Spoilage Mitigation

[rommager]

Ok, we know the rules:

Food spoilage is 1/2
Energy spoilage is 1/3
Smithore and Crystite are 50 units

What do you think of a way to implement "Spoilage Mitigation"?  A way to reduce (or maybe eliminate) spoilage.  Obviously, it just can not be a set it and forget it mentality...  It also makes it more possible to become the food or energy magnate.   If it weren't for spoilage, things could get more interesting.  I have two main ideas.  They can be mutually exclusive or work together:

1) You can buy an anti-spoilage unit that is good to protect from any spoilage for one turn.  That way if you want to hoard the max amount of food over the course of the game, you have to keep running back and forth between town and your plots.  So long as you can sustain putting anti-spoilage devices on each plot, you can hoard as much as you want.  If you it installed on every plot, then there will be no spoilage during that turn.  In an example where you don't have this installed on every plot, consider this example:  If you have 30 extra food, and 3 food plots, but you only have 2 plots protected, you would be protected from 2/3 of your spoilage.  Normal spoilage here would be 15, but your actual realized spoilage would be 5.  If you want to keep hoarding, then you need to run back and forth between town and your plots every turn (or it can last for 2 turns, if needed) to reinstall new protection devices.  How you spend your time per turn, of course depends on you!

2) You can buy some sort of permanent add on to negate (but not eliminate) spoilage on one plot.  This upgrade can reduce the spoilage rate for that plot by say 50% or 75% (actual percentage to be balanced).  The upgrade could be locked to a commodity, for instance, silos for food, capacitors for energy, and storage for mining.   This permanent anti-spoilage mechanism could cost some $$$ to buy, then also cost your plot 1 production unit (net) per turn to have the advantage of lower spoilage rate.  This makes it handy for outlying plots that are far away from town.

I think it kind of enhances the idea of prospecting and hoarding, bringing it to a whole new level.

Thoughts?

[Intergalactic Mole]

Sounds very much like the idea to allow protection from pirates.

See the debate about that here:

http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=459.0


Honestly I don't see much difference between that and what you are suggesting. 

[data2008]

We had a version for Planet Mule, where we tested so called "upgrades".

Upgardes could be bought in the colony inside a shop called "Plant" or "Laboratory", replacing the Land Sale shop.

Those upgrades included: Watertank for Food, Powerplant for Energy, Mining Tower and the Depot.
The Depot was against Pirates, the others for better production value.

It was kind of terraforming, too, as it influenced the plots next to it with NEGATIVE mod bonus:
The Mining Tower influenced Energy due to smoke, the Powerplant influenced Food and the Watertank was erroding Smithore Mining... so it was Paper/Stone/Scissor... only the Depot was neutral and defended against Pirates.

It turned out not that satisfying in real play though, so we skipped that concept completely...
I'm not saying it won't work in some other version or context, but ultimately it may be better to think of some "real fifth good" as compared to the appraoch to "waste plots" with some secondary enhancement that gives bonusses by preventing spoilage or give assurance against a single event (pirates), as then either every player wants/needs one or no one wants one... (thats why PR makes most of their additional buildings really "wantable" but at the same time limits them to 2 of the same kind per game).

[rommager]

I guess the thought was to make it easier to have larger stockpiles of say food and energy without as much of the spoilage penalty.  This is distinctly different from pirate protection, which I am against (because it's a single event and not a major gameplay element).  The idea of plot upgrades still sounds interesting, but it sounds like they were pretty complicated before. 

I have thought about my idea more, and it does have its share of issues.  For instance, if the idea is to protect a commodity by upgrading the plots that produce it, then what about commodities you buy?  In my idea, I guess they would still be prone to spoilage.

Anyway, it sounds like the idea was play tested and didn't work out.  I would still be interested in trying a single player game of that prototype at some point though.  (if anyone still has it)

[rommager]

Also, why do those icons suddenly bring back memories of SimCity?  LOL 

[data2008]

Maybe its because the plots of original mule inspired will wright to do simcity, as he cites mule as having a major impact on him and dedicated the sims to dan bunten later?

[Jaradakar]

It's an interesting idea but it also moves away from the base concept of:

1) Get land
2) Outfit MULE
3) Install Mule
4) Create goods.

In some ways I think it would be cleaner if you were forced to choose; Install mule to create goods -or- use plot of land to increase storage.

So in effect you would outfit your mule to be a storage device and use a plot of land to reduce spoilage.  Of course spoilage is a bit more of an advance concept.  Most beginning players I'd say don't know or even worry about it.  Adding this outfit option adds yet another option that players have to figure out, "what does this do?".  "Why should I build it?" and it might not be very apparent right away.

In some ways the spoilage amounts allow the designers to control how the game is played...