Iron and You - test server discussion

[Pinkleet]

"Dear BB,

Here is a real world example from my live island:

Lvl 5 Iron Smelter x 2
Lvl 4 Steel Smelter
Lvl 4 Iron Swordsmith
Lvl 4 Steel Swordsmith


It takes 16 level 1 iron mines to support this setup. In order to ramp this production up, I would need to level up all iron mines, which would cause them to deplete faster.

You have to remember that unlike the test server, our live islands have iron deposits of only 500 and 550 ore. Level 1 mines last 55 to 64 hours depending on storehouse proximity. Level 2 mines last 27.5 to 32 hours. Level 3 mines last 18.2 to 21.2 hours. As you can see, level three mines will last less than one full day. Which forces the rebuilding of all 16 mines every single day.

The search time for an iron mine is 1 hour with a regular geologist, 1/2 hour with a jolly geo. 16 mines = 16 hours of search time, 8 hours with jollys. Yes, of course this can be lessened by having multiple jolly geos, but this doesn't change the fact that the search time for iron deposits is 12 times greater than it is for copper. This is the 1st "unbalance point" in the weapons chain.

Iron mines take 5 minutes to build, so 16 iron mines = 80 minutes spent building iron mines. You have to remember BB, that we can only queue up 3 mines at a time, so the entire process has to be monitored, so yes, it really does take 80 minutes to build them all, or at least 65 minutes until the last 3 are in queue and it can be walked away from. However, if I need to upgrade the last three mines, then I need to wait the full 80.

Even split up into groups of 4 mines and managed over multiple days, the amount of time/work involved is totally out of proportion, especially when compared to copper/bronze. And if I would need to run all mines at level 3 to keep up production, the multiple days option of managing the mines totally evaporates as level 3 mines deplete in 18 to 22 hours.

This is the second "unbalanced point". There are too many iron mines to manage. It consumes way too much time. There should be less mines containing much more ore each.

As it is, I now trade for most of my iron ore live and only build the mines containing 550 ore. I don't have the time to constantly maintain all 16. And, it's way too tedious to do to start with. I did all 16 for a very long time, then got totally sick of doing it.

Please make iron mines much less work/time to deal with.

After this problem is dealt with, then iron ore consumption and balancing the times of smelters and weaponsmiths can be dealt with.

So far steel swords and damascus swords production time has been lessened. However, the smelters that supply them have not changed!!! How exactly is this supposed to work??

Would somebody responsible for coding please sit down and play the game for a few months, just like all of us do. Not on some fantasy super-island with deposits of 9000 iron ore, every building at level 5 and 32 recyclers!"

[Pinkleet]

Many people told BB their own island designed by them CAN'T support the production needed to do adventures by the new combat system. Apparently BB has no idea about it, because they tweek the weapons a bit but left the iron/steel smelters untouched (horribly expensive to run in resources). Death ears.

I don't hold breath for BB to increase the size of iron deposits (a simple solution to time/resource sink and managing multiple iron mines). The design team apparently is incapable of such a task. I am not a coder no do I know the code for the game, but this just sounds really creepy to me. Is changing a deposit from 500 to 2000 such an impossible task? Some one with code experience could answer this. They can adjust the numbers on enemies in adventures, change production cycles and upgrade building pass lev 5 (as originally design) but can't fluff a couple of zeros on a depo?

[Pinkleet]

Another point is the ocean of coal all of this will need to support. Those number will run up pretty high since iron/steel production is about 3x more expensive than bronze?

[Moonlime]

32 recyclers!"

Yes, I want 32 recyclers :P

[Troll-Phu]

and yet you couldn't keep up with coal let alone any of the other weapon chains. weapons should not have droppped like they did to begin with anyone that does a lot of RB can tell you that. i mean it's to easy to get 100k steel swords in a few weeks swapping RBs

[Plumz]

And most testers agree. Remove weapons, keep loot as it is(even enhance it with smart deposits), reduce the cost of making weapons (especially Iron/steel) reduce the cost of making weapons components (iron/steel bars - so the current iron deposits can support it)) shorten the cycles of making weapons and training units and ... somewhere there both players and devs can meet. Crunch some numbers till you get a working formula. As it is proposed now it is not working. It looks more like a cart with a broken wheel stuck in a mud.

[Pinkleet]

It seems things are slowly improving on test. There is a reduction in both cost and time needed to make advance weapons. Testers argue it can be adjusted even better (I agree). Still the persisting problem of iron/steel is bugging a bit. Additional to that is the cost of bows and especially longbows. This also needs to be taken under consideration and revised.

Tension and frustration on test are still high, hopefully BB will communicate more clearly (by posting change logs and hints what they want testers to test). Common sense returning? God I hope so...

[Moonlime]

It seems things are slowly improving on test. There is a reduction in both cost and time needed to make advance weapons. Testers argue it can be adjusted even better (I agree). Still the persisting problem of iron/steel is bugging a bit. Additional to that is the cost of bows and especially longbows. This also needs to be taken under consideration and revised.

Tension and frustration on test are still high, hopefully BB will communicate more clearly (by posting change logs and hints what they want testers to test). Common sense returning? God I hope so...

That sounds positive, Pinkleet. I'll go check it out! Thanks for the alert.