I'm really enjoying the game, but I have a major problem with the racket upgrades. One of the things that originally attracted me to EoS was the combination of the different elements of combat, RPG and economic (racket) management, but I find that the current game design almost discourages racket management as it is not worth the cost.
Deflect - I've never spent money on upgrading Deflect as the number of raids was so low that it was never a priority for me. Having said that, playing the Beta version I have seen an increase in the number of raids. However, given that the cost of upgrading Deflect is usually more than the cost of buying a new racket, it makes more sense not to upgrade Deflect and then, if a racket is raided, use the money you've saved to bribe the BOI to stop the raid or, if that fails, use the money to buy a new one (or even better take someone else's for free). The same can be said of security upgrades (even though the chances of raids by other bosses are higher, the same principal applies, that you're better off economically letting them take the racket and then either buying a new one or simply taking it back).
Word of Mouth - I've also never upgraded this because my rackets always seemed to be full other than when I first take them over, therefore there is no point in spending money to increase draw. My early impression of the Beta is that there are fewer customers therefore some of my rackets are not full, but this is due to there being too many rackets in the district as I already have positive draw in the rackets that are not full, which means it makes more sense to take someone else's racket to reduce competition rather than upgrading your own.
Ambience - the cost of upgrading is so high relative to the increased income that it takes far too long to break even. As an example, a small speakeasy costs $2000 to upgrade Ambience to level 2. In return your net income goes up by $14 per week (based on 50 customers and a base spend of $4). It would therefore take 2 years 9 months to recoup the $2000 cost. What's more, because the cost increases exponentially (e.g. upgrading to level 3 is an additional $3000), while the income increase incrementally (you still only get a $14 uplift in income), the breakeven gets longer with each upgrade. By my calculations, upgrading a small speakeasy to level 5 would take over 19 years to break even (Prohibition only lasted 13 years and all of my games have ended within a few years). For brothels it’s even worse due to the lower base average spend. Although it does improve marginally with larger rackets a large speakeasy upgrading to level 2 would still take 1 years and 4 months to break even, and over 9 years to cover the cost of upgrading to level 5. All of this ignores any discounts, but I don't think that affects the economics to any great extent.
Casino Games - more difficult to see what is going on given the erratic income but, given the percentage change in income is lower (and I assume this will increase losses as well as wins) and the costs are the same, I think the situation is similar to Ambience.
Alcohol Quality - I think that serving the preferred type of alcohol is supposed to give a 10% increase in income (although I'm not certain as I think there may be a bug with this but I haven't got my head around it yet), which on a small brewery would mean an increase of $80 a week, which would take 25 weeks to break even, but that is just to upgrade to Rack; if the preferred alcohol goes up to Top Shelf you need to spend another $3000 to upgrade your breweries, and to cover all eventualities you'd need to spend $15,000 in total, but you're still only getting an $80 a week benefit. Although it is more economic on larger breweries (for a large brewery you're spending up to $30,000 to cover all eventualities to get a $320 a week benefit).
Alcohol Production - the cost of upgrading to maximise a brewery's production is marginally less than the base cost of buying a new brewery at the larger size, but even then the time taken to upgrade makes it more sensible to buy/take a larger brewery rather than upgrading.
This is really disappointing as I feel that a major element of gameplay is effectively superfluous.
In terms of possible solutions:
A simple first step would be to make the cost of upgrading incremental rather than exponential to be consistent with the benefits.
I'd personally rather it was significantly cheaper to upgrade, but make it far more expensive to rush the upgrade (at the moment it’s the other way round).
I don't really understand what Deflect is meant to be. I would personally prefer to manage this at a district level through the bribery mechanism in some way. For example, paying a regular amount to the local precinct reduces the likelihood of raids on all your rackets in that district and/or increases the likelihood that you get tipped off in advance of a raid so that you can close the racket down or send a squad to help defend it before it is raided.
The income benefits of ambience/casino games could be significantly increased. Even 75% rather than 7.5% would not seem overly excessive to me.
Word of Mouth could be combined with Ambience so that increasing Ambience automatically increases Draw (which is what it says on the Ambience description by the way).
Preferred Alcohol could be made more critical, i.e. if you're not supplying the type of alcohol customers want, or can afford, then they won't come to your speakeasies. For example, if you're 1 level off reduce customers by 50%, 2 levels off reduces by 75%, 3 levels by 100%.
No one else has raised these issues, so maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but I'd be interested in other people's views (if anyone made it this far - sorry for the long message).
Deflect - I've never spent money on upgrading Deflect as the number of raids was so low that it was never a priority for me. Having said that, playing the Beta version I have seen an increase in the number of raids. However, given that the cost of upgrading Deflect is usually more than the cost of buying a new racket, it makes more sense not to upgrade Deflect and then, if a racket is raided, use the money you've saved to bribe the BOI to stop the raid or, if that fails, use the money to buy a new one (or even better take someone else's for free). The same can be said of security upgrades (even though the chances of raids by other bosses are higher, the same principal applies, that you're better off economically letting them take the racket and then either buying a new one or simply taking it back).
Word of Mouth - I've also never upgraded this because my rackets always seemed to be full other than when I first take them over, therefore there is no point in spending money to increase draw. My early impression of the Beta is that there are fewer customers therefore some of my rackets are not full, but this is due to there being too many rackets in the district as I already have positive draw in the rackets that are not full, which means it makes more sense to take someone else's racket to reduce competition rather than upgrading your own.
Ambience - the cost of upgrading is so high relative to the increased income that it takes far too long to break even. As an example, a small speakeasy costs $2000 to upgrade Ambience to level 2. In return your net income goes up by $14 per week (based on 50 customers and a base spend of $4). It would therefore take 2 years 9 months to recoup the $2000 cost. What's more, because the cost increases exponentially (e.g. upgrading to level 3 is an additional $3000), while the income increase incrementally (you still only get a $14 uplift in income), the breakeven gets longer with each upgrade. By my calculations, upgrading a small speakeasy to level 5 would take over 19 years to break even (Prohibition only lasted 13 years and all of my games have ended within a few years). For brothels it’s even worse due to the lower base average spend. Although it does improve marginally with larger rackets a large speakeasy upgrading to level 2 would still take 1 years and 4 months to break even, and over 9 years to cover the cost of upgrading to level 5. All of this ignores any discounts, but I don't think that affects the economics to any great extent.
Casino Games - more difficult to see what is going on given the erratic income but, given the percentage change in income is lower (and I assume this will increase losses as well as wins) and the costs are the same, I think the situation is similar to Ambience.
Alcohol Quality - I think that serving the preferred type of alcohol is supposed to give a 10% increase in income (although I'm not certain as I think there may be a bug with this but I haven't got my head around it yet), which on a small brewery would mean an increase of $80 a week, which would take 25 weeks to break even, but that is just to upgrade to Rack; if the preferred alcohol goes up to Top Shelf you need to spend another $3000 to upgrade your breweries, and to cover all eventualities you'd need to spend $15,000 in total, but you're still only getting an $80 a week benefit. Although it is more economic on larger breweries (for a large brewery you're spending up to $30,000 to cover all eventualities to get a $320 a week benefit).
Alcohol Production - the cost of upgrading to maximise a brewery's production is marginally less than the base cost of buying a new brewery at the larger size, but even then the time taken to upgrade makes it more sensible to buy/take a larger brewery rather than upgrading.
This is really disappointing as I feel that a major element of gameplay is effectively superfluous.
In terms of possible solutions:
A simple first step would be to make the cost of upgrading incremental rather than exponential to be consistent with the benefits.
I'd personally rather it was significantly cheaper to upgrade, but make it far more expensive to rush the upgrade (at the moment it’s the other way round).
I don't really understand what Deflect is meant to be. I would personally prefer to manage this at a district level through the bribery mechanism in some way. For example, paying a regular amount to the local precinct reduces the likelihood of raids on all your rackets in that district and/or increases the likelihood that you get tipped off in advance of a raid so that you can close the racket down or send a squad to help defend it before it is raided.
The income benefits of ambience/casino games could be significantly increased. Even 75% rather than 7.5% would not seem overly excessive to me.
Word of Mouth could be combined with Ambience so that increasing Ambience automatically increases Draw (which is what it says on the Ambience description by the way).
Preferred Alcohol could be made more critical, i.e. if you're not supplying the type of alcohol customers want, or can afford, then they won't come to your speakeasies. For example, if you're 1 level off reduce customers by 50%, 2 levels off reduces by 75%, 3 levels by 100%.
No one else has raised these issues, so maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but I'd be interested in other people's views (if anyone made it this far - sorry for the long message).
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