I’m not saying its broken, and i’m not saying we should get more oort out of it. I’m saying that if noone is using it, than it IS upto the devs to maybe take a ponder and think “ge wiz why is noone using it”.
Again, Who?
I’m not saying the concept is broken, and if it was being used i would 100% be in agreement that it doesn’t need fixing.
But surely you must understand that if something isn’t being used by anyone in any substantial quantity, maybe it DOES indeed need fixing?
I’m pretty sure its not exactly working as intended if next to noone is using it on a regular basis as I had previously established.
I understand now that you don’t see it as broken… I think I was just generalizing comments in the thread and not intentionally trying to mean you but not taking the time to explain it better. I apologize.
I understand that thought process but don’t try to ever approach things that way. I would question why the thing is needed first and that it fulfills a need. Then I would see if there are options that exist to solve that need before I created an asset. Then if it did need to exist I and it wasn’t performing I would look at trying to make it better.
Since I didn’t see an original problem that caused this asset to be created I can’t really see a need to look at how to fix it.
The asset and how it fits into the game is exactly working as intended. The developers designed it was an inverted scale of return (maybe not the best way to say it). I know this is true because I talked with James personally about it as Ollie (if I remember right he was the Dev that helped design) worked out the system. I don’t know all the specifics but basically that was the rough explanation.
Basically that you used more Oort to get longer fuel times. They were not going to give people the ability to have to fuel portals less without them having to pay something for it – in this case more Oort. This is consistent with how they have approached portals.
Now I do understand that people not using the asset can say that it appears it is not working as intended. Personally, though, I would say it another way - the asset people wanted was not delivered in the way they wanted it - e.g. more time between fueling without more Oort costs. So that caused it not to be used and create an appearance that there is a problem here due to it not being used.
I don’t have an exact list of who was for it and who was against it. Here are a variety of threads related to the discussions:
I can see how we have different ways of looking at it. I suppose now it’s up to the devs to decide if there still happy with it (assuming they even look through this thread).
For me personally, I don’t plan to use it unless it becomes atleast as efficient to do so. Given how unlikely this is, i’l leave it as is.
Wow, I didn’t expect this thread to go into a debate. It was just a question on the usefulness of the almagrams. Thank all of you for answering! But I do want to say one thing:
Thank you guys for keeping your debate open minded and calm! Seriously! @Xaldafax & @Vansten
I’d use them in all my portals if I could and I use all my portals weekly if not daily. I still don’t want to be bothered with having to carry Oort on me while I’m trying to go do something. And I don’t use the new fuel in my portals because it’s close to impossible to get enough Ichor to use in one portal let alone all of my portals
Once you do that, could you please let me know how it turns out in the end? As far as longevity goes. I’m curious,but cautious to spend the supplies needed. Thank you so much!
I would never use a fuel source (Oort Shards) to fuel something when the next processing step above that actually rewards less time. I am wasting Oort Shards and another resource, along with spark and the crafting time the machine uses (which could have been used to make something far more useful) to get a worse result.
That’s the reason nobody uses Oort Amal. It isn’t a cost effective fuel source. It doesn’t follow the same design concept of compacting coal. We’re also getting that next step up past regular compact coal (unless I am mistaken) and honestly it probably will be better than regular compact coal. Portal fuel should be absolutely no different. Even if it’s just merely twice as good, it won’t really be that big of a difference.
If developers didn’t want the hundreds upon hundreds of portals in the game like we have currently, they would have made meteors only spawn twice a day at best but that would have a trickling effect throughout the game as it would make Rough Oort way more rare and traveling would be way more expensive and that cripples the economy.
So pretty much Oort Amalgram is a huge waste of resources and time to craft. The math behind what you get doesn’t lie.
Not sure if this was stated, but…
Seems the amalgams are a “cost for convenience” sort of thing. Using the maths, It looks like 1 amalgam = 3 oort shards? Basically, an amalgam-filled portal should last 3x longer than an oort-filled one of equal size.
You loose the effectiveness of the raw oort shards in exchange for not needing to babysit a portal. I don’t think the amalgam was meant for stead use, but maybe for when you plan on a break and want to keep portals open while you’re away.
I think the cost/power loss of an amalgam is appropriate, but is much better for powering larger portal long term as they can eat through a stack of oort in just a few hours. Not everything in the world becomes more efficient when processed further- it can often just serve a different purpose.
The issue from the math someone did was that the larger the portals were, the less and less effective the amalgam became. The change was negligible for small 1x2 portals, and small but noticeable for 1x3s but was completely a waste for the largest of portals.
Why should portal fuel be exactly the same as fuel to heat up or cook a resource? They are different things an use cases. If we used coal to fuel portals like for electricity or something then maybe… but we do not. We use a special resource - Oort. So is completely acceptable that the compact system could be different.
The meteors do spawn in a specific case… people have found a way to take advantage and leverage the system to get more Oort than you would if you played it via the normal method. Players then took that extra Oort and used it for more portals…
The Devs don’t care about the amount of portals basically. It is different than that. They see it as a server port cost and rare items that is special. So they put a system around that.
They aren’t at fault if people are trying to fuel their portal drug obsession but aren’t happy about the returns.
How about the Devs allow us to compact the amalgams. Compact/Refined/Decorative Amalgam Oort Blocks. Suddenly, it’s worth it, and that color looks pretty awesome.
I could be totally wrong, but I thought James or a dev said that they prefer larger portals to numerous smaller ones for some reason. (Even though it seems that players prefer the smaller, cheaper, longer-lasting portals)
Maybe it has to do with accessing the world data each time you “look” at a portal or something? I dunno.
Yea one of them did say this, not sure what the exact reason was though. Technically speaking, if that’s the case they should just allow bigger jumps for less shard cost. I’d take improved server stability and convenience over whatever reason it is the way it is now.
Or they can just fix it and have refined fuel sources provide a better result. It isn’t consistent in how this works with every other fuel source in the game. Doesn’t matter that they are used for other things, the fact is it’s the only one that doesn’t follow that same design principle. It kind of already is Compact Oort Shards anyways.
I think it works already for really small portals, but for larger ones not so much because of the oort shard cost per hour goes up pretty quickly and that cuts directly into the cost to benefit of Oort Amalgam.
I do think it might be worth using it to exclusively fuel small 2x2 (1 shard per hour cost) portals to use as doorways between builds or to create your own elevator system inside your main base. But to fuel something like portal hubs and networks, not at all worth it because of the scarcity of the ichor on top of the limited time and coin to acquire the rough oort or oort shards to continue to fuel all the portals but I don’t think there’s a single individual that’s fueling an entire portal hub or network all by themselves. I think all of them are managed by a group of people.
Right now the difference between the Mass Craft of 100 Oort Amalgam and 324 Oort Shards used in that Mass Craft is about 4 hours. This doesn’t seem like a lot but when comparing it to fueling larger portals, time to acquire Meteor Ichor (rare and very limited) along with the 25k spark (Amalgam craft) compared to even 2 Mass Crafts of Oort Shards (20k), the Oort Shards come out on top every time.
I think individuals would rather seek a more abundant fuel source for their portals that is going to net them, overall that is, more time for the effort involved in acquiring it. Crafting times are the same too, 75 minutes, but one gives more fuel time plus requires less resources to get and is more abundant.
In specifically in terms of balance, Oort Amalgam is a complete waste of time to craft for the net loss in actual portal fueling time. On top of that, the Meteor Ichor wasted probably is better served in just being stockpiled or sold to another player for coin (personally I’d stockpile it for future crafting recipes).
Yes they would prefer that because of the server ports etc. But I don’t think they really have put a limit on the amount and instead just offer the options… large = fuel often, small = fuel less. I think they expected people to use portals to jump here and there and not fully connect every planet in one central location. Then do that for 8+ people… etc. They just see them as special so it requires effort and lots of Oort.
Again portals are a different thing that cooking meat or melting iron. It is not the same type of fuel.
It would matter what servers the worlds sat on and a likely many things. I wouldn’t assume 1 is better than the other until we say actual figures and full technical specifics around costs, etc.