Manufacturers For Hire

[JoolzVern]

I think it  would be cool to have something like a "3D Printer Station" that will manufacture any  modules you need provided you have the plans(tech level). To make it 'mesh' with the current system I would suggest that it manufacture modules (??)% faster/slower than your own bays, depending on how much you're willing to pay. So, if you want a module fast and have the money you can pay extra to have it printed for you, and if you want to save money and are patient, you can get a module at a discount compared to if you bought materials and did it yourself. If you a re  up to doing the extra coding you could also maybe have an option to make some modules like armor faster and cheaper, but they are crap, and disintegrate after 15 or 30 days or something.

Maybe everybody would just get the discount, but I imagine a significant number of us need or want it faster so I think it may balance out.

I think this would better reflect reality. As my father always says about repairs maany services and stuff:

"You can have it three ways; good, fast, and cheap. But you can only pick two at a time."

[Fenix]

Eh.. Idk about this one. I mean sure time is money so if you have to wait longer then in a way you are still paying the same amount but something like this could be hard to balance out. Emi is already planning on letting us create our own manufacturing stations at some point and I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the wealthy and powerful folks on here would throw some of us lower level players a bone now and then giving us a low level module for a discount.

As for having a module get done faster, I think the Mechanical Officer provides a 50% reduction in manufacturing/upgrade time and that is fair enough. I know some people have suggested upgraded officers though I haven't read those threads so I don't know what everyone else thought about them but one idea I thought of was just being able to hire more than one officer to help with the same cost but diminishing returns. For example a 2nd Mechanical Officer would only get half the bonus being 25% and it wouldn't stack linearly with the previous bonus, so a 50% and 25% wouldn't be 75% total but rather the 50% comes out first and then it takes out 25% of what time is left for a total bonus of 62.5% That being said, I don't think being able to hire as many officers as you want would be a good idea, those that are rich could essentially spend a couple hundread QP and have their super powerful modules done nearly instantly.

Anyways, the game isn't supposed to be super easy, nor is anything supposed to be very fast, that is part of the realism to this game. While certainly what you have said makes sense in reality Joolz, in order to keep a game balanced sometimes you have to disregard certain parts of reality and create your own rules in a sense. The main problems I see with it is that it could make the game too easy and later on at the higher levels it could quickly become very overpowered when we have tons of money to spend and are mostly looking for ways to save time.

[JoolzVern]

 I could see that. You make some good points.  I didn't know Manufacturing stations were coming though. The multi-officer thing is interesting too.

But you could cap it at one module a day or something maybe to limit the big guys. Maybe even a total ship power cap, where you can only do this if you have under 5mil ship power or something.

I guess I just feel like there should be  some ability to customise/vary the time/cost of manufacturing rather than it being uniform accross the board,  always taking 3hrs per level.

[Matamaure001]

Manufacturing time is a great limitation when you have high level techs. It also maintain the balance of the game.

To improve manufacturing time, we could have a new module called something like a "Manufacturing accelerator". It could improve a little the manufacturing speed and as we upgrade it to better MK levels, it could become more and more efficient. We could also have more than one on our manufacturing ship.

[Fenix]

Hmm, that is in interesting thought. We already have Hanger bays for docking ships we could make an Advanced Manufacturing Bay and put modules inside it to upgrade them a bit faster than the standard Manufacturing Bay, as long as there is a reasonable limit to the number of modules you can create/upgrade in them at one time and in order to get a really good decrease in manufacturing time you had to spend a fair amount of time to research and then upgrade the module I think that would be more in tune to the spirit of the game and easier to balance overall.

[JoolzVern]

Those  are good ideas.

How about we make an "upgrade  module" that boosts the manufacturing speed a bit? Maybe have it capped at a certain %/level to keep people from being able to build modules instantly. Or how about an upgrade module that speeds it up, and a... I don't know "automated" or just advanced manufacturing module that boosts efficiency- lowering the amount of materials required?

Again, there would need to be limits to keep it from being too unbalanced, but that souds pretty cool.

[Jazzbob]

A kind of "manufaturing module" would really be great. So it could speed up a manufacturing task by a few percent. But there could be a conflict of interests there: speeding up manufacturing CAN already be done using QPs. So, I don't know the amount of bought QP, but such module could maybe lower the income of the game.

[Fenix]

A kind of "manufaturing module" would really be great. So it could speed up a manufacturing task by a few percent. But there could be a conflict of interests there: speeding up manufacturing CAN already be done using QPs. So, I don't know the amount of bought QP, but such module could maybe lower the income of the game.

That is true in a sense, however since QP can also be bought with solars there is technically no need to even buy QP with real money. As long as the module doesn't lower the time required to build/upgrade something by a lot then I don't think it will be a major issue. Those that want to buy QP with real money and use it to make stuff happen instantly will still do that I'm sure.

[JoolzVern]

Then  it's settled 

[Fenix]

Then  it's settled 

Maybe in your mind, in the end it's completely up to SirEmi lol

[JoolzVern]

Then  it's settled 

Maybe in your mind, in the end it's completely up to SirEmi lol

shhh!! Don't tell him that!

[raphael]

Manufacturing modules is already easy the way it is now (even for newbies), though i wouldn't mind any update to make it even easier/faster.

[JamJulLison]

I would rather there be a way for when your at Earth to automaticly buy what you need from Earth for an upgrade when you go to click your upgrade. Now that would be a real time saver.

[Fenix]

I would rather there be a way for when your at Earth to automaticly buy what you need from Earth for an upgrade when you go to click your upgrade. Now that would be a real time saver.

Meaning you would just skip the process of buying resources altogether and starting an upgrade to a module would just automatically take the amount of money required for those resources out of your money? I guess that would save some time for the higher level modules certainly, not to mention some hassle when you need a couple thousand m3 of space for the resources to do an upgrade. Maybe emi could add that feature to VIP, I think that makes a good deal of sense.

[JamJulLison]

I would rather there be a way for when your at Earth to automaticly buy what you need from Earth for an upgrade when you go to click your upgrade. Now that would be a real time saver.

Meaning you would just skip the process of buying resources altogether and starting an upgrade to a module would just automatically take the amount of money required for those resources out of your money? I guess that would save some time for the higher level modules certainly, not to mention some hassle when you need a couple thousand m3 of space for the resources to do an upgrade. Maybe emi could add that feature to VIP, I think that makes a good deal of sense.

I would even be content if they still required you to have enough space in your cargo bay to do it. It would just be a nice time saver yet offers no real advantages.