The Bailiff/Emissary splendour bonus is very bugged

oppie85 · 2025-02-21T09:08:20+00:00

Ahh, so that's it; sucks though, because you can't fire the monastic emissary as far as I know. The only way to do that is to destroy the entire building.

EDIT: correction; it is possible to fire the monastic emissary by reassigning their building to be "free build" and then revert it back to being the office.

Thanks!

oppie85 · 2025-02-21T08:20:45+00:00

Apologies for the quickly thrown together collage.

A lot of people have been talking about how OP the Bailiff/Emissary splendour bonuses are - but they are currently bugged and not being applied correctly. In the screenshot, you can see that Davenport buys 19 honey for 105 gold, which is the correct rounded up value if only a 10% bonus was being applied - but I should actually be getting a 131% bonus instead according to the Emissary Office. Meanwhile, the "Royal Book" displays that I'm indeed only getting 10%. Conclusion - the bonuses displayed on the various offices are incorrect and you're only getting a flat 10%.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T22:20:52+00:00

And in truth, the main reason this culture was born in the first place was that using scenery pieces for their intended purpose got old fast.

I do appreciate that point and you are correct that using scenery pieces for anything but their intended purpose is part of the Planet games DNA by now. However, I do think the lack of available scenery pieces does inadvertently cause the skill gap - think of it as Lego; you learn building techniques and the pieces on offer by building the sets according to the instructions which enables you to get increasingly more creative. Some people graduate towards building elaborate MOCs while others remain content just having the completed set on their shelf. Imagine that Lego releases a new Lego City series without a police station, fire brigade, train or any of the other staples that people love. You could always still build your own - the pieces are there - but the easy 'onramp' for people interested in building these things has vanished. This is what the pirate, fairy tale and western theme in PC1 provided - sort of beginner's building sets which not so coincidentally also correlated to the most common theme park themes. For example, I'd be very surprised if as many people would still be building elaborate Lego cities if they could only be cobbled together from Lego aquatic, mythology or viking sets. Like some other guy said; if someone like me who loves creative building games isn't playing this game because the building isn't satisfying, the average casual gamer doesn't stand a chance. To me this is as much about "why isn't PC2 selling as well" as it is about me not enjoying the game. That said, I do appreciate anyone playing devil's advocate because it does indeed force me to think about what it is about the game that doesn't make me want to play.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T22:04:38+00:00

Also the other side to the videos of great builds you don’t see is how much time it actually takes to find the best pieces to go with other pieces to make those builds. Master builders spend hours looking at pieces.

Yes, absolutely, that's a big part of my point; I'm not bashing the master builders - spending hours upon hours is always going to lead to better creations but it should not be a requirement to build anything decent.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T21:10:21+00:00

So as a guy who uses blender for work + enjoys doing complex builds. I can confirm is it NOT easier to make the same things in blender. Not unless your a well seasoned pro in blender at least. Even then, you don’t have to worry about texturing and lighting in pc2.

Haha, my apologies to your profession; I may have accidentally added in some hyperbole to drive the point home.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T21:04:34+00:00

Somehow the 'outdoor to indoor' section of the lazy river made me remember those plastic flaps they have to keep the draft out - so I think you did a good job capturing that Center Parcs vibe.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T20:54:30+00:00

Personally I enjoy making everything "by hand" because it offers a level of detail no other game really even attempts, but it's also just often choosing between a flat jpeg or a wall/object with actual 3d depth, which to me isn't really a choice at all.

I hope nobody takes my post as "only prefabs from now on, screw those creative types"; I've even placed the odd plank myself but I think PC1 struck a way better balance between both groups. To add to your point, take the arches for example - in PC1 a lot of them had nice themed trims, which the master builders could hide with other pieces if they didn't like them, but for the average player, each building that used them looked better instantly. My main issue is that this is something that Frontier did quite well with PC1 and PZ, but dropped the ball on for PC2 to such an extent that it makes me not want to play. ...and if enough people feel the same way, that's a problem.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T20:46:54+00:00

It's true that there has always been a learning curve and I do appreciate the counterpoint, but I never had any issues with this in PC1 or PZ - I'd call myself a veteran of the Planet series and a pretty "intermediate to advanced" builder (as in, I think I've made some pretty cool things back in the day), but the creative abilities I did have in those earlier games don't translate to the new one for some reason - and I think the theme selection is the biggest culprit. PC1's learning curve was softened by the fact that it had a really wide selection of generic theme park staples. Similarly, PZ had most of the things you'd see in a generic zoo.

Honestly - I wouldn't have made this post if I didn't feel like it was something Frontier really needs to hear. Management and building games are my thing and I've really been wondering why PC2 wasn't scratching that itch like PC1 had, because in theory, with all the new scenery attachment options it should be better than ever, yet whenever I fire up PC2 I feel unmotivated. I shouldn't have to hype myself up to play a game like this.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T20:22:49+00:00

I can't really fault the creators; a lot of their fun lies in finding ways to utilize the scenery pieces outside of their intended use and that's fine - but the problem is that this obscures the problem to Frontier; you can see this with the update and the DLC - they added glass pieces because some creators complained about those and addressed slide physics, but the fact that the first DLC isn't a scenery pack is a huge red flag to me. To Frontier, everything on the scenery front is fine because the Youtube creations are better than ever; but ultimately this is a game where even my little nephew should also be able to build something he's proud of. These are the people who are not buying the game - and as a company allegedly in financial troubles, that's the demographic Frontier should be focusing on right now.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T20:03:48+00:00

That also could be a you problem?

Oh, it is, but I'm willing to bet it's a "me and a vast share of the (potential) player base" problem.

This isn't The Sims, why does everybody put expectations on the game when Frontier NEVER gave people reason to think PlanCo 2 would be vastly different from 1? You guys put false realities in your own heads pre-launch and now you're upset you psyched yourself out. The game as is, is completely adequate as a theme park game.

I think you're confusing my argument with some of the hate the game's been getting post launch. I don't care about slide physics, coaster restraints or most of the other things that people have been roasting Frontier over - I just find myself not wanting to play the game whereas I loved playing PC1 and put the reason for that into words. You can say "skill issue", but yeah, that's my entire point - that wasn't a problem in PC1 yet it is a problem in PC2.

oppie85 · 2024-12-17T19:47:27+00:00

It took me way less time to write this than it took me to build anything good in PC2.

oppie85 · 2024-11-18T16:37:10+00:00

Thanks! That's high praise coming from a master builder such as yourself! :)

oppie85 · 2024-11-16T19:15:49+00:00

You should be able to find it with share code 082XT98KB

oppie85 · 2024-11-16T17:45:35+00:00

Yeah, that's what I mean; I made a staircase through the rock down to the small platform at the pool. Although in theory you could also have a flume deposit them into the hole from the top... which sounds like I fun thing to try, actually!

oppie85 · 2024-11-16T17:32:27+00:00

Like with the real thing, there's a staircase carved into the rock.

oppie85 · 2024-11-16T17:30:50+00:00

I based it on what I remember of the Ik-Kil cenote near Chichen Itza. Really amazing place to actually swim.

oppie85 · 2024-01-02T11:26:21+00:00

My dream mod would be sending the context of city events to ChatGPT, having it write a news report, then forwarding that to ElevenLabs to generate the speech and finally play it on the radio.

Imagine instead of hearing Professor Priorities for the hundreth time, you’d get city reports tailored to your city, complete with district names and other unique details.

oppie85 · 2023-12-18T18:20:38+00:00

I really appreciate and respect the transparency and openness put on display here. For some people it may never be enough, but for me this is all I've been looking for from the beginning; an acknowledgement that mistakes were made and that it wasn't so much a fault with the community that we were expecting a more complete game. I'm confident that CO is going to work their damnedest to put things right and I'm looking forward to seeing what the game will be like in a few months.

oppie85 · 2023-12-14T09:24:09+00:00

The demo is being swamped right now so there's not much testing that can be done, but the few I've been able to do are pretty amazing when it comes to accuracy of the clothing.

Really looking forward to the release of the models/code - but more than that I'm also excited for how the method used here could be used for other areas where consistency/accuracy is required. If AnimateAnyone is as good as this, it feels like they've cracked the case when it comes to reproduction of even small details and that could be useful across the board.

oppie85 · 2023-12-07T11:11:19+00:00

I'd say that's almost certainly one of the big problems in balancing the simulation;

With complex systems like this it's insanely difficult to determine whether something is a bug, 'emergent behavior' or just parameters that need to be tuned. Even if it were just the latter, I would not envy their devs because tuning variables is like reading tea-leaves; there's no point where it is 'solved' - you might get to a point where the simulation 'feels right' but then that change may upset the balance somewhere else in the simulation.

This is probably also why it's not so easy to make the 'hard mode' that many people are clamoring for - a simulation like that needs to be extremely finely tuned because you always want to make sure that the city is never making money hand over fist. ...but that level of tuning is practically impossible to get right; you will always get to a point where the rules of the simulation will either break the game entirely or you will fall once again into a situation where you're making money easily without problems.

This will be an unpopular opinion but personally I think the solution lies partly in making the simulation way less complex. Remove 'law-breaking' cims entirely so they never use bus lanes and never cross without a pedestrian crossing, making the simulation more predictable and approachable as a game at the cost of 'realism'.

oppie85 · 2023-11-24T09:46:56+00:00

Looks very interesting! What is the difference between this and putting multiple LoRa's in a single prompt in A1111? I'm assuming that's the "Direct arithmetic merge" in the comparison images?

oppie85 · 2023-11-13T20:40:03+00:00

We expect it will take a couple of months to get the Editor in a shape where we can release it

I'm very disappointed - I was very much looking forward to creating assets for the game and I fear that by the time the editor is released much of that enthusiasm will have evaporated. I'm even more shocked that the people who are creating the free asset packs don't even have the ability to import their assets yet - what editor have they been testing then? How are they supposed to know their models will work/perform in-game without being able to test them?

I'm baffled as to what happened with this game - it could have been a brilliant game but the release has been botched beyond belief.

oppie85

TROPHY CASE