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Domination: Earth

Tracking Satellite mechanics changes


Mr. D

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Hi all,

As per discussion in the following thread the Tracking Satellite mechanics are changing to increase usefulness of the structure to all new players and reduce "coaching strategies" for players with larger lands:

From now on, Tracking Satellite no longer collects resources spawned on any of your lands.
Instead, each satellite now collects a single random resource anywhere around the globe once every 24 hours.
Having multiple bases allows to construct more satellites (one per base, same as before) and use this action additional times in the 24-hour period.

Any perk bonuses related to resource collection from the map will apply to the new Tracking Satellite.

This is a server-side change that is now live, but the associated text changes on the UI will be released separately in the next version, so please ignore the old description as it'll be replaced as soon as possible.

As always, please post if you have any questions!

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Idea for a perk: Global Collector.

It would be an expensive perk (say 10,000 PKP or so). Activating this perk would produce a button that would collect from all Tracking Satellites that are not under cooldown. The cost for using this button would be at a usury cost, say 2-10 personnel per satellite.

The idea would be give players who have multiple bases the option to utilize their tracking satellites without having to cycle through all their bases, which can be unwieldy.

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2 hours ago, Luna said:

Doesn’t this make it really hard to get personnel without collecting in person? Getting a single resource will only cover the cost for the satellite.

There are a few things to note:

  • Usually personnel generates in the amounts of 1 - 3, so there's only +-33% chance to not actually gain anything from the satellite collection if you pick up a single unit.
  • There is a chance to collect the "boss resource" (the one with the large icon and at least x10 more resources in it than usual).
  • Perk bonuses still apply to every satellite collection, so if you have at least 1 level in "Officer" you will always gain at least some personnel upon every collection.
  • "Collecting things in person" is pretty much what the game is about, so I am glad that there are now more reasons to do so. :)
6 hours ago, BrianK said:

While I understand your reasoning for this change, what is the advantage now of merging to create large territories (>100)? If there's not much advantage to that, what value do travel points provide now? 

Larger lands still allow placing more utility structures on their surface that increase your overall resource collection rate, more defence structures making the land easier to protect and more attack structures situated further away from the land's centre, which allows you to reach enemies further away from all sides (as the attack radius of every structure is calculated against its own position, not the land centre's).
Finally, that is the easiest way to reach the top of the leaderboards (and for some leaderboards - the only way). ;)

I also have a "feeling" that there will be more features in the future aimed at larger lands, so don't discard them just yet. :)

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Good to read that there are, possibly, further plans for making holding land worth doing.

Have you considered making some of these resource gathering/making tasks automated?  Clicks on clocks make for tedious gameplay, and this game has potential for becoming much bigger than your typical click-fest.

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6 hours ago, Max Siren said:

Have you considered making some of these resource gathering/making tasks automated?

Yes, this is also what @S KeillanKeillan suggested above. 🙂

This may not necessarily become a perk, as I have some ideas about how to incorporate it into a larger feature that I've been planning for a while.

However, it does involve a lot of UI work so I cannot promise it in the next few weeks.

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I get the reasoning, but please provide some method of collecting more of the items in our lands again? In my area I can't collect most resources without items, bc they're all in non-public areas.. before I got my base up to a high enough level I could basically spend 3-4 hours driving around to collect a resources once or twice a month at best, and the rest of the items would be permanently out of reach.. with being able to use items after expanding my perks, at this point I couls to bump that up to once a week, but driving around the city wasting gas is a pretty dull way to play the game, and walking around the city isn't really possible with the spread of resources, I'd spend all day just to get a few item pick ups..

Currently I've grabbed ~80% of the resources that don't require me making dedicated drives to them (meaning, excluding places I could resonanbly walk to after driving to a single location, as I'd do in Pogo) and i can't spawn more bc the "resources maximum reached."

 

Will eagerly await an update, but for now I simply can't do much in game except farm perk points.

 

Edit: I'd like to add, no rush; I've been playing for years, and if I gotta wait a bit while y'all figure out the best way to balance it, I'm ok with that! The game is, generally speaking, awesome, and I get why y'all are making changes, I just hope there is some rebalancing planned for those of us who don't have as accessible areas :)

Edited by Kramer42
Changed the quote to the correct quote, since I was mistaken on what it said
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/19/2020 at 1:55 AM, Mr. D said:

 

  • Perk bonuses still apply to every satellite collection, so if you have at least 1 level in "Officer" you will always gain at least some personnel upon every collection.

But indeed this does not guarantee that you get personal... if it costs 3 personally to have one positive attempt the added value for 3 days is very limited. This makes it almost impossible to gain enough armies to actively fight the FoT.

I can understand to limit this, but why not 10 resources? 1 seems to limited to me for the cost of a satellite...

But well lets see the next update

Edited by The one true king
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/6/2020 at 6:14 AM, The one true king said:

But indeed this does not guarantee that you get personal... if it costs 3 personally to have one positive attempt the added value for 3 days is very limited. This makes it almost impossible to gain enough armies to actively fight the FoT.

I can understand to limit this, but why not 10 resources? 1 seems to limited to me for the cost of a satellite...

But well lets see the next update

Or even just a massive delay on it. I mean, being able to do it every hour made it really easy to snowball, I get it, but what if it was all the stuff in your territory but you could only do it once a week, or once a month even?

 

As an aside towards my personal issue on using items in my area, did that the other day and it regularly didn't pick up stuff well within the circle, was pretty dissapointing. I got like 1/3 of the stuff in my expanded pick up radius after dropping the radio and rhe metal detector. Some of the stuff it didn't capture was juuust outside of my base pick up radius, so it's not even like it was on the edge of my extended pick up radius and maybe wasn't actually inside it. :I and it still says resource limit reached when I try to drop new items immediately following that.

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  • 1 month later...
On 9/20/2020 at 5:41 AM, Mr. D said:

Yes, this is also what @S KeillanKeillan suggested above. 🙂

This may not necessarily become a perk, as I have some ideas about how to incorporate it into a larger feature that I've been planning for a while.

However, it does involve a lot of UI work so I cannot promise it in the next few weeks.

Any news on this front?  I've found it hard to be motivated enough to claim new lands lately, seeing as there's no benefit to doing so at the moment.

If there's anything we can do to help, let your players know.  I just sent you some coins, hope it buys you some inspiration!

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On 12/5/2020 at 8:17 PM, Max Siren said:

  I just sent you some coins, hope it buys you some inspiration!

Thanks, @Max Siren! 🙂
Your support is greatly appreciated!

Unfortunately, all development stalled in November due to some turmoil at work and in other personal aspects, things have been extremely stressful and I couldn't find any time to progress DE at all.
However, I am hopeful that with some help from a Christmas miracle things will get back to normal in 2021 and I will be able to finish the features I was talking about. ;)

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