(POLL) How many portals should we have?

General
1

How many portals should the average person to reasonably expect to be able to run? (per week)

I was looking back on some posts, saw there were a lot of people wanting more ways to get Oortstone, talking about about the lack of Oortstone or Oortstone being too expensive. Got me thinking, how many portals are people expecting to be able to run? (Are these people complaining, over estimating how many portals a single person should have?)

I have never had an Oortstone problem… I’m not a hunter and I have about 10 portals that I run.

Should portals be something people can run loads of without the help of others? Should a portal network be possible with a few people?

I read somewhere that the devs didn’t predict that players would be making portal networks the size they are today (TNT Hub for example). So maybe the initial intent of portals was to make them a rare connection that multiple people would contribute, connecting 2 popular areas/settlements.

I personally think if the average person did 1 large hunt per week for an hour or 2, how much Oortstone would that allow someone to get. Then THAT amount would be a reasonable amount of ‘portals’ someone could expect to run.

So:

  • Oortstone needs to be more common
  • Oortstone should be a rare item
  • Fine as is

0 voters

7 Likes
2

We defiantly need the updated fuels, but I have tons of extra oort I’m saving for then, and I don’t go hunting that often.

3 Likes
3

Yes. Group dynamics were expected to support portals of size. The baseline assumption if (I remember right) was that a person should be able to support 1 1x2 portal with basic effort. Anything beyond that was not designed for a single player to easily do. Also they were assuming people would use more planet to planet single use portals paid by coin.

On a side note, I did extensive discussions with James about increasing Oort and how that might look. It was not an easy sell because of how the early game is and Oort not being available on lower planets.

3 Likes
4

I think Oort is fine as it is. But as Samski said. The compact Oort to be used as fuel that was supposed to come out with the update was something I was really looking forward to. And make life so much better.

4 Likes
5

If the next update the adds Compact Oort as a fuel that would solve everything lol

1 Like
6

I think people will still not be happy because they still kept it close to 1-1 resources if I remember right. So I’m not sure how much extra time you get. I didn’t test it though so I might be wrong.

7

Hello…

Have over 54 Portals in the beginning running for my Sovs, but meanwhile only 28 Portals.
I do not Hunt everyday, build and farm most time and real Life ; )
Always have not enough Oort for all Portals.
And i vote for 10 Portals for free on Sovereign Planets ; ), only one Portal to Sovereign costs Oort, all other on Planet for free. ok ok, we can probably dream ; )

Helmut (Tarah)

1 Like
8

I think compact Oort solves the “have to log in every day or else” problem, not the number of oort required to grind problem. At 1:1 fuel conversion on compacting, it’s 10 times more time between fuellings.

9

When I feel like playing a game that forces me to grind I’ll play one of the many themepark MMOs.

Boundless, for me, is just a happy place where I build and rebuild my ever growing workshop… because I can. I enjoy grinding for stuff I need to expand my build, like coils or bricks.

I do not enjoy to grind for anything that’s only used as upkeep cost. I’m not going to hunt. If I feel like playing some combat I’ll log into ESO and run a dungeon.

It doesn’t matter if they tweak the Oort you get from a hunt as I’m… not going to hunt!

I’d love to reconnect my farms or add some portals inside my workshop but not enough to actually grind for it. There was a time where you could pay for the Oort with footfall. But there are to many farms, not enough player and heavy nerfed footfall.

I would play more if I could connect my builds without going to an external web site to find Oort and pay for it with stuff i farmed to put in my minter…

2 Likes
10

My biggest problem with oort/portals/hunts is timing issues mostly. If transits would work faster, i would be pretty ok with them. However they are really slow for the most part.

My other problem is that i have to go out of my way to do hunts, because they normally are not in my playtime.

2 Likes
11

I run a small portal hub on Sochaltin I with Artemida for folks that don’t wish to be directly connected to larger hubs … like a portal buffer or portal proxy, if you will.

Now Bath House hub is great n’all, but I don’t make enough to run the kind of portals that I’d like there. I hunt maybe a couple of times a month? But I find it mentally exhausting (on the boring scale) which is no reflection on the hunt leaders (who are amazing) but on my zero desire levels to do this in order to be able to run portals.

I think if I could vote for it, I would pick somewhere between it’s and more common. :+1:

2 Likes
12

I would totally vote for a more condensed version of fuel. Having anything that is more than 1x2 means full stack of oort keeps the portal for about 1 week or so.
For this I see 2 solutions… either have higher levels of oort shards to fuel for longer, or… a more easier to implement I guess would be to have more slots on the portal, and that could be dynamic with the portal size, probably a 50% of number of portal blocks to be for fuel storage space, with a limit of 32-34, whatever is the max storage space of a chest.
Something like:

1x2 portal - 1 storage space
1x3 portal - 1 storage space (round down)
2x2 portal - 2 storage space
…
20x20 portal - 32 storage space

In my opinion any solution would be good, and an improvement to what we have now.

Edit:
Not intending to be rude, but @Ovis, the pull options are not that conclusive with the title question taken without reading the description :smiley:.

13

As im managing 2 hubs now. Hosting/Fueling a few big portals now (even a few small ones) i have to say it helps a lot having a fairly active hub (a lot of traffic) to keep up with the oort cost (I only hunt if i have to).

That said having a “few” small ones are pretty easy to keep fueled for example 1x2 fully fueled gives me 5 weeks to refeul, 1x3 2weeks (drawing from memory but believe its almost 3 weeks), 2x2/1x4 around 2 weeks…
Bigger ones have to be fueled every week (or within days).

Your location well connected is a plus side but its hard to keep up with active networks… as the most active ones to my knowledge are Tigg’s (small but still alive after all these years), Ultima, TNT and GTG.
That said if it isn’t needed don’t, save that trouble as you can easily find a route to get everywhere in just a few portal hops (like going from GTG to Ultima to TNT). Hubs and networks are usually hooked up with each other to maximize traffic and cover additional costs like oort.

I do understand locations to be easily reachable especially for shops but we could also add an address in the beacon for portal routes.

For example my shop is on Lamblis.
In my beacon i could add for the fastest route;

  • TNT W. W meaning world as in on planet.
  • TNT M. M meaning main as in main hub.
    That way you can see o i have to look at TNT main/world hub to find said connection. This also works for other networks like GTG/ULT/TIG…. (Needs tweaking for ultima but still would work)

Point being yeah oort has gone up but if there is no point in the expense cut it and use the cheapest available options.

Personally im hoping on better portal fuel (no amalgam isn’t worth the cost) that will give me more time fueled, especially for the big portals.

To make oort cheaper its a yes and no…. Yes i can buy more oort, no it’s less profitable for the hunters to go out and hunt for me :wink: (as i buy the oort).

Also sorry if i missed any Networks.

1 Like
14

The iron horse shoe TNT W
Is the closest portal to that shop as it doesn’t have a portal. (So you would have to go to TNT Lamblis).

15

the whole compact oort was not about getting way more efficient fuel - just to be able to get more time from the oort slot on larger portals, so one won’t have to remember to fuel every 5 days

in general current balance is ok-ish, but ability to shove more oort into portals would be of great help

2 Likes
16

Other option would be to adjust time per shard so more time per shard. Seems like that would be an easier change to make. Probably a couple numbers to change.

17

The compact oort change is done and live on the beta version of the game.

1 Like
18

I only have about 4 portals, less than most of my friends.

I wish the portals would fuel closer to how beacons do, or even the spark generator setup where it consumes the material and keeps an internal balance. Let us build a month up if we have the resources rather than having all these portals that are on different timers needing to be refueled on their own schedule.

I have one big portal that leaves my little hub, and I keep forgetting that I need to refill it twice as often as all the little bitty 2 block ones. Keep shelling out the re-opening fee.

2 Likes
19

One thing I really hate is the fact that opening portals between EU and US region planets that are both T1 or T2 can be expensive. I was thinking of connecting to Major Vex’s Tutorial planet from my base on Finata and it would require a 3x6 portal. I can’t justify the upkeep of it just now. I think regardless of region all T1 and T2 planets should be able to connect via 1x2 portals.

In a game with a worldwide, but small, community it would make more sense to make connecting the community easier.

I can see the merit in making the higher tier planets more costly in terms of Oort, but the low tier worlds shouldn’t have prohibitive travel costs.

3 Likes
20

A couple, IMO.

First question, yes. There’s playstyles to consider and for an “average” player to be able to “easily” support a single portal - there will always be an avid hunter who can do that 20 times in a week or something.

Second question, I think so, yes. “portal network” covers a lot of ground, though. Some people refer to a large hub as a network, honestly. 2 - 3 of the hunters mentioned above and some builders are going to be able to maintain a multi-planet network. In the current game balance, it really takes less than 10 (assuming at least half are ‘avid’ hunters) to keep an all-planets network. This is acceptable because:

We want our average player to be able to easily maintain at least one portal.

This is a bit more specific. “1 large hunt” I’ll assume a group hunt with several experienced hunters at T4 running until inventory is full. Our guy isn’t an avid hunter so he’s going to fill up and bow out. The hunt may go 90 minutes but he’ll be good with let’s say about 216 rough oort (a multiple of 18). People can call me out if that’s way off - it’s been a while since I hunted.

216 rough = 12 mass extractions = 3000 oort shards.

3 stacks is 2700 so if this player wants a portal to one or two multi-planet networks on their home planet, and maybe a ‘local’ shop they’re fine for the next 5 weeks and change. From dipping in on one “good” hunt.

Maybe a 1x2 to the local TNT hub and a 2x4 to something on a nearby planet. It’s still going to be fuel for something like a month.

If they want a portal directly to the TNT main hub it’s 8 blocks and a shard stack per week from almost any planet. Three and a half weeks or so, from the one(partial) hunt.

In the current game balance I’d say it’s pretty easy, and that’s ok. Making it harder would mean more trouble for the little guy (average player) and cause some other issues(?) like player concentration, lack of variety, etc…

I think anybody that plays the game for a minute should be able to support a single portal. Right now even someone who is just semi-competent soloing T3 could easily maintain 1 portal with less than an hour focus on hunting per week. If they’re willing to go with a large group to a higher tier, an hour per month is more than enough for a couple small portals.

I think things are good in terms of having options and being able to get pretty much everywhere. The cost seems to be manageable, price has been stable for a while and could possibly go down - not important though there are plenty of hoarders satisfied with the current market.

I agree with others the balance is good but the time requirements are more intense and I think that this is a good way to balance this part of the game. Even if you have all the oort it really requires a team to develop a sense of reliability and reputation as a solid network when portals are running out of fuel every 4,6,7,12, and 30 days or whatever the variances are.

I miss the compact oort update honestly more than the swords :frowning:

1 Like