Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Proposal: We Want More

Timed out 1 vote to 8. Failed by Kevan.

Adminned at 13 Aug 2021 13:55:31 UTC

Add the following Wants to the list in “Clientele”:

  • Triplet: The Worker currently holds a box with value exactly 3
  • Scale: The Worker currently holds a box with value 8 or more
  • Asceticism: The Worker held no Things immediately prior to the previous Cycle action

In that list of Wants, rename “Tecnocrat” to “Technocrat”, and change its effect to “The Worker has activated machines at least 6 times during the previous Cycle”.

Between the second and third paragraphs of “Clientele”, add a new paragraph:

As a weekly communal action, a Worker can Assess Demand. To do this, they add a random Want that that Client doesn’t already have to each Client, then for each Client, they remove one of that Client’s Wants at random; however, if the Want that would be removed is the Want that was just added, it is left in the list of Wants rather than being removed.

If there is a type of Machine “Dehumidifier” with a cost of “1 Energy plus n Cogs”, change its cost to “1 Energy plus zero or more Cogs”.

Adding some new Wants, and a mechanism for Wants to change (together with a typo fix). Technocrat is being made slightly easier: you can only have six Machines under the current ruleset, so it doesn’t make sense to have a requirement to activate seven or more.

The last sentence is unrelated – Kevan suggested that riders on proposals might be a good place to do uncontroversial wording fixes.

Comments

Josh: he/they

11-08-2021 13:08:35 UTC

I think Assess Demand doesn’t quite work as planned: the text says that it is applied to ‘that Client’ but it doesn’t specify how the client is selected, and whether it’s a communal action as applied to each Client separately or all Clients at once (eg if I do it for Elite can Kevan then do it for Vatican). It also specifies that you add a Want, then remove a Want at random, but as the result of that will always be Clients having exactly 1 Want there’s no need to randomise the removal; the Want that gets removed will always be the older of the two.

I also think that Triplet is (sigh) tilted towards sugar; I hate that we have to play with this mindset already but being able to make a box with a discrete value under 7 makes it trivially achievable for the sugar gang. I won’t object to that if Swamp looks like passing as I think that prop will go some way to eroding the literal bifurcation of the plays, and I do accept that it’s a marginal edge.

Josh: he/they

11-08-2021 13:09:05 UTC

Oh, sorry, I misread Assess Demand; I see now that it does apply to all clients in one go.

ais523:

11-08-2021 13:24:01 UTC

Right, you basically just do the same thing for each client.

I put Triplet into the range where both Press and Sugar could hit it easily (whereas Scale is horrible for both, and good for Spin). If you think it’s still unbalanced, we can try to rebalance, but it’s hard to favour Press strategies at the moment because their range is just strictly worse than the Sugar range.

Maybe Sugar should be fixed to the 4-7 range, rather than 1-7? That would create more differences between the three main box-gaining strategies.

Clucky: he/him

11-08-2021 17:26:00 UTC

“Exactly 3” feels a bit too easy to get, and “8 or more” feels very much a “rich get richer” type scenario.

ais523:

11-08-2021 17:36:37 UTC

Well, fulfilling the Want gives you 2 Cogs. So if you have a Sugar or Press setup to guarantee yourself a 3-Box (to get the 2 Cogs bonus), you also have the capability to guarantee yourself a 5-Box instead, which is worth two more Cogs if Clanked.

“8 or more” is intended to give a buff to the Spin strategy, the point being that these are the Boxes that can’t be produced via Sugarcube (whereas a Spin will generate them 30% of the time).

(Asceticism is, of course, a nerf to Sugar.)

Clucky: he/him

11-08-2021 18:08:32 UTC

2 cogs without having to use a machine activation is probably better than 5 cogs having to use a machine activation

Clucky: he/him

12-08-2021 03:19:30 UTC

against

lemon: she/her

12-08-2021 07:28:00 UTC

for presses can also make boxes with exactly three, but that’s not a bad thing; with how this randomizes Wants & gradually increases their number, specific wants that are easy to accomplish alone can become much harder to accomplish in tandem with multiple other wants!

Kevan: he/him

12-08-2021 12:18:56 UTC

against Per Ais’s demonstration that Sugar farmers can easily construct a lot of Boxes with any number from 1 to 7, so would have no difficulty in hitting both Triplet and Scale while using them all up.

Josh: he/they

12-08-2021 19:39:06 UTC

against

Bucky:

12-08-2021 22:17:18 UTC

against per Kevan

Darknight: he/him

13-08-2021 00:43:19 UTC

against

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

13-08-2021 03:20:57 UTC

against

Raven1207: he/they

13-08-2021 03:49:39 UTC

against

lemon: she/her

13-08-2021 11:56:06 UTC

against CoV for the sake of the Q