I understand that BL doesn’t want portals all over the place. However, without any other means to travel, besides portals or walking, portals are a huge necessity. (I think if we could build vehicles or had a creature to ride and travel faster, we might use portals less).
What if you had to take all of the current steps to create & fuel a portal…with one change…
as long as your beacon is live/fueled, your portal would stay open.
Side note:
I noticed awhile back that oortstone was on the resource tab in some planets. Will we be able to mine oortstone as ore in the future?
I get what you are saying, but then the trade of oortstones would die.
And as about the only item that has a stable price range in this game it would severely damage the economy, and then all the issues that go with that further down the line.
I would like a portal that stays “alive” while it’s on an active beacon plot.
Everyone would be able to focus more on other things, rather than having to watch a portal every day.
There could be minimums to open the portal, since the fueled beacon would keep it alive. So to open a 1x2 it could be 250 shards, 2x2 could be 500 shards, 4x4 1000 shards, etc.
And maybe oort can be used in other forms of fuel in the future, or integrated into armor/weapons/tools/machines, to keep it’s value.
I think the system is fine as it is currently. Portals provide huge benefits and should require upkeep to keep them.
The alternative of travel is totem with warp augments which is hardly used anymore due to abundance of portals. Portals became the normality and we got used to them. That is why they are not valued as something special providing huge comfort anymore.
Fueling them is also not a big issue. I dont have a trained hunter yet but my lvl 18 alt with silver gear is already able to collect about 60 oort stones per hour on a T3 world. Mass crafting those is around 830 shards or a month of the smallest portal. Such a portal is already enough to connect to a portal hub and have access to the whole universe. A better character and joining big hunts yields even more oort reducing required time per month further.
If they change anything, I hope they make compact fuel. I know that it isn’t a huge popular opinion…as it could keep inactive portals open for longer, but it would be really nice to farm a huge amount of Oort and not have to worry about my portals every month.
Similar to how beacon fuel works. I use the largest beacon fuel in my builds…so I don’t have to worry about it. Would love that for my portals.
I also think that compacting the fuel should reduce the efficiency but grant convenience.
So if 100 shards equals 1 week on a 1x2 portal (just made up numbers)
Then if you compact those 100 shards into 1 compact oort it would only provide 6 days on a 1x2 portal.
But since you can put 900 compact oort into that one slot, the portal could stay open ‘net’ longer…but you lost some of the efficiency you would have if you refilled it everyday.
Again, just my idea, not suggesting it for everyone.
I have to say that I think this is a terrible idea. Portals are already very easy to maintain. I didn’t come to Boundless to play creative mode. This proposal would make portals the litter/trash of the Boundless universe. If someone is having difficulty maintaining their portals, they should take it as a hint that they may be over-extended.
Maybe majorvex is trying to propose something so completely ridiculous that people will compromise on compact oort shards, lol. (I do support compact oort shards.)
lol I wouldn’t mind compact oort - but if there were compact oort that allowed longer fueling, wouldn’t that get closer to what I’m suggesting? If people don’t need to obtain as much oort or as often, wouldn’t that also cause the demand for oort to wavier?
I think if we had more methods to generate coin people wouldn’t be so protective of oort/shards. I am not over-extended on portals & don’t run a network, but I see over & over some hubs having a lot of difficulty maintaining their portals. The problem seems to never get better.
I wouldn’t touch BL again if it became “creative mode”. So I agree with you 100% there.
I get it. Its frustrating to fuel those.
We kinda have alrdy a “faster mount” its called fast brew.
Only thing you are missing is “mount” while im rly wanting some sort of transportation vehicle ingame it should not travel faster than normal char with fast brew
I think it would nice to keep the fuel time of the portals between 20 and 30 days. Its indeed a pain to keep them open. But from the networks persective it is nice to keep the shops connected that are active. So when beacon fuel is extended to months or half year, like the beacons. The portals stay way longer open keeping the spot occupied. Its not a big deal if there is plenty of space. But for the shopper it is annoying to go into an abandoned shop.
“Better” fuel or portals scaling with fuel slots like spark generators would be nice to have so that bigger portals wouldn’t have to be fueled so often.
I’m more in favor of using spark to fuel vehicles but I am 100% in favor of having to fuel them.
I think just adding a slot for fuel for portals that are 12 portal blocks or bigger would be fine (I broke down the math a long time ago on this, i think 12 was the happy spot, might have been 10). I feel that the the largest portals should be able to be fueled for at least 1 week at a time (about 1600ish shards, but we can only load 900 now). I don’t think portals that can only be just over a week old are truly “abandoned” but having to remember to drop another stack in there once every 4 days is maybe just a little too much hassle.
edit: Speaking of which, i need to message my wife to drop some fuel in my large portal. I think it expires early tomorrow morning and I don’t want to forget to log on when I get home from work late tonight.
If I had my way, I would make the maximum oort a portal can hold be a fixed amount of time, instead of a fixed amount of shards. I’m not in favor of reducing the cost of portals.
Darn it
- but if there were compact oort that allowed longer fueling, wouldn’t that get closer to what I’m suggesting? 
If people don’t need to obtain as much oort or as often, wouldn’t that also cause the demand for oort to wavier?