6/14/2021 - devlog
Fabian and Michi are talking about some of the changes the next maintenance release will bring, including price bands and company headquarters bonuses.
Fabian (Counterpoint)
Before my vacation I was laying out lots of big concepts for our planned changes to politics, governments and infrastructure (including a first balancing pass for the brand-new beacons). Now, before adding too much more to all of that and building on a highly speculative future, I'm going to concentrate on a few smaller topics we collected over time.
The first one of those topics is a kind of "specialization bonus" for levelling up your HQ and not using your base permits to build more bases (this idea was brought up by Madnewmy on the forums a while ago). This will make it more viable to go "tall" instead of "wide" (to a degree, it of course won't be a game-breaking effect). We'll also use this to speed up early-game progress a little as it will be based on your "bases to permits" ratio and you start with two permits but only one base, so you can immediately make use of this bonus.
Also on the list by the way: the ability to demolish a base (i.e. core module).
Michi (molp)
This week I took a break from the work on the universe map prototype and focused on the next maintenance release. As it stands now, we will release it on Wednesday, 23rd of June. A proper topic in the forums with all the changes will follow, but I'll outline the most important changes below.
Fabian already mentioned the modification of the headquarters production efficiency bonus. I was able to implement the changes he designed rather quickly and here is a screenshot how it is presented in the game:
The first line labeled "efficiency gains" (with the tooltip) shows the current efficiency gains. In the "upgrade" section the efficiency line appears again, showing the gains after the next upgrade.
The next issue we tackled this week are price bands. Every broker at a commodity exchange uses a price band to determine if an order is accepted or not by checking if the order's limit is within the band. The price bands are calculated dynamically using price data from the last few days, or trades if not timely information is available. While price bands help to fight simple forms of cheating, they are also manipulated easily by two or more parties that trade a commodity back and forth until the price band is to their liking. After the parties finish trading, the price band stays where it was, often preventing other players from creating orders using normal limits.
Price bands have been in discussion for quite a while now, and we agree with the general sentiment of them needing fixing. Instead of removing them completely and thus loose all the cheating protection, we adjust how they work a little to see if the situation improves. Brokers will accept orders outside the price bands from PRO licensees if their company is older than 45 days.
As always: We'd love to hear what you think. Join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!