I quit.

I am a mineral miner :) on RT anyway, it gives you the freedom to not care at all about your colonies. And don`t care about VM as can just explore back 60 planets.

But yes the income stream isn`t great, not compared to the ships upkeep.

Eh, I think with the other changes, while yes you can explore more as a mineral miner, but I dont think many want to play that race type anymore looking at what is already out there. There are better income streams out there and the ships are okay ish currently. I honestly wouldn`t recommend going mineral miner, just buy from the BM once implemented.

hmm yes it would I guess make a mineral miner easier to play, and also easier to change what ores you produce. Probably would add supply to the market, but is this a bad thing or a good thing. On the normal server it would be a good thing.

With more small planets available it would be easier to produce ore as well, and that seems to be in short supply.

Land-based exploration would introduce a different set of distortions. For instance, we might see a sudden collapse in mineral prices...

How`s this... use the current explore formula, but tweak it a bit... say, each planet counts as much as half a planet does currently, and every 500 land is equivalent to one planet?

We could.. i meant though, that gordo`d empires be left the way they are currently. Dont make them unexplorable, dont do anything to them. They just wont be able to increase their land because there would be no more gordoes. And once they restart......well...you know.

As far as the rest of the arties, perhaps completely rethinking them would be better than eliminating them.

You could Asmo, but most of those empires that are gordoed will want to remain exploreable, thus they will go below whatever limits are estalbished. Eliminating gordos, dont suppose we can eliminate other artis as well then?

Could possibly keep gordo`d land, nerf or eliminate gordoes entirely...

I dont understand why you would tihnk that this changes things so drastically that now miners will be making more money than they did before, thus needing a change to upkeep or tax income.

Right now, as far as exploring goes, all races are pretty much held to the same standard - they can explore to the same point.
Changing it to land based, and allowing them all to still explore to about the same point, that doesnt change income ONE bit.

The only difference it has is that it hurts massively gordo`d empires and makes it harder for them to explore.

This shouldnt change income at all other than maybe seeing gordo`d planets finally changing hands a bit more because theyre forced to fight for borders rather than exploring them in 10 seconds.


I really want to see the path of reasoning that leads anyone to the belief that certain races should be able to explore more land than other races

Jesus christ. I dont think you guys are getting my point.

I totally understand that land based exploration would only be considered as a means of making gordod empires less explorable. I totally understand that.

Im also not talking about land ceilings. I dont believe Ive ever mentioned an actual cap other than for coll and maru.

What I have said is simply that when we talk about current exploration, there is a a point - around 70 planets, where exploring becomes much more difficult or more costly. Im not saying theres a 70 planet cap - im just saying that after that, very little exploration is happening.

Most people explore 2 C2`s max with 800+ planets, and after that, any exploring is generally for borders. That means that we essentially ALREADY have a land cap of about 50,000 when it comes to exploring. YES, I UNDERSTAND PEOPLE CAN CURRENTLY GORDO HIGHER. Im saying that when it comes to exploring, not many people are exploring more than around that 50k point, outside of U class.

The point Im making is that changing to land based exploration doesnt change that. You make it so the formula makes around 50k the point where exploring starts to become more and more time consuming - before than 30 turns or so of scouts can easily explore you ot this point at 1/2/3 turns per planet. After that the jumps start to be a lot bigger, 50, 100, 200+ turns per planet.

Meh, didn`t ignore it, and rather not get into a he ignored me/ you ignored me debate. The reason we say it this way is not to ignore you, but because we have played this game for a long time and understand that changing one thing leads to needing to tweak other things.

The method you want where you only care about land ceilings is only one part of the equation, either you have to adjust incomes as well for all races and/or tweak the ship upkeeps or tweak the max land ceiling by race. While we have each race currently exploring the same amount of planets, the economies of scale are very different and some use gordos to help their empires economy. This is one thing, EE has said he wants to change and thus if that land ceilings are implemented with other changes to racials (e.g. tax, comm, agri production, etc.) you have to look at the entire race and what outside factors affect them and also their own ship upkeep. This would make some races less favorable than others to play.

Ankaar, what YOU are not getting is that land based exploring would be a means to prevent gordo abuse, and not what you are currently defending as everyone being on an equal footing for explore amounts. There are several explorable empires with 200k+ land (and growing).

Once you get over the land threshold, or planet cap, you become UNEXPLORABLE. so this scenario of some miner having 150k land because a Terran lost his colonies, that`s totally plausible, but then the miner is on their own to fight for borders- because they cannot explore.

For as long as Gordos are around(and really just got a buff), fighting is becoming less and less beneficial. Land based exploration would in fact standardize, and bring economies to a balance. For land allowances to be the same, we would need to balance upkeeps/incomes.

That`s why I noted with "current economies." In the original post.

Omeg, Im asking why we would change anything other than how we explore
Right now we have exactly the same situation we would have with land, IDK why youre not getting it.

Each race can explore about the same number of planets currently. That means currently, each race can explore about the same amount of land assuming player are keeping the same size planets - in general, 800+

Changing to land based exploration doesnt change the fact that each race should explore about the same amount of land.
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Ill explain it again since you ignored it the first time.
Currently, exploring for every race that can explore gets difficult around the same time - greater than 70 something planets. If you really want those borders above 80, you can explore it just takes quite a while.

If youre only keeping planets above 800 land, youre going to have around 55-65k land in those planets.
To clarify, this isnt a limit, its not a ceiling - its just the most that the majority of players will explore to before it becomes too tedious. In fact, its unlikely most explore more than 2 C2`s at around 50k land before they stop going for land and just start gathering borders.

So CURRENTLY, as stated before, all races can explore to about the same amount before it becomes tedious or very costly. Assuming we are keeping 800+ land planets, we CURRENTLY have every race exploring the same amount of land as each other.
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Changing the exploration mechanics to be land based should be just that - changing the formula so it takes total land into account instead of planets. The total land should be about the same as it is now as far as the formula goes. Exploring until 50-65k land pretty easily, and then a steep climb afterward.

Thats the way it is now for every race - why would you change that?

Suggesting we change that is like suggesting we currently should allow one race to easily explore to 90 planets while only allowing another to easily explore to 60.

So you want to say regardless of race, a tax viral makes more than a guard both be fixed with 56k land? Sure a Guards upkeep is less and a viral does take in food/cg costs, but how is that fair when your income is much better than mine?

If you want to switch how exploration works, you have to tweak everything else in the game. Also, if someone is hording or going beyond the land exploration limit, I think they should benefit from a larger income boost because they are no longer explorable and risking clusters. Sure it will need adjusting, but right now there is no true benefit of having multiple clusters regardless of being gordoed or not compared to being exploreable empire.

Also, RTK, would rather not change the c3 layout. The reason why he left was because he was on a mission to get 200 planets and wanted to do that without fighting. If I am able to hold 4 c3s as a miner or 7 c3s as a viral, anyone else can do it as well.

I`ve got a better idea - let`s leave the exploring system alone.

Instead though I would like to see c3 be 75 planets then c4 can be 125.

This would of fixed ghost issue like this

I get that peeps can`t or don`t have time to fight everyday. However when you have a high planet count you have to. Where`s if I had a c3 it would mean Iwe`d have extra space to keep extra borders. For times when we don`t have the time

If you want to balance a races economy, basing it on the amount of land they can explore is a pretty terrible idea.

I mentioned it before, but lets say terran could explore 100k land, miner explore 50k. Miner then swoops in and takes 100k land from a terran. The Miners income is now wayyyy higher than you planned for.

So again, basing explore land limits on race isnt necessary in a changeover to land based explore model.

Give each race the same exact requirements for exploring, allowing them to reach similar land totals.
If each race can do 50k land or so before it really starts spiking, you then adjust their income and upkeep / costs accordingly, AS THEY ALREADY ARE. I am absolutely failing to understand why any of you think changing from planet based exploring to land based exploring would have any effect on an empires income or upkeep costs.

Im asking why.

Currently, every explorable race explores to pretty much the same point before it becomes too expensive / time consuming.

I see no reason to change this if we went land based.

Im suggesting that if everyone on a planet based explore system keeps planets 800+, youre hitting a wall around 60-70 planets then it starts to become quite time consuming to go further. For the purposes of this thread, lets say around 70 planets is when it becomes difficult. lets say each of those planets is 800 land.

That means regardless of race, youre exploring to around 56k land before it becomes a pain to explore more - not saying you cant do more, just that it becomes a lot more tedious after this. You dont see majoirty of players exploring too far past this point. No race is able to easily go to 90 while another can only explore to 40 in that same general amount of turns.

SO why if we changed to land based exploring would we change the entire system so that one race explores to 50k while another explores to 90k in the same general timeframe? That makes no sense. That would be like if today, terran could explore to 90 planets and miner could only explore to 50 with the same scanners / turn.

Im not saying the numbers are funky - Im saying its absurd to think that one race needs to be able to explore more land than another, or rather, more easily than another. I dont get why anyone thinks that switching to land based should mean that races need different limits.

The goal of land based exploration isnt to give some weird bonus to anyone or to try to balance racial incomes, the idea is to limit gordo`d empires ability to explore borders as easily.

Again, setting an explore formula that makes it start jumping a bit for every race around 50-60k land is exactly the same as the current formula spiking it around 60-70 planets.

Ankaar these sorts of details would have to be worked out, perhaps it costs different races more turns ?

Why should miner get more land than terran?
Or the better question, why should one race be able to get almost twice another currently explorable race? Miner at 70k and guard at 40k?

Not only is miner income already tremendously better, but now youre giving them nearly twice the starting point of a guard

If we are doing land based exploring, I see no reason to have different land be easily explorable between races, other than marauder and collective who could reasonably have a lower limit just because we would still like them to be more difficult

yes it is and interesting idea, also frees up ships slots if we don`t need scouts.

I like the borders idea