When does building extra buildings start to give diminishing returns

kittens-game

So in the kittens game I am at the year 239. My building count is ridiculously high now (93 catnip fields, 62 aqueducts, 56 pastures, 47 mines and etc).

I was wondering if it is possible to have a list to determine after which point there is no need to construct a specific building because the rate of return decreases.

What I mean by rate of return decreases is that I am pretty sure that if you build 25 tradeposts (which I have now), your rare resource consumption does not end up being zero

Best Answer

There is a difference in buildings that produce resources (or positively influence resource income) and buildings that reduces the consumption.

In the first case, build whatever you want. They will always add up to your total income. These buildings are for example catnip fields, aquaducts and temples (culture). Every catnip field you build extra will produce another 0.125 catnip per tick, excluding all bonuses. The same goes for the mine. Each mine will increase the mineral output by 20%. Note that this 20% is summed over, not multiplied. So 10 mines increase output by 200%, not 1.2^10 = 619%.

The second part is a bit more tricky. You already noticed that 25 tradeposts should result in a stop of consumption of the luxury goods (because 25 * -4% = -100%). That is indeed not the case. There is a diminishing function, explained here, which will make sure that the reduction never reaches 100%. However, the diminishing does only start after 75%. So building 18 tradeposts (=72% reduction) gives the expected reduction, but 19 tradeposts will give around 75.8% something. Each tradepost you will build after this 19th one will increase the reduction by a smaller amount, as seen in the previously mentioned answer. Pastures (both normal and unicorns) are good examples (and tradeposts of course) of buildings who have this diminishing effect. An example of a diminished effect is the auto-observe chance for observatories.

This diminishing function is the same for every building and effect. So every building and effect increases linearly untill 75%, and after that it's slope will decrease (as shown in the figure in the linked answer).

Related Solutions

When do new buildings from research appear

Looking at the code, in buildings.js, there is the following:

var res = this.game.resPool.get(price.name);
if (res.value < price.val * unlockRatio){
    isEnabled = false;
    break;
}

Thus, to unlock a building, you need at least unlockRatio of each resource that is used in building it. The default is to require 30% of the cost of a building, with only one building having a non-default value.

For those looking to know, the religion-related Ziggurat is the one with non-default unlockRatio. It's set to 5%, partly so you don't need a ton of Megaliths before you ever know what they're good for; building a handful to see if they do anything is generally enough.

Building your first Academy will cost 50 Wood, 70 Minerals, and 100 Science, so you should only need 15 Wood, 21 Minerals, and 30 Science to unlock them. Mines should unlock once you have 30 Wood, and Pastures would have appeared once you had 30 Catnip and 3 Wood.

What happens to togglable buildings when they run out of a required resource

When you run out of a required resource, mints and smelters simply do nothing that tick. That results in you getting benefits proportional to the resources you do have available (although the sidebar numbers won't reflect this).

Most buildings that consume resources have the same behavior, but there are some exceptions:

If you run out of uranium, all of your reactors will turn off
If you run out of oil, one magneto will turn off per tick (1/5 of a second) until your oil supply is positive again

Best Answer

Related Solutions

When do new buildings from research appear

What happens to togglable buildings when they run out of a required resource

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