They should call this game GrindColony because I've never played a more flagrantly grinding-like game. I've been "playing" this game for over two weeks and I have still yet to actually do anything.
I think the NextColony team doesn't understand the concept of what a "level" is. Traditionally, when you level up something, that thing actually gets better. In NextColony, you have to hit max level 20 on a ship skill before you can even build it. These artificial scarcity barriers are the worst I've ever seen.
That being said I've already stated that the game has to make some big changes to become tenable to the players. I appreciate the game released the way it did, but it will go nowhere without big changes being made. At this point, I just assume those big changes are going to be made and I'll worry about that in the months to come instead of now.
There are huge diminishing returns of ROI after level 10.
The smartest thing to do is to get the mines to level 10 (takes a week),
Then rush the Explorer ship upgrade to 20 in an attempt to find another planet.
At the same time rushing Shipyard to 14.
I haven't made it very far because I've been leveling my mines probably a bit more than I should. Take the upgrade to level 15 Coal mine for example.
- 480 coal
- 672 ore
- 288 copper
- 96 uranium
480 + 6722 + 2884 + 96*8 = 3744
So just the skill costs 3744 'points'.
Double that to 7488 to actually buy the mine.
Each mine upgrade gives 80 'points' per day, so this mine would pay for itself in 94 days. Yikes!
At the point the only reason to upgrade mines is if you really need that one resource it's providing. Otherwise it's going to smarter to attempt to colonize another planet and upgrade the mines there to somewhere around level 11-13.
I was told the reason the game was such a grind was to prevent Sybil attacks and multiple accounts. This seems to be false. So far, with 7 accounts running it's going to be much easier for me to create all 7 kinds of warships and give myself a good mix for all the planets I'm defending.
Because level-up costs don't get out of control until level 11 I've upgraded all my storage and I only have to log in once a day or less to keep up. I could easily get away with logging in every other day at this point.
June 8
Battles will open (theoretically) in exactly one month. Until then I suppose we're just expected to continue grinding it out with zero payoff. I'm in... not quite sure why, but I am. Cheers!