Game Economy - Sugar

Game economy balance is critical. I have read many threads on power cell shortages or surpluses but those issues are very related to RNG and not in our control. Shame about the pearl adjustment too but I understand that. What I wanted to talk about was sugar and the lack of it and see if others feel the same.

Last few updates have been great to players and I see the game moving in the right direction and now have an improved sense of progression which is paramount in a game like this. I think the raffle offering perks has really helped me farm gold for ship levels and much needed rare parts. In fact, I am now stockpiling parts and gold which I never thought would happen. Where I am bottle-necking now is sugar. The only way to get more sugar is to play more, and frankly the return is not enough.

To head off the common responses, I play about an hour a day (100 matches a week) which is pretty dedicated without being obsessed. I guess I could play more but sugar gains this way are painfully slow.

I also re-roll EVERY quest until it lands on sugar. Even doing this I need more. I need an average of 600k sugar every 2 days just to keep my crew training.

So to balance things, I have to take a day or more off of crew training to level some weapons which, bottom line, seems counter productive. We already know that full crew training will take a year of daily playing to maximize. I am only working on a core set of gear for one ship, and after T5 I will start working on any number of other weapons. My point is i feel more sugar is needed to keep up with player drive and enthusiasm. Surely Rovio is not concerned about people leveling too fast and quitting because they are bored! There are plenty other limiters in the game such as mk level tied with captain level, and needing duplicates to reach new tiers.

My thought is that we need some other way to earn sugar. Put pots of it in raffle, or rewards. Maybe up the amount you get. Maybe recycling parts gives you some sugar too. Maybe you can convert gold to sugar. Make rivalry boosts bump up your sugar rewards too! I will honestly take anything at this point.

I am interested in other's experience from both new and advanced players perspective. I am now going to listen to Sugar by System of a Down on repeat.

 

yes i get ur problem , normally i am on near 0 sugar and on the days i do have sugar i have way too much but overall it is too little to train crew and uplevel weapons.
I think maybe u could sell some certain perks for sugar would solve the problem as now u get lots of perks from raffle and even one epic perk a day sold should give u like 200k sugar or maybe higher, what do u think devs

 

And I am tired of sugar someone please give me gold in exchange of power cells uncommon and common.

 

My infamy only 300+ although I'm using mk5. Always battling 2.5k to 3k infamy.
I' getting 2k to 4k sugar even I win.
Hardly getting a star. Hardly getting gold.
Be fair man. Even I'm try my best to win...
Some players battle using noob weapon coz of quest... how am I going up my infamy?
Seems it will took me years period

 

This 100%, I never have even close to enough sugar.

I’m a ‘reasonably’ active player too. Just had a look back through my logs: Monday I played 63 games, Friday I played 57 games, Wednesday I played 80 games. Even on a bad day I manage to squeeze in about 20 games. If you count a game as ~3 mins (on average), I’m playing for at least and hour a day, sometimes 3-4 hours. I have 93 speeder wins on the very hard board this week, more than double the next person (and that’s not even my highest).

Yet I’m rarely able to save more than 400-500k sugar, and if I upgrade a weapon or two, I’m back down to ~200k. That’s barely enough to train my lowliest crew member (which I’m not even interested in). My next Bhurt level is a million sugar!

There are undoubtedly people who play more than me, but there is no way Rovio should expect people to put in more than an hour a day, let alone 3-4 hours. Even some dedicated professional musicians probably don’t put in that much practise per day! It’s insane.

It’s completely unreasonable to expect anyone to put more time than that into a mobile game, I shouldn’t be struggling with resources. I’m also a VIP, AND I’ve got pearl diver running constantly.

I feel like I should have more than enough sugar to stay on top of my weapons, and keep my training going, and maybe have some left over to train up some auxilery weapons in my inventory... yet I’ve had 6x Napalm 6x Bandages, 5x Tesla Shield etc... all languishing in my inventory for weeks (stuck on t2), because I barely have enough to keep up with crew training, let alone build up alternative items.

@Zeus @The Grim Repair whats going on? If we’re playing, and we’re spending (way more than a healthy person should), why are we still coming up short?

TLDR: I play over an hour every day, I’m a VIP, I buy pearls constantly... still don’t have enough sugar.

 

Guild quest--->Use multiple ships and weapons--->upgrade multiple weapons(cost sugar) and train multiple captains(again sugar),on top of that lose infamy because try another ship or weapon,so rewards cut.

The game was boring but much easier when we had to just play and focus on one SHIP.

@ViscountSniffit i hope 1 Hour of daily play would do the job.Neither enough to complete guild quests nor To earn sugar enough to keep captains upgrading without break.

I m a F2P and using 3 boats and have best suited weapons for them,I uninstalled the game and took a break for the reasons stated.
I have mentioned in lots of threads how quest and training favours hard-core players or whales but there is no middle ground for low spending non hard core players unless you are willing to play it for years

Hope they increase the sugar earned after every battle just a little more....

 

I had a perpetual sugar shortage for a while (and I still think the sugar bucket is too small), but the perpetual shortage seemed to subside when it started taking 3-5 days per training session. That was more than enough time to re-fill my sugar in its entirety and have enough for item leveling. Currently I keep my sugar bucket maxed for training and level up items only with overflow. That works fine because it takes that long to get enough gold and parts to level up.

It's the long way of saying, yes there's likely a game imbalance at your level, but it will go away.

 

Once you progress a bit your problem will be the neverending sugar quests while your sugar is always maxed out