Idea to fix the meta surrounding power stations

[cold pivot]

Currently power stations offer no increased efficiency for higher levels. The way to get higher efficiency is to surround key building like fuel site and converters with as many low level power stations as possible. The result of this is most lands end up having a very large number of power stations built. It can sometimes be as much as 50% of all the buildings. This causes lands to look cluttered and not appealing to look at, as well as incentivizes the strategy of nexus rushing to increase the building limit as fast as possible, and there is no need to level power stations up past level 1. This seems like a very suboptimal situation.

After many discussions on discord channels with other players about this issue, my suggestion is to simply add a mechanic where increasing power levels yields an increase in efficiency boost. This would require that level 1 stations get a major nerf in the amount of efficiency they yield, and this would then be recovered as it levels up. I believe the ideal state is that one max level power station right next to a building should yield the full 150% bonus, thereby removing the need for 5+ power stations crowded in an area. This should then be accompanied by a decrease in the max number of buildings allowed, so that players are actually forced to make strategic decisions about where they want their efficiency to be placed, and the reduction in necessary power stations does not just lead to more converters.

The aesthetics of our land should be very important. The current meta balance pushes players to have tightly packed, crammed lands where the vast majority of buildings are power stations and converters. Those buildings should be special buildings on our plots, not a dime a dozen. I'm including a few screenshots of plots that people shared on discord representing the current state of the meta in Illuvium zero. This change will have the benefit of leaving more available space on our land for the future.

[formal stone]

It's funny i wrote that kind of feedback ingame a few hours ago.
Makes way more sense (including lore-tech-related in a sci-fi world), space, and fun.
Fully support the idea, thanks !

[dark trench]

yeah fully agree

[autumn tundra]

I think this a great idea.
I think that should also come with the increase in the penalty for converters so that this change does not allow stacking converters and still getting 150% efficiency.

[arctic spruce]

this is a good way imo, but I would keep the efficiency of lvl1 power stations as it is right now, so at the beginning you may spam power stations, but then I'd add an increasing efficiency boost for surrounding buildings with higher levels, so you then start to sell not any longer needed power stations. bc i fear nerfing them at low level will push spamming even further at the beginning. nexus rushing is not avoidable and i also believe it is okay to rush that one building asap anyway. wdyt?

[ember tartan]

We just should remove the limitation at 50% efficiency. Making pack of converter without thinking about the placement of road and powerstation. Let the 100converter city drop to 0% efficiency.

[cold pivot]

Interesting point. Maybe this actually suggests the best way to do this is to actually go ahead and cap the number of power stations at each level? Or also could drop the max number of buildings at each town hall so this wouldn't be a valid strategy.

My main idea here is really two things:

1. leveling up power stations should increase the efficiency boost to over a reason to level them up
2. the current game state has our lands being way to spammy with them covered in power stations and converters. This takes away from the uniqueness of our lands with the unique fuel sites. I'd like to see them make a strong effort to adjust this meta.

[arctic spruce]

totally agree

a quantity cap would make sense, but tied to what level? if nexus, it will push nexus rushing even further

[cold pivot]

nexus rushing is inevitable and generally OK, just need to make the cost to upgrade enough that you can't rush too hard which is currently the case

[visual bridge]

<@&1107754780744487002> thoughts?

[odd tusk]

I'll bite a bit since I'm curious what the community thinks is best in terms of the feel and fun of the game, we can tune the economy aspect after

• Efficiency increasing per Power Stations was one of the systems we were playing with in our minds as well (Say 2% at Stage 1 to 10% at Stage 9)
• We haven't landed on it yet because we feel it might complicate Power Stations too much, being both the harbingers of efficiency and power, I think keeping those separate has some merit especially for new players
• Idea would be to let Power Stations govern the power system while compensating efficiency in other ways, but we're not sure exactly where yet

[odd tusk]

This idea would definitely fit into the solution, heard this float around as well, good one

[dark trench]

i just dont want to build 10 powerstations per converter to get break even or let alone a gain

[cold pivot]

Awesome, thanks for the input here! Sounds like you are on top of this @odd tusk. Really what this proposal comes down to is trying to change to the fact that right now we have such an insane number of low level power stations on the land cluttering things up. I like your idea of separating power and efficiency. I think that might be the cleanest solution, and could make an even higher level of strategy for optimizing layouts!

[odd tusk]

Yeah I don't think anyone on the team is seeing the current efficiency system and thinking we can't do a significantly better job, but more important fish to fry for now
I don't think it's AS much of an issue as painted above, you don't 'need' to get to 150% on everything as otherwise the end state of your plot would be very static, but I do agree it's too far in the current setup and I hereby confirm it's 'on our list', up there but not at the top either

[cold pivot]

That’s great to hear and totally fair. Keep up the good work 💪🏼

[arctic spruce]

thx for your feedback Perry!

[arctic spruce]

but i think it is very obvious that people are ofc always heading for max efficiency of at least their fuel sites

[turbid oxide]

I think as we get more structures added, (training gyms or anything else supporting "land as a service" we will need more room and the power stations take up too much of it. Plus these lands are beautiful and you cant take in that beauty when its covered head to toe in building and paths

[visual bridge]

My feeling as well.

[gritty lichen]

I don't think this is an efficiency issue or a power issue. This is happening because of the path bonus.

Once you get to a certain level, I think people are building power stations to get the path bonus. There is only a need for so many other buildings and if you are trying to get your path bonus up to or near 20%, you need a bunch of buildings and power stations just make the most sense.

Unless you change the path bonus system I think you are going to see spams of whatever building gets you power and efficiency. Also a few rows of storage.

I'd like to have a button to hide power stations, like leave a marker so you can tell where they are, but maybe not have them 3-D, so you can see and click your other buildings easier.

[cold pivot]

Have to say I dissagree pretty strongly. There's no way people are building so many power stations for a very small path bonus, that's a much smaller impact than the efficiency. I agree that the broader fix should consider the path bonus as well though, as you are right if its not power stations people would spam another building instead. But you could keep the path bonus as is and just drop the max building number. I don't think making them hidden is worthwhile, its just an odd band-aid to the problem when you could more easily just fix it

@warm summit tagging you here since I saw this topic come up a bit in your most Illuvium news podcast with TSG highlighting game changes coming. Maybe worth documenting how the team has acknowledged this and will be getting to it, but its not in their top priorities. They generally just said that recognize the power station mechanic isn't ideal.

[warm summit]

Love to hear this

[thick wyvern]

Excellent suggestion. In lower tiers of my build, I would have converters in my power-dense region, then just move them across the map to move the next converter in. Since that is free and just takes seconds, I'm not even sure whatever "goal" of paving the place with power stations is even being served. It seems like a placeholder for some other mechanic (like not scanning + harvesting fuel) which could be accomplished by other means ... without the ugly "urban sprawl."