Sandbox Mode Hash
After extensive playing of the new test build, I am ready to present you something I like to call the QoL hash. It is aimed at simply improving your Cartel Tycoon experience, without cheesing the game nor making it way too frustrating.
- Hire delay – 10%
- Research duration – 10%
- Construction duration – 10%
This trio aims at removing the “waiting simulator” part out of the game, when you stare at the screen waiting for things to happen. The lieutenant hiring screen right now is flawed and the new one is on the roadmap, but in the interim the best thing we can do is ensure new lieutenants become available fast, which improves our chances of rolling decent ones sooner.
Not only does the game insist we need to research something as a farm or a gravel road, but it also takes quite a lot of time (and no, keeping around lieutenants whose only purpose is hasting research by the “huge” 15% is not good enough). Long research times is something that artifically stalls our progression and limits our options.
Ever since the game started queing construction so you can only build or upgrade a single building at the time, building something became a chore. Therefore getting stuff built faster is a great benefit towards your brain cells.
- Growing zones – Rich
The devs have been experimenting with making fertile soil more scarce as a way to impose difficulty or “hardcore”, but in reality all it does is limits the player’s options and makes the games more samey. The more options for fertile soil you have the more interested you are in expanding your operation and creating large, complex, optimized chains – which is what I love doing in the game.
- Lieutenant max experience allegiance decrease – 0%
This solves the lieutenant issue for good. Let’s face it – the lieutenants are not born equal. Some have very good perks, the others don’t. The need to constantly raise their salaries just because they’d grow disloyal and start wreaking havoc on your empire otherwise leads to the wages far outweighing whatever benefit the lieutenants were bringing to your cartel; eventually you had to kill them and look for someone who’d simply do the same job cheaper. Ultimately it made you perceive your lieutenants as expendable resource rather than characters. The only way to remedy this is let you decide who and when deserves a promotion. You are the boss, after all.
- Building stash capacity – 300%
- Transport cargo capacity – 300%
There are two reasons for this settings. First one is realism – I can hardly beleive a truck can only fit $5000 inside. Second one is practicality – it enables your warehouses, transport companies and residences to serve more buildings at the same time, allowing you to create more compact, nice and tidy chains instead of ones overclogged with buildings just to keep up with logistics. Of course, less buildings and trucks means you have to pay less upkeep – so it does make the game a little bit easier for you. On the other hand, cleaner map is very performance and fps-friendly.
- Building construction limit – disabled
They say Escobar had hundreds of residences scattered throughout the country. Why should we be limited on them? Or the hotels, which are essentially an in-city residence? Why shouldn’t we be able to build a cathedral in every city if we’ve got money to burn?
More residences allows us to compensate for the lack of longe-range cash logistics currently in the game (residences have to double at both acquiring cash and then distributing it), and also helps us to switch all of our production to dirty money upkeep, which is really helpful for the bottom line late game.
- Empire destruction – buildings arrested only
This mechanic is an artifact of the old times when the game had a more “hardcore” lean. I took the liberty to remove all the options that were too toxic or punishing on the player, like taking away your regions and possibly setting you back hours of gameplay. Having some of your buildings burned meant you had to go through a chore of rebuilding all that, which in some cases was impossible due to how tightly packed your chains were – hence this option had to go as well. Limiting the impact of the mechanic to building arrest is pretty much in line with the devs’ desire to make the game more approachable by making the terror mechanic less agressive.
Have fun!
Hash:
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