Normalize crafting time tooltips (New Player Experience)

[eradicator]

(This post does NOT propose any changes to production ratios.)

So now that the New Player Experienc (NPE) is being worked on and the game is also being optimized in other aspects to be more intuitive to new players it occured to me that one of the most basic aspects of crafting is still somewhat confusing. While the crafting speed is shown in the menu, the actual speed is different for the vast majority of recipes. There's been past suggestions to show the current crafting speed of machines in the gui of each individual machine, but i'd like to take a different approach.

First, let's look at how crafting speed is currently distributed:

normalized_crafting_speed.png (526.39 KiB) Viewed 4112 times

We can immediately see that out of 5 crafting branches, only two have a machine that actually craft at the time shown in the tooltip - smelting and refining. While two - chemistry and centrifuging - have only a single machine that doesn't craft at normal speed. Because these two branches are also largely used for things that can not be handcrafted this means that in vanilla most chemistry and centrifuging recipes are never crafted at the speed shown in the menu. To the new player the menu becomes a "lying menu" - to use an old term from a certain RPG.

Proposal
I thus propose that each crafting branch should have a machine with crafting speed 1.0. For chemical and centrifuging the crafting times for recipes must be adjusted to keep the "real" crafting speed at the same values they are now, because they only have one machine type each. E.g. a battery currently takes 5/1.25 seconds, thus after the change the recipe should have 4/1.0 seconds crafting time. Sulfur would be shown as 0.8, and solid fuel as 2.4, i.e. as their actual crafting times right now.

Further possibilities
For smelting the speed values should be scaled the same way, to make the dominant crafting speed 1.0. This ensures that the crafting time tooltip is correct until the player uses a module - i.e. only explicit player actions will invalidate the tooltip numbers. Combined with the above change to assembling-machine-2 this also means that both early game buildings - stone furnace and assembler 1 - work at exactly half the tooltip speed.

scaled_crafting_speed.png (155.96 KiB) Viewed 4112 times

Possible Questions:
Q: But modules and beacons change the crafting times anyway so this is useless!
A: No, because the change is supposed to help new players get into the game easier, and module production does not normally happen until mid-game.

Q: Why are steel-furnace and assembler-2 at speed 1.0 and not stone-furnace and assembler-1?
A: I chose steel-furnace and assembling-machine-2 as normalization targets because they're both available quite early (first hour) and for both of them the next step is quite far away (at least 10 hours). So this should prolong the period where the tooltip is correct. And makes stone-furnace the same speed as assembler-1.

Q: But this messes up my blueprint ratios!
A: No there would be no change to endgame ratios. The actual crafting speeds will stay the same, only the values shown in the tooltip would change.

[Darinth]

I agree with the principle, but not necessarily the method.

I'd leave smelting exactly as it is. It is the most 'new player' friendly to have your basic structures be at a 1.0 speed. To further that principle, and because it makes everything relatively nice a neat ratios that can be easily changed by an automated process I'd change the assembling machine 1 to be the new 1.0 speed and increase the other two by proportional amounts. This would place the ASM1 at 1.0, ASM2 at 1.5, and ASM3 and 2.5. Because this double the crafting speed, all you have to do is cut the crafting speed of all recipes in those buildings in half and nothing changes about the actual crafting speeds... it's just that new players don't have to worry right out of the gate that their buildings aren't actually making stuff at the speeds that they say they are.

Similarly, if the centrifuge was increase from 0.75 to 1.0 (a 33% increase) the centrifuge recipes should be slowed down and if the chemistry plant is slowed down, the recipes should be sped up. This allows all of the recipes that the player starts off with to actually be running at exactly the speed the tooltips start off displaying. They've only gotta worry later on about buildings that craft slower/faster or once they start getting into modules.

[eradicator]

@Darinth:
I chose steel-furnace and assembling-machine-2 as normalization targets because they're both available quite early in game (first hour) and for both of them the next step is quite far away (at least 10 hours). So by normalizing those two the tooltip is useful much longer than if you chose the first two buildings as normalizers and in the first hour most people might not even notice that their buildings procuce at exactly half speed because they're still overwhelmed. Also it means that stone-furnace-1 and assembling-machine-1 have the same speed, which makes calculation easier there too.
But as stated above furnaces are only an extra option, and i'm not focused on which exact machine is normalized, just that there is one.

Similarly, if the centrifuge was increase from 0.75 to 1.0 (a 33% increase) the centrifuge recipes should be slowed down and if the chemistry plant is slowed down, the recipes should be sped up.

Agreed as stated in OP.

[Zavian]

Personally I would choose stone furnaces and assembler 1 as normalisation targets.
crafting speed for assemblers would then be 1.0, 1.5, 2.5. If you simple doubled the time required for all recipes, they would keep the same effective time, and the 0.5 craft time recipes (which includes many early recipes) would become 1.0. That seems to give an easier set of numbers to work with for most of the game.

[Sad_Brother]

Isn't crafting speed 1.0 supposed to present hand-making? If so, you should not change assemblers.
Mining speed can be recalibrated as it is another possible hand process.
Furnace values are not dis-informative as is.
Other speeds should be 1.0 simply because only one machine of each type present.

[mrudat]

How about seconds to craft in what you're selecting the recipe for?

[bobingabout]

I have to agree that, especially with the Centrifuge and Chemical plant where they're the only machine that produces those recipes, it is a bit odd that they're not set to 1.

Now, the chemical plant I can understand, you could say that they chose 1.25 so that it's the same speed as assembling machine 3, so these production machines are now matched, but then oil refinery and furnace are speed 1, so there's still a miss match in speeds.

it is something I tried to address in my mods to some extend, the final tier of all machines should be the same speed (Though I think there's actually a mix of 3.5 and 4, and not all entities, Centrifuge for example, don't have higher tiers. plus mining drills go even faster.)

[Jap2.0]

1. Make centrifuge and chemical plant have a speed of 1. There is no reason why this should stay how it is now. I absolutely think that this should be changed.
2. The changes to assembly machines makes me very hesitant. Although I haven't made any exceptionally large beaconed megabases, I rarely use assembly machine 3s: they're not that much faster than assembly machine 2s, and this would only make that worse, and they're quite expensive. I realize that they may be more useful late game, but I see only a few niche uses for them until after you've launched dozens of rockets. For the same cost as one assembly machine 3, I could build two assembly machine 2s and fill them with any level 1 module, or build somewhere between 4 and 8 assembly machine 2s without modules. If we're suggesting radical changes, we could change the speeds to 0.5, 1, and 2, but... that would be quite radical and quite possibly make the late game significantly less balanced. 1, 1.5, and 2.5 would also work, although those are slightly less nice numbers, but at least they would not exacerbate the problem of assembler 2 vs assembler 3.
3. Smelting. Hmm. I don't really care - multiply by 2, divide by 2, either way it's fairly easy to calculate ratios (although 3.5 and 17.5 were bad choices imo, 1:5 (1:1) is nice, but could we make them nicer numbers)? One point I'd like to make is that even though you may be to steel furnaces within an hour, for new players getting good quantities of green science and steel could take quite a while, so they may not necessarily be there that quickly, but either way, it's not that hard.
4. Ratios. This is making me a little uneasy. "all the ratios will be the same," you say, but how you're getting there is what's making me nervous, and is also making me think this is an all or nothing change. Right now all the recipes are in halves of a second (I don't think there are any that are quarters). When you mention times like 2.4 and 0.8, it means fifths of a second, and if we're having both systems simultaneously, then we could easily have recipes in tenths or twentieths of a second, and that's just complicating it more than it is already. Additionally ratios would break. You're suggesting changes to assembly machine crafting speeds which are not proportionate between all tiers, meaning that it would have to break ratios somewhere.

[eradicator]

TL;DR: Dear busy reader, the conclusion is at the end.

(I use "asm" as an abbreviation of "assembling machine" in this post.)

@Jap2.0

Sidenote on cost of assembling machine 2/3:
Looking at the numbers, when you use two moduled asm2 instead of one asm3 you pay twice as much for power, and have triple pollution. I usually just upgrade my factory in place with asm3 because it's a simple fast-replace action with no drawbacks. But i don't want to derail into cost considerations, as that is too much game "style" related and not really objective.

You say you don't like 0.8 as a number, but that is already the number that is currently being used. I deliberately only gave examples for the chemical branch, because there is only one machine in it and chemistry can't be hand-crafted. The nice tooltip times of 5/3/1 seconds never actually happen, which is my main point. I want the tooltips to display real values, not fantasy values for some imaginary "standard machine".

But for assemblers...ooohh, shoot. I did indeed forgot that all machines of a tier have to be adjusted equally if we want to preserve production ratios. Let's look at the numbers (

narf, why is the code block not monospaced? view in an appropriate editor for perfect number alignment

):

Code: Select all

current values      = { 0.5 , 0.75, 1.25 } | recipes: { 0.5 , 1   , 2   , 3   ,  5   ,  6  ,  8   , 10   , 20   , 15, 30,  60 }
                                                      
normalized for asm1 = { 1   , 1.5 , 2.5  }            { 1   , 2   , 4   , 6   , 10   , 12  , 16   , 20   , 40   , 30, 60, 120 }
normalized for asm2 = { 0.66, 1   , 1.66 }            { 0.66, 1.33, 2.66, 4   ,  6.66, 8   , 10.66, 13.33, 26.66, 20, 40,  80 }
normalized for asm3 = { 0.4 , 0.6 , 1    }            { 0.4 , 0.8 , 1.60, 2.4 ,  4   , 4.8 , 6.40 , 8    , 16   , 12, 24,  48 }

Analysis of ASM1 normalization:
Multiplying everything by two to make asm1 a standard 1.0 machine gives the roundest numbers, but the tooltips stay useless for most of the game, because as soon as you start building asm2 - which is quite early in the game - you have to do division by 1.5 or 2.5 in your head. Synchronizes only half with a 1.0/2.0 furnace scheme. (If electric furnaces were boosted to 2.5 would make a nice match, but then chemistry has a different ratio again.)

Analysis of ASM2 normalization:
These are the actual numbers most people have to deal with in their factories. Lots of ugly 1/3rd fractions, but at least the tooltips are accurate. Trying to keep the numbers "nice" with 0.6/1.0/1.6 for the machines and keeping the original crafting times would be a 33% overall production boost, despite still not syncing with 1.0/2.0 furnaces.

Analysis of ASM3 normalization:
Tooltips are accurate in the endgame, and can be approximated in the early game be "roughly half of that". But ofc we don't want new players to be approximating right from the start *sigh*. The crafting times look nicely overall, even though getting used to 1/5ths might make some existing players uncomfortable ;). Also syncs nicely with a 0.5/1.0 furnace system.

Conclusion:
OK. Adjusting all assembling machines at once makes this much more difficult when trying to exactly preserve the current balance. Boosting asm2 production speed by 33% to 1.0 without changing any of the other numbers suddenly sounds like the sanest option again. It gives correct tooltips from early-game to mid-game, and keeps asm2 equal to steel furnaces (for 0.5/1.0) like described in the OP. For large factories nothing changes because they still need the four module slots of asm3 to mount productivity modules. Ratios only "break" compared to current if you mix different tiers of asm in a single assembly line (or mix assemblers with furnaces and chem plants). As long as you have seperate production blocks it only means that some of the production blocks can be smaller than before.

[ThaPear]

The crafting machines should definitely be normalized.
It makes no sense for the only machine that is able to craft a certain recipe to have a crafting speed other than 1.0.

Regarding assembly machines: 1/3 or 2/3 fractions is not a nice thing to calculate with, so I'd be in favor of normalizing to machine 1, if at all.
The problem with normalizing another value than it is now is that there will either be a player crafting speed that is not 1.0, or the machines will receive different crafting speeds than they have now, causing issues with existing saves. This is acceptable to me since I start a new game with every major release anyway.
Personally I calculate every recipe to be per second. If it's normalized to assembly machine 1 I'll only have to multiply by either 1.5 or 2.5 for machine 2 or 3.

[darkfrei]

We can also change the production speed with new technologies, but not with assembling machines tiers.

[Engimage]

I do totally agree with this point.
I would also vote for making Assembler 1 with a crafting speed of 1 as waaay many newcomers wonder why assembler produces slower than recipe states. Actually all basic machines should have a speed of 1 and upgrades go for multiples of that so you could clearly see a benefit from upgrading.

To add to the issue I would link my old suggestion
Recipe tooltip time accounting machine crafting speed