devilstrand requires practically no work or research to start farming. Gold then becomes the go-to cash crop, but requires significant investment in research and time.

Therefore 1 solution should get you:
1 aspirin
1 resin
2 gold
10 metal (that's 30 metal per hydro table per week, worth ~92 silver, or ~480 compared to equivalent devilstrand of 320).

I personally am okay with these for balance. They're actually worth the effort to set up but not TOO powerful.

MisterLock

I always thought the end product of these recipies should be just a little buffed.
I personally went into the files with notepad++ and changed the amount of resources you get from the final solution.

If you are quite litelarly suggesting to get 150 metal from a final solution(Iron Solution)then that would be a little overpowered in my opinion...Since I personally set it to give me 5 Metal per Solution

As for the silver.Either leave it as is(1 or change it to 2 silver)or remove it.There is no reason to grow loads of it just so you can buy stuff,big part of acquiring expensive resources like the AI core,Slaves,Mechanical Body Parts is trading your resources for them,if you already have tons of silver from growing it,that kinda negates trading on your part.
To each his own.

skullywag

#41
ok so after some play testing with 3 colonists dedicated to nothing but this and eating, on 1 hydroponics table per plant I have it down to this:

end of day 1, plants at 50% growth
end of day 2, first stuff gets harvested
end of day 3, 40 metal, 8 gold, 4 aspirin, 4 resin, 50% growth on plants
end of day 4, 2nd round of plants almost grown
end of day 5, 80 metal, 16 gold, 8 aspirin, 8 resin, 50% growth on plants
pattern seems to hold as long as no incidents

Thats every 10 days:
1 improvised turret
5 medicine
9 plasteel
32 gold

Gold is about 10 silver a pop so thats 320 silver per 10 days also.

Slight buff required?
Skullywag modded to death.
I'd never met an iterator I liked....until Zhentar saved me.
Why Unity5, WHY do you forsake me?

skullywag

Ive decided to double the above, i realised that this mod using the above is fine for a vanilla game, but modded it needs buffing. Theres too much to spend the stuff on. Should I upload 2 versions? Vanilla only and Modded.
Skullywag modded to death.
I'd never met an iterator I liked....until Zhentar saved me.
Why Unity5, WHY do you forsake me?

thrakkemarn

Yeah I'd definitely keep these values for a vanilla version, maybe 1.5x for a modded version? But I like the numbers as is for balance with vanilla.

skullywag

ive been doing some more play testing, and 1.5 does seem to be about right after a few hours of tweaking, so we are on the same lines. Ill get the github version updated with these numbers tomorrow, need sleep.
Skullywag modded to death.
I'd never met an iterator I liked....until Zhentar saved me.
Why Unity5, WHY do you forsake me?