Oort Amalgam Question

General
1

Currently you can create Oort Amalgam. Oort Amalgam allows you to fuel portals for longer (convenience) then the normal time limit allowed by just 999 Oort Shards.

I am confused though why you always lose time.

Single Craft: 18 shards (plus 4 Ichor) = 4 Amalgam
Bulk Craft : 72 shards (plus 16 Ichor) = 10 Amalgam
Mass Craft : 324 shards (plus 72 Ichor) = 100 Amalgam

What seems odd here is why an additional item was added to craft it…but you actually lose efficiency.

Using the Bulk and Mass Craft as examples:

Bulk:
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VS
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8 Hours Lost per bulk craft. (Approx 396 hours lost if you used Bulk crafts to get up to 999 for a portal)

Mass (used a larger portal so you can see hours):
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VS
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4 hours lost per mass craft. (Approx 40 hours lost to get 999 for a portal)

I understand trading efficiency for convenience, but why then add an additional item to the cost? If we are just going to lose efficiency…why not just let us make Oort Amalgam with Oort Shards?

I would think having to farm another item would at least result in an even trade and not lose efficiency?

This impacts portal hubs the most, but I am curious why this direction?

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2

Pretty underwhelming honestly. For pure cost efficiency it’s better to just use the shards.

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3

Why are you going off 999 when a ss is 900

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4

delete this plz

5

Likely an inverted curve. You are getting a huge time benefit so you should pay more. It should not be a 1-1 ratio. Plus the additional item makes sense.

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6

the thread or your post?

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8

Just an oversight while creating the post. You are right, should be 900…though I guess the point still stands.

9

Why both though. it’s less efficient AND you need a new item? why not leave the efficiency and just require 2 new items instead of 1.

I guess what I’m saying is: some players may use this, but I think larger guilds will not… maybe I"m wrong, but spending more money to get less not really a good trade. I get that you have to fuel it less often but the budget lines are pretty tight as it is already… I can’t imagine making a decision to make it tighter.

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10

You’re trading fuel efficiency for portal longevity. Can’t have it all. I would ignore the new fuel if you don’t need the longevity. Like how it’s bad to use greater beacon fuel if you’re on often enough to chop the leaves for regular fuel. Same trade-off

11

if you hit the show more button on your post you shod be able to see a trash can where you can delete it

12

Only real use I see is for when you’re suddenly away from PS4/PC for a bit. Otherwise it’s a total waste of oort shards…

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thanks completly forgot about this one ^^ appreciate :slight_smile:

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completly agreed :frowning: i though this might be a good solution but when i saw the ratios it was not so good of a solution anymore. sad ;( cause that would be epic QoL if the amalgam was at least same efficiency ;/

15

But why not? For an extra rare ingredient, crafting time, spark, and increased power requirement you should get efficiency AND longevity. It is a significantly more expensive form of fuel.

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Disclaimer: Everything mentioned below is speculation/conjecture and doses not reflect rather or not I agree or disagree with how it was done, It is just what I think as to the „Why“ the devs did this.

Most likely to add a barrier to entry, I assume they don’t want this fuel being made from the current standard meteor hunts, and this is a way to force people to go to the T7 if they want to farm this fuel.

I think the devs are purposefully making this unattractive, It is not an purely upgraded version of fuel, it is a fuel you can use in the event you do not want to spend as much time going about and fueling portals, It is not a fuel that was designed to make everything easier, and become the clear choice that it is the fuel that needs to be used and is the clear winner.

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17

I think the number of situations you’d want to use the amalgam will be so low that ichor value will be trash so there goes the barrier of entry. If this is meant to ease big portals, 3x longer portal times won’t be worth the efficiency loss for most. I might fuel 1x2’s with it, but not bigger ones. We’ll see I guess :slight_smile:

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18

I feel the same. I might fuel my one personal portal (1x2) with it to make it stay open longer…but for any continuous use or large portals this fuel just isn’t worth it.

I hope a new fuel is coming. With Oort being able to compacted into a block it will be all the more difficult to buy it. Portal Networks could use a little ease of maintaining…even if it is just a break even trade…not looking for an upgrade.

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19

I’ll probably use the new fuel in all my portals. I don’t like having to fuel them all the time so I don’t mind the small sacrifice.

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20

I thought that this fuel would be for large portals, but the lost fuel is the worst on large portals.

Take a portal that needs to move you from Alycon to Maurakrib. Because of the blink distance, it needs to be large and the only way to get to that planet.

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4days and 16 hours = 112 hours

If you use the new fuel that will mean you will get 336 hours or 14 days at the cost of 40 hours. That is 12% of your fuel time you loose in Oort Shards.

If you compare that with a small portal:

1x2 portal is 5 weeks 2 days when fully fueled or 37 days or 888 hours

Using the new fuel you get 2,664 hours or 111 days or 15 weeks and 6 days. That means the lost of 40 hours vs that 2,664 hour timer is only 1%.

This pans out over time. Fueling a 1x2 portal with this fuel over a year means you only loose ~120 hours of fuel, which is just a few shards.

If you fuel the above portal only with amalgam for one year, you loose ~1,040 hours of fuel. That means you would need to lose just over 3 stacks of Oort Shards just to use the Amalgam on a large portal for one year.

The problem ramps up quickly with large portals, and I thought this Amalgam was supposed to be the solution for large portals? It punishes large portals far more than small ones, so that can’t be the solution.

Here are dev posts suggesting that increasing Oort fuel would help:

I thought this would be the solution, but it doesn’t fill the role…

I would love insight on this. Is the math off? Is it intentional? Is there a solution for larger portals that won’t cost a fortune to have need a refill at a reasonable time?

Big portals are good for the server:

I want to point out I am not adding these dev notes to suggest that communicating an idea has somehow locked them into delivering a specific product. I totally understand that along the way development changes and I appreciate the Dev’s willingness to share information with us and their thoughts. The math just seems off here and I want to share why I THINK it might be a problem compared to some expectations of what I thought the fuel was supposed to do. If a Dev came in here and was like “Yea, that is what we thought, but we changed direction and it is working as intended” I would totally understand and not have anymore questions! I would open a suggestion thread looking to have what I thought this was going to do! <3

7 Likes
21

did this get fixed or should I add it to the extensive “garbage” list I have going.