Suggestion: “Build a Bertha” in the Festive Store

[Akkamaddi]

Hello,

This is a fairly simple idea outline. When the Big Bertha extractor was released, it was a huge boon for extracting resources. Several players have been asking for a CES Industrial equivalent extractor for years.

Of course, the next question was, will we get an Exotic Bertha?

This suggestion proposes a new page to the Festive Store, “Build a Bertha”.

Essentially, the Big Bertha would be the base model. Players could then update a Big Bertha one time. The update would cost Festive Points. Updates are non-reversible.

The benefit for players, particularly older players, is that it would allow their extraction enterprise to be more customized to personal preferences. It would be at a cost, so change to the resource economy would have limitations. Expanse enabled Berthas loose the massive hopper, while other upgrades do not work in the Expanse. Hence, a Bertha fleet would be limited by cost in Festive Points.

For Coops, this would make Bertha’s more valuable. Right now, there is no value in owning more than eight. I’ve personally given bonus Berthas from purchases away because I have two that cannot be used. With diversification of the Berthas, a player could easily make use of a dozen ore more Bertha extractors.

Constructive input, good or bad, is valuable. Something I freely admit is that I am not sure the price range for festive points. So, I will only have prices listed as low, medium, or high.

- Build a Better Bertha -

:: Big Big Bertha: cost – low
This is the most basic Bertha upgrade. The hopper size is increased to 25K. This is an upgrade so basic it comes with a “Live Laugh Love” wall holo.

:: Kind Bertha: cost – medium
This is the Bertha version of the Guild Extractor. It does not have a hopper. Like a Guild Extractor, resources go directly into Guild Stores. This will not function in the Expanse.

:: Quantum Bertha: cost – medium
This Bertha unit is designed for truly remote worlds. It functions as a Big Bertha Extractor, with no functional changes. The primary change is that in addition to the “Empty Hopper” feature standard in Extractors, this also has a “Quantum Transfer Hopper”. While it must be manually operated, a captain has the option to Quantum Transfer the contents of a Quantum Bertha to any settlement with a Commercial Storage unit, just as if using a CSTS. The captain must transfer the entire hopper contents. If the contents are sent to the local CS, either manually or by the plot drying up, the resources cannot be re-added to the Quantum Bertha for transfer. This will not function in the Expanse.

:: Administrative Bertha: cost – high
An expensive upgrade, this Bertha unit does not have a hopper. Resources are deposited into the local commercial stores hourly. Attempting to use this in expanse space will result in destruction of the planet, which is forbidden because it causes a lot of paperwork for the Naristro.

:: Little Green Bertha: cost – high
The hopper size is halved to 10K, due to heavy shielding. This hopper will work in the expanse without causing runaway radioactive meltdown, dark matter gravity well cascades, temporal causality ignition, or any other doomsday scenarios associated with improper extraction in the Expanse. It will still function in standard space as well.

:: Voracious Bertha: cost – very high
This extractor uses the most cutting edge, and black-box secretive, tech of Truly Wonderful. No engineers outside the tender administration of the staff of St. Plonqueir of the Nutters Home for the Supernaturally Insane and Web Hosting Services know how this works, and the manual contains only the statement, “They made the pact. All is chaos and doom.” What this means is a mystery, but Captains agree it is a wonder of efficient technology!

Unlike other Berta units, this unit requires one structure point to deploy. This is not for the unit itself, but the safety shielding to prevent ORSA cleaning crew from being extracted.

The Voracious Bertha has a 26.6K hopper, slightly larger than the standard Big Bertha, and extraction rate is doubled. However, it is important to know that Terranor POD’s and similar ORSA-boosting ship upgrades will not work with a Voracious Bertha. An initial press release from the dev team said something about a Hell dimension, but a subsequent press release said that something called “infernal feedback” prevents holonet browser games like Project Terran from working, hence connection is blocked by the ship firewall.

It cannot be removed from spatial compression storage in Expanse space, for unknown reasons.

When a Voracious Bertha is safely deployed, it becomes a “black box”. The captain may not interact with it until the hopper fills and the Voracious Bertha shuts down, or the resource field expires and the unit shuts down. The Captain cannot enter the safety shielding. This means that the hopper cannot be emptied or the extractor removed. It will run its course and then become inert again.

[OtherRick]

Now, I like the idea of different flavors of extractors. I like it a lot. The difficulty is that "standard" Berthas are already significantly better than almost all other extractors. With that said, giving captains the ability to further customize them makes them... erm... far too "truly wonderful".

So, maybe the idea could be modified somewhat to include placing captain-chosen penalties on the extractors in addition to increased festive point cost. The way you have this described above, there are set flavors of Berthas that you could build. What do you think of the following, which lets captains mix and match?

Bonus (Pick up to 3):
1.5x Extraction Rate (2 penalties)
2x Extraction Rate (3 penalties)
2x Hopper Size (1 penalty)
Expanse Functionality (2 penalties)
Guild storage Hopper(1 penalty)
Local Commercial Store Hopper(1 penalty)
Doesn't count towards CES Extractor Limit (3 penalties)

Penalties (pick as many as needed to fill "cost" of bonuses):
1/2 Hopper Size
1/2 Extraction Rate
No resource collection (Counts as three penalties)
+1 Structure Point Cost
+2 Structure Point Cost (Counts as two penalties)
Only one can be placed on a given resource
Quadruple festive point cost
Doesn't work outside expanse

This setup would be way more work for Coops to implement, but would enable some really custom extractors that aren't significantly more overpowered than standard berthas. Arguably, something similar could also be done for commercial/industrial/personal extractors.