So, I’m much farther along in the game now than ever. And just some observations regarding balance. Yes, I am fully aware this game is still very early in development. I believe in early feedback to prevent future issues.
So, I wanted to get a wheel and tire manufacturing process going, but I have a few concerns. Numbers used are “for example”, I didn’t write them down.
Lets talk production… to import a single tire costs $X, tire station takes what 5 seconds? 4 tires per car, so $5(X). Now to MAKE the tires, station takes almost 8 seconds per tire. I’d need 5 of these stations to make enough tires for one tire installation station. Each of those requires power and people.
Basically, the cost for wages and power negates any benefit of building these on site.
The next thing that I’ve been fighting are the resource importers. I am making exhausts, but my line isn’t using them. It still imports all the exhausts. Can we please get a way to limit what the resource importer is allowed to import? I want to force the system to use my in-house exhausts.
Stockpile needs a slot for import and a space for export, separated, so I can keep my processes separated.
Lastly… I think the BIGGEST request I have, is to allow us to build the engine on a different line, and deliver the full completed engine to an installation station. This would help as Valve installation is by far the biggest bottleneck my factory experiences.
Yup, the game is in dire need of balancing, this is very true I haven’t devoted any time to looking at the numbers yet, but its clear that we need to either hugely reduce the cost of making components, or inflate the costs of buying them in. One easy solution, as you hint, is to make production of them a lot quicker.
I guess there is an argument to make them quicker, as presumably a dedicated machine making tyres (for example) can knock them out a lot quicker than a single production line can make cars, so there would then be a late-game mechanic in the design that pushes you towards investing in tyre manufacture only when your car output reaches a certain number per hour, enough to justify making the tyres in-house.
Currently the game always uses the nearest source for a component, but I plan to introduce some ‘process management’ techs for you to research that would allow more control over this sort of thing.
You could add some kind of route penalty to the resource importer, so the game think the production station(s) is closer than they are.
15-20 tile penalty is enough to favor local production over imports in a decent factory layout.
I’d definitely second the plea for distinct in/out ports on the stockpile; I was trying to have an Importer dedicated to filling up my stockpiles, but obviously because everything has to be linked, workstations were calling stock up from it too.
(and don’t get me started on placing resource conveyors; I cannot for the life of me tell visually what square the damn things are on!)
