Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game

Info Terminal => Add-on projects in progress => Topic started by: Rostin on May 09, 2014, 02:32:38 AM



Title: New Project Modules
Post by: Rostin on May 09, 2014, 02:32:38 AM
I wasn't really sure what section to put this is... But in regards to the modules that you could earn for supporting projects (power armor marines, planetary fortresses, cloning facilities, etc.) will we eventually be able to research and manufacture those? Or will they only be purchasable through QP?


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: SirEmi on May 09, 2014, 05:59:59 PM
Research and manufacture will not be an option as those are modified / ancient / improved / alien devices. It uses technology that is either experimental or extinct.

You will only be able to get these modules from the pledge system.

You might also be able to find some rare module through exploration / mysterious encounters, that might have different stats but could be used for reverse engineer.



Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: sargas on May 09, 2014, 06:04:16 PM
If I am understanding it correctly, the power-marines and the cloning vats can only be upgraded through reverse engineering.  They are only sold through the pledge program.

The planetary fortification will be available for sale at the SOL Shipyard, but only up to MKX.  The special ones in the pledge program are MKXV (and not available elsewhere).

And therefore, none of the three can be researched through the normal science tree.




(edit because...

...dadgummit...

...well, you beat me to the answer, Sir Emi...)


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: JamJulLison on May 12, 2014, 03:14:48 PM
The sad thing is most of these QP only modules are pretty much useless anyways. Look at the power armor marines. In order to get them higher in MK you need to upgrade your reverse engineering. But you also must spend more QP on more so you are even able to do so.  It becomes a process that just isn't worth it when you compare it to the already cheap and easy to research marines.  Those that could use these don't have the income to be buying QP for power armors and those who do have the income to do it don't need them since our marines are far superior. 


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: sargas on May 13, 2014, 02:26:18 AM
my jury is still out on that...


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: johnnydrinkmeth on May 13, 2014, 08:01:57 AM
I found that the cloning module wasn't a bad investment of my SEA QP.  the slow but steady influx of new men is useful, and it's handy to know if I ever get beaten up enough to lose men, i've got a resupply on ship.

Ditto goes for the power marines.  I put some SEA points in, and the marines are really useful compared to my low level modules.

That said, I don't have enough QP to go for many more modules, + I'm focussing on going VIP, but still, not entirely useless from my perspective...


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: JamJulLison on May 13, 2014, 01:33:14 PM
I found that the cloning module wasn't a bad investment of my SEA QP.  the slow but steady influx of new men is useful, and it's handy to know if I ever get beaten up enough to lose men, i've got a resupply on ship.

Ditto goes for the power marines.  I put some SEA points in, and the marines are really useful compared to my low level modules.

That said, I don't have enough QP to go for many more modules, + I'm focussing on going VIP, but still, not entirely useless from my perspective...


Most people aren't going to have the QP to spare for them though. They are only useful really for low ranking people. My powered armored marines unfortunately are just crap compared to my actual marines which are high MK.

I haven't used my cloning mod yet.  I haven't really had a good reason to. lol


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: johnnydrinkmeth on May 13, 2014, 07:05:07 PM
I guess we have to look at it from Emi's perspective.  It gives newer players an incentive to go VIP.  And do be honest, if they do pay to get these modules, at least it's not a huge bonus that non-paying players can't compete with.

If the QP only modules were scaled to be of real benefit to the more senior players,that might widen the gap between new and old players even more.  I'm not too upset with how they are at the moment.

(and we'll see how the planetary fortress mod goes, that might be more useful for senior players...)


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: JoolzVern on May 13, 2014, 08:12:54 PM
I guess we have to look at it from Emi's perspective.  It gives newer players an incentive to go VIP.  And do be honest, if they do pay to get these modules, at least it's not a huge bonus that non-paying players can't compete with.

If the QP only modules were scaled to be of real benefit to the more senior players,that might widen the gap between new and old players even more.  I'm not too upset with how they are at the moment.

(and we'll see how the planetary fortress mod goes, that might be more useful for senior players...)

Really it just gives players an incentive to buy QP with solars to buy modules. It's frivolous imo to spend real money or SEA QP on these when you could could get VIP or officers for a few million solars worth of QP. Even when you're new, these probably aren't worth wasting QP on like officers or VIP. And while it's cheaper than hiring marines if you have a while to wait, the savings won't beat the boost you get from spending the QP on officers or something.  With a good corp ship you can earn the solars to buy QP to get the VIP/nav officers and to build MAUs and hire marines fairly easily compared to the clones etc. it would take to get to the same destination.

A cloning module for example gets 24 people a day cloned at mk1, which costs less than $1K solars to buy at Earth. One good SOS run with  one of our corp SOS ships and nav officer+ VIP can get you millions of solars a week with your activity level- plenty to hire marines and buy QP or start upgrades etc. I mean you can get VIP for $5mil and I think some of our guys earn ten or more sometimes in one run getting refugees. This is why I told you in the beginning to spend your SEA QP on VIP and a nav officer.

And of course as a corp we can build higher mk MAUs if you can buy the materials. SpaceX has me building a few mk50 MAUs for him right now and he's fairly new himself.


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: JamJulLison on May 13, 2014, 09:44:32 PM
I think what should happen is these QP modules be available to research for everyone. Just the usage of QP before it's release would allow us to get already made modules a little ahead of time. Hell from what I can see so far, it looks like the only way you will be able to do some of these new missions that are coming like the wormhole stuff is by spending QP to get the mods needed. Which if that is the case is total bullcrap. Most of this we should be able to research.  As for reverse engineering, it is complete crap.  I think once we reverse engineer something it should become available to build without having to reverse engineer the same kind of thing over and over.  I would also think our scientist would be smart enough to remember what they learned from reverse engineering something and then using that knowledge to build bigger and better modules of the same type.


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: JoolzVern on May 13, 2014, 11:23:56 PM
I think what should happen is these QP modules be available to research for everyone. ..  I think once we reverse engineer something it should become available to build without having to reverse engineer the same kind of thing over and over...

 :please:



Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: johnnydrinkmeth on May 13, 2014, 11:28:35 PM
I think what should happen is these QP modules be available to research for everyone. Just the usage of QP before it's release would allow us to get already made modules a little ahead of time. Hell from what I can see so far, it looks like the only way you will be able to do some of these new missions that are coming like the wormhole stuff is by spending QP to get the mods needed. Which if that is the case is total bullcrap. Most of this we should be able to research.  As for reverse engineering, it is complete crap.  I think once we reverse engineer something it should become available to build without having to reverse engineer the same kind of thing over and over.  I would also think our scientist would be smart enough to remember what they learned from reverse engineering something and then using that knowledge to build bigger and better modules of the same type.

I always thought that the justification for not being able to research things like safety override and creamtorium was to keep them rare, and give people an incentive to do more nest missions.  There's rare loot in most games, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.  But I definitely think all game play areas should be accessible without investing QP.  I'm sure Emi will let us all research the tech for wormholes.  Maybe those modules just make it a little quicker, like the new mining modules?

And Joolz. You're probably right about VIP.  Getting the new modules was a silly spend, but it was fun :p
VIP and nav officer are my next priorities now.


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: JamJulLison on May 14, 2014, 02:12:59 AM
I think what should happen is these QP modules be available to research for everyone. Just the usage of QP before it's release would allow us to get already made modules a little ahead of time. Hell from what I can see so far, it looks like the only way you will be able to do some of these new missions that are coming like the wormhole stuff is by spending QP to get the mods needed. Which if that is the case is total bullcrap. Most of this we should be able to research.  As for reverse engineering, it is complete crap.  I think once we reverse engineer something it should become available to build without having to reverse engineer the same kind of thing over and over.  I would also think our scientist would be smart enough to remember what they learned from reverse engineering something and then using that knowledge to build bigger and better modules of the same type.

I always thought that the justification for not being able to research things like safety override and creamtorium was to keep them rare, and give people an incentive to do more nest missions.  There's rare loot in most games, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.  But I definitely think all game play areas should be accessible without investing QP.  I'm sure Emi will let us all research the tech for wormholes.  Maybe those modules just make it a little quicker, like the new mining modules?

And Joolz. You're probably right about VIP.  Getting the new modules was a silly spend, but it was fun :p
VIP and nav officer are my next priorities now.

Yes but it doesn't make much sense though. Especially considering SirEmi claims to be wanting to keep this somewhat realistic. I tried to accept it this way for those rare mods though.  But for these QP only one now this is just getting rediculas. Especially since some aren't even worth the QP spent on them.  I can understand he is trying to get more people to donate. But he shouldn't be trying to exclude not donators either.  VIP and Officers are already worth getting as it is. Making VIP better is a good idea. As would be maybe adding some more officers.  I would like to see one that increases combat time on defense and decreases combat time on offense.  Of course with us big players this wouldn't make a lot of difference on pvp combat between each other. But it sure would make a difference on COMs at least.  Perhaps he could even introduce a banking system for VIPs only that allow them to deposit Solars into a personal banking account that accumulate so much interest over time. There would of course need to be a limit on this.  Also make it possible to transfer Solars from your account to another player.  We need good ideas such as these.  Not limiting gameplay and modules only to certain players willing to spend the QP for them. Crappy mods or not it is just a bad idea.


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: raphael on May 14, 2014, 09:46:07 AM
I am fine with the new modules requiring QP. Some of the prices needs adjustment though (ex.: a destroyable-500-QP module vs a permanent-750-QP ship).

Combat drives need improvement; same with those kinda useless wormhole detectors. LOL


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: Antilak on June 14, 2016, 02:33:24 PM
I know this is an old thread, but it's on the first page in "Add-on projects in progress", so....

I wnated to post about the Cloning Module. I was thinking about getting it when I realized how stupid it's if you're not donating mucho $$$ for QP. It cost 10 QP and produces 24 crew per day. 10 QP = $10,000,000 solars. 24 crew = $240 solars on Earth. 24 crew = $1200 solars maximum if beyond 3rd or 4th ring. So no matter how far away you're from Earth, you'll never pay more than $50 per crew member using Salvage Ship. Ok so $1200 per day at best means it'll take 8333 days to recoup the cost for the module, or 22 RL years.

It's not even all that great if you donate a lot for QP. Lets assume I donated $5 and got 55 QP. 1 QP exchanges for 50,000 solars. Exchanging 10 QP would get me 10,000 crew. So if I instead spent that 10 QP for the cloning module then I'd produce 10,000 crew after 1 year and ~2 months. I'd be unloading my cloning module every 4 days--its 100 personnel capacity.  Assuming upgrading is 1.25x, buying additional modules adds to recoup time. An MK II module would cost me 1,000,000 solars and require 1 year and 10 months to recoup. MK III would cost me 1,500,000 solars and require 2 years and 3 months to recoup. Considering how easy it's to lose interest in a game and having to unload every 4 days for YEARS, this seems a waste. Additionally, with how much MMO's mudflate in years of time, the cloning module will have even less value than now.

Was the cloning module introduced BEFORE salvage ship? That would have increased its value a lot. The only reason I was interested is because I'm located 1600+ light years from Earth, so I'm always paying the highest price for crew. But after doing the quick math, it just makes utterly no sense to pay 10 QP for it, given I'm not donating a lot and the QP I do have is better spent on VIP and officers and whatnot. I'll admit I've spent some on infusers.

EDIT: I'm assuming the 100 personnel limit increases by 1.25x with each upgrade. If not, it'll be exceeded at MK 14 per day, meaning you'd need to unload every day for 3.76 years to reap the benefits and "recoup" your costs.


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: Antilak on June 14, 2016, 06:00:56 PM
(update to my previous post)

I just realized marines are 3 times the cost, so the recoup time with be a third if you're replacing marines. This assumes you have room for them. For MK 1 cloning module, that's about ~5 months unloading every 4 days. This is based on the highest price too. If you're closer to Earth, it's lower. And if you're close, you'll probably go to Earth anyway! (For anyone who's always ever going to purchase marines from Earth, the recoup time for MK-1 is 1.9 years, or 1 year, ~11 months.)

The problem with longterm things is not just of interest/convenience/devaluation. The MMO might not even be here!

EDIT: For anyone interested, this is the formula I used for the cloning module:
(500,000 * MK) / ((24 + (MK-1) * 6) * price-of-marine-or-civilian)

So for MK 10 cloning module and marines which cost $30 each:
(500,000*10) / ((24 + (10-1) * 6) * 30) = 2136.75 days or 5.85 years.

500,000 represents the value of an MK if you exchanged QP for solars and bought crew instead. Note if you were to purchase QP's with solars the cost would instead be 10,000,000. Thus, the cloning module is only relevant to people who donate $$$ and have already purchased all their officers and VIP and so have QP to spare/spend.


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: TEDDY on June 15, 2016, 01:20:11 AM
What a bad investment.
How about you buy one ATH-1 with workers and you unload chlorine at 70% efficiency every 6 days. :)

Then after 2136 days you unloaded it 356 times.
356 unloads of chlorine has a sale value of 5,696,000$.

Now just imagine you bought 500 ATH-1 for those 5,000,000$ instead of those 10 cloning modules.
Then after 2136 days you would have 2,848,000,000$...lol, that's billions. :))


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: Raptor on June 15, 2016, 03:43:08 AM
In my opinion, ALL pledge investments, with the exception of the Wormhole Cruiser, lost whatever value they had when the price of the QP quadrupled.


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: NoBrain on June 15, 2016, 03:47:20 AM
In my opinion, ALL pledge investments, with the exception of the Wormhole Cruiser, lost whatever value they had when the price of the QP quadrupled.

I totally agree


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: TEDDY on June 15, 2016, 06:49:04 AM
True true :)

For those that are new to the game: one QP used to have the value of 250,000$! Then the new combat system came, bringing APS. There were no APs before that. From one day to the next QPs costed 1,000,000$ instead if 250,000$...the silly part is, the pledge investments never got adapted to the change, that's why those modules and ships have these completely insane prices.
I was interested in buying a shifter anyway, but one thing made me change my mind, the positioning of the new ship in my ship list. It would be at the bottom. If get a shifter, then it's main job would be jumping, and I'm not scrolling down my ship list to find it every minute. Nope! Lol :))


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: sargas on June 15, 2016, 09:16:12 AM


EDIT: I'm assuming the 100 personnel limit increases by 1.25x with each upgrade. If not, it'll be exceeded at MK 14 per day, meaning you'd need to unload every day for 3.76 years to reap the benefits and "recoup" your costs.


the personnel limit does not increase only the cooking timer. MKI = 1 clone/hr and MKC = 25.75 clone/hr they still only have a useless 100 clone capacity.

I keep one on my COM ships to replace civilian engineers if I am jumped.


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: sargas on June 15, 2016, 09:19:22 AM
True true :)

For those that are new to the game: one QP used to have the value of 250,000$! Then the new combat system came, bringing APS. There were no APs before that. From one day to the next QPs costed 1,000,000$ instead if 250,000$...the silly part is, the pledge investments never got adapted to the change, that's why those modules and ships have these completely insane prices.
I was interested in buying a shifter anyway, but one thing made me change my mind, the positioning of the new ship in my ship list. It would be at the bottom. If get a shifter, then it's main job would be jumping, and I'm not scrolling down my ship list to find it every minute. Nope! Lol :))

if you utilize the Ships button on the COMMS section over there <, you won't have to scroll...


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: TEDDY on June 15, 2016, 12:05:22 PM
I don't get it. :)
COMMs section over there <??


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: TEDDY on June 15, 2016, 12:16:16 PM
Oh i see...Of course I have to scroll there. I'm playing mobile. I have no page down button. I have all important ships at the top, so I don't have to wait for the page to load. I mostly fly 3-4 ships (not crappy scouts) on WHG-157 simultaneously. But if I have to wait for the page to load, and scroll then I can't fly that many ships. Would be nice NOT to have ships ordered by buying date, with an option of the positioning in the fleet. :)


Title: Re: New Project Modules
Post by: sargas on June 15, 2016, 12:39:54 PM
I understand now and agree with you.
the last round of general updates took months (+)
hopefully there is one in development now...