Mastery Bonus Adjustment

Some long overdue observations on the effects of mastery lead me to feel that the mechanics need adjusting.

It seems that when one chooses the mood/energy reduction, along with any reduction coming from individual challenges, the reduction becomes the new value rather than being treated as a modification of the original value as an RI would be. The problem comes when you want to add RIs to further decrease mood and energy consumption: the reduction isn't cumulative with the mastery like it is with RIs.

So if a building with a mood/energy of 200/100 takes the reduction and ends up with 100/50, an epic solar panel will result in 80/40 (-20% of new value) rather than an expected 60/30 (-70% in total).

I noticed this with the sunrise lofts and the somewhat ridiculous (for that building) requirement for two epics for mastery. Two solar panels plus the mastery, I would have expected to put me at 8/4, a 90% reduction, but my figures were 22/11, a 40% reduction of the new value after the mastery adjustment.

I believe this behavior may be intentional to prevent a zero-consumtion building as with RIs alone you can get up to 90% reduction and some building challenge rewards would push you to or over 100%, however I don't find it normal, especially considering the possibilities of real technology. While you'll still achieve lower numbers than buildings without this mastery using RIs, the price in RI slots for such extreme measures is arguably not worth it, making further specialization less interesting than it could be. Having a smaller base value means the returns are diminished. If balance is a concern, then a cap (i.e. 99% or 1/1) can be implemented. It'd still take a lot of work to get that far anyway. And seriously, we have need of too many power plants.

The timer suffers as well. I have alpine lodges with three epic bars (-5% timer each), that with the mastery challenge (-10%) I'd expect to bring me down to an even six hour timer (-25% total). However it is only at 6:07:12, an annoyingly inconvenient number, which is indeed 15% subtracted from the timer that has already been reduced by the 10% mastery bonus (7:12), rather than 25% from the full eight hours.

Another example:

Example 1

The math is easy enough to do. Example 1 could have a reduction of 95%: a timer as low as 36 minutes! Of course, that could be seen as unbalancing, but again, it's not easy to earn, and again, caps could be implemented.

This leaves the income-increasing mastery and challenges. They are the only ones that add rather than subtract from values, and thus the only ones that provide a larger base number for RIs to act upon.

As we can see in this example, you end up with more than the combined percentages from RIs:

Example 2

It changes the base stat the same way as the other mastery specializations, however unlike the others the effect of RIs will be even greater because the 25% specialization bonus isn't cumulative; it's applied before, permanently changing the base. Compared to how the others specializations are implemented, it doesn't seem as balanced for the governing stats. The change of the base income stat is more advantageous to that stat as it is easier to boost (comparatively less RIs needed) than the other specializations, making specialization in other stats excessively punishing in comparison. RIs that affect any given stat then have a higher effective magnitude when choosing the income mastery.

Perhaps I misinterpret how the mastery is supposed to be implemented, but to me it looks as if the same rules were applied to different situations without regard to the individual consequences, which is a flawed implementation.

In conclusion, I think at least the mood/energy and timer specializations, including challenge bonuses, should be cumulative with the base stat as RIs are rather than permanently lowering the true base stat. This gives a more specific advantage – thus incentive – to specialization in those stats and brings them to the level of the income mastery. Applying that behavior to income would however cause a slight decrease in income when paired with RIs, diminishing the advantage it has, so I don't see a need in changing it. As mastery stands, I don't see much significant variation in combinations of mastery and RIs. One would typically use RIs to make up for a mastery that wasn't chosen, resulting in all choices having little difference.