TL;DR:
We discovered an exponential growth issue in the production of $PART. At a certain level of Algorithm, the game essentially broke. Luckily, we caught this early in the Alpha and have made a tough but necessary choice to fundamentally change the way $PART is scavenged.

Details about this change

An exponential growth problem

Here is the original Algorithm formula:

(0.0003 + charging_station_level * 0.00003) * (1.1^algorithm_level)

This determined how much $PART you made every 3 seconds. The problem we discovered was if algorithm_level gets too high, the amount of $PART produced starts to rise faster than the cost of the upgrades, including the upgrade to Algorithm.

This creates a ‘runaway effect,’ where you just keep putting $PART into upgrades and keep making more and more $PART. Instead of diminishing returns, you get increasing returns. Eventually, a single user could control 99.999% of all production. That’s not good.

A community discussion

Many of the passionate players identified this issue in the public #go-main Discord channel. A few at first, then more and more as the problem became more clear. Eventually a Discord thread was created and several people—including solo-developer @yuexn and the top leaderboard players—began to seriously discuss the problem.

After several hours of analysis and brainstorm, it was clear that something needed to change. Top player @angrychipmunk1 was already starting down the path towards this 99.999% domination (and with good grace and humor agreed that he needed to be nerfed).

@yuexn’s goal was to find a solution that killed the exponential growth curve without causing a situation that incentivized all the nerfed players to go and create tons of alts.

The solution that we arrived on involves changing $PART production to a linear model, while still keeping bonuses and burn mechanisms that incentivize building a single account versus an army of alts.

The linear production solution

Here how it now works:

• Algorithm will be replaced entirely by a new Skill called Scavenger Golems. Each Golem costs 10 $PART and will increase your scavenge rate by 0.12 PART per hour.
• The Golem Charging Station will now limit how many Scavenger Golems you can have. Higher GCS = higher cap = more production. GCS also now boosts your claim bonus.
• Scavenger Golems will break down over time, at a rate of 0.5% per hour. Meaning your production rate will slowly decrease over time unless replenished (think of it as a fire that needs to be fed every now and then)

That Decay is capped at 75% of your claim, meaning you can never lose on a claim!

The Golem Charging Station upgrade cost is on a very expensive curve, so in this model, there will be diminishing returns to leveling up $PART production (instead of the other way around). The “stoking the fire” decay system rewards gaming activity, creates another sink for $PART, and makes managing 100s of alt-farms tougher and less rewarding.

Nerf compensation

This change will impact higher level players more than newer players. If you had a high Algorithm Skill, you will likely see a significant reduction in $PART production per hour.

We understand that this may feel unfair, frustrating, or upsetting. Unfortunately, this is the nature of an Alpha, and this move was needed to secure a viable future for the game. But still, it’s no fun to see your hard work wiped away and replaced with something less productive. Here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• This hits everyone at once, and the people above you get hit harder
• There will be a compensation mechanism, proportionate to how hard you got hit. Expect some $SHARD rewards and possibly a special title.
• We want to stress again that this is an Alpha! Bumpy roads are par for the course. We hope that it’s fun most of the time… but every now and then it can be painful.
• We also adjusted some builds cause they came out ahead way more than we would like.

What’s next?

As these changes deploy, @yuexn and others will monitor the economy and ensure that the desired outcomes are appearing. Tweaks to the new Skill abilities and formula may occur as the system is fine tuned.

Guild bunker upgrades, $SHARD utility, and other awesome content releases are still very much on the short-term horizon. (Take note, those of you who receive $SHARD compensation!)

Many people will be concerned about $PART price and volume. We honestly have no idea what this might do, and frankly, at this stage, it is not really the priority. It has been very exciting to see the market activity around $PART, but GO is first and foremost a game designed to be fun. The goal is to encourage deep theorycrafting, strong gaming culture, and be robust Hive app for many years to come.

Feedback is 100% welcome. Comment here or join us on Discord. And thank you for your continued support of Golem Overlord. The community literally makes all the difference.