I think there’s a similar thread about this, but I can’t seem to find it.
Anyway, so this whole fuel consumption on bigger portals, even if the blinksec distance is shorter is relatively annoying.
One of the reasons I would really like to have larger portal sizes is due to the better portal frame you can make from it.
A portal of 10 portal conduits is affordable, atleast a couple when it comes to a smaller group of people like the one I am playing with consisting of about 20 people or so, but wanting to go up to above 15 portal conduits and the fuel expense starts to really hurt.
The issue here is that, with smaller sized portals there’s no real way to get proper detailed portal frames into it, without making it often look very similar to everything else out there - a portal of 10 blocks has to be either very tall or very wide, a portal of 15 starts to get there, but its still feels like an ultra wide screen display rather than that of an actual portal.
I get that we might be stuck with larger fuel consumption on larger portals even if the blinksec distances is relatively low - but would a compromise such as still having larger fuel consumption but have it mixed in with the distance, so that it could be lower still because of a reduced blinksec distance ?
Sure you might see larger portals pop up around more places, but is that such a bad thing ;o ?
It still costs quite a bit of resources and quite a bit of spark to mass produce portal conduits, and you’d generally need more space anyway to fill up portals for portal hubs as well.
I would REALLY love to make a larger portal, since I got an idea in mind that I would love to create, I just know that at this point, I wouldn’t be able to fuel it, let alone remember to refuel it due to the really low amount of fuel you can put into a single portal at any given time.
one of the devs said himself that servers would work better with less larger portals than they do with a lot of small ones, so why not encourage that happening by making long distance portals cost significantly less per blinksec?
I took a look now and it is actually getting a lot cheaper per blinksec (when distance go up 4 times, the cost only 2 times etc.).
So, how to encourage players to go for larger jumps? Maybe make 1-3 blinksec portals really expensive like double of what we have now? Or maybe make portals for over 4 blinksec travels only and below that warp would be the only travel option?
However, this kind of messing with balance here would be unfair towards all of the network builders as that would require a massive rework of existing connections.
So, I suppose better if all stays kinda the same?
Just thinking out loud here. Don’t have a firm opinion on it.
They want or wanted an individual to be able to maintain a portal. I think we would need to consider where A player would want to run a portal. Probably from their home or shop to a portal hub or maybe the planet capital. I think making this more expensive to run makes it too hard for an individual and just forces all portals into the realm of a group activity. That would be a shame. It is a great experience to open and run your own portal.
I understand where reducing portals might help based on developers comments. My concern is by increasing costs you make portal hubs a group activity. You create more congestion and building around the hubs since no individual an afford to portal from the hub to their own place on the other side of the planet. I think we end up with huge cities and most people trying to live around the hubs compared to being more spread out now. This might in the end make congestion worse with most players in huge clumps around the hubs.
Question. If my portals is between points on the same planet, does the user of portal only count as one player on the world? If yes then portals between points on the same world are not creating the congestion. If no, they count where they are and where they are looking, can this be addressed?
The cost for larger portals are still very steep - 3 days in the most extreme cases and no way to add more fuel to extend this amount makes it very difficult to maintain, and even to remember to refuel
Also personally I don’t think increasing the cost of portals is the way to go, especially considering that the vast amount of portals that you find in hubs aren’t actually run by the hub owners, but by others who buy the tokens to link up to them.
