Advisor Boost Balance

Dreamnomad
Dreamnomad Member Posts: 3,591

I'm finally reaching the stage where I'll soon have everything I care about unlocked. So where I'll spend those extra resources will become quite relevant. Which leads me to the topic at hand. There seem to be some issues with balance when it comes to advisor boost imho.

Suits - Boost gives info about missions before taking them. This one is perfect. Don't change a thing. (other than fixing the bug that shows 0 meter harvester path)

Traps - Boost increases synthite drop rate by 10/20/30%. This is the advisor I'm actively working toward now as it is quite appealing to me to be able to spend cells and parts to increase synthite gains once I've unlocked everything. As far as if the amount gained is worth it or not, I'll have to wait until I have a bit of experience running it. I'm quite interested in others experience with the boost.

Hardware - Boosts Gen Mat gains by 5/10/15%. Perfect late game resource sink. Spend cells and parts to increase Gen Mat gains sounds great. I'm not sure about the costs for benefit ratio. I'm interested in others opinions on this.


So these 3 seem quite good and worth working towards. There is room for debate on how much value the boosts give, but on the surface they look good. Especially once they are leveled up enough to last quite a long time. That leaves me with the other boosts which I'm quite concerned about.

Weapons - Boost increases parts drop rates by 10/20/30%. I can't speak for everyone, but parts is the first resource that I've reached the point that I don't really need much of. I keep 100+ of each equipment in stock and I don't skimp out on using them either. (do not take this as a reason to mess with the parts drop rate or equipment costs) I'm to the point where I view this resource as a bonus to boost gains with other resources using advisor boosts. But is that resource sink itself enough to warrant using this boost? It really doesn't seem like it. Is anyone at any stage of the game not earning enough parts?

Guards - Boosts prestige earned from by outposts by 5/10/20%. This is the one that I have the greatest concern about. Who needs this boost? From my experience, if an outpost does remotely well then gaining prestige isn't an issue and if an outpost isn't getting enough action then a couple percent more isn't going to make any difference. Is there any benefit to gaining excess prestige on a base? Maybe this is just a misunderstanding on my part. I'm working under the assumption that prestige points only effect your ability to prestige your outposts. Is there another benefit? Perhaps that is actually the solution to this issue. Bonus prestige should offer some tangible benefit. Then this boost could actually be quite good. But I'm really struggling to understand this particular boost. By the way, another concern about this boost is its duration. It only effects outposts so spending a bunch of cells to boost your outpost for a couple hours seems rather lackluster. What level do you need to get an advisor to make your boosts last 24+ hours? By my math it's something like level 478. Maybe this particular advisor should increase the boost duration by 9 minutes per level so it can reach a meaningful duration quicker?

Comments

  • wydyadoit
    wydyadoit Member Posts: 1,131

    the boosts are there because the devs needed something for the game to be aesthetically balanced. not necessarily gameplay orientation balanced.

    your views on the various boosts are accurate. suits is the most useful. parts is the least useful. prestige barely works. synthite is a must. and genmat gains are universally beneficial.

    it's around level 480. it's like... 3 minutes a level.

    24x60/3=480. idk the exact value because my metamorph has a value that isn't exactly divisible by 3, but it doesn't show seconds. only hours and minutes.

    at level 20 all boosts are an hour. so 20x24=480.

  • Dreamnomad
    Dreamnomad Member Posts: 3,591

    Well, that is fundamentally a problem isn't it? If two of the five advisor boosts don't give any tangible benefit then why would players build/raid those particular advisor outposts? I can tell you the only reason I would do it would be because using the suit boost I can see that those particular outposts are pretty easy to raid. Like if I see the top 2 trap types are impaler and bolts and that makes up like 80% or more of the total traps then I'm down to speed run that. But each advisor boost should at least be appealing to use.

  • wydyadoit
    wydyadoit Member Posts: 1,131

    tbh all of my bases are 4500 capacity or higher 9000 genmat and of the 9 i have 3 or 4 are trap genmat.

    it's not necessarily a problem if you see it as an incentive to encourage specific player driven economic decisions.

    yes, you might get less visitors to your base id it fails to be worthwhile, but after you get their levels so high it becomes more realistic to just go for one that is closer to leveling up. it takes more genmat to level as you increase it.

  • Dreamnomad
    Dreamnomad Member Posts: 3,591

    Okay, it's been a little time now and I've had some time to reflect on these advisor buffs. The only two buffs I use are the suit (mission info) and traps (synthite) advisors. Suit advisor is a no brainer. If you aren't regularly using this buff then you are playing the game wrong. The traps advisor is a little bit more of a late game thing. But once you've maxxed out most your unlocks then the cells and parts you have quickly accumulate and there really isn't much to do with them other than spend them this buff or stock piling equipment.

    I've come to the conclusion that the hardware (gen mat) and weapons (parts) boost are intended to be strictly for the raiders only crowd. These buffs both require a rather large amount of synthite which base builders will simply not have an excess of. I don't think there is anyone playing this game for any length of time that is short on parts, but I do find it unfortunate that the gen mat boost requires synthite. That would be a nice resource sink. I still stand by everything I said already about guards (prestige) boost. That one needs a serious overhaul.

    One thing I've learned recently is that advisors have a level cap of 100 which adds up to 5 hours boost. Which I'm fine with honestly. If there was no level cap then in a couple years the boosts would be ridiculous if they last multiple days. I still think excess prestige once a base retires should give a synthite bonus and that the guards boost needs to go by a different standard. Unlike all the other boosts, this one strictly effects outposts so the bonus should cap out at like 12 hours or something.

  • MadMoeZel
    MadMoeZel Member Posts: 685

    i've also reached similar conclusions. i only ever use suits and trap boosts and i've gotten my consumable stockpiles into the 300s now. i'm keeping just enough parts on hand that i can buy any new content as soon as it's released even if it's a new trap or guard with multiple mods/augs to buy. other than that i'm just collecting 4500,9000 maps and pre-prestiging them to 5 in preparation for higher player base in a few months.