"lets set the record straight, this has nothing to do with any kind of pressure, the reason they or rather you all do not want to do it is it will cut into making people coin"
You got it. Shipyard pressure makes people coin.
Removing shipyard pressure will make less people coin. Less people coining = bad for kixeye
Not entirely true... People that coin will always coin, that includes retrofit lab research and VXP... No matter how Kixeye does it they won't lose money from the coiners, just depends on how well they want to make the game for the people that don't coin much or don't coin at all
free up ship yard to build new ships retrow lab sits doing nothing do 2 builds at once
Moving the upgrades away from the shipyard won't have that effect though. What the end result would be is nearly doubling the time it takes to do both actions and having to contend with maintaining a tight schedule with two buildings instead of one. So sure, you can work on two ships at once, but they will each take nearly twice as long to complete.
At this point in time the shipyard economy seems to be pretty dialed in and balanced as desired. It hasn't really changed over the last few tiers. The only noteworthy change is splitting the Garrison cycle into 2 fleets per year instead of 1. Which doesn't change the overall shipyard pressure through out the year, it just reduces the spikes caused by the intro of new Garrison ships and upgrades and spreads them around it around a bit more.
Let's say upgrades shift to the Retrofit Lab, the balance of the system has now been changed and it is out of balance. The amount of natural time available has doubled, so to return to the previous balance point, which seems to be pretty clearly designed and intended, the time investment required to complete a fleet will also nearly double.
That doesn't actually make sense... As it is, a build for lets say the Flashbang was a little over 16 days. Now 16 days for 5 ships for just the build. That's 80 days which will extend beyond a 2 month cycle. Now yes you can take time off each week with the Forsaken Mission but not all the tech for it releases all at once. That means multiple refits for the fleet during that 2 months. You also have to do the upgrades on it which you can't even use the Forsaken Mission to speed up because upgrade tokens aren't provided and build tokens can't be used. A lot of times there's either a Heavy Weapon or a CIC that needs put on it too that can only be done after an upgrade too... That for sure is another refit... That's why there's always a problem with keeping up now, because there's too much that needs done in 2 months that can't be done. Along with that you have to somehow find 2 times a year now to build a Forsaken Mission fleet or just fall behind and be forced to wait until Kix gives a free fleet. Now that fleet will also need upgraded but where do you find time to do that in between building new fleets? Can't rely on the Pillage at this point if you fall behind because the low tier targets always have low payouts.
That is how the system is designed. You have X number of days available and Y number of days of things to complete. And Y is slightly larger than X by design.
All the tech for a ship, outside of the flagship, has been released by the time the hull itself is released. FM introduces the armor a month before the hull is released. Pillage introduces the limited weapon and a limited special. The raid releases the hull itself, the standard blueprint weapon, and typically one or two new specials. The FM then typically has a CIC or heavy weapon depending on the flavor of the month.
The general build strategy for PvE is: - Go into the raid for the hull with 1x weeks of FM tokens stashed, and 1x week of FM chests unopened. This gives you 11 days of build time to kickstart your fleet. - Redeem the hull as soon as possible and build a couple. Maximize the token usage, try and get the build as close to something that can be completed with tokens. Typically you'll have an hour or two over what can be done and slow do that, or coin it. - Once you've used the build tokens you have to kick out some blanks, redeem kits and start upgrading. If you aren't working on upgrades the first night of the raid, you are behind. - You want to do as much of your fleet building as possible with tokens so you can dedicate your shipyard time to upgrades since there are far more build tokens than there are upgrade tokens. - You want to build most of the ship through refits the same way you built the original ship. Getting as close to an even day and using tokens to cover it. Refitting also has all kinds of reductions applied to it provided you have your labs upgraded.
At the end of it, yes, the time it takes to build a fleet and upgrade it is more than there is actually time and tokens to complete. This is by design and why the idea of splitting the upgrades off into another queue won't solve anything. Build and upgrade times would lengthen and put us right back where we are now, except with the condition of needing to try and optimize two building queues instead of just one.
free up ship yard to build new ships retrow lab sits doing nothing do 2 builds at once
Moving the upgrades away from the shipyard won't have that effect though. What the end result would be is nearly doubling the time it takes to do both actions and having to contend with maintaining a tight schedule with two buildings instead of one. So sure, you can work on two ships at once, but they will each take nearly twice as long to complete.
At this point in time the shipyard economy seems to be pretty dialed in and balanced as desired. It hasn't really changed over the last few tiers. The only noteworthy change is splitting the Garrison cycle into 2 fleets per year instead of 1. Which doesn't change the overall shipyard pressure through out the year, it just reduces the spikes caused by the intro of new Garrison ships and upgrades and spreads them around it around a bit more.
Let's say upgrades shift to the Retrofit Lab, the balance of the system has now been changed and it is out of balance. The amount of natural time available has doubled, so to return to the previous balance point, which seems to be pretty clearly designed and intended, the time investment required to complete a fleet will also nearly double.
That doesn't actually make sense... As it is, a build for lets say the Flashbang was a little over 16 days. Now 16 days for 5 ships for just the build. That's 80 days which will extend beyond a 2 month cycle. Now yes you can take time off each week with the Forsaken Mission but not all the tech for it releases all at once. That means multiple refits for the fleet during that 2 months. You also have to do the upgrades on it which you can't even use the Forsaken Mission to speed up because upgrade tokens aren't provided and build tokens can't be used. A lot of times there's either a Heavy Weapon or a CIC that needs put on it too that can only be done after an upgrade too... That for sure is another refit... That's why there's always a problem with keeping up now, because there's too much that needs done in 2 months that can't be done. Along with that you have to somehow find 2 times a year now to build a Forsaken Mission fleet or just fall behind and be forced to wait until Kix gives a free fleet. Now that fleet will also need upgraded but where do you find time to do that in between building new fleets? Can't rely on the Pillage at this point if you fall behind because the low tier targets always have low payouts.
That is how the system is designed. You have X number of days available and Y number of days of things to complete. And Y is slightly larger than X by design.
All the tech for a ship, outside of the flagship, has been released by the time the hull itself is released. FM introduces the armor a month before the hull is released. Pillage introduces the limited weapon and a limited special. The raid releases the hull itself, the standard blueprint weapon, and typically one or two new specials. The FM then typically has a CIC or heavy weapon depending on the flavor of the month.
The general build strategy for PvE is: - Go into the raid for the hull with 1x weeks of FM tokens stashed, and 1x week of FM chests unopened. This gives you 11 days of build time to kickstart your fleet. - Redeem the hull as soon as possible and build a couple. Maximize the token usage, try and get the build as close to something that can be completed with tokens. Typically you'll have an hour or two over what can be done and slow do that, or coin it. - Once you've used the build tokens you have to kick out some blanks, redeem kits and start upgrading. If you aren't working on upgrades the first night of the raid, you are behind. - You want to do as much of your fleet building as possible with tokens so you can dedicate your shipyard time to upgrades since there are far more build tokens than there are upgrade tokens. - You want to build most of the ship through refits the same way you built the original ship. Getting as close to an even day and using tokens to cover it. Refitting also has all kinds of reductions applied to it provided you have your labs upgraded.
At the end of it, yes, the time it takes to build a fleet and upgrade it is more than there is actually time and tokens to complete. This is by design and why the idea of splitting the upgrades off into another queue won't solve anything. Build and upgrade times would lengthen and put us right back where we are now, except with the condition of needing to try and optimize two building queues instead of just one.
The only thing is fleet builds aren't really any faster than they used to be despite having a shorter and very cramped time frame to get them built. Even when Kix gives out a fleet, it usually isn't capable of getting the ship on the first day of a raid unless you coin or have repair tokens to get it going again for a few extra runs. Basically unless you're already running a U3 or X1 fleet, there's not really any way for you to follow that strategy you said. That may be the intention in the way it was made but it's hard to be on the back end of that. Splitting it off would give people a chance to catch up instead of always being held back.
The real problem is that it doesn't matter how many times it's told to you that it's possible or that you've been given the strategy to build your fleets, you argue it's not possible and don't even try. . . Despite the fact that many of us ARE building our fleets just fine and getting them done along with the tech required without the need for more tokens and time etc.
Building fleets is a tough job, this IS a strategy game, I highly advise using some sort of build strategy to get your fleets ready for events. Here's mine that I use each week and advise my alliance and many others to do the same;
not going to vote, it was separate matter, upgrade which is currently are upgrading individual hull, what the retrofit do was upgrading its blue print. why they choose upgrading nowdays is to gain more income to support this game, the upside is the building process become less time
The real problem is that it doesn't matter how many times it's told to you that it's possible or that you've been given the strategy to build your fleets, you argue it's not possible and don't even try. . . Despite the fact that many of us ARE building our fleets just fine and getting them done along with the tech required without the need for more tokens and time etc.
Building fleets is a tough job, this IS a strategy game, I highly advise using some sort of build strategy to get your fleets ready for events. Here's mine that I use each week and advise my alliance and many others to do the same;
The thing is it's not that it isn't possible... It's just not possible if you're not caught up to having new fleets prepared in time... If you fall behind even once you fall out of that chance to keep it going... As far as this being a strategy game, it hasn't really been half as much of a strategy game since ship classes came out. Half your specials, the weapon, and the armor are all forced to be set to what is specifically made for the ship. Following a strict schedule just because Kixeye made it that way doesn't make it strategy anymore. Only part that feels like it involves strategy anymore is PvP.
not going to vote, it was separate matter, upgrade which is currently are upgrading individual hull, what the retrofit do was upgrading its blue print. why they choose upgrading nowdays is to gain more income to support this game, the upside is the building process become less time
The building process is exactly the same as the ships used to be... Some of the older ships had even lower build times than the current ones. I don't get why everyone seems to say that as if the ship builds were that insane before... It's not like the Proto-Nemesis build time or anything like that
Careful what you wish for. I still remember the 35 day Goliath builds. Imagine the way cycles are set now having to wait over a month to get a defender worth a dang.
Blackbeard III said: Not forgetting that you need to get the upgrade kits as well. If that was change to Titanum & Uranium combined, even a huge amount, no-one would care (it'd be celebrated) ...
Kits are a huge bottleneck for the average player. All very well for those who breeze through because they have everything already.
They'd just move those resources back into being hard to obtain. We'll have to auto elite salvages and hit drac bases for small amounts of uranium because Dredge Fleets aren't spawning when you need them. I'd still take that over the kit system though because at least I have some kind of recourse other than needing to wait on a TLC/event because I'm 10 kits short on my flag for some reason. (totally didnt finish my X1 obliterator flag on the final 2 days of last raid because of this)
Blackbeard III said: Remember when the Hellhound came out? 10 days BLANK build time, a day per thrower. & no VXP targets in those days either.
Yet people were running around with fully ranked fleets... Some people have extremely deep pockets here, all I can say.
Reminder that this was before they removed armor repair times, most weapons added armor to the ship and Reaver ships had an increased repair modifier stat... All on ships that need to take damage in order to get stronger for a few seconds. You were probably not losing if you hit someone's base with mortar Hellhounds, but that fleet was basically pay to play with its operating costs.
Ahh, yes, I recall the D4* armours had like 15 minutes repair time per panel.
& how some hulls had as much as a 400% repair modifier (subs fell into that category too, IIRC)
& yup, the Reaver stuff with boosts gained for short periods of time based on x amount of armour points lost: That could be aggravating when it's a raid fleet & just one hull gets its boost but the others didn't thus un-stacking the fleet. (& then having to take a few seconds or so to re-align the fleet)
I build my raid ships that become PvE for their short lifespan in stages. I try to save as many FM build tokens as I can. I get the rest from an event or the campaigns. As MDB says you have to plan carefully. I do the blank shell then upgrade all to U1. I add the goodies to make sure they coincide with the tokens I have and sometimes buy the LTOs that have upgrade tokens as those aren't offered in a raid until the ships are campaign and pillage toys. Knowing the U1-X1 upgrade times helps with strategizing and usage of tokens or letting final day cook on its own to avoid using those tokens.
I try to have ships 2-5 at U3 by raid start and flagship at least U2. I've done raids recently with only 4 ships because flag was still U2. I completely forgot in the flashbang raid to upgrade flag to X1 as I was working on gambits too. My time management on here is better than in my everyday life which is probably not a good thing. But I've worked out a system that works for me and follow it to maximize token usage to reduce build/upgrade times.
As far as moving upgrades to the Retrofit Lab that is a bad idea. In short term people may think it may be great but then build and upgrade times will increase exponentially. The huge trust fund whale players will still coin those ships because their fragile egos must have the new shiny toy immediately especially on day 2 of bounty when they've upgraded their conquerors 40 days worth or 1900 coins roughly. I've never upgraded the conquerors on day 2 using that many coins because of immediate gratification only to be basically useless after 6 months. No ship in this game is worth that many coins to spend on upgrades--pure insanity.
I'm currently still upgrading the old weapons, armors, specs to R15 in the Retrofit Lab with about a year left on finishing them. Putting the upgrades in there would mess up the game for a lot of mid level or lower level players. It would cause another mass exodus of players that are sometimes just cannon fodder and easy medals for those that chase those worthless items. Sure Kix might give out a free fleet but they aren't upgraded to U3 at least as targets are tuned to U3/X1 even though we are told they aren't (big lie). At one point back in the day we could have had 90-100k or more online playing this game alone no matter the number online total for all the other games too. As changes and complexity increased many players left even heavy coiners to spend money elsewhere. Asking for something that you may think helps the game will actually complicate it more and hinder possible newer players, if we have those small under level 80 Blackheart bases still, to join and possibly coin adding to Kix's bottom line.
Be careful what you wish for as making your request will backfire horrendously and push the game further down the drain. I think the original idea of upgrades was stated in a forum post several years ago by WrongThinker (interesting name eh) in hopes to make ships better and take less damage/better stats (look how that turned out for us---- oops my bad). Great idea to make Kix/Stillfront more money and by including them further widening the gap between the trust fund whales and the rest of the player base. We can discuss this until we are all blue in the face and hypoxic but nothing will be done that truly benefits the players. It's the same request as please fix the Rogue Crews to tier 8 and up ships. We can talk about that every few months but unless Kix can benefit somehow it won't happen. It's also very possible that it will be messed up even further. We already have enough issues with the game for some and don't want more problems. I've been playing since May 2011 with a bit of a break due to a job change and dead PC but I've seen good ideas and bad. This suggestion by the OP is a huge NO DON'T DO IT.
I want to see the cycle dial back to where someone that doesnt spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week playing this game can log in and be able to A Defend their base also have ships that can do task that they need to .. current setup of this game is only for coiner moby **** size whales or retired people who can afford to spend hours and hours on their **** grinding ....
The real problem is that it doesn't matter how many times it's told to you that it's possible or that you've been given the strategy to build your fleets, you argue it's not possible and don't even try. . . Despite the fact that many of us ARE building our fleets just fine and getting them done along with the tech required without the need for more tokens and time etc.
Building fleets is a tough job, this IS a strategy game, I highly advise using some sort of build strategy to get your fleets ready for events. Here's mine that I use each week and advise my alliance and many others to do the same;
The thing is it's not that it isn't possible... It's just not possible if you're not caught up to having new fleets prepared in time... If you fall behind even once you fall out of that chance to keep it going... As far as this being a strategy game, it hasn't really been half as much of a strategy game since ship classes came out. Half your specials, the weapon, and the armor are all forced to be set to what is specifically made for the ship. Following a strict schedule just because Kixeye made it that way doesn't make it strategy anymore. Only part that feels like it involves strategy anymore is PvP.
Thats the thing though, with this raid, and the following with the confessor.
I will be upgrading, and building the confessor until the start of the final raid for this cycle. As soon as the raid starts - the confessor is "obsolete" and I stop doing anything to it. The hamster wheel starts again for the new cycle. I get the new hull and build that with saved FM tokens.
Before entering the last raid, I will save up the FM tokens, sacrifice the confessor "build times" for getting the new hull blanks built.
It is fun to see the arguments about why this would be a good thing while everyone ignores what is being said by the two people that have more than likely talked to the Kix folks about implementing something along this line and are flat out telling you why it won't be what you want it to be.
All the tech for a ship, outside of the flagship, has been released by the time the hull itself is released.
FM introduces the armor a month before the hull is released.
Pillage introduces the limited weapon and a limited special.
The raid releases the hull itself, the standard blueprint weapon, and typically one or two new specials.
The FM then typically has a CIC or heavy weapon depending on the flavor of the month.
The general build strategy for PvE is:
- Go into the raid for the hull with 1x weeks of FM tokens stashed, and 1x week of FM chests unopened. This gives you 11 days of build time to kickstart your fleet.
- Redeem the hull as soon as possible and build a couple. Maximize the token usage, try and get the build as close to something that can be completed with tokens. Typically you'll have an hour or two over what can be done and slow do that, or coin it.
- Once you've used the build tokens you have to kick out some blanks, redeem kits and start upgrading. If you aren't working on upgrades the first night of the raid, you are behind.
- You want to do as much of your fleet building as possible with tokens so you can dedicate your shipyard time to upgrades since there are far more build tokens than there are upgrade tokens.
- You want to build most of the ship through refits the same way you built the original ship. Getting as close to an even day and using tokens to cover it. Refitting also has all kinds of reductions applied to it provided you have your labs upgraded.
At the end of it, yes, the time it takes to build a fleet and upgrade it is more than there is actually time and tokens to complete. This is by design and why the idea of splitting the upgrades off into another queue won't solve anything. Build and upgrade times would lengthen and put us right back where we are now, except with the condition of needing to try and optimize two building queues instead of just one.
Building fleets is a tough job, this IS a strategy game, I highly advise using some sort of build strategy to get your fleets ready for events. Here's mine that I use each week and advise my alliance and many others to do the same;
Don't forget to join us on Discord. Click the link above for your invitation to the server where you can see the new forums and features.
& how some hulls had as much as a 400% repair modifier (subs fell into that category too, IIRC)
& yup, the Reaver stuff with boosts gained for short periods of time based on x amount of armour points lost: That could be aggravating when it's a raid fleet & just one hull gets its boost but the others didn't thus un-stacking the fleet. (& then having to take a few seconds or so to re-align the fleet)
Thanks for reminding me of those painful days lol
I try to have ships 2-5 at U3 by raid start and flagship at least U2. I've done raids recently with only 4 ships because flag was still U2. I completely forgot in the flashbang raid to upgrade flag to X1 as I was working on gambits too. My time management on here is better than in my everyday life which is probably not a good thing. But I've worked out a system that works for me and follow it to maximize token usage to reduce build/upgrade times.
As far as moving upgrades to the Retrofit Lab that is a bad idea. In short term people may think it may be great but then build and upgrade times will increase exponentially. The huge trust fund whale players will still coin those ships because their fragile egos must have the new shiny toy immediately especially on day 2 of bounty when they've upgraded their conquerors 40 days worth or 1900 coins roughly. I've never upgraded the conquerors on day 2 using that many coins because of immediate gratification only to be basically useless after 6 months. No ship in this game is worth that many coins to spend on upgrades--pure insanity.
I'm currently still upgrading the old weapons, armors, specs to R15 in the Retrofit Lab with about a year left on finishing them. Putting the upgrades in there would mess up the game for a lot of mid level or lower level players. It would cause another mass exodus of players that are sometimes just cannon fodder and easy medals for those that chase those worthless items. Sure Kix might give out a free fleet but they aren't upgraded to U3 at least as targets are tuned to U3/X1 even though we are told they aren't (big lie). At one point back in the day we could have had 90-100k or more online playing this game alone no matter the number online total for all the other games too. As changes and complexity increased many players left even heavy coiners to spend money elsewhere. Asking for something that you may think helps the game will actually complicate it more and hinder possible newer players, if we have those small under level 80 Blackheart bases still, to join and possibly coin adding to Kix's bottom line.
Be careful what you wish for as making your request will backfire horrendously and push the game further down the drain. I think the original idea of upgrades was stated in a forum post several years ago by WrongThinker (interesting name eh) in hopes to make ships better and take less damage/better stats (look how that turned out for us---- oops my bad). Great idea to make Kix/Stillfront more money and by including them further widening the gap between the trust fund whales and the rest of the player base. We can discuss this until we are all blue in the face and hypoxic but nothing will be done that truly benefits the players. It's the same request as please fix the Rogue Crews to tier 8 and up ships. We can talk about that every few months but unless Kix can benefit somehow it won't happen. It's also very possible that it will be messed up even further. We already have enough issues with the game for some and don't want more problems. I've been playing since May 2011 with a bit of a break due to a job change and dead PC but I've seen good ideas and bad. This suggestion by the OP is a huge NO DON'T DO IT.
I will be upgrading, and building the confessor until the start of the final raid for this cycle. As soon as the raid starts - the confessor is "obsolete" and I stop doing anything to it. The hamster wheel starts again for the new cycle. I get the new hull and build that with saved FM tokens.
Before entering the last raid, I will save up the FM tokens, sacrifice the confessor "build times" for getting the new hull blanks built.