For anyone who's played this level . . .

Are there _any_ profitable recipes on this level? They all seem to be:

cost of buying ingredients >> sale price of crafted item

So even with +15% +15% item sale price Techs +16% item sale price Artifact +10% item sale price CW benefit, the sale prices are still money losses after buying the ingredients.

The ingredients for the worthy crafted items are all hundreds of bars + numerous items which in turn require hundreds of bars each, so it's not practical to smelt and craft the ingredients required to craft the worthy items either.

I just finished the map last week. I remember there were two well-priced items that required only one alloy: one required Thorium, the other Chromium... I invested only in those two. Also I used all my Market Raids on the market to get the rarest alloys.
It took me 32 days

Edited 4/6/2021 11:34:48

Ok, so maybe I just haven't gotten to it yet ...

If one is all Thorium, maybe it's a Relay? Going from memory, I think that's all Thorium. Not sure what an all Chromium item is. I'll keep an eye out for those.

I'm hoping to reduce the clear time from 32 days as I'm using up my pent up powers, so we'll see how much I can accelerate things. (:

On a different note ... assume this means you have Ascended? How are you finding redoing the earlier levels with more AP Advancements?

I think the other item was the microchip....

What do you mean by ascending? Replaying old maps after investing AP?
To tell you the truth, after finishing Europe Huge I reset all my AP and reinvested them into "Increased AP" to a value of 25%. So now I'm getting more AP from maps but I'm also way lower on all my other upgrades. It will take me probably 2 more months to regain all the needed upgrades to the level I had a week ago.

But of course the more AP you invest, the faster you are going to finish older levels....

"Ascending" is completing all Idle levels, then they all reset to full AP and you can start again. Not sure if Powers reset as well.

Or did you Skip some levels and haven't actually finished them all yet?

Oh my, I didn't know it was possible!
I skipped a couple of levels.... now I'm intrigued

@krinid

"Ascending" is completing all Idle levels, then they all reset to full AP and you can start again. Not sure if Powers reset as well.

Sadly, powers do not reset.

Sadly, powers do not reset.

This is a sad day indeed. I shall hang my head in sorrow and don the mask of true sadness.

do not reset? you mean they do reset and you start with zero Powers?

Purple Oyster Cult

@Parsifal

The powers you have stay with you, and those you have already collected from the maps do not regenerate (eg: do not reset to being present again). You can collect each power on a given map twice ... and once they're gone, nothing brings them back. Ever. Not even Ascension. Sad face.

@ krinid

interesting information! Thanks
I will miss inspire mercenaries the most I recon... but on the other hand you invest in your AP, so at some point the effect from all your permanent upgrades should ease your loss, shouldn't it?

Edited 4/6/2021 21:46:58

Can anything truly make up for not getting anymore IMs? Those are super useful if used wisely. The best power imho.

maybe with an increased production of money and selling prices of items+alloys you won't even notice...
now I get it, why there are so many upgrades for revealing stuff on maps. If there are no more Fog Busters available...

btw, where did you read this information about Powers? just curious..

If you mean Powers being able to be collected twice and only twice, don't recall where it's documented but it's a well known fact.

That they don't regenerate on Ascension, we just heard from SubLunar about that in this thread. I'm not sure if his info is first hand experience or knowledge from others, but I learned it from him. And sad news it was.

But back to the topic at hand ... this level is depressing . . .



Look at how resource intensive these recipes are. It's insane. 51 welding rod, 329 twine, 324 struct ... and the sell price of the item is <20% of the cost of buying the ingredients. What's the point of even having these items on the level at all?

Haven't found the Relay or Microchip yet ... hopefully they will bring profit, but it looks bleak right now.

@krinid
First hand experience with powers not resetting.

Do you have any modifiers (advancements etc.) concerning the above listed recipes?

But back to the topic at hand ... this level is depressing . . .

Krinid, you don't really need any of them. Maybe the diode...
And I remember that all of those items needed was mostly Aluminum and Silicon and it's products Welding Rod and Twine, which doesn't take much time to produce.
At the middle of the game I let my mines harvest Aluminum and Silicon, but then I gave up. Didn't really need all of that.
You hardly need those complex items for any of your upgrades anyway.
I remember that I started to recruit my mercenaries after I entered Russia. After that is was a piece of cake. Most of all the Russian territories were 2-2.1 B.
Except of one gigantic territory which had 400B (somewhere in the middle-south). That was some surprise, but mercenaries helped me alot with that.

@Parsifal
400B! Assuming that wasn't a typo, WOW, that is shocking ... but interesting; that actually makes a case for the Active artifacts like Damage Territory, Triple Strike, Field Hospital, etc, which aren't terribly useful most of the time. The aluminum, silicon, etc, isn't a huge deal tbh, I can deal with the straight up alloy bar requirements, but these items need not only Welding Rods, Twine (not so ingredient intensive albeit it ends up being ingredient intensive b/c some require >100 welding rods or twine, so essentially the same thing) but also Rivets, Structs (which have high ingredient requirements), etc, and each of those in turn require hundreds of bars, and that gets problematic. This is the first map I've played where I just can't keep my crafters busy b/c I don't have enough rivets, bolts, twine, structs to build the more complex items with. Most of them aren't required for Techs, so I don't need them, but I need to build _something_ in order to sell to make profit to drive money for the level for upgrades, etc. So sure, having these recipes on the map that are unusable doesn't hurt me, but what's the point of having them at all? If they aren't required for Techs (thankfully, that'd be a nightmare!) and they aren't profitable either, why do they exist at all? Just white noise to cause confusion on the level? Presence of non-profitable recipes is quite confusing. This isn't new on this map by any stretch, but I've never seen this degree of non-profitable recipes. It would be better if they recipes were varying degrees of profit and maybe a few unprofitable ones so a keen eye and analysis & optimization is still required, but this is just varying degrees of profit loss. Why would anyone craft these at all? And if there's no reason to craft them, why even have them?

@SubLunar Unit
Do you mean Advancements for higher ore production? Are these actually helpful? I've always assumed that in-game money would be sufficient for upgrades rather than spending AP on it which would be more usefully spent on other advancements. If it were a straight up "Increase ore production" advancement, that'd be different, but seems far less useful being a specific copper/iron/nickel/aluminum/silver/gold/etc ore advancement. That's a lot of AP across all of those!

Side note ... do you have any other observations or recommendations regarding Ascending? Things to do/not do, how to better prepare? Anything you'd do differently? And how close are you to finishing all levels a 2nd time?

@krinid

Do you mean Advancements for higher ore production?

No, I mean advancements for higher prices of ores, alloys or items.

Yeah I might have one recommendation regarding Ascending: Unlock/upgrade expensive advancements while you still can.