Make KD Bigger

[torn mountain]

Maybe multiple layers of KD, but it is almost never consistent in size regarding df 500 and if one player is farming it, another player cant get enough kills to make any meaningful credits/hr

[river jay]

Well, we also can tune spawn rates

it doesn't have to be layer size alone

Actually, making the layer bigger without doing anything to the spawn rate will run into the same issue, with just less ai per gal

I'll see what other folks say about scaling up KD/that part of KD.

[torn mountain]

hear me out

each arm can have its own spawners/teams or lunarians/selenites cyborgs etc and its own spawners?

also behold my artist prowess

[modern kite]

I'm curious what rate limits you're running into.

There are 3 main farms and a couple niche farms I can think of:

1. DGs
   a) These have a 1 hour lockout and a 10 minute respawn. Are we hitting these caps?
   b) Bosses have specific drop tables which enables target farming, but also makes certain loops more valuable. Are specific bosses too rare causing target farming issues?
2. Trackers
   a) This is specifically related to space but there is no hard limit on number of trackers spawnd. Are people finding KD is small enough to where PvP is preventing the ability to do Trackers?
   b) If the space is increased would the increase in space negatively impact the ability to farm?
3. Layer AI
   a) Kalthi farms. I haven't seen a shortage of Kalthi AI. The farm is decent returns and needed for manufacturing parts and some missions
   i) Termi/Destroyer roamers. Needed for missions, some rarer drops, limited spawns. Are these a problem?
   b) Empryeal enemies. These are mostly just for the skill missions, not much value in farming them outside of that.
   c) Cyber dudes. Ok scrap value, decent commod farm. Never seen a shortage of these.
   d) Lunarian/Selarian farms. Needed for commods. Can swarm and probably the most generically dangerous enemy in KD. Do we feel like there aren't enough of these? Would increasing size or spawn rate cause problems for players breaking into KD?
   e) Generic AI, Delquads, various LF(s). Does anyone farm these, are they a problem?

Increasing space could potentially improve prospecting.
People have asked about that a bit lately and it seems prospecting generally feels weak.
Devs have said they'd look into it though and I believe their numbers have been on target, so I'm not sure how this may impact it.

[river jay]

Prospecting is it's own paramter. If it's left alone prospecting would actually be harder because there would be more gals

All of this stuff is tuned so finely. I'm not sure ya'll were playing, but there were a couple years of KD tunning that was really painful and things kept being kinda weird each iteration

It will be difficult to do any sort of layer change without tons of side effects

Knowing what the pain point is, would at least let us think about making a surgical change. Just scaling up the entire layer(add more gals, increase spawn numbers, maybe rates as well), while sounds cool, would be a ton of work and could easily end up being not as good

[modern kite]

Exactly. If people legit keep trying to DG and always have to wait 5-9 minutes for bosses even if they're changing the location of their farm there is a problem.
If people need to farm empy ai for missions or kalthi for manufacturing parts and just can't find any.. there is a problem.
But I can't imagine with the size of our player base most of the things I outlined are possible which is why some specifics would be awesome.

[flat ember]

I mean KD isn't meant to be infinitely scalable either.

But yeah I'd be curious of specifics

[river jay]

ofc but it's also limited size. Our player count farming it could get to the point that it is trully too small for how many people are trying to use it.

[torn mountain]

Main profit from roaming DF 500 KD is cyborgs, lunarians, selenites. One person can clear all of KD pretty fast leaving nothing for another player looking to roam. profit from kalthi is based on the market which isnt guaranteed

DGs are a separate thing as well as trackers

[flat ember]

Definitely. But I want to hear what's actually too hard to find. There's no guaranteed profit here. If it's strictly rate of profit by wiping it from a fresh state that's not really something we should solve.

[torn mountain]

AI while roaming are too hard to find if someone cleared it in the last 30 mins

rate of respawn seems to be about an hour

so if someone was through the gals before you within an hour, you are running into empty gals

[torn mountain]

this happens, dependent on time of day

[river jay]

Adding more DGs is actually trivial compared to everything else we've talked about here

[torn mountain]

they made specific DG bosses drop specific gear so everyone knows what to target farm.

thats a different conversation though. id personally like roaming KD to be viable for more than 1 player per hour

[modern kite]

Like consistently though? There was a time WAY back where it was legit hard to get a DG loop going in EF layer without massive wait times. But if you go out do you expect to hit empty dgs and if you go from North ro South expect the same thing?

Roamers are hard. Increasing size has a LOT of various impact and should probably be the last thing considered. So what other options do we have to address that if there is additional feedback that echos the concern.

Increase number of AI. This makes it more dangerous, more profitable, and doesn't resolve the root of the issue if a single player can still reasonably clear them all.

Increase spawn rates of AI. This makes it a little more dangerous even at same cap because there is less downtime and it would be harder to do things like OOC. It would likely largely increase the profitability. If it currently can only support 1 player and we want it to be able to support 3+ we're talking about tripling the spawn rate. This would scale profitability to player ability and not a maximum target value.. this could be hard to balance. It could resolve the root of the issue, but if the farm becomes way more viable it could just perpetuate the issue.

Make spawn rates dynamic. No clue if this is possible on a technical level. Difficulty would scale by active use. Profits could also scale by active use. Could resolve the root issue but could be difficult to tune.

[river jay]

I'd probably not want to spend my time trying to design some sort of dynamic spawning in an already made layer with so many various AI

[flat ember]

Its a slippery slope to just increase the difficulty at this stage.

People can already do trackers if KD is empty. We probably should create more of them.

If there's specific materials that aren't scalable - I'd be interested in helping players more focus their time.

[river jay]

why spawn rate or spawn rate+num+ gal count would make most sense. Increasing num alone doesn't make sense any way you cut it(and does actualy nothing to mitigate the problem)

[flat ember]

Yeah. I think that's doable though annoying how its setup

[river jay]

Yeah that's the issue

I like utilizing more trackers (as long as you don't get trackers from trackers)

[flat ember]

I think the better ROI is trackers though.

[fickle matrix]

Yeah I'm of the opinion that trackers are a much better way to do this, if Trackers come from doing stuff in the layer.

I agree that Trackers from Trackers doesn't work for everything.

[modern kite]

why not? Why would it have to be lossy? If you're going out to farm content, like credits and commods, you shouldn't have to sink income into that right?

If the reward is GEAR, then sure, making it a little lossy makes sense.

But like exotic trackers.. getting a base of hundreds of them back in the day was a fairly large investment to be able to farm them optimally.
Now it's mostly sustainable.. but there is a lot of friction at all levels when really the friction and loss should be for Red Beards since the gear IS the reward, not the income.

[flat ember]

We need more sinks for Weakage then just using them for trade in and then scrap

[modern kite]

This is fair. Trackers from Trackers doesn't work for EVERYTHING.

For the specific instance of just wanting the vibe farm though it seems like it would make the most sense for it to be low friction.

[river jay]

There's actually a lot of issues with trackers from trackers. I don't think we can do it at all anymore.

but the old one gets to stay at least

[fickle matrix]

I don't think Vibe farming should be self sustainable and on the players schedule exactly.

[flat ember]

mhm

[fickle matrix]

Its important that you have motivation to do other things

Those other things may require different strategies, etc.

It adds some texture, and might even encourage some people to just pay/trade with others to do it for them.

If this was a single player game I'd agree that vibing out was a good idea.

[modern kite]

That's not a bad idea if you're getting wreckage from them at similar rates. But Wreckage IS a big part of roamer income, making it a sink that reduces that would make the system less efficient no?

[flat ember]

If the goal is strictly credits - I'm not interested.

[fickle matrix]

I'm not really concerned with adding more sources of income

[flat ember]

Helping people find materials for builds and selling them that's fine

[modern kite]

You don't think people should be able to just go out and play the game?

[fickle matrix]

Adding more sources of scrappable income as we add new content is always something that will happen simply because of how scrapping works

[fickle matrix]

I don't think people should be able to go out and play a specific part of the game in the specific way they want to on their specific schedule with no impetus to do something else.

[modern kite]

Why? Like.. if I want to do trackers I can just go do them, if I want to DG I can just do it, if I want to farm Anatolia I can just do it. Like.. these are farms and there are not many viable ones in the game.

[fickle matrix]

Because getting people to do different things encourages those who have no interest in doing those things to partner up and collaborate with others, even if its in a transactional way.

It means there's a web of dependency, which is a far more interesting experience for the playerbase. Even if the individual player would rather go it alone.

[modern kite]

partner up... really.. the dozens of us?

[fickle matrix]

You can asynchronously partner up. I do it all the time.

[severe kraken]

Right.. but we already do that with weekly lockouts that haven't largely changed from decades ago.. and some of the new roamers added are basically unapproachable and undoable by all but maybe 2 or 3 teams due to player power structure.

[fickle matrix]

We're talking about Trackers, Goldstar

[modern kite]

uuhh no, we're talking about the fact that it currently feels like you can go out to KD to target farm something like credits/commods and can't.
Trackers are a possible solution.. and squad based trackers for THAT type of content seems really unreasonable.

[flat ember]

Battle never said target farm. He said credits/per hour which isn't something we should really tune KD for

If we are talking about Target farm - we can really get into specifics

[modern kite]

Mind you, I would want more player feedback if others are having this problem. I have no idea how true the initial feedback is or if it matches general player consensus.

[flat ember]

Yeah same.

[fickle matrix]

Yeah this isn't about target farming this is about df500 power farming and killing everything in sight

And how you can't make as much money when someone else went through in the last hour

[flat ember]

^ that's entire point of roaming content - its oppurtunity and its rate limited.

[modern kite]

Yea.. and we run into the prospecting issue where if anyone else is doing it the farm is dead... which isn't great from a player perspective.
We've only got like 4 things to do in the game, if 25% can only support 1-2 people I'd consider it a design level issue at that point.

Imagine if 1 player could monopolize all of anatolia, or even 50% of Anatolia.. that would likely be problematic no?

[stark silo]

What if we shrank KD by 90% and increased spawn rates by 600%?

[languid moss]

Some feedback from me:

1. A single Gunner/FC combo can basically grab 75% of the spawn from any given DF500 area. The "Northern" DF500 has this inconvenient generation wedge that makes it awkward for ai to build up in so the main area people show up is the south side.

2. Almost no one bothers the Kalthi because:

2A: Commanders on the same team as other Kalthi.

2B: Spawns from the HP thresholds on Commanders linger for like an hour and drop nothing, and rip any teammates in the area getting murked by 50 ai.

2C: Armored and Wrathful AI while relatively weak on their own is like Celestial superitems and behaviors on steroids. Sometimes I do think I'm getting pvped. Thanks @novel phoenix grumbl grumble.

2D: The explicit Kalthi loot really boils down to KMP and Essence, which for anyone already flying T23 ships, are generally not going to use in quantities that you'd get from murdering Kalthi, and the above aggro stuff.

3. Celestials actually drop nothing. No point to shoot them. You can get your dailies from within the zone and worse the mid DF Celestials are teamed so you get pissing off Kalthi vibes.

[stark silo]

Was that not enough? @flat ember

What about 99% and 800%

[languid moss]

There was an attempt from the devteam years back to massively buff up respawn rates in gals that didn't have players in them and basically remove ai ability to roam to foster a kind of dungeon crawl.

What happened to that?

[flat ember]

It's already live church

[novel phoenix]

They're pretty strong yeah, but they were designed for t22 squads. We tested them with intro Kalthi ships and Aveksaka ships.

[flat ember]

There's special respawn logic and we reduced alot to not roam but be static.

[fickle matrix]

I think the reality is that players have surpassed Kalthi Depths, after it has been adjusted multiple times over the years

[novel phoenix]

The spawns also don't clean up on death bc there isn't a "despawn sub spawns" on the commander death. Perhaps we can add that.

[fickle matrix]

There's no new hard content

[languid moss]

Doesn't seem enough because I can clear everything but the terms/dds and have to sit there for an hour before seeing another cruiser/battleship/avenger

[fickle matrix]

There's no new roaming area where you get your ass handed to you by AI and have to figure out how to survive

[flat ember]

This. Yeah need new layer/hard content. Ain't going to balance for credits per hour

[fickle matrix]

That's what KD was originally but it was too hard considering that a lot of people did not have the level of modded gear and skills to even try to make it work there.

[flat ember]

Then it's working.

[fickle matrix]

And we can make the newer layer be a little more lucrative resource/gear/etc wise, or even be a source for new modules. And, of course it'll have scrappable stuff. But trying to fiddle with preexisting content to get credits per hour per player to a level that players personally want isn't something I'm going to spend my time doing.

[novel phoenix]

I think one big mistake with t23 was using too much old material for the new items.

Kalthi Essence is valuable bc of Selenic Crystals

It was used out of scope

[fickle matrix]

Yup, and we're not going to use so much old stuff going forward.

[novel phoenix]

Shoulda greatly expanded CE and really made us spend time in there

I hate farming Solarian Gear

[flat ember]

Definitely a bit but t22 ain't too bad for old material but I agree else where.

[languid moss]

No. Not "sit in one galaxy". I mean, sit in the entire DF500 of 40 odd galaxies and still not see them.

I'm not camping one explicit gal.

[fickle matrix]

Its still a good idea to have players dip back into the past content zones, but it doesn't need to be as heavily leaned on as it is.

[novel phoenix]

Kalthi gear is also surprisingly expensive for one attempt at NF, and most of them are kinda bad (Kalthi Scopic Blaster lmao)

[torn mountain]

Churchill is right. You can run through df500 pretty quick and not see an AI for quite some time , while constantly roaming

[flat ember]

It's working. You aren't meant to farm continuously. So trackers or something else..it's opportunity content.

[novel phoenix]

df500 is weirdly small because it's split between the east and west ends

[languid moss]

just don't go that far back. one of the celestial module bp turn ins wants T8 gear. celestial is T23.

[torn mountain]

And one side is smaller than the other 😂

[novel phoenix]

Yeah it's wild

[flat ember]

Rng happens with seeds sometimes

[novel phoenix]

The feeling of "wildness" isn't apparent in KD, unfortunately.

I like pspace

I have fond memories roaming pspace in C1. It felt pretty foreign because back then you did not want to poke the delquads and hives

But you can solo everything in KD rn. We lack a zone that is appropriately challenging

[flat ember]

P space is more progressive. Just what happens when KD is redone a million times. We really just need a new layer or new experience

[novel phoenix]

Players also got MEGA power crept from neuroforge

😂 Like woooo

[river jay]

even then pre NF KD was getting molly whopped by the strong folks

it wasn't really much different in terms of how well players destroyed the layer

[languid moss]

also has four regions. perilous space is basically DF <300 and DF >300 which results in more ai of a given area because less total areas.

KD is DF400-420, DF430-450, DF460-490, DF500

[novel phoenix]

Honestly I don't have any really strong opinions on wild zones

I'm not sure how I like them best, I just know I felt pspace was more fun than KD.

[languid moss]

1. Regular Kalthi, unteamed Celestials

2. Wrathful/Armored, teamed Celestials

3. W/A, teamed Celestials, non-Cruiser/BB Cyborgs, Non-Avenger Lunarians/Selenites

4. Coordinators/Terms/Destroyers, All Cyborgs, Lunarians, Selenites, and Avengers.

[fickle matrix]

Don't worry, when we finally drop a new content zone its going to be hard.

Maybe not release ~~KD ~~PPS hard, if anyone remembers that.

[languid moss]

release PS hard.

a million big greens, ice picks, forgones, reavers, and two separate grim reaver spawns in a day when all forms of splash, chain, aoe, bounce, etc didn't exist and each ai was about half your defenses and firepower on a good day.

[glossy reef]

as long as you can scale new "stuff" if there's more players, even if it's not needed, it's probably ok. player bottlenecks for the shiny stuff suck

[flat ember]

It's okay for open roaming to be rate limited and not scalable. Means you pew pew others over it. But we need enough scalable options to complement it

[torn mountain]

If loot dropped, pvping for it would be viable for sure

Not saying I want loot to drop though

That would just leave the only “guaranteed” credit generation at colonies. I hope one day we start caring more about active play. Red rogue trackers were a step in the right directions but people still make way more afk

[modern kite]

That's kinda the kicker though, we just don't have much in the wat of scalable play loops.
I'm more likely to see poeple sitting AFK in their own gals than out doing content.

[river jay]

Active IC system as well.

[modern kite]

naw... even making trillions over a uni you can still way out farm with active play, it's not even close.

[torn mountain]

If you play 8 hrs a day sure

[river jay]

yeah I've heard the same from most.

[modern kite]

Colos are ~1B a day each, even at 100 colos that's like an hour of farming

[torn mountain]

I know people getting substantially more than that

Even still

Most people are definitely not getting 100b/hr farming anything

[modern kite]

Also, on topic. I just went and farmed KD for an hour.

I was able to clear all of south DF500 for the most part to where I could no long find dense spawns.
All cybers, Sele/Luna and Kalthi.

Income was ~100B an hour including all scrap and sell price of all materials and blueprints.

Mind you I'm a pretty slow farmer being capped at 300 speed and 600k dps.

[torn mountain]

Market prices are pretty misleading. If you dont actually sell the BPs you didn’t make any credits

The scrap per hour in df500 uncontested is pretty good though

[modern kite]

ColoIC(s) can far out pace that but have extra expenses. The number of sell colonies available compared to total colonies available likely barely moves the needle off 1B per on a macro level.

[modern kite]

Only blueprints of value were the Sele/Luna ones and there is plenty of demand for those at the moment.

I did not include value of augs.

[torn mountain]

Aug BPs maybe but that’s about it

[modern kite]

No, the actual iums.

[torn mountain]

Mmm, I appreciate you pointing that out to me.

[modern kite]

I was basing it off the actual buy price of bases, not the sell price on MC

Personally I would never sell those, too valuable for mass builds.. but one could sell them.

I actually made an extra 50b off manufacturing parts... but i normalized the market sonI didn't really count that.

[rare orbit]

I roam KD fair bit, i can confirm that i can personally deplete the spawns of some enemies and it's more worthwhile for me to do a sweep to kill most things and then come back a little while later

for instance, i go through, kill most/all of the avengers, cybernetic battleships/cruisers, caracaras, etc. Those don't respawn for a while.

selens and lunars also respond constantly but they do take a while to hit max density and its not really worthwhile to farm the constant respawns

[modern kite]

But I can confirm that a single player can fully drain at least half of DF500 pretty fast. Like an hour or so. I didn't have the time or will to measure how long before it repropogated.

[rare orbit]

if i'm trying i can also deplete kalthis commanders; vanilla ones are easy to find, there are only a few armored, and wraithful... are hell

[rare orbit]

west DF500 has very little due to it's small size, usually the cybernetic battleships and avengers spawn east

[modern kite]

I think there is a spawn on both sides no?

Termi and destroyer have a spawn on both sides I'm almost certain.
The big non-boss roams just have pretty limited spawns and those being kills of opportunity sorta make sense.

Idk that I agree than the only source of things like essence/manufacturing parts/ sele/Luna should be opportunity based.

And the scrap income is about the same as other dedicated farms such as dgs/trackers/anatolia... if it was 2-5x them being opportunity based would be reasonable, but honestly roaming is the worst farm for income out of the available options.

[rare orbit]

termi and destroyers, yes

i am less sure about avengers and cyber bosses

there are spawners but i think they might share a pool

[languid moss]

I argue you make more money actively but the problem is no one wants to play for 8h a day, everyday. I have you at about 125b/hour and my record is 130 but colonies and ICs operate without you being there. AIC only become active for a 1h or so window every 3-4 days.

to date the only people I've found that will hardcore dg/active income are cojines and jira (of which jira doesn't play)

[torn mountain]

From my experience there 1 or 2 cruiser/avenger spawns total on the west side. It’s not worth going there

[rare orbit]

'hardcore' is debatable but my income is exclusively active

[languid moss]

cojines basically dged 8 hours a day, 7 days a week.

for like 4 years

that's what I consider "hardcore". his shop is one of if not the biggest as result.

[rare orbit]

i am not that hardcore.

[flat ember]

Yeah this uni KD sucks. Weird shape and size that's reduced spawn.

I'll work with Jey to ensure future seeds are up to snuff on that front and we'll review other stuff.

[languid moss]

probably the universal generation hiccup. there's a huge gap where you'd think a bunch of gals would go on top of being smaller. it's a little under 20 gals with the DF490 hole at Impy.

about 35 gals on the other df500.

[flat ember]

luckily the uni is almost over.

[modern kite]

Funny enough North is actually a really really nice loop to farm from a layout perspective.
I'll try to do a similar farm over there at some point and see if it feels bad.
My guess is there is a very specific farm that is vastly superior over there, but it's a niche one with somewhat limited profitability.

[rare orbit]

i'm not sure what farm you're talking about, but in my experience west is not really worthwhile

[languid moss]

^

[modern kite]

Looking at the feedback as "The availability of roaming AI in KD is insufficient" I will say I agree.

The reasons for the farm are:
Tier commods (Little better than DGing)
Scrap (Comparable to DGing but without much valuable loot)
Selenium/Lunarium/Kathi parts/Essence (Only source of these required materials)

Personally none of these feel like they should be opportunistic or rate limited ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[rare orbit]

i mean if i could just fight a lunarian/selenite swarm for hours straight that'd be awesome

might be a tab imba tho

[modern kite]

They get a little spicey when there are 30+ of them around lol

[languid moss]

As far as I understand, ai spawn rates are tied to number of gals meaning more gals means more ai. and if you can connect those gals, ai tend to congregate in the gals with most connectors, meaning the north feels bad because there's these concentrations:

1. Matriarch loop with 10 odd gals

2. The Hand line with 5 gals

3. Visel (1 gal)

4. Encore-Senate pair (2 gals)

All four are disconnected by a series of DF490s.

Now, granted, regular Lunarians, Selenites, and Cyborgs show up in DF470-490. They can swarm to a degree. But the Cruisers, Battleships, and Avengers are limited to df500 and a single avenger is worth 15-20 normal ais in one go worth of loot.

Deadend gals in subspace have nothing but the 7+ connector middle gals have sooooooo muchhhhhh aiiiiiii

[rare orbit]

maybe part of this could be addressed by making AI more active?

so they actually seek out players from several gals away

mechanically, this could be something as simple as "Ai try to move into relatively empty gals", which would cause them to slowly move towards players because they keep clearing the gal they're in

like a drain in a sink

[modern kite]

Monkey paw much.. you want MORE interceptors?

Also this would actually make the problem worse as you would clear out the zone faster with less travel.

[rare orbit]

interceptors are only a threat in ships that you aren't killing them with

travel ships

[languid moss]

Reducing spawn regions from 4 to 3 or even 2 would help immensely as it would allow a far greater area for stuff to spawn in, as well as increasing the value/quantity of drops from certain ai (kalthi).

I really want to see wrathful and armored split into their own teams. Shoot a KAD, get shot back by the wrathful commander.

[rare orbit]

the commanders kind of have their own issues. Wrathful should not have random augs since their entire shtick is "stay behind them" and they can get turning augs...

[languid moss]

seers, sd, travel ships. yep. they don't pose a problem whatsoever to heavier classes but having to take time killing them and not what you're currently fighting is a right pain

i generally avoid bringing my recon chars to kd. I have a haraka that is now a special beacon deployer.

[modern kite]

Sounds like you're playing on a tankier class. They are problematic for stealth chars, they make OOC a pain for bank builds. You can't really outrun them or avoid them... while I agree they don't pose ME an issue... my playstyle isn't the only one.

[rare orbit]

fair enough

[flat ember]

We actually plan to make them more static so you can't afk farm.

[modern kite]

Are you talking about the DF limits on some AI?
Because having those limits is what enables some farms.

And by the sounds of previous dev commoents, more gals does not mean more AI, those are not directly tied together.

[flat ember]

They're seperate levers in some cases - yeah

[modern kite]

Do you plan on shrinking gal size then?

With the way AI like to fly to solar bodies when every gal has stuff 15k out it really sucks.

[flat ember]

Not controlable. Same solar system design everywhere but Wild Space

Spaced out isn't bad. It just isn't efficent - which you're trying to otimize too much of what the game feels like space game lol

[languid moss]

yes.

[modern kite]

Oh... so you'll scale rewards up so we have to kill less?

You're basically saying our time isn't valuable... or we currently get too much with what we do invest.. which is.. a take I guess.

[languid moss]

If KD could be divided like perilous space (<300, >300), you'd essentially double the amount of potential spawn gals for the remaining two groups.

[modern kite]

More gals is not better though

[flat ember]

Eh - I worded that poorly. I'm not saying anything like that - I'm just saying the ends don't always justify the means and traveling and being part of the space sim is part of the experiance.

Anyways - me and Roh have some thoughts and we'll deal with a number of issues here.

1. bad seed
2. maybe more gals with respective AI rates
3. allowing more target farming via trackers for a few chokepoints

[languid moss]

so you'd have df400-450 that has regular kalthi, unteamed celestials, and unteamed wrathful/armoreds, unteamed cyborgs, unteamed lunarians/selenites

and then df460+ that has a wrathful team, an armored team, teamed celestials, lunarian swarm team, selenite swarm team, cruisers, and battleships,

celestial encampment would remain df440 connector.

you'd have an easier kd and a harder kd

and the avengers and battleships would spawn from df460+ instead of df500+

[flat ember]

Church goes back on ignore so I can filter the chat.

[languid moss]

what I'm saying is if specific ai df ranges can be better stratified, you go from 35 gals in south kd to roam to 100+

which in effect basically equals tripling kd territory

...without actually tripling the actual number

[modern kite]

I know, but empty space and flying around isn't fun
Fetch quests with no reward aren't fun
Having an already medium farm gutted to prevent other people from afking it poorly already isn't fun

Games are supposed to be fun

and like.. some classes are SLOW...
Most rangers/engi/FC/Gunner/ShM are locked below 300 speed.
When you force more time between content you are actually effecting class balance and playability.

[rare orbit]

Engi deserves special mention. It's not speed, it's that moving gals as engi costs you like half a million energy

and unless you carry a special loadout you can usually do it only like once every 60 seconds

if i torch on my engi i can move pretty damn fast; it doesn't help when farming because i am literally the immobile class

[flat ember]

Engi rework hopefully will address that 🤞🏻

Rework is a poor definition..

[river jay]

It is indeed one of the direct things it's meant to address yes

[flat ember]

I'll think of a better and less PTSD title

I know I can speak for engi everywhere when rework is said

[modern kite]

Mobiles aren't bad my guy, both stationaries and mobiles have different use cases. If you're farming content other than lockouts with stationaries yikes.

[rare orbit]

fallens have bad dps and in practice their multitarget application is not great because AOE has falloff unlike chain. Piercers are theoretically good due to the high chain, but in practice the utterly gargantuan knockback gimps them. Harrassers are... okay. But single target.

so yes, in KD i use mainly red platforms for chains. I carry a set of fallens but they find use almost exclusively for dgs

[languid moss]

I agree with buggy, mobiles are kinda bad. overall defense and real lack of choice. drones are already pretty limited now you have a drone subtype.

[rare orbit]

one of the things to keep in mind is that drones are your dps and tank.

if you have all your drones sitting behind your ship, you are already at a disadvantage

[languid moss]

it's like pulse guns and lincins. except worse diversity.

[modern kite]

Well I don't want to distract from the main target of this convo, but making AI more stationary does have pretty big effects and it negatively impacts some classes much more than others.. so PLEASE consider that when looking into changes like that.

[modern kite]

You're playing a different game than I am 😄

[rare orbit]

on top of that, mobiles have worse dps, much worse tank for when they do get hit, worse multitarget options, they're generally pretty slow...

[rare orbit]

have you seen any of my videos of doing lockouts? I use drones to tank

[modern kite]

either way, let's not have a drone discussion here, it's not the place. go pop off in engi chat if you want.
You make a valid point that some classes are less mobile than others.

[thin sapphire]

What we need is a layer above KD where your ship blows up on death and half of your gear drops overboard (including neurobound and augmenters and sometimes the ship).

[modern kite]

Seems unrelated to this feedback topic. Feel free to make one about that though!

[glossy reef]

i didnt do anything close to that if you want to know i did consistently farm 2~3h a day for a couple of months, that's the most "hardcore" i've done. from my experience the biggest difference is high efficiency, with a hint of consistency. active gameplay is much better than colonies, unless the ic colonies are crazy and u get many roaming kd killing the lesser ai is pretty good creds too (i know the "boss" type have 1 to 4h respawn time depending), but i think lesser ai just respawn or it's much lower time (i might be wrong)

[river jay]

the IC colonies still require commods from active play, so someone still has to play actively for them to make any money

unlike standard colonies

[glossy reef]

ah then they count as another active loop 👍

[torn mountain]

Sounds like afk income is superior to me

[modern kite]

Not a single colo IC has anywhere close to that level of consumption. If you own a few of them and enough supply sources sure

Raw credits, maybe.. but that is nowhere near the profit number.

But you'd need probably 5-6 of the best colo IC dumps to touch that number. Certainly not something the overwhelming majority of the playerbase could even come close to doing because that many literally don't exist.

[river jay]

and ofc the colo commods to feed

[modern kite]

Supply sources yea.
The ability to make/aquire the AICs is not a limiting factor.

But it should be considered as a cost vs profit as they have a static assessable value

I'm not arguing you can't fully sustain yourself off passive income if you invest heavily enough... That is a completely valid playstyle though.
If you want to take the time to do that and also active farm you'll still be better off.

If you farmed 1 hour a day for an entire uni at 100b an hour (reasonable rate) it'd still be 9t.
Even at half of that you're making as much actively as 65 colos (at least 3 accounts worth) with prom sales.

[grave latch]

colo wrld

[thin sapphire]

sorry my programming does not allow me to share classified information about colonies. Active play is the superior source of income

[grave latch]

I agree buff active income

but make it drop on death

😉

[modern kite]

I'm not saying passive income is weak. It's the best it's ever been and colo ICs are pretty crazy at the top end.
But active play is still 100% viable and with even 1 hour a day can make several accounts worth of standard colo income over a uni.

And that's not including valuable drops or lockouts which by far can out pace colos.

[grave latch]

passive income is chill but active feels bad

[modern kite]

It's not the 300B an hour you could make with the infinite instant trackers... but active income is solid and better than standard passive income.
Full active (all lockouts) on 3 accounts is going to make you more than 3 accounts worth of bases.

[grave latch]

active roaming KD has been severely nerfed over the years, dgs don't have much depth to them, that leaves only orange trackers which is one of the best atm

[thin sapphire]

active income would feel better if ranger got a dps buff

[modern kite]

What type feels bad? Is it just how few viable farms there are and that the loops aren't very engaging or is it the actual income that feels vad?

[grave latch]

there's just not a lot of options and the loop gets bland very quick yeah

[modern kite]

Yea, trackers and Anatolia are the most profitable for sure from a credit standpoint.

The viable loops are pretty meh.
I'm sad they deleted the CE grind.

[river jay]

what CE grind?

[modern kite]

Emp frags

[river jay]

that wasn't a grind, it was pure AFK which is counter to the AIC system

[thin sapphire]

How much IC $ were emp frags worth again?

[grave latch]

these people dging 5+ hours a day I'm convinced are psychopaths

[modern kite]

You can scoop afk?

[thin sapphire]

didn't know you can kill CE bosses afk 😂

[river jay]

Yeah there's a lot of different ways to describe AFK

[modern kite]

They did a 90% reduction on the value, took it from a 100b an hour active farm to a 10b an hour farm.

[thin sapphire]

(running the CE lockouts at high scaling is a superior way of gathering emp frags)

[modern kite]

Fly around and kill ships for drops.
If you were only scooping spawns from 1 gal it was like 12b an hour.

If you were full clear roaming it was 100b an hour.

And you still have to turn in the AICs.. which is active risk based play.. or use them for Colo ICs... which is a whole other level of logistics.

[river jay]

Yeah the afk scooping kinda killed it from a dev perspective unfortunately

and instead of redesigning the zone, did that

This is all pretty off topic tho Sorry

Ya'll can stay off topic it just isn't good for me to perpuetate it

[modern kite]

Fair enough. Got kinda on the topic of farms in general which while related is not specific to the topic.

[river jay]

by that logic like anything is in scope

need to keep things a bit more narrow.

[modern kite]

Any designed perpetual farm, we got on to the comparison of active vs passive of which the feedback is active feels kinda bad due to repeditivness both in design and lack of availability which is why opertunisitc farms that are viable feel bad if they can't scale beyond 2 players.

See, I brought it around

[river jay]

little branches out to adjacent topics is totally fine, but for me to engage I'll try to keep things coming back to the main topic, not be derailed for hours.

[modern kite]

Genuinely appreciate the feedback that you'll look into additional farms of pseudo existing contnet (ala tracker style).
Having more than a couple ways to realistically spend your time in game so the best play loop isn't sitting afk with your colo ICs between lockouts would be nice

[glossy reef]

i have no problem sharing you can make 30t+ per month with active gameplay if you're semi hardcore

obv you have to do more than just kill stuff and scrap tho. if i tried really really hard i could probably do 50t in a month before losing my mind, but more capable/farmer people could do even more. the potential is there

[modern kite]

Yea, you would eventually saturate the market if you're including gear sales... the player base only has so many credits.

When you talk about true inclome generation you have to talk about things you realistically can't saturate. Even things like the ium blueprints would eventually saturate so they're not a good marker for revenue.

You're high ticket items will likely saturate even quicker outside of things like desists... even then.. is there really a market for 50 of them at their current value? Increase supply and people would likely want to pay less.

[glossy reef]

yes, just 2 dedicated farmers would saturate all markets

[modern kite]

I mean when we were both gridning hard we dropped most DG loot to like 1/10th its value... that was pre NF though.

[glossy reef]

having met true grinders, i dont consider myself a grinder at all

[rare orbit]

honestly i'm baffled on how you could be making 1t a day with active gameplay

i am online many hours a day and i make nowhere near that much

like, 20% of that, maybe.

[unique falcon]

Engineer just can't clear content that fast.

[modern kite]

It's like 4 hours of Anatolia, 10 hours of dgs and roaming, 8 or so hours of exotic trackers (on engi, less as Ranger).

[languid moss]

he's a zerk

[glossy reef]

you can get to 30/40/50 dg bosses per hour, if you really go hard i bet 60 or even 70 is possible (this'd take a speedrunner)

[languid moss]

teammate was getting about 125b/hour roaming kd and dging. play for 8 hours a day, get 1tril a day

it's just so boring to do that for 8h a day

[rare orbit]

i don't think i can do a dg every 2 minutes

[languid moss]

he can

[rare orbit]

right but i can't

[languid moss]

engi, shm, ranger, seer, and FC are all basically screwed

[modern kite]

A boss. Not a whole dg.
Defo can't with stationary drones lol.
I used to push 45-50 an hour, post NF i get 25-30.

[languid moss]

it's gunner, zerk, and maybeeeeee sd that can dg like that

[glossy reef]

i'm on the 40 range because i dont plan that much, i could get it to 50. i dont have the will to get it to 60 because it'd take multiple chars

[rare orbit]

i mean i don't dg with stationary drones

[languid moss]

even if you had a perfect set of mobile drones for every damage type engi just doesn't move that fast

or have the aoe

[rare orbit]

yeah i'm pretty sure i can't clear levels nearly that fast

[languid moss]

coj has a veryyyy nice set of divides

[rare orbit]

i get a level of hives or something and that's it, i'm there for 3 minutes.

[languid moss]

coj also has an edge

[modern kite]

You have to scoo between gates and burn up to 6-700

[rare orbit]

i mean i'll get whatever ship is best for my class. No good matri engi ships tho

[languid moss]

exactly. even if you had drones that moved at 300-400 so you can keep them out constantly, it just wouldn't go fast enough

[modern kite]

Have a planned route and know the dg layouts. It doesn't take that long to plan out a 12-15 dg loop that takes about an hour to run

[modern kite]

Yup, torch or turbo and double warper

[rare orbit]

Dorian, that's kind of silly, you won't clear a level before you could fly between the gates

[modern kite]

Wat?

[languid moss]

we're just talking hypothetical for engi

[rare orbit]

yes but, in no universe is a engi clearing a typical dg level that fast

[languid moss]

thats why I specifically said gunner, zerk, and sd. no other classes can basically clear as they ap from gate to gate and then murk the boss in 5 seconds

[modern kite]

I mean that IS what Indo... gates just take 50-60% longer than they used to between engines getting gutted and kd ai getting tank buffs.

[languid moss]

coj basically one shots the entire room with the divides as i understand it

[modern kite]

If i was REALLY pushing itnI could probably still get up to 40... but I'd be sweaty by the end

[glossy reef]

zerk>ranger, then everything else (for dgs). there's a a very good chance gunner is better than zerk but i dont feel like learning/building it

[modern kite]

Like actual apm maxing, copy/paste list of gals and their dgs while knowing the ai and bosses to plan what drones and what scoop patern.... I used to do that when I first came back and was poor AF.

Yea, zerk is just literally the best for all contnet afaik... it's kinda gross.
That said, I don't think it should get nerfed... i think everything else needs buffed

[glossy reef]

seer with a supporting char to loot might work faster too but since i can't do that i havent mathed it out either

[modern kite]

SD is great for dgs and roaming loop... but loot room is tight

[river jay]

rn just FC, Engi and to a lesser extent Ranger in PvP are on our radars. If zerk is far and away better then the not mentioned classes.. well

[modern kite]

It might be the actual fastest just because ofnit's dps and mobility

[modern kite]

Why you gotta bait me like that

[river jay]

Use ur imagination

[modern kite]

Oh I mean derailing this topic to talk about zerk and class balance as a whole.
I struggle to stay on topic.

[rare orbit]

this is what a typical dg looks like for me. Even with a very short dg at minimum DF, it took over 2 minutes

[river jay]

I personally don't have evidence that it's far and away better in enough situations though, for your own records

[glossy reef]

you only need to clear enough to open the gate. that's already a double digit % improvement

[rare orbit]

that's... not very ocd compliant

[glossy reef]

reframe your ocd

the thing that's wrong is killing the extra

[river jay]

More so what I was meaning by what I was saying was that the classes I didn't name didn't have much chances to get targeted class specific buffs at this time. We got a cooler longer term project to do a class mechanic shake up project called "prestige classes" but that's more so an idea then anything rn. And I won't work on that until I feel good about our base classes behavior

[modern kite]

Wrong drones and full clearing, I could probably knock through those gates in well under half the time.

[rare orbit]

what are the right drones

forerunners were heavily recommended to me for this exact purpose

[modern kite]

Forerunners are mostly dead... they nerfed AoE too much on top of engi nerfs and dg buffs.

They are good if you're doing gates with LFs.

[glossy reef]

it's all the little things. tweaks/warps to move, knowing the layout, timing your supers. engi doesnt have enough front dps to compete for dg efficiency tho

[rare orbit]

i agree that optimizing movement is important for other classes with dps. With engi, i am frequently waiting there patiently for AI to die. I have time to move where i need.

[river jay]

at this point I need to make a general feedback thread thing or something

so ya'll can just yap

[modern kite]

If you're just chill clearing forerunners are mint.
For speed dging you need some more specific drones and probably need dps bots with surg/heat/mining

[rare orbit]

dps bots get into the trils

that's not a small ask

also what specific drones

i've been over the drones page like 3 times

give me names please

[glossy reef]

your aug setup is "wrong" for efficient dgs too

[rare orbit]

harassers are singletarget, piercers have ruinous knockback...

[languid moss]

we used to have this, lmao. enk said it wasn't needed anymore and closed it.

"feedback discussion"

[rare orbit]

i could optimize for more dps at the cost of tank, i guess. But this isn't my final aug setup, it's just that i've been having some trouble getting a desist

also, pure dps optimization is a little difficult. Augs tend to be mixeed

[river jay]

it was before we had threads. feedback "posts" was one channel, then all of them were all discussed as a mess in the other channel. it was horrible.

It doesn't need to be it's own channel. A pinned thread is fine.

[glossy reef]

all i'm saying is you "can" dg at 30-40 range (at least) on engi. but you have to build and learn for it

[languid moss]

jira explained to me that optimal dging is all about speed/agility, burst, and regen.

it wasn't for kd dgs but my optimal dging FC build was double smuggling augs with essentially SD bots. that was how you needed to build and think.

[rare orbit]

it seems iffy, to me. Optimization and a more dps-centric aug setup would help, yes. But this was the lowest possible DF dg, even somewhat higher dfs get very unpleasantly tanky

if i could get 30 dgs of this difficulty, sure, okay

but they get longer, and they get more ehp. I don't see where you're getting the magic for that from

[glossy reef]

well i dont do df500 dgs

[rare orbit]

even just a level or three upwards is going to be a lot slower per level

especially if you start pick and choosing

[languid moss]

knowing the route is very important imo

[glossy reef]

that's exactly what you do

[rare orbit]

picking and choosing forces you to go higher df

[glossy reef]

wdym?

[rare orbit]

there's only so many low DF dgs. The more of them you discard as a option, the higher DF you gotta go

[modern kite]

Many higher df dgs are actually easier on engi.. more LFs.

But you should be cataloging dg Ai and bosses and understand the drop tables.

You should known the distance, pathing, and what dgs you clearnthe fastest and plan an optimal 1 hour loop at max efficiency.

[glossy reef]

there's more than enough low dfs, unless there's many people doing them

[rare orbit]

there's maybe like, 10 DF420 dgs or so

[modern kite]

Depending on boss count that could be an hour loop.

[rare orbit]

unless you only visit a quarter of them, then you need to go to df430 or 440 for more dgs

[modern kite]

Is that an issue? DG df doesn't really scale clear speed if you're doing it right.

[glossy reef]

like dorian said, there's higher df ais that are really easy depending on weapons so if you map good high dfs you can do that too

[rare orbit]

my experience is that higher DF dgs get much slower to clear

i've spent like 3-4 minutes on single levels

[glossy reef]

sounds like a dg you dont want to go back to

[rare orbit]

if you get a omega platform level, forget about it. You're better off scooping all your drones to lay some mining or you'll be there for ages

[modern kite]

Drop 1-2 mining drones, or have bots with ATMLs.

[rare orbit]

fuzzes take a while, acidrains take a while, hives take a while...

the asteroid freighters take a while

the... goblin thingies. Psionics are middling.

honestly the only one off the top of my head that are notably fast are the sahvitras

[modern kite]

If you're full clearing with just forerunners that all tracks. The last AI alone can take as long as the rest of a gate.

Also.. as weird as it seems.. sometimes speed clearing contnet requires you to run mixed drones.

I would regularly scoop 3-4 forerunners (pretty nerfs) to get out some damage type specific drones for some ai types.
I eventually spent the trils to make good engi bots that can solo clear specific AI (surj/mining/heat weaknesses)

[rare orbit]

mixed drones makes sense

faster charging

but that's also not going to be very sustainable

bots would be good, they're just very expensive

[modern kite]

Well you have to run over sets.. usually 10-12 forerunners with some alternates.

[rare orbit]

they're not very sustainable because you will bank out

and then have to ooc for 5 minutes

[modern kite]

If we all start doing 60 bosses an hour though we may need to make KD bigger

[river jay]

DG count can be increased without changing layer size

[modern kite]

Playful hint we're way off topic.

[river jay]

It's on topic if you don't know that aspect 😛

[glossy reef]

@rare orbit what are you using to record? i can show you a dg at my speed

[river jay]

I always use OBS, free, and infinitly configurable in terms of what to stream, what to block out, what resolution and frame rate

Can use a hotkey to start and stop recording so there's no edits needed. Same with pause recording

just do all the "edits" by doing cuts manually by pausing and playing

[rare orbit]

OBS

[river jay]

Then if the video is too big for discord or you don't have nitro, youtube is great and free.

[rare orbit]

and then i compress the video manually with FFMPEG

[glossy reef]

i couldnt figure out the coding stuff in short time but thankfully youtube is easy. same dg but 130 seconds faster 😅 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZNS-ArfWDY

[severe kraken]

I use a combination of stationary and mobile drones and swap drones sometimes each level to use optimized damage types. I'll have to time myself but if I'm not too stressed about killing all the ai (which is my preference..mmm auggies) I can get through pretty quick.

Forerunner drones are pretty craptastic now..I have them to deal with LF ai but otherwise don't use them if i can help it.

[glossy reef]

i've heard the aug argument many times and i always find it funny

you can kill ais to "clear" the dg lvl, or you can kill the exact same ais to open up another dg lvl. which one gives more augs?

i'm just talking about efficiency, if people want to clear lvls that's fine

[severe kraken]

If you build stations the Aug argument is strong. If you don't it's probably much more efficient to kill the minimum necessary to jump up. It would be interesting to see if someone has ever logged everything for KD and looked at the comparison using market prices.

[modern kite]

If you're clearing 2x as fast you end up hitting 2x the number of gates. Total AI killed is still the same whether you full clear or partial clear. You get more sup/ult augs from the bosses and if you're after augs you should be target farming specific bosses for their augs. If you want baseing augs Anatolia is the best bet.

[torn mountain]

So what do we think then? Perhaps increasing spawn rates in KD is a solution?

[languid moss]

short term. probably increasing the spawn and wander range as well.

the real long term solution is a new zone.

or, a higher df range.

w3 ef and w2 ef are in the same layer.

[torn mountain]

Yeah long term I’d like to see a grind zone similar to KD but more difficult/better rewarding.

[languid moss]

for now they can just introduce df600 and df700

and increase wander range down to df450

[exotic stirrup]

Why not just create a new zone entirely? It seems like it would solve the problem of limited opportunities and inconsistent KD uni sizes.

[languid moss]

the solution is probably just expand kd.

if you look at T21, T22, and T23 content (and even split T22 into Subspace and KD subgroups) you get basically 3 major content additions for T21, 7 for early T22, another 7 for later T22, and 3 for T23.

[flat ember]

I laid out the plan above.

Let me quote it

[flat ember]

.

[languid moss]

will help but isn't an ideal long term solution tbh

[flat ember]

Solution for what

[languid moss]

we're still grinding T22 mobs at T23 and about to enter T24. IMagine a dev saying you will still grind Icepick Hunters and Unforgones. Boringggggg.

[flat ember]

I have no idea what you're talking about

What problem are you referring to?

[languid moss]

DF500: Selenites, Lunarians, Cyborgs, Kalthi, Caracara. Are these T23 mobs?

Are they T24 mobs?

[flat ember]

You're asking questions to my question

[fickle matrix]

We're going to add more roaming content y'all

Just give us some time