Announcement: OF Mining Bonuses

[Sally]

Well, they haven't really lost anything in the sense that perks don't cost anything material. They don't really cost a lot of effort, either, since most of them are just "this is our primary ore, we want this buffed" "yes okay".

Game mechanics sometimes make old requests obsolete. It's the same with old tech cells, a lot of the perk archive is tech cell requests that are completely irrelevant now because the whole system has been overhauled multiple times since then.

Can then officials now file a player request to get a different faction perk? For example, if Bristol wanted to get a different perk since the mining bonus now has become obsolete, can they just to put a practical example request a selling point for a Bulwark in Bristol Bay that only the Bristol Official ID can purchase? I'm bringing this as example because I know XA has something similar with that red Rebel snub as a faction perk.

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"I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute." - RMS

[Soban]

It's a buff to faction with more than one ore to mine. To faction that specialized in one it's just a free nerf.

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[Karst]

Can we get any specific examples for this problem occurring?

As far as I can tell, generally speaking Bristol Indie mining was completely viable and OF mining simply a step up from that. Despite the advantage, there's still been difficulty at times to supply our own bases with the necessary ore for platinum and heavy water. So...where, exactly, is the "too much" part about it?

Basically the problem is just math. 33% is simply too high of an increase. I know these are not directly comparable, but imagine an OF getting a third higher sell prices, or cruise speed, or powercore recharge, or 6650 cargo capacity transports.
The economy is balanced with certain numbers in mind and they simply can't be increased by such an enormous amount.

Well, they haven't really lost anything in the sense that perks don't cost anything material. They don't really cost a lot of effort, either, since most of them are just "this is our primary ore, we want this buffed" "yes okay".

Game mechanics sometimes make old requests obsolete. It's the same with old tech cells, a lot of the perk archive is tech cell requests that are completely irrelevant now because the whole system has been overhauled multiple times since then.

Can then officials now file a player request to get a different faction perk? For example, if Bristol wanted to get a different perk since the mining bonus now has become obsolete, can they just to put a practical example request a selling point for a Bulwark in Bristol Bay that only the Bristol Official ID can purchase? I'm bringing this as example because I know XA has something similar with that red Rebel snub as a faction perk.

Factions can of course request anything else they want as a perk. They can do that irrespective of this change.
I'll try to explain how this uh, "worked", which might take a while, so bear with me.

We were trying to catalogue existing, active faction perks, because it has been problematic that no such archive exists. It's not visible for the player, but there's also no secret staff list that documents them. Nobody knows, basically.
So, we (well, I) went through the twenty something pages of the Approved Faction Requests subforum to see which of them were perks, and which of those were actually active.
Now in the past, the widely accepted but never written rule was "an OF gets a 4x instead of a 3x on their primary ore of preference", and that generally wasn't treated as a perk. Some of them were requested in the perk format, but most of them aren't documented at all, they were simply what someone in the faction told someone with the ability to edit minectrl.cfg to boost.
Then there's additional mining bonuses, beyond a single primary ore, and these are even more of a mess. Some factions had them as documented perks. Some requested them along with their ID and no additional anything, and that was granted. Some, we have no idea where they came from.

So basically, that whole system was kind of a mess. There was no fairness or consistency about it, and no way to establish which of these was "legit" or not. Since 4.0 bonuses are undesirable anyway for the aforementioned balance reasons, the most obvious solution was to simply give all OFs a blanket bonus. This is actually beneficial for a lot of OFs, since they get higher bonuses on all the stuff they previously had the base amount on.

Anyway the bottom line is, OFs can request whatever they want, and if it's reasonable & balanced, it'll be granted. Mining bonuses even higher than the blanket +.5 probably won't be. Perks don't take up "slots" and no OF is affected by having a previous perk "wasted", it just doesn't apply anymore.

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[Sally]

Anyway the bottom line is, OFs can request whatever they want, and if it's reasonable & balanced, it'll be granted.

Alright, all clarified. Thank you for your time Karst. The way you're explaining the situation makes sense as well, if there never was a clear consensus about this then it's understandable.

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"I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute." - RMS

[Shulsky]

Can we get any specific examples for this problem occurring?

As far as I can tell, generally speaking Bristol Indie mining was completely viable and OF mining simply a step up from that. Despite the advantage, there's still been difficulty at times to supply our own bases with the necessary ore for platinum and heavy water. So...where, exactly, is the "too much" part about it?

Basically the problem is just math. 33% is simply too high of an increase. I know these are not directly comparable, but imagine an OF getting a third higher sell prices, or cruise speed, or powercore recharge, or 6650 cargo capacity transports.
The economy is balanced with certain numbers in mind and they simply can't be increased by such an enormous amount.

I don't think we can really flatly look at this across the board as "A 33% increase is unacceptable here, therefore it is always too much". For instance, if I had a 33% more efficient kidney, that'd be kinda cool, but if I had 33% longer fingers that'd be disgusting and horrible. The mining bonus is a modifier to an activity, not to ships; Any bonus to a craft would be seen as unfair and unbalanced because it would be.

So, I would like to ask again as to any specific instances or metrics which were gathered on mining specifically, as far as the 4x being unbalanced compared to the 3x?

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Operation Have Sea

[LuckyOne]

^ There's just too many credits in the "new economy" because the devs fudged the math.

Guess this is their attempt at backpedalling on some of the changes via a different route.

[Karst]

I don't think we can really flatly look at this across the board as "A 33% increase is unacceptable here, therefore it is always too much". For instance, if I had a 33% more efficient kidney, that'd be kinda cool, but if I had 33% longer fingers that'd be disgusting and horrible. The mining bonus is a modifier to an activity, not to ships; Any bonus to a craft would be seen as unfair and unbalanced because it would be.

So, I would like to ask again as to any specific instances or metrics which were gathered on mining specifically, as far as the 4x being unbalanced compared to the 3x?

I am not really sure how to further break down "33% is a lot"?

That's a third. That is three people doing the work of four.
Ore is typically at least three quarters of a refinery's cost. That input is obtained a third faster. That is a huge increase.
And aside from the base economic factor, the motivation factor for people who purely mine, and for whom that element of the calculation represents the entirety of their profit, that is highly disincentivizing for playing a non-OF miner.

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[NOVA-5]

Will the mining guide be updated so i can tell what my OF Junkers didn't get in the first place to what they'll not get now?

[Nika]

OFs worked for they shit so they should be getting a substantial bonus? This change is the biggest puzzle of the recent time.

[The_Godslayer]

Neato! Another reason to never aim for OF! We were just running short on those lol

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"