[Implemented] Academy

[PhoenixKnight]

One thing I do not like about the leveling up is that level 1 does not have gold cost. It gives quite the shock when you build the building and notice for the first time that cost. Especially that gold is very expensive and building a building is an investment.

[Mr. Rothschild]

Is there a suggested cost list for the technologies to be researched? I think both are needed to understand the true cost involved and to be able to give some viable input.

[Cdv]

Initial suggestion for academy costs:
http://s2.piratesglory.com/hideout_cost ... ar=academy

Key design:
-About 460M the total cost (at about 2500 gc per gold bar avg price)
-Mediocre demand on other resources supplies
-Mediocre demand on gold bars
-Increased construction time demand

Why are the construction times so long? I think they can be reduced.

Is there a suggested cost list for the technologies to be researched? I think both are needed to understand the true cost involved and to be able to give some viable input.

Agreed.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Construction times can be reduced : with Workshop @ level 20, they are cut in half. I would hazard a guess that the devs consider folk will have considered levelling up their workshops by now.

[Juicypotato]

First off i'd like to say that the academy looks very promising and will make the game much more exciting. I believe the research should go for the first 3 levels you pick which techs you want to upgrade and after that upgrade those certain techs. Another idea is upgrade as many levels as you like except it takes up a bunch of time and turns. Here are a few more suggestions.

1. Favor of the Witch Doctor- Every level increases 2 percent that a voodoo card you use won't be used up from your inventory but will still be effectively cast.

2. Super Sailing- Every level increases ship speed by 10 percent.

3. Pirates Bounty- Every level increases plunder loot bonus and maximum by 5 percent.

4. Allusive Ships- Every level increases a fleet to escape on defense by 2 percent.

5. Ship Builder Master- Every level increases starting attributes of ship by 1 point.

6. Birthday Presents- Every level decreases present wait time you can send to a friend and yourself by 1 hour.

7. Explosive ship- Every level increases that your opponent's ship will explode and destroy itself by 1 percent.

8. Bad Magic- Every Level increases 1 voodoo enchantment you can cast on a player as long as he has that enchantment on you. This wouldn't require you to have the voodoo curse in your inventory and it won't use up the card if you did. This 100 percent mindbar countercurse piercing. You can only do this once every 24 hours.

[Captain dungeness]

2. Super Sailing- Every level increases ship speed by 10 percent.

3. Pirates Bounty- Every level increases plunder loot bonus and maximum by 5 percent.

4. Allusive Ships- Every level increases a fleet to escape on defense by 2 percent.

5. Ship Builder Master- Every level increases starting attributes of ship by 1 point.

6. Birthday Presents- Every level decreases present wait time you can send to a friend and yourself by 1 hour.

+1
I really like you're ideas 2-6 although I think all of them are too large. Maybe 1% faster sailing per level so if you get to level 20 and choose this skill then you get +20% speed boost which is considerable. Same goes for the other ideas.
-Captain D

[Captain Jack]

The new calculator for Officers is bound to help us in defining the cost for officers-relative technology. Same goes for the Warehouse upgrade calculator.

Every technology will have the following traits:
-Cost will be only in Gold Coins, Gold Bars and Time
-First levels of a technology can be very cheap but the scaling can be harsh, depending the technology. For both officers and warehouses techs, this is something we prefer.

Total cost of every technology would be good to have. We would like your suggestions. Then we can decide how to distribute it among gold bars and gold coins. Generally, technology research will not be requiring too many gold bars. Gold coins will be the major cost but Time cost will be even greater.

We are looking to make Technologies more of a time-restricted feature rather than gold coins or gold bars restricted feature. This will work well into getting the most out of Academy upgrades as initially, the Academy level will only play a role in research time.

[Captain Jack]

If you have feedback pending, please post here up as soon as possible. Take some time for it perhaps. We need to do some progress till Monday. Then there might not be any more time for predesign phase. We need to get the full functionality of the academy, all technology costs ready next week so they can be implemented.

The functionality of the academy ends today in-game. Then we will only have technology functionality (about to end soon) and finally technologies costs where there is currently 0 progress.

[Cdv]

Regarding the cost of the Officer Contracts technology, I'm sure you must have your own formula in mind, but here is my two cents.
Right now the 'ideal' ship size is 200. A player who would want to use this technology must already be an established player, have a Hideout, build an Academy and have enough gold left over to research this technology to a reasonable level. So, it will not be surprising if he already has 200 captains at a total cost of 90 mil gold.(I am ignoring other officer costs for ease of calculation.)

Suppose with the introduction of the new technology, the ideal ship size becomes double(400) because officers are now cheaper. If the break-even point is set at 300 ships, the cost of technology would be around 100 million. Alternatively, the decrease in officer cost per level could be raised to 3% and make the research cost a little higher at 150 million. This would be total cost for 20 levels to be distributed between gold bars and gold coins.

[Captain Jack]

At level 20, which is every technology's maximum level, you get 40% discount.
So, instead of paying 1,139,866 for the 201st captain, you will get to pay 684k. That's a save of 455k for a single captain. Cool eh?

Let me create the whole scenario now, as this will speed things up;

Starting point for the formula construction
-Captains costs up to 200 should not be taken in mind for the formula. The thinking is that you need to get to 200 captains before getting an Academy.
-Let's suppose one could get a big enough loan to manage to get a level 1 academy, for this purpose, since research will be cheap for first levels. Still, no matter how cheap it will be though, we cannot expect a player to finish 10 levels of the technology before he reaches 200 captains. The discount at that point will be 20%.
-200 captains, 40 admirals and 38 merchants, all together cost a total of 105M

So, it becomes clear that it is safely to exclude these 100M from our metrics, in order to get safe results.

Cost from 200 to 400
Again, we need to also add in Admirals and merchants. All these cost a total of 480M

We need to factor in that one will start upgrading at 200 captains but will not wait to finish all the research before getting more captains. Some players will do this, and this patience should count in their favor so it should not be factored in, to give them the strategical advance.

Let's suppose a player on average gets the officers from 200 to 300 with 10% discount and the officers from 300 to 400 with an average of 15% discount.

Calculating save... (200 to 300 cost = 182M - 10% = 164M for a save of about 18M) + (300 to 400 cost about 300M - 30% = 210M for a save of about 90M).

So, the tech can save you on average a total of 108M on avg or a total of 192M at maximum.

From this metric, it becomes clear to me that the total tech cost for the first 15 levels should not be greater than 100M to make it worthwhile (there also academy costs etc).

Costs from 400 to 1000

We should not overlook the big benefits players that choose to go to higher counts are getting. Although, we came down to think that whoever takes such a risk (of running a thousand ships) he should be able to saw his risks if successful (at times, I wonder why we have this Antagonize card).

The total officers costs is equal to 5.15B. The total save of 40% at level 20, means that for the 400 to 1000 captains, one can save about 2B. No matter how we tailor the formula, it will break as these are huge numbers.

Cdv point

It becomes clear to me, that CDV point is well chosen. This is why I ask from players to give their feedback. Especially when veteran players are involved, the feedback is great.

Ultimate suggestion - Officer Contacts

I think that by taking in mind all the above, what would work best for Officers cost is the following:
-An overall cost of about 200M (including gold bars cost @ 2k a piece)
-An overall time of about 2 months time to fully research it (with a level 20 academy and lvl 20 education, this will drop down to 22 days)
-Levels up to 15 cost about 100M
-Levels from 15 to 20 (final 10%) costs about 100M more
-To achieve this huge difference in the formula, we will use gold bars cost at the final levels
-Entry technology should be very cheap (about 500k perhaps)
-Time for first tech should also be low (about 2 hours)
-Time and Cost will scale fiercely to reach objectives set above.

This suggestion will be the final implementation for Officer Contracts, unless user feedback/insight forces us to update it. You are my guests for this purpose.