The Great Aluminium Conference of 2020 (Plane resource cost change)

[BelgiumFury]

Hey, 

Now that the war is over I can make this suggestion in peace.
This post is a personal perspective, I have no insight in the finances of my (or any other) alliance.
I personally believe that (as everyone predicted) the aluminium price is extremely low. This isn't just a now thing however, most people ive talked to presume this chance to be one for the long term. The last time Aluminium prices were this low was when resources were cheated in.
Steel also dropped in price, but is around the level it was 120 days ago (as far as my data goes without digging really hard), aluminium is around 1000PPU lower. 

The only resource sink that alumium has that steel doesn't are both the CP and the ACP, but these projects are rare and dont get used very frequently (as far as I am aware) so they dont really exist to drain aluminium. 

My simple proposal here is to raise the plane aluminium cost to either 8, 8.5 or 10.
Why these numbers you might ask?
Well for a 20 city nation it costs 12.5K steel to buy all tanks from 0 to full.
It costs however 7.5K aluminium to do the same for planes.
If we raise aluminium price of a plane to 8 per unit it will cost 12K aluminium to rebuild all planes. More in line with the steel costs for tanks (8.5 means 12750, 10 means 15K).

This will indeed make planes even more expensive than tanks, but i believe this is balanced out by the following:

• As we have seen before this war, people keep a lot less tanks in peace time compared to the amount of planes they have. I presume this will stay the same (because of the following point).
• Tanks are a lot more expensive to pay upkeep for, it is hard to justify to keep them during peace time. For a 20 city nation it costs 7.5M per day to pay for max planes, it costs 12.5M per day to pay for tanks (both during peace time). That is a 5M per day diffrence. (or a 600M per 4 month NAP :p). Tanks are however also a lot more expensive during peace time, yet another thing that compensates for the fact that planes are more expensive than tanks.
• Because of the upkeep cost of tanks, they are more likely to be destroyed during peace time. Which eliminates 25% of the steel used just like that. (and in extension raises the demand for steel).
• I am relatively sure that comperatively speaking, more tanks get destroyed than planes during wars. This is because of meta related reasons. Which raises the demand for steel but not for alumium. 

In the current meta planes have a use, tanks are better, but planes still have a very real use. I doubt this could make planes irrelevant. If an alliance decides to not use any planes at all during an alliance war they would get utterly rofflestomped (Air supperioirty and whatnot). So planes might not be as good as tanks in actual battle, in the current meta, everyone needs to at least have planes to not get utterly destroyed.

Now, I am very aware that this change would probably take ages to change the aluminium price (probably just before / during next war), but I believe that it is in the long term benifit of the economy for it to happen. 

I have no idea of 8, 8.5 or 10 is the right aluminium cost for planes, and I'm going to let smarter people figure this out. But I do believe a price change is in order.

Feel free to shoot all the critique or questions at me, i'd love to help
~~Belgium
 

[Arawra]

Let's not buff tanks and nerf planes even more please.

[epsteindidntkillhimself]

considering the low damage output planes have, this isn’t the best idea. if planes could kill more mil units it would work, but it’s just a useless change right now.

[BelgiumFury]

Both points are fair.
I do however believe that it is still impossible not to have planes (as youd instantly lose any war) so this makes them, pretty valluable.

However they are indeed in a state of not that good, buffing planes on its own isnt a bad idea either.

[Rin]

I don't think resource balances should be done around wars. War is already the hardest part to balance, and a small tweak ripples all over Orbis.

Use other sinks. Economic is the best for this - projects, improvements. The UP/AUP project is genius because it balances between food prices and cash prices. Heck, if there's too much aluminium, raise the price of space programs over planes.

[katashimon13]

fired a little early on this one 😧

stop letting pre make up project prices?

for example the hospitals/polices station ones probs need to be revisited (at least till the rework of the things they affect actually get released

rawr

[BelgiumFury]

On 12/15/2020 at 4:34 PM, katashimon13 said:

fired a little early on this one 😧

stop letting pre make up project prices?

for example the hospitals/polices station ones probs need to be revisited (at least till the rework of the things they affect actually get released

rawr

we should probably peer review project prices before they actually get released 😛
 

[Prefontaine]

49 minutes ago, BelgiumFury said:

we should probably peer review project prices before they actually get released 😛
 

They are.

Last four projects can be found there. Thread was up for months before implementation, I don't think anyone brought up price change suggestions. 

[BelgiumFury]

43 minutes ago, Prefontaine said:

They are.

Last four projects can be found there. Thread was up for months before implementation, I don't think anyone brought up price change suggestions. 

You know i completly forgot about this.
Yeah thats right, if noone complained about it then, neither should they do so less than a few weeks after implementation without any real use.
My bad.
Im sorry.

[Prefontaine]

22 hours ago, BelgiumFury said:

You know i completly forgot about this.
Yeah thats right, if noone complained about it then, neither should they do so less than a few weeks after implementation without any real use.
My bad.
Im sorry.

No worries, it's all good. I have made sure to change how things are done in this last year. Any changes the Dev Team produces will get posted publicly before implementation, barring some crazy emergency situation. That'd be more Alex fixing a major issue while maybe consulting us -- anyway, as you can tell by the edits in the OP in that link I do like constructive feedback and trying to make adjustments.

 

Thanks for the apology though, appreciated. 

[Adrienne]

If there's so much aluminum, it's because of how planes got nerfed/became practically irrelevant after 2-3 rounds last war. The solution is to fix that in my opinion, not raise the cost of planes.

[Azaghul]

An unbalanced market isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Having some imbalances between costs of military units is a good thing, it creates room for different units in different ways and a larger variety of strategies and tactics, all things that make the game more interesting.

[katashimon13]

On 12/20/2020 at 10:49 AM, Prefontaine said:

Last four projects can be found there. Thread was up for months before implementation, I don't think anyone brought up price change suggestions. 

the numbers hardly ever change from when you post these we have collectively given up

rawr

[Prefontaine]

51 minutes ago, katashimon13 said:

the numbers hardly ever change from when you post these we have collectively given up

rawr

Okay, well I'll put your posts on ignore then since you have given up. Take care.

[katashimon13]

On 12/21/2020 at 7:01 PM, Prefontaine said:

Okay, well I'll put your posts on ignore then since you have given up. Take care.

yes that is y we gave up glad uve caught up

rawr

Edited December 24, 2020 by katashimon13
rawr

[Ketya]

On 12/15/2020 at 4:02 AM, Rin said:

I don't think resource balances should be done around wars. War is already the hardest part to balance, and a small tweak ripples all over Orbis.

Use other sinks. Economic is the best for this - projects, improvements. The UP/AUP project is genius because it balances between food prices and cash prices. Heck, if there's too much aluminium, raise the price of space programs over planes.

Good point. If you look at the data visualization charts around the amount of raws and resources, most are reaching pre-cheating levels; and this is with a large scale global war. Adding more projects could both address the increasing amount of resources/raws and also force players to specialize instead of trying to get all projects.

Was it ever the case where new city building required resources in addition to cash? That might be another method to make raws/resources more valuable.