[FEEDBACK] Testing 234 - Review individual machine's "health points"

[NerArth]

Because these features are being added/worked on:

@james

• Update the Machine/Power Coil HUD info to show a bar reflecting the combined wear of full Machine and Power Coil network so that the bar will only show as fully repaired if the Machine and all coils are repaired.
• Adjust the recently added Spanner behaviour so that the Machine and Power Coils will now repair at the same rate by biasing to repair the engines more than the Machine as the engines have more durability.

This is probably the best time for me to bring this up again… Please, make machine health points uniform across the board. I don’t know why this discrepancy exists, but I’m guessing it’s the legacy of an old design decision?

---

For reference, currently the values are as follows:

Workbench: 2,000 hp
Extractor: 2,000 hp
Mixer: 4,000 hp
Spark Generator: 8,000 hp
Refinery: 10,000 hp
Compactor: 10,000 hp
Centraforge: 10,000 hp

This has always seemed really odd to me ever since I noticed it. The thing is, spanners all repair for specific base values only dependent on their tier – 10k for each of the gem spanners and varying values for each of the 5 materials below gem.

And then coils, as far as I can tell, all have a uniform health anyway (different for normal and advanced though?), which does not get matched by their machines in some cases… (see further below)

I know that recipes for all the machines have widely varied values of wear, which for the most part feel fine for each specific machine, so my suggestion would be to make all machines have properly uniformised health values, be that 2k or 10k or whatever…

And then, for any machines where the max health has changed, change the wear proportionally so that in terms of wear % taken by a recipe, it then still feels the same way as before, but meanwhile all the hp values might actually start making more sense…

---

Then, as mentioned briefly above, we also have things like this, with Chrysominter coils, where they wear out before the machine does:

As you can see the health bar is still partially filled, but when looking at the coils will say worn out.
With the debug info I can see that these chryso coils have -0.14 in the durability variable and the machine has 0.24.

I feel this is an issue because then the new collective health bar feature is no longer accurate in this situation.

I can’t remember if this happens with any other machine+coil combination and I’ll try to check, but it’s difficult to test quickly since there’s no way on testing to set the current wear of a machine/coil to a specific value and there isn’t a way of insta-completing a recipe.

---

I hope I articulated myself properly – to be honest this isn’t as big a deal as I may seem to be making out, but I feel that since the machine health bars are being looked at in this version of testing, this may be one of the only appropriate times to have a look at this before development moves on to the other issues/content.

[Xaldafax]

Maybe I misunderstand but I feel that machines should have different levels of health. Each do certain things and shouldn’t be uniform…

[Coolpants]

But the chrysominter coils wearing more quickly than the machine itself makes the health bar for the machine misleading. For example, the coils will be completely worn out after 4 stacks of ancient essence are minted but the machine can do 5 before being worn out. It’s a little inconvenient, I agree

[DKPuncherello]

I didn’t know this. Interesting.

[NerArth]

@Xaldafax

I feel that machines should have different levels of health. Each do certain things and shouldn’t be uniform…

Could you be more specific on why you think they should indeed have different health values?

---

Note: My argument here is that spanners are all pretty much standard and uniform, as are coils, so why are machines themselves different and non-uniform? There doesn’t seem to be a discernable reason for it other than “just because”.

And let me add again, I think the relative amount of wear taken by all the recipes seems fine, so there has to be no change there, other than making the wear relatively the same in %, should the max health points change. In practice, the main outcome from altered health values is that every machine and its coils becomes properly predictable in how many hits etc. it takes to repair.

[Xaldafax]

@Coolpants

For example, the coils will be completely worn out after 4 stacks of ancient essence are minted but the machine can do 5 before being worn out. It’s a little inconvenient, I agree

I don’t know the reason that they are “less” than the chrysominter but I can see how that could make sense since they are a small bonus. I am not sure we should use certain resources as a tase to level them.

@NerArth

Could you be more specific on why you think they should indeed have different health values?

Each machine comes as you skill up your character. So for that reason alone I could see a need to link them to larger health. It creates a simple progression.

I am fine with coils being the same values because once you can make them you can make them all. There wasn’t a progression in skill only resources required.

@NerArth

As you can see the health bar is still partially filled, but when looking at the coils will say worn out.

Back to your original post, I do think this NEEDS to be fixed. Now that coils are linked to the machine a bit differently we should be able to see both bars. But, this might be a programming thing in that the don’t monitor it that way. Without more information on how they actually track health of the machines I’m not sure how things might change in this area.

[Nightstar]

@NerArth

Could you be more specific on why you think they should indeed have different health values?

I do tend to process larger batches and/or higher wear recipes in the machines with more hit points.

I also tend to do large extraction runs, and hadn’t realized the machine’s durability was so low. This implies to me that it’s fairly well balanced vs. the other machines for the amount of use you would expect to get from it vs. the wear requirements of common recipes.

As for the spanner repair amount, I think it’s reasonable that the ‘largest’ spanner would match/approach the damage of the ‘largest’ machines. With a range of spanners available those that didn’t want the waste could use a more appropriate spanner for the lower level machines.

With the new coil system it’s; even less of a concern.

On the chrysominter coil issue, the only player comment that ever seemed to make sense of this for me is that these aren’t advanced coils, which is basically what most everyone in the game is used to using on their machines.

I have never tried to verify that regular workbench coils, for instance, would perform similarly and run out of durability well before the attached machine. It would make sense though, that they have less durability but still take the same wear when used.

With that in mind i’m not really sure why balancing to the non-advanced coil ratio was decided. It could be an indicator of advanced coils to come but IMO is more likely a matter of just matching the other system.

It does add a bit of a challenge though I frequently lose a few coins to get a reminder of this when i have a large amount of something to mint.

[DKPuncherello]

I’ve thought for a long time that it would be useful to have advanced machines. They’d have no bonus other than being shiny (I presume they’d use refined titanium in the recipe) and having more maximum hp (wear). Quick and easy to model and implement; doesn’t create a crafting wall; benefits higher level crafters; new items to sell.