Sink for Essentia

Reasons

The economy of Lacuna is failing because the cost of things is going down. There have been a number of attempts to correct this in the past (the Del would sell and so provide a sink) but nothing has made a big difference.

The Lottery is adding a lot of E each day (1210e) and people are in every zone so most of this is going to the players.

The following is a suggestion as to a new Essentia Sink that might help out in the short to medium term.

New e-vein rules

Ideally we should replace the existing e-veins but in such a way as the owners do not feel that they are losing out (getting less E per day) than they are at the moment otherwise there could be resistance to the idea.

The core concept is as follows. Details (such as the numbers) can be tweaked.

• Anyone can obtain a level 1 e-vein, but it costs 300E to purchase one.
• A level 1 e-vein will work in perpetuity but only deliver 1E per day and only store 3E
• A player needs to log in (personally, captcha?) and collect the E which is stored in the e-vein to transfer it to their game wallet.
• An e-vein will no longer be upgraded via halls.
• For all Essentia that the player spends in a game sink (e.g. subsidy, boosts, SSD subsidy etc.) but not where it just involves transfer from one player to another (Trade Min, SSD trade costs etc.) then the player gets some 'club points'.
• When the points reach 100% they can get a free upgrade of their e-vein.
• Higher levels of e-vein return more E per day (say 1E extra per 3 levels? so 10E/day at level 30)

The concept is, that although the e-vein will last forever, certainly in the short to medium term, it will take more Essentia out of the economy (via sinks) than it will return.

Secondly, since it requires a captcha to transfer the Essentia it incentivises people to come back to the game each day.

Levels might be as follows.

1. 1E per day
2. 1E
3. 1E
4. 1E
5. 2E
6. 2E
7. 2E
8. 2E
9. 3E
10. 3E
11. 3E

(then increasing by 1E at 12, 15 etc until

• 27 9E
• 28 10E
• 29 10E
• 30 10E

and each level of the e-vein can store that number of E (level 20 can store 20E)

When the stored E in the e-vein reaches the limit then no more E is added each day until such time as the user logs in and manually transfers it to their game wallet setting it back to zero.

When the number of 'club points' reaches 100% it does not increase any further until such time as the user logs in and manually clicks the upgrade button.

Please add below any comments or tweaks that we could make to this suggestion. (icydee)

Tower - I'd suggest the 300E new-e-vein plan be sold by Lacuna Expanse Corp, not DeLambert. This would go well with other "basic supplies" LEC could be selling, such as 1+0 starter packs and resources and such. (Trading with LEC could also be considered a sink for these purposes.)

icydee - a further suggestion. The Essentia that is stored in the e-vein can be stolen by spies (note, only that stored in the e-vein that has not yet been transferred to the players 'wallet', the players 'wallet' cannot be stolen.)

Tower - I'm also thinking this could be a new building, not a replacement for current eveins. Something like an "Essentia Factory", maybe TRSS could make the images (more outbuildings to store unclaimed E). However, I would then want to completely tone down veins. Draining would still exist, but some other limit to the E they can produce, perhaps only allow 10 levels, or maybe go up to 15 but only add 20 days per upgrade (draining would then drain 20 days at a time, though that might still be 30e). The theory here is that Trel would still be a source of E without being the sole major source anymore.

icydee - if we do this we should really fix the captchas (currently they can be 'remembered', the same image for each UUID) so in theory they can then be automated. (I have no evidence that this is happening, but I can see how to do it).

Tower - I don't disagree that we should really fix the captchas, but I'm not sure how to fix captchas yet, in a way that doesn't become burdensome on our players (we have some players who are hard-of-seeing, possibly usually due to age), nor our scripters (still should be possible to respond to a captcha that was brought up by script, otherwise you can't use scripts to launch attacks at all).

So, starting on this:

• image will reuse the Halls image.
• "club points" - need to decide on a name. Rhu suggested 'Lacuna credits' - the more I think about it, the more I like it. 1e spent = 1 credit. But 3.4e spent - is that 3 credits or 3.4 credits?
• Instead of producing 1e/day, it'll produce 1e/time period t. At level 1, t = 24 hours, level 5 t = 12 hours, etc., to level 30 with t = 2hr24 or some such. Will have to find a curve to match this and see how it works. It will store 1e per level, and will get a work timer. The work timer will get triggered on build to be how long it takes to get the full amount the factory can store at its current production rate. If the work timer has not yet progressed enough for a full point of E, you can't extract anything. But if it has, for example the level 5 factory and more than 12 hours has passed, you can extract the E that has built up, and the work timer will extend by that time period.
• This means that a factory without a work timer is full. Having a work timer will probably go over better than having it hidden, since users are expected to interact with it, so coming up with a formula that shows a work timer is probably better than not.
• Cost to upgrade: 100 credits per (old) level. Going from level 1 to 2 is 100 credits, 2 to 3 is 200 credits, etc.
• Upgrades will always reset the timer to max (empty out the storage first!). Maybe an error during upgrade if there is 1e or more in storage.
• credits are stored per empire (part of the empire table).
• Max per planet: 1
• These allow you to have multiple factories, but you'll have to decide what order to upgrade them (evenly or focus on one?).
• Toning down of eveins has already (partially) occurred with Trels jumping to level 29 28 veins. While I'm sure some tweaking is likely to be done there, I think this idea can coexist with Trel veins fairly well at this point.