Post by Casteele in Light the City! comments

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A little more information on what the numbers mean would be helpful. I assume the production rates next to power plants are per power plant? What about storage: What does storage levels affect? Since auto-sell does not start unless storage is at full capacity, I do not see any reason to have much storage nor reason to invest in storage enhancing techs as it only means it takes that much longer to fill up and start auto-selling. What about auto-buy: It seems to only buy when stock is zero, and only buy enough for one "tick" of production. So it's not as useful either; I am better off stocking up when prices are low instead of letting auto-buy use up all my capital buying when prices are high.

From a design perspective, having such things in the game only make sense if they provide some kind of need, worth, and/or value--otherwise there is no incentive for people to play the game or utilize the ... "feature" ... while playing.

Semenar3 years ago

Your assumptions are correct. The storage is not that much helpful, that is true; but you might like to have an energy buffer when you unlock alternate energy sources, or to have more time until filling up to operate manual selling. The auto-buy is not as effective as a human, exactly (making it stock up would probably require some heavy logic and be not clear for players anyway); but it still gets the job done.

There are some elements in this game that are not strictly needed for the optimal playthrough, but they still usually have some kind of situation where they are helpful.

Casteele3 years ago

I do not see the need for (much) logic, only math. Total power generated multiplied by selling price of power for the total revenues. Divide that by the resources consumed in producing that power, and you have the "break even" point (no profit or loss) for the resource price. If you subtract the current market price from that, you will get net profit (a positive result) or loss (a negative result). You already have the the capability (I think?) there in the button for engineers to only buy when profitable... The only logic needed may be how *much* to buy. But you could work that in to the game: Start with buying exactly one second worth of full production. Then you can add upgrades and research to buy more at a time. It will not "stock up" at the base rate since production is using it right away, but as you upgrade/research increasing the buy amount, the overall effect will be that it will buy extra when the price is profitable--Effectively "stocking up". And giving players incentives and reasons to pursue those upgrades/research paths.

Semenar3 years ago(+1)

This way of stocking would not help much, it would just replace continuous purchases with repeatable bulk ones, and that won't give a discount since the bulk buys happen on timer and not when the price is at the lowest. Alternately, if it buys even when there are supplies, people would have difficulties with autobuyers wasting money on oversupplying.

That's why I said that an effective auto-buy algorithm is complicated: you need to determine that the current price is low enough in a sense that the chances of it becoming even lower are slim, and you need to somehow pick an amount to buy that is obvious to players and won't screw them over even if they had other plans for the money they stocked up.

saddestsad3 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

If you let the player decide what price is low enough, then it's not too much of an issue whether it's effective or not. When you have enough supplies, you can set the stockpile auto-buy price to zero.

In-game information to the floors and ceilings of the prices would be nice, too.

Casteele3 years ago

My main thought is not about stocking up so much, anyhow. It's about using and managing resources--not always optimally, but at least not at a consistently wasteful rate. I think you are seeing this as trying to achieve the impossible: Trying to predict the market, and waiting for the right time to act. I am not suggesting that; I am only suggesting that when buying clearly is at a loss, it doesn't buy. If it costs X to supply a generator, but the market price is currently X+100, it should not buy, as it is losing that extra 100 for nothing. That's usually what wastes my money, not oversupply. I calculated the break even point for my current game, and as long as the market price is at or below that point, I go ahead and buy, even if the market price is not at the lowest. I am not trying to "get rich" off rock bottom buying, I'm trying to avoid not spending more resourecs than necessary: Avoiding that X+100 scenario.

There's no need (and as you said, it's not just complicated, but actually impossible) to create a predictive algorithm to buy at the lowest point in the market. I.E., I am not concerned with trying to determine if there's a chance the market will be even lower the next "tick"; It might be. It might not be. That is a random probability. On the other hand, if at this point in time, the market price is that "X+100", there is no probability at all that you will buy at a loss--it is a 100% certainty that I wish to avoid.

In math terms, let's say at time T, the market is at X+5. Buying would be at a loss. So skip buying. At T+1, the market drops to X-10. If you buy a small amount, say S+1 (S for supply)--enough to supply this tick and the next, then no matter if the next tick the price goes up or down, you'll have the supply to cover it. Then at T+2, the price drops even lower to X-50. So again, buy S+1. Notice I am still only buying an extra +1? That is because I'm not trying to predict; I'm only trying to buy when it's not at a loss, which *might* end up stockpiling (in this case, it would now have +2 stockpiled; +1 from the previous, and +1 from this). But let's say the *player* decides to manually buy an extra +10, that would increase the stockpile to +12. But that is under the power of the player, not an algorithm.

Another way of putting it, is that if you are going to have any kind of auto-feature to make decisions fr the player, you can at least make it not make clearly bad decisions. You are correct that trying to make the best decision is complicated or not possible, but you can determine if a decision is certainly a bad one--and avoid it.

Semenar3 years ago (1 edit)

It actually already has a toggle to not buy if unprofitable, unlocked by one of the early techs.

Casteele3 years ago

Perhaps I am doing something wrong then, as I have that turned on, but I have not seen any effect. There are still many instances where the engineers buy when they should not, and I watch as my money rapidly decrease.

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