Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is only true if the decision is whether to craft or upgrade a single harvester. For example, if I craft 2 new L1s, it costs me the same as upgrading a single harvester from L1 to L2. I would still get my alchemica sooner by crafting 2 new L1s than I would by upgrading a single harvester to L2.
To flip this around, as a player, I see upgrading an existing harvester as the opportunity cost of crafting a new L1 as long as I am not restricted by my parcel limits or some other mechanic.
I agree. The more I think about it, the more I see diminishing returns to be the best solution (as also discovered by PC). We just need to tweak some numbers and pull in some other mechanics and I believe we’ll have a great little farming game.
I think that the reservoirs should definitely have a spill, but if we set double spill (harv+res), then the spill should not be 50% with a 5% step (75% it is too big spill imo), but for example 36% with a 3% step - for both harvesters and reservoirs.
Example:
I have a fud harv L1+L2 and a res L3.
Spill for L1+L2 harvs will be:
(14/(14+29))*36% + (29/(14+29))*33% = 33.98%
Spill for res L3 = 30%
how much FUD will I get with L1+L2 harvs and L3 res?
(1-0.3398)*(1-0.3) = 46.21%
General spill:
1-0.4621 = 53.79%
this way the player will be motivated to upgrade both reservoirs and harvesters.
the rate spill are of course approximate, we can try on different ones, for example 40% with a 4% step
but still I don’t rule out that we can make a spill only for harvesters and the reservoir will just fill this spill but will not have a spill by itself. this needs to be thought about. I’m just confused by the fact that the reservoir will only differ in capacity - then there will be a very simple decision to upgrade it or not. that is, the farmer will simply compare price and capacity - it’s very easy and that’s why I don’t like it
but if I choose a spill for harv or for res, then I would definitely choose harvesters because they need it much more
I think this is probably a very viable option to explore. As you upgrade harvesters, you are naturally incentivized to upgrade reservoirs because your emptying will need to increase in frequency if you do not also increase the reservoir capacity. There is a very real labor cost to either empty reservoirs yourself, or to pay a borrower for the service.
I feel like the point of the reservoir, is that you are picking the location you are spilling from, and you are deciding how long to wait between emptying. That’s two considerations.
It’s in the WIKI itself. This is the list of things that could potentially add value to “taking up less space” Not considering the value of the space itself, is like saying these other things have no value, and that is not accurate. It’s hard to quantify, but it is safe to assume that this value is not 0.
Merely on the flex scale… a harvester only parcel is “just another farmer” Or as Notorious said… oh look, more matrix.
YES! You are right! the spill is needed only for the harvesters, and no one will have problems with the motivation to upgrade the reservoirs - we have no worries about it
then the classic system of spill looks good: 50% spill for harv L1 with a step 5% and weighted average by rate/date to calculate the total spill, and the spill itself occurs at the moment of emptying of reservoir. This is the best option so far for me. will keep thinking…
Would it not be easier to just cap each reservoir at 5 harvesters? We already have an “unlimited” number of reservoirs that we could use so by limiting it to just 5 harvesters, players would be motivated to level their harvesters past lvl 1. As it stands currently, a single lvl 5 reservoir can support ~40 lvl 1 harvesters so you would only need ~3 per spacious and a single lvl 7 reservoir can support ~196 which is 68 MORE than a single spacious could even hold. If we “capped” it at 5 harvesters per reservoir, at best players would need ~26 IF they wanted to spam lvl 1 harvesters. Realistically players will go with the most “cost effective” way but now they would have to take the time a think about if it is really “worth” building those 26 reservoirs or would it be more advantageous to simply start leveling their installations.
Reservoirs only service the harvester they are touching.
This locks it in at 4 harvesters per reservoir, or 6, if you shift the ones on one set of sides, by 1 square. The mechanics of how this lays out on the parcel, will make optimizing your space and ratios into a puzzle, adding to the game AND fixing the problem.
This is where that leads, using what I was proposing… no change, actually, because the humble cant do enough harvesters for it to matter. The Reasonable pulls ahead slightly by needing one less harvester. On the spacious, It would play out with a 6 to 1 ratio, or close.
If we end up messing with the tokenomics, this would be a way to add in a scaling mechanic, but it leans harder into the spacious side.
I think you’d have to restrict it to 2 harvesters per reservoir, before you saw the results you wanted from the restriction.
For doing all four types of alch at once, on a humble, you use the whole parcel. There is no change, on the reasonable. However, you don’t have to do all four types. You may be concentrating on only the high roll for each of your humbles. That WAS the selling point of a humble, that you were spreading risk out.
I encourage you to play with the layouts… maybe something will come to you…
If I have no restrictions, the optimal strategy ends up looking like this.
The method you proposed is interesting but you will still need a min 1 of each type of alchemica. So if you mined a humble according to your example a humble would have the space for 1 of each res & harv with the altar if you wanted walls.
That’s not possible because yield is calculated onchain in a fairly simple formula. I would not continue down this road unless you’d like to have 3 months of delay and a complete makeover of the contracts
It would be possible to limit the # of harvesters per reservoir, but what problem are we really addressing here?
I’m not 100% convinced there’s a problem… just looking for other levers to pull, wires to crosswire, or simple limits to add on top.
I have a feeling that we find something to adjust here, and something with the estates, and it works together to make it all make sense in a way that serves everyone, and makes very little changes to the codebase.
We’re trying to avoid industrial sprawl-mart on the spacious, while making things a little friendlier for the humbles, and making there be a point to estates on the reasonable and humble side, and enabling logical reasons to use the higher level harvesters… there must be something elegant we are not seeing yet.
The idea, that the spillage-rate is tied to reservoirs came up in my mind, because the spillage-event is triggered at the moment a Gotchi interacts with the Reservoir.
It is already stated in the Litepaper, that the „accuracy of early Haarvesters“ can be improved by leveling them up. Couldn’t this be made to be a strong enough incentive to upgrade them?
As I understand it: at the moment of the triggering of the spillage-event a calculation is performed, taking into account which (levels of) Haarvesters contributed to the filling-up of the Reservoir: the according weighted final spillage-rate is calculated at this point.
The value of Estates could be ameliorated by adding a small „Estate-Multiplicator“ to the formula calculating the final spillage-rate (or maybe even the spillage-radius). This multiplicator could rise with each Maaker-level, thus adjusting the value of Estates and higher-level Maakers.
IMO there really is not a “problem” with the original game mechanics. The issue seems to be that some feel that the current system to them does not really encourage/incentivize players to level their installations and could make the Gotchiverse somehow less astatically pleasing by “spamming” lvl 1 harvesters . So instead of changing the spillage mechanics to make the harvesters themselves spill alchemica 24 hours per day/7 days a week, IMO the best and simplest solution is to add a 4~5 harvester to reservoir ratio. This simple change would “help” with the spamming of lvl 1 harvesters by making it less cost effective thereby making the option of leveling the clearer choice. Now imo that more people are encouraged to upgrade their installations, the use case of the maaker installation will also improve.
What if we adjust the sizes per level? The harvesters are in three bands 1-3,4-6,7-9, and clearly there was some intent there to do this.
Sizes would be 3x3, 2x3,2x2, 3x3,2x3,2x2, 3x3,2x3,2x2
This would give people a reason to upgrade past the start of the new tier(the tiers are where the curve on the ROI bends), cause people to have to rearrange and make the realm less homogenous.
Another way to do this, without messing with the art assets, is to add connecting pieces, that you need, to access the reservoirs. They could be one square, and come as straight tubes and elbows. The 1,4,7, are the cheapest model in their range, and do not come with hookups. The 2,5,8 have one hookup built in, and the 3,6,9 have two hookups built in. To add more harvesters to the reservoirs, you need to add hookup pieces, or get a higher level reservoir.
I’m trying to go down that road, and see if there’s anything that works like that, using the parcel sizes.
No matter what I do, the spacious will simply not care, as it it only half full, if you build walls around it, add 128 harvesters, 64 reservoirs, a lodge, and an altar. The furthest that will go, is 70-80% full, with either of these methods, although, that is still a consideration, if one wants the space for other things or cares about aesthetics. For the humble, it introduces a lot of land management, and it makes the reasonable player at least think before doing.
This is a reasonable with 16 of the 3x3 L1s, and 8 reservoirs.
We could go harder on it, and make the reservoirs get bigger as they go? Maybe this alone would handle the issue? Reservoirs could be one square per level. 1x1 up to 9x9? There is no question as to the value of a high level reservoir, due to the gains on the spillage(I don’t see spillage included in the ROI calculations BTW!) The reservoir is actually where you make your gains leveling this up, so making the reservoir actually take up more space, is sounding like the ‘elegant solution’ here. Getting wild with the reservoir size is also the only way to make a spacious owner feel any pain on installation sizes.
The game might execute fully and function, however it would be dreadfully dull with one clear strategy and no incentive to build beyond the bare basics. My concern is with the current set up things will quickly become boring and everyone will just be logging in to extract value.
