Conceptual Balance Mod 1.84

[thejeff]

One difference between hammers and SDRs is that hammers were necessary for everyone, so many nations needed Earth on their pretender. SDRs were only necessary if you intended to go into blood. And if you were going into blood, you'd have blood mages and wouldn't need to go to any special lengths to get one who could make SDRs.

[rdonj]

Psycho - Actually shortly after I posted that I realized exactly why I was wrong. Having actually thought about it more I'm feeling that there really was no purpose in getting rid of rods, since you can do the exact same thing with boosters. The question then becomes, how badly do we want to nerf the ability to build slave pools. If it's severe enough I guess we could leave them out and just keep using boosters to do it instead (which is totally worth it even at 25 slaves), or do we bring back SDRs at a bit lower price? I'm inclined to think that we should bring back SDRs, probably at something like 10+5 per rod so they can be forged at lower blood level, but still have a fairly appreciable cost compared to blood boosters. It would be better to just increase the price of blood magic across the board so that it's not just a one time thing that easily pays itself back over time, but I really question the sanity of trying to do an across the board increase to blood prices due to potential errors in judgement/bugs (along with just being a lot of work), so for the moment my vote will lean towards increased expense on the SDR.

[Deathblob]

Originally Posted by rdonj

If it's severe enough I guess we could leave them out and just keep using boosters to do it instead (which is totally worth it even at 25 slaves)

Thanks. Initially it seemed to me like it wouldn't be worth it.

For a B3 or higher, your booster will give just 1 extra slave per turn, so 25 turns to payback.

For a B2, your avg slave income goes from:
8(x+2)/10 to 10(x+3)/10,
So you get .2x + 1.4 more slaves per turn.

x is supposedly a d6 according to the manual, but since I've had a b0 hunter pull 11 slaves in one month, I think that's full of crap. It's got to be open-ended, so it's 4.2 not 3.5, on average.

B2 to B3 is then 2.24 better per month, payback in 11 turns with a 25B cost booster.

For a B1, your avg slave income goes from:
4(x+1)/10 to 8(x+2)/10,
So you get .4x + 1.2 more slaves per turn, @x=4.2 = 2.88, payback in 8.7 turns.

For a B0, your avg slave income goes from:
x/10 to 4(x+1)/10,
So you get 1.66 more slaves per turn, but booster cost is 50B (empowerment), payback is 30 turns.

For comparison, summoning a B3 Vamp Lord for 66 slaves has full payback @ 7.2 per turn in about 9.1 turns.

So, if I'm right about x == 4.2:

A 25B booster is worth it for a B1 hunter. (Unless you get national B2 hunter summons like Mictlan for 25B).

But if you can make Vampire Lords, it's more cost effective to spend your blood on them instead of boosters for B2+'s. Since Vamp Lords are actually useful in combat, I'd make them, instead of boosters for B1s to hunt with.

Payback is really slow for empowering to B1, so don't do that unless you're going to take the extra step of making a 25B booster. (And definitely don't do it if you can make Vamp Lords).