Intro

This blog post is a follow up to the last one on underground resources and extraction.

Today we will give an overview of the upcoming changes and give insights into our process and decision making since we last shared our perspective on the topic.

• Changes

• Rationale

• Process

• Next Steps

Changes

For 0.3.9 there will be the following changes related to underground resources:

• Many tiles can be extracted more often

• The radar mode of the scanner has a filter option

• The tooltip for extraction is reworked

• A new object will start spawning on the map: Debris

(I.) Underground Tiles

The following tables show the changes to the amount of successful extraction cycles that can be performed on a tile at a given level of abundance along side the current levels:

The most noticeable difference can be seen for rare resource tiles like Aurite Ore at high levels of abundance, as well as coal in general.

(II.) Filter for the Radar

The radar mode of the scanner now offers an option to select which resources should be considered for detection. If the radar is set for Aurite Ore and Argentite Ore for example, the radar will ignore other resources like Hematite Ore and not spend any attempts on them. This means the rate at which rare resources like Aurite Ore can be found while exploring the map should be higher on average, compared to searching for Aurite Ore with a radar that is looking for all types of resources.

(III.) Extractor Tooltip

The tooltip for the extractor now shows the remaining units of ores that can be mined from a tile, instead of the abundance level.

We have noticed that the relation between abundance, depletion, success chance and output of a tile was not as clear as we anticipated, and we hope that this new approach will be more informative.

(IV.) Debris Object 

A new object called Debris will now appear and continuously respawn on the map.

Debris can be harvested for Scrap Metal which can be recycled into Chalcopyrite Ore, Hematite ore and Graphite Powder.

Scrap Metal has a high volume, which means that the MTU can be very helpful for gathering larger quantities of it across the map.

Rationale

(I.) Rare Ores

As a general concept, we are balancing the amount of underground resources against a total budget for each island. We are increasing this budget, since rare resources are more scarce on the player driven market than intended.

The increase to rare underground tiles specifically at high levels of abundance is meant to increase the total amount of rare ores that can be mined from one island while still maintaining a desired level of scarcity. Rare tiles at low levels of abundance can be found relatively fast, which means that applying a significant increase to their yield may quickly lead to an oversupply of rare materials.

As an alternative, we considered changing the scattering-algorithm of underground resources to remove some of the underground tiles that have not been discovered yet - this would allow for a higher budget of resources that we could allocate for the remaining tiles that would not be removed. However, changes to the layout of underground resources are less trivial and sustainable on our end, and probably more prone to cause disruptions to the live game, which is why we are trying to avoid this option.

(II.) Common Underground Resources

In our discussions with the Player Advocates, we discovered that common underground resources like coal and chalcopyrite may still be too scarce after the changes.

In order to create an avenue for players to balance out shortages for these materials, we balanced the Debris objects to hopefully create a reliable source that can be accessed by players on demand, without disrupting the economy around static extraction. The reason why we are still trying to keep coal and copper as a mild bottleneck for extraction is that we want to avoid a full automation of the mining-loop that would support a near unlimited production of most goods without the need for monitoring and evaluating the usage of resources. We will keep monitoring the availability of copper and coal to make sure that the desired middleground between over-supply and under-supply has been created, and do further adjustments if necessary.

Since Debris is the first object that we are balancing towards strategies that include the MTU, and the MTU is just being introduced, we decided to aim for a relatively narrow balance of scrap metal, meaning that the output form Debris will likely be perceived as too low rather than too high. This is done intentionally to prevent a sudden over-saturation of the market, and we ask for your patience as we monitor this side of gameplay and carefully tweak the yield from Debris until it can coexist as a profitable loop alongside extraction.

(III.) The Scanner

We noticed that the radar mode generally suffers from the detection of resources that players are not actively looking for, for example creating clues on Hematite while players are hoping for rare resources.

We hope that the new filter mode of the radar makes it more convenient to search for underground tiles alongside the general exploration gameplay.

(IV.) Extractor Tooltip

We have received a lot of questions and feedback around the concept of abundance and how it relates to success, output and the lifespan of underground tiles. We took this as a sign that the underlying concept may generally not be clear enough, and rather than adding additional information at the risk of overloading the UI, we decided to take another approach.

We will keep close eye on feedback regarding the UI/UX of extraction and keep iterating on the concept if needed!

(V.) General lifespan of Underground Tiles

We have received feedback that the placement of drills can be cumbersome, especially if drills have to be moved repeatedly upon the depletion of tiles.

For this specific point, a lot of investigation and experimentation has been done in our end, and we still keep investigating.

Unfortunately there are a lot of overlapping constraints in terms of balancing underground tiles, such as the overall budget for materials on an island, the time and effort it takes to extract them, the value of objects that can be made with them and so on. 

We investigated options for rebalancing the supply-chains of the metalworking industry to allow for an even higher output of underground tiles along with a shorter autonomous time, but so far we did not arrive at a solution that would allow for such changes without disrupting other parts of the gameplay.

We will still keep a close eye on this part of the balance!

Process

As announced, we conducted a playtest with a group of players to test the changes described in this document.

As a follow up to this test, we have arranged a call between developers and these players, to discuss our perspectives in a freeform conversation. In the following weeks, we have further discussed the open feedback and questions in a thread.

Players have also been provided with a tool from developers, to experiment with the consumption of resources and the resulting depletion of underground-tiles, which was used for discussing the proposed new balance.

The following changes have been made based on this process:

• Adjustments to the new UI of extractors

• Adjustments to the yield of Debris, to make it more profitable than in the playtest, and to balance out the potential under-supply of copper and coal that was discussed

• A fix to the UI of extractors that may display wrong values for the autonomous timings

Next steps

We will closely monitor how the new balance affects the experience and economy and follow up with further changes in case further changes are still needed. The feedback on Harberger Tax is amongst the topics we are already investigating.

We are grateful for the patience of our community and hope to continuously improve the experience in an ongoing exchange between players and developers. Thank you all for the feedback, and please let us know how the recent changes affect your experience.