Forums » Suggestions
2010, Fall, Economy, production, crafting, dynamic, income rate, and inflation
(So da rules say to start a new thread and link to the relevant older ones.)
As requested, I am creating a new thread, and linking to the old one http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11406
I'm new here. And, I have ideas for a crafting/construction system. A little background: I'm very much a merchant type; in past games (YPP), I have been much more of a shop runner than a combat person.
So, the first thing I want to address, after reading the initial post by Incarnate in that post, is to distinguish three separate things that are not kept separate in that post:
1. Trading, trade runs, and supply runs for shops.
2. Construction, which I'm defining as large scale building of stuff, beyond what a single person can do. Ships, weapons, etc, fall into this.
3. Crafting, or what a single person can do. This includes recipe research; this includes manger-level functions. The question of "What can a shop build, if it has the workforce, and the supplies"; the question of "What does the shop know how to build, and how well-trained/supervised is the workforce".
Just as a simple example: The quality and stats of a laser produced by a shop will depend on what quality of parts the shop has access to, how well that shop knows what to do with those parts, and how skilled the technicians that it hires are. To make a good quality part, you not only need a good recipe (perhaps obtained by some mission for a powerful NPC that requires good faction standing; perhaps obtained by research [as a time, money, and equipment investment], and perhaps obtained by raiding some other production facility), you also need high quality parts (Gee, this laser requires an unobtainium crystal, and the only known sources of unobtainum rocks are deep in the grey zones, but only the Itani guys know how to turn that rock into a quality crystal), and you need the resources to produce it (we need what kind of power source from the Serca???). You also need trained techs (it'll take how long to hire and train some college grads??), and a state of the art production facility (hmm, gotta get a government contract just to get permission to use that stuff in our factory).
Now, almost all of these things can be traded on the market. Some, like the skilled workers, can't; some, like the production facility, might be sellable but not relocatable.
Here's a bad idea to avoid completely: Having to "level up" your production skill. That idea from WoW deserves to die -- if one producer has to produce 200+ items, then unless producers represent around .4% to .7% of the population, things are out of balance. The general idea should be that the production rate by players is about equal to the demand for player produced stuff.
Now, some of that demand might be NPC. After all, players demand stuff from NPC producers, maybe NPCs want some of our production. Perhaps moreso in the UIT and unaligned areas.
Put in components of differing amounts and you suddenly get a different item. However, they (at least EverQuest) offset this with an incredibly annoying high probability of failure, where you sat and clicked and lost components to "gain skill" and eventually be able to Make Stuff. I didn't find this process of failure very Fun, so I'm avoiding it at all costs. I think there are better ways of handling it.
For instance, one could have the ability to create "plans" for new types of items, and still yeild a 100% success rate, but you wouldn't know what the properties were of the item until you tested it.
How about: You spend time, money, and equipment researching. You indicate what you are trying to research. Your output will be either nothing, or (usually) something similar to what you wanted. (And, occasionally, a non-similar eureka.) You can try another round of research, this time including a copy of your previous output; now, you're more likely to succeed.
But fundamentally, a recipe is knowledge. Data. Information. Trivially and easily copied. Unlike EvE, where every invention yields a limited usage BPC, your research yields an unrestricted and copyable recipe. Low end recipes are common. Higher-end recipes less so, however, just like historical guild systems, unless your guild maintains strict controls over who gets information, it will leak and become commonplace. Maybe your knowledge will be raided by someone else. Whatever else, expect that your research will gain you, at best, a temporary advantage/exclusivity.
B) the station was too back-ordered for that particular item and wasn't taking further orders
Don't be silly. They'll add in a surcharge. Longer queues == higher prices.
Ultimately, this implies something along the following:
1. A production facility has so much storage space for parts. If you want to order something, they will report "Yea, we got that in stock, here's the price and time". Or, they might say "Yea, we can do that, here's the price, but we're short of stuff. This is what we need, and this is the estimated time".
2. They will buy stuff up to their storage space; if they have excess orders, they will buy more than their storage space, and temporarily buy surplus storage space from whereever they are located; this reduces the profit slightly (and helps to explain the higher markup as the queue gets longer) and may reduce the amount paid for items (the question being, is the stuff coming in faster than it is being consumed to produce the queue).
3. Player production centers will use both their purchase prices, their queue length markups, and their total base markups to differentiate themselves. (as well as who they will do business with.)
4. Items that you expect to be in demand can be pre-produced, and ready for immediate sale. Finished products take less space than the parts, in general. How much can you afford to stock?
LeberMac: I think it's important that crafting be skill-based/twitch-based in JUST the same way that Vendetta-Online combat is skill-based/twitch-based.
The only way I know of to do this is with some sort of time-based puzzle. (Hello YPP). Do you have other ideas on how to do this?
PhaserLight: From a single-player perspective, the only reason you wouldn't want to craft as many items as possible is scarcity of resources... if I had unlimited ore, tons of credits, and all the time in the world, is there any drawback to crafting 100 Vulture Mk Vs? What strategy is involved with choosing what and what not to craft? I think the answer lies in a different question:
Do stations have limited resources, or is crafting limited only per-player?
There has to be a limit. YPP used to have a limit of 24 units of production per account per day (it was recently increased); PotBS has a limit of 10 production lots per account (each lot has a maximum production rate).
For game provided NPC production, there can be a fixed production rate.
For player provided production, if there's unlimited ability to build production lots, then there's unlimited production potential. EvE somehow managed to do this and work; no other game I know of succeeded.
So what's the NPC's production rate? What's the NPC's supply of raw goods like? How much raw goods does the game spawn for player harvest? How do you prevent commodity shortages making some rare commodity "unavailable at any price unless your friend or guildmate harvests it"?
YPP solved that with a dynamic spawn system -- commodities have a "target price" set by the game designers (so you can balance the value of working in a sector with the risk of being in that sector). If the price of something on the market is going above that level, then the spawn rate increases; if the price is going below that, the spawn rate decreases. It prevents unavailability, and permits the game to expand as the player base/demand expands. It could also be applied to the NPC production queue if wanted; long NPC queues slightly increase the speed of NPC production. Equally, if NPC shops have a shortage of goods, they raise their buy rates (and possibly their charged amounts); if they get a shorter queue and sufficient stock, they lower prices. Presto -- dynamic pricing / trade economy.
LeiberMac: I'd like to re-state my STRONG desire that crafting not be purely "gather X items, put items through y device, get z super-cool item. Repeat."
Either you have a time delay, or you have some sort of "player crafting level" (yuck -- see WoW), or you have some sort of mini-game to play. Vanguard had simple mini-games. YPP has several different types of mini-games. It's doable. How much work is it to make a bunch of themed mini-games that are all fun? Is the time limit factor sufficient? As far as I know, that's all EvE uses.
Otherwise the guilds will quickly obtain every single item that it is possible to get and we'll be back to square one - there's no new items, people clamoring for new things. You should have to have high levels AND "real people" high crafting skills in order to make the most desired items.
I hate to break this to you: You have to assume that guilds will have everything, or at least the ability to make everything.
What's the solution? Simple. People don't like it, but it's a simple solution.
The rate of consumption of items has to roughly equal the rate of production of items
WoW got this right with "Bind on equip". Yes, people hate it, but it means that the production by a person (their mob drop rate, basically) equals their consumption rate (they either use it, and then it's bound, no one else can use it, eventually being sold as vendor trash when it's too weak), or they sell it -- in which case someone else consumes it. Case in point: Normal bags do not bind on equip -- and quickly reach the point where they are no longer worth making because the server is full of them.
YPP got a "close enough" match by saying that all equipment lasts so many days of play, and then wears out.
Is your guild producing 3 uuber-guns per week? Then it can be expected to lose / need to replace 3 per week. Balance the loss rate. If you can't, then put in a wear-out factor.
What's a warrior without a blacksmith to back him up?
"Dinner", said the canine/feline/etc :-)
Phaserlight: I want to manufacture 100 vultures to be sold. I don't want to sit there and try to draw 100 perfect circles or what have you... I want to make an executive decision to dedicate the station's resources to creating 100 vultures.
Then there are two possible game designs that I know of:
1. (PotBS): You pay NPC's X for labor to build it.
2. (YPP): You pay player workers Y per labor unit; there may be multiple grades with different pay rates.
YPP has a horrendous problem with trying to match the supply of players who are good with shops that need players. It has a big problem with "how many players are able to do high-quality work, and how many are just basic".
I don't know what PotBS's problem is, but I do know that people who played it had complaints on this issue. I don't know how vanguard handled this, or even if this issue came up.
(pg 2)
LeiberMac: Advertisements: Just require that it be in Galactic Trade Standard :-).
We've already determined that computers & robots themselves cannot mass-produce anything new, only copies of existing prototypes.(e.g. The Hive). Human input is required to create new objects.
All this requires is that creating a new recipe requires some sort of investment of (game resources? Human skill? Some combination?). Once you've got a recipe, you program your construction factory, and poof. (Are they fully automated? No actual workers?)
LordQ, http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11406?page=2#134855 seems to cover a lot of this, but I'm having trouble understanding this post.
Leibermac, responding to Phaser: Different "plans" could be stored in datapads, which can be transported from station to station (And STOLEN posibly by nasssty pie-rats)
Not only real, working plans, but how about fakes as well? You steal the datapad, you get a bunch of designs, but until you try them, how will you tell which are real and which are fake? This will give at least some protection to new guild recipes, at least for a while. It won't protect the eventual "everyone knows", but it will help.
Level "10" empty datapads would cost like 1 million credits
Level "3" empty datapads would cost maybe 10,000 cr.
AND, if you are experimenting with formulas to make new and excting variants on things, there is a good possibility that your formula will fail and you will have wasted the datapad.
This is bad. A plan is just information. Plain old data. The idea that it would be that much more expensive, or unreusable, is just silly.
Given the expected growth rate of storage density, you can assume that a single datapad can store effectively unlimited amounts of information.
(end of pg 2 / pg 3)
At this point, I'm aware of something that I wasn't aware of before. NPC's deliver raw ores, etc. Rocks spawn ore based on temperature, and people will heat up rocks to deny ore to others.
If you want a dynamic spawning system to work, how do you handle it? If you just send out more and more NPC's to mine stuff from the rocks, then just making the rocks hotter won't act to deny ore anymore -- eventually, the higher price will create more NPC miners and the heat effect no longer works.
But if you don't have dynamic supply, how do you handle more people playing the game? How do you handle a change in economy/crafting that has players making all the basic stuff from ore, instead of relying on NPC production?
I came up with a simple answer: NPC miners only spawn to go out and mine when the rocks are "cold enough"; they spawn and mine in a group to reduce the heat effect.
You can still keep the rocks hot to deny the mining.
Or, a large guild might decide that the best way to get the minerals that they need is to protect and defend the rocks long enough for them to cool and NPC's resume work. But that sounds like player-based law enforcement ...
Stations having production equipment, vs players having to build production equipment: That's easy. Yes, stations will have production equipment; different tech stations have different equipment. Busy stations will charge you more to use their equipment (they have less unused equipment hours), idle stations will charge you less. Or, build your own, and pay the fee upfront.
LeiberMac: There needs to be some limiting factor on creating every possible "uber" item. Because the JOURNEY towards those items is the POINT of crafting. (It's not the destination, it's the journey!) Once you reach the pinnacle and you have crafted the perfect item of every possible piece of equipment, there is no more interest, and the game is back at square one, as if the crafting system did not exist, because everyone will eventually have the "perfect" item of every piece of equipment, along with enough money to buy everything they ever wanted.
Ultimately, every perfect items needs to need replacing.
Ultimately, every game needs some sort of unrestricted money sink. RL has taxes, but we don't have that in games.
Players will find a way to break things
Yup. And if you find something broken, then what?
Well, if you have "wear out" factors, you just fix the breakage. Soon, the overpowered stuff will need to be replaced, and it's fixed.
Player owned stations being attacked:
Well, EvE apparently solved that. Anyone know how?
(pg 4)
Sieges, and switching alliances: If enough stations in a system change alliances, does the system itself change?
Insurance: I like it. Maybe you get 40% insurance automatically, and every +10% costs you 5% of the value every 3 months? (EvE style rates)
===
How about some sort of "logoff" for stations? After all, a player might go on vacation for a while.
The idea: Just as players have a 10 second delay before they are logged off, a station might have <N> days before it logs off. How big is N? Well, can you attack it directly? Are they allowed to have automated defenses, and how well are those automated defenses expected to hold up?
A logged off station is gone from the world map. It's in the server's database, but never drawn, doesn't interact, etc. At some point when you return, you can reactivate your stations; this results in an <M> day delay where it is present, and can be attacked, or defend itself, but won't have any other functions.
LeiberMac has a similar idea with stasis, but he wants the length determined ahead of time. No, it needs to be "as needed".
Everman7: Doesn't want to take expensive, time consuming specials into battle.
Well, lets see. You can pay $X to get a standard item, or you can spend $Y to get a player produced item. If a player production store has them premade and in stock, there's no time cost. So the question is, is the value of (Y-X) worth the improvement in quality?
Pg 6:
Do we want a single, fixed, unknown but discoverable tech tree, or do we want continual improvement (Before: strength 40 armor, strength 40 weapon. After: strength 39 armor and weapon, and that-guy-over-there has a 41. NPC's try to keep up, and are selling new stuff still at 40.)
This is an interesting idea. If you have this mechanism, then crafting -- individual experimentation to make for better combinations -- will continue to be of use. But now it can't be based on a specific tech tree, only "investing time, resources, and past experimentation" to try to make a new something.
Note that the combination -- I've made a new "best of the best", so all existing stuff gets weaker, stays evenly matched, and NPC stuff just keeps up with the typical/average -- doesn't hurt new players, and allows for ongoing play in this as the universe gets older. Now, at some point, the inventors are going to keep getting better numbers. So, every so often (once a week?), the NPC's improve a little. Everyone else goes down a little. Eventually, if you stop inventing, your uuber 45 will drop to 44, then 43, then 42, then 41, then 40 -- the NPC's have caught up with you. They won't go past you.
This is a nice mechanism. I like it, and it's not something I would have thought of. Kudos.
Once again, you have the case where half the items in the game eventually become worthless, and this punishes new players... mudflation.
No, the NPC made stuff doesn't change. New players are unaffected.
Equivalent Exchange: Well, technically, it violates the second rule. The original anime explained it by saying that it takes energy from the other side of the gate; not sure how the manga/second anime will explain it.
(pg 7)
Tech levels ...
I'd say you should never expect to see a pure tech 2 everything ship. Yes, you might see a ship with tech 2 weapons, and another with tech 2 armor. But that should not be the norm. Tech 2 should be maybe 5-10% of the demand, no where near 100%. Yes, this means that T2 should be a noticeable improvement over T1. That might mean more damage; that might mean less mass. That might mean special ability (maybe a T2 weapon is armor piercing; has little effect on a ship with little armor, while the T2 armor is hardened.)
But one thing must stay balanced: A t1 ship, in the hands of a skilled pilot, should be able to defeat a ship with some T2 in the hands of a good pilot. For equal skill, T2 should rule T1; for better skill, skill should rule at some point.
How much "extra skill" does a T2 buy? Mmm...
I'll say, at the high-end of the skill range, nothing. But at the low end, a lot.
A "knows the basic, good against bots" T2 pilot should get the biggest benefit. But even then, a skilled T1 should do better. Not sure what the spread should be.
===
Any production system needs to avoid the PotBS trap. From what I understand, while PotBS originally looked to be a large player economy, with lots of things to work in, it turned into guild oriented, vertical production -- instead of producing stuff for the market, you just produced what the guild told you to make. There has to be enough room for independents.
===
As it stands, if the devs want to have a crafting system, they'll have to keep track of individual widgets anyway. So additional complexity in the system should be anticipated regardless of what method the crafting takes.
The whole POINT of crafting is to make something that is different than everything else out there.
Remember, both a production system and a crafting system are being considered. It is possible to have production without crafting.
Production means that you are building ship/weapon type X. Maybe it's a plan that you can get in the deep greys. Maybe it's a well-known existing plan. Maybe players can make it cheaper than the NPC's, if the players first invest in an expensive production site.
But before you can produce crafted stuff, you have to be able to produce basic stuff. So a production system has to be in this; a crafting system doesn't. Some of us like being merchants.
As mentioned, a production system will really benefit from a good supply/demand trading model.
Lost Commander: The facilities should NEVER take resources from the station's inventory; you must buy them first, then place and pay for a production order.
Let me give you a counter model: I am a shop. I am open to the public. You place an order, I begin work on it. If I need to purchase supplies from the station to complete my job, I do so. If I need to place a buy order from traders who come by the station, I do so. When you place your order, you pay a down payment, set by my owner -- it is supposed to be enough to make sure that I can purchase the supplies needed. When finished, you pay the remainder as a delivery fee. If you don't pay the delivery fee in <x> days, you forfeit the product. Meanwhile, my competitor down there has a 100% down policy, but you'll never forfeit the product once it's finished.
The point being: Production can be for shops. Maybe some player shops pre-produce, and have it available now. Maybe some are "all parts are available, it will take N hours". Maybe some are "Not all parts are available; X, Y, and Z needs to be delivered. That one might be the cheapest, but it might also take the longest.
NO SPAWNING!!! !!! That is COMPLETELY against the idea of full economy. NPC ships have to come from SOMEWHERE.
I don't understand this.
Remember, I'm brand new here. It's my understanding that an NPC ship departs a station, goes to the asteroid, mines it, and then flies back; during this time, you can attack it and loot it's cargo.
Station destructability: The key question is, how long does it take to destroy one, and, are you expecting NPC ships to help you (are you in defended space; did you buy a defense contract), and are you in a large guild (the whole guild knows about the station, and sends people out there).
That assumes that it's possible for your guild to fill a small attack fleet any time of day or night. I don't know if that's realistic for most guilds. It kills the small guilds and independents. Do you want to kill those?
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Lost Commander then has a very long, detailed post that almost looks like defining resources and expenses for three nations in a big, detailed, resource management board game (ala the old SPI wargames). I do not understand most of it.
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Next, "The New Economy", http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/17418
This topic seems to be horrifically overcomplicated to build an economic model with a large number of flawed assumptions, the primary one seems to be that the activities of the players in-game is the dominant economic activities in the entire nation. It seems far more likely to me that NPC activity that we don't see far outweighs all player activity combined.
4. The underlying Model of the Economy must recognise that, for each Nation [or faction] there is an effectively LIMITED amount of wealth available, and money available for it to issue.
which is a total fail -- governments can and do arbitrarily issue all the money that they want.
In fact, there's so many flaws in this post ... it's just a disaster.
Here's a quick hint: the idea that there is a fixed, finite amount of money in the system is wrong. The system is not closed. There is, somewhere, a unbalanced source of money.
In the US, for example, that's the ability of the federal reserve to inject money into banks from nowhere. It's the increase in the money supply over time. It's the combined effect of bankruptcy and fractional reserve lending. Etc.
We are saying: the money in VO has problems (read my posts);
and the Devs are working on the Economy for VO 2.0;
and we are just chipping in with constructive ideas for a:
- dynamic economy
- which has a simple model that behaves fairly rationally
- which preserves the value of money (is devoid of "perpetual-money making machines")
1 - In an MMO, the supply of money increases as a function of player hours, character level, and player skill.
2 - In an MMO, the supply of money decreases with equipment purchase
3 - If there is too much money, the simplest fix is to introduce a big re-occurring expense that is much larger than the next big expense for a very minor, but noticeable/significant improvement, one whose re-occurring cost is too high for the benefit and income expected during the lifespan of that item.
4 - If you cannot reduce the fountains, you need to add sinks.
*5* If your game is designed around resource destruction (PvP), then you must ensure that there is sufficient resource production that the loss doesn't hurt.
A PvP game, where resource destruction is the name of the game, where you must buy new ships constantly, requires that all players get an influx of income. If you want a realistic economy, you cannot have that large level of destruction.
Remember: A realistic economy means that some people will wind up with more than their share of funds, and others will wind up with less than their share. If the less-than-average people cannot afford the next ship to be lost, they stop playing.
===
Any game like VO will have the basic operation be:
1. Mine asteroids for minerals. No change to the money supply. Increase in player commodity supply.
2. Sell minerals to NPC's. Increase in player money supply. Decrease in player commodity supply. Hidden opposite movements in non-tracked NPC supplies. For a dynamic economy, reduction in NPC demand.
3. Buying ships and equipment. Decrease in player money supply. Decrease in player demand. Hidden increase in non-tracked NPC money supply. For a dynamic economy, increase in NPC demand.
4. Loss of ships. Increase in player demand.
Now, keep that in approximate balance, keeping low-end players in ships capable of generating the player money supply necessary for PvP action. That's a "good enough" model.
Note that this doesn't address:
1. NPC mining of minerals
2. Dynamic supply of minerals based on changing mining demand or changing production consumption, or changing trading prices
3. Probably other things as well.
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http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/16119?page=2#204224
This is why, in all these games the currency of choice is always in a state of rapid devaluation and price inflation.
<Sigh.>
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. YPP solved the price inflation issue; on subscriber oceans, housing and furniture permit arbitrary spending of surplus funds (poe sink on commodities to manufacture decorations for your pirate home).
You can keep prices under control while still having a player driven economy with player manufacturing.
If players have something to spend surplus funds on, and they have the ability to show off what they have spent, then they have a reason to spend surplus funds.
If you restrict funds to be "realistic", then you run into the inherently unrealistic nature of payouts in most games, and the system breaks.
As a quick example of "realism", an EvE PLEX is "realistic". Yet it's out of the price range of beginning players, and dirt cheap to experienced players. If you have realistic pricing and the typical game's income model, then high level characters have all the money, and beginners are all broke.
All transactions should result in credits moving from one account, to another, and never, under any circumstance, create credits from nothing. Without this, inflation is inevitable and will continuously make credits more worthless.
I'll post in detail on this if you want, but this is false:
1. It fails to account for population change
2. It fails to account for hording of funds
3. It fails to account for the deflation that occurs when there is hording
4. It fails to account for population change
5. It fails to account for inflation actually being a relationship between production and perceived demand, desire and available funds, and population. Almost all accounts of inflation leave out population, and yet it is critical.
I do agree that different currencies for the different nations, along with a currency trading system, makes for a good idea; it's probably too complicated for many would-be players.
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http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/21125?page=1
RFC: Trading and economics (2009):
First, the idea of setting expected income per time period, which is what this sounds like (beginners earn 500 * 200 per what sounds like 30 minutes of shipping, experienced players earn 1200 * 200 per what sounds like 60 minutes, or 5000 * 200 per what sounds like 180 minutes -- or a scale of 1000, 1200, and 1700 per hour. Granted, those time periods may be off, but this is what the idea seems to be saying) is a good thing. Setting expected mining profits, and expected combat / mission profits based on that is the next thing. All sounds like good, basic game design.
(Ohh, slotbot, an excellent money sink! :-).
If it takes 30min to do a 100,000cr run, that 30min of game time can buy you approx 1.7 high-end ships. In other words, 30 minutes has bought you about 10min of PvP
Yea, as I mentioned above, a PvP game is all about being able to bring in enough resources to afford to lose the next ship. That's for 1-on-1. For armada on armada / guild vs. guild, you need even bigger income.
This is exactly the opposite of what is needed to spur player interaction in these days of low player base.
Just as a quickie, if low player base is an issue, then you want to make it easy for people to log in, and learn to play. Having only 8 hours to learn what I'm doing means I'm spending as much time as possible NOT logged in, to avoid wasting it; it means I'm not doing any sort of "atmosphere" immersion, such as deciphering the GTS signs.
Keep it simple: assuming I am not trying to return to the income levels of Old, how do the relative profits look for the different Intra, Inter, and Deep-Gray regions?
I want to be able to spend 2 minutes in PvP for every minute in PvE. And, I'm a horrible twitch reaction person. I'll use the auto-aim tools. I'll side and turn; I grew up with "warp" and learned to constantly vary my speed and direction. I'll probably have around a 35-40% win rate given the large number of people with more experience than me (less if they have better ships than me :-).
If I can do that with your deep-gray payout levels, then good!.
If not, then my question is: How many minutes of PvE do I spend per minute of PvP? What is your target goal here?
Just to give you another take on the numbers: I play poker online, with "fake cash". I go to tables where I am only bringing in about 1/10th of my available funds. I generally have a positive return, but I do have losing streaks.
If I had 1 million, I'd fly a 100K ship.
If I had 10 million, I'd fly a 1 mil ship.
Except: If I'm fighting someone in the same class of ship as mine, I'm expecting a loss from lack of experience. Doesn't matter if I have a 100K ship or a 1 mil ship -- I'll last about the same length of time. So, unless there's something I'm not understanding, I can expect <N> minutes of PvP for two fights (one win, and one loss), and that <N> doesn't change with ship class. So how much money can I make in N minutes of PvE? And if I want twice as much PvP time as PvE time, then (1) is that reasonable, and (2) what kind of ship can I get?
If the focus is on PvP, which seems to be the case, and PvP ends with one of the two destroyed (and in a large armada battle, more than half of the total are destroyed), then does the PvE generate enough funds?
Hence why I love shopkeeping/merchanting: I'm making money on the side, at the same time that I'm fighting the E. My income rate is higher than my PvE rate; I can afford more PvP time.
(Or have I misunderstood the point of this game?)
===
Hyper inflation:
Instead of multiplying all costs by a factor of 10, what's wrong with cutting all existing bank accounts by a factor of 10?
Ok, that's all the threads I saw about the economy, the change to dynamic, changing the profit per time model, etc. All more than a year old, so I'm starting a new one.
(NB: The changelog has version numbers, but not dates; the forum threads have dates, but no corresponding version number. It's really hard to figure out what forum discussions correspond to what version of the game. For the record, the current version is 1.8.139)
As requested, I am creating a new thread, and linking to the old one http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11406
I'm new here. And, I have ideas for a crafting/construction system. A little background: I'm very much a merchant type; in past games (YPP), I have been much more of a shop runner than a combat person.
So, the first thing I want to address, after reading the initial post by Incarnate in that post, is to distinguish three separate things that are not kept separate in that post:
1. Trading, trade runs, and supply runs for shops.
2. Construction, which I'm defining as large scale building of stuff, beyond what a single person can do. Ships, weapons, etc, fall into this.
3. Crafting, or what a single person can do. This includes recipe research; this includes manger-level functions. The question of "What can a shop build, if it has the workforce, and the supplies"; the question of "What does the shop know how to build, and how well-trained/supervised is the workforce".
Just as a simple example: The quality and stats of a laser produced by a shop will depend on what quality of parts the shop has access to, how well that shop knows what to do with those parts, and how skilled the technicians that it hires are. To make a good quality part, you not only need a good recipe (perhaps obtained by some mission for a powerful NPC that requires good faction standing; perhaps obtained by research [as a time, money, and equipment investment], and perhaps obtained by raiding some other production facility), you also need high quality parts (Gee, this laser requires an unobtainium crystal, and the only known sources of unobtainum rocks are deep in the grey zones, but only the Itani guys know how to turn that rock into a quality crystal), and you need the resources to produce it (we need what kind of power source from the Serca???). You also need trained techs (it'll take how long to hire and train some college grads??), and a state of the art production facility (hmm, gotta get a government contract just to get permission to use that stuff in our factory).
Now, almost all of these things can be traded on the market. Some, like the skilled workers, can't; some, like the production facility, might be sellable but not relocatable.
Here's a bad idea to avoid completely: Having to "level up" your production skill. That idea from WoW deserves to die -- if one producer has to produce 200+ items, then unless producers represent around .4% to .7% of the population, things are out of balance. The general idea should be that the production rate by players is about equal to the demand for player produced stuff.
Now, some of that demand might be NPC. After all, players demand stuff from NPC producers, maybe NPCs want some of our production. Perhaps moreso in the UIT and unaligned areas.
Put in components of differing amounts and you suddenly get a different item. However, they (at least EverQuest) offset this with an incredibly annoying high probability of failure, where you sat and clicked and lost components to "gain skill" and eventually be able to Make Stuff. I didn't find this process of failure very Fun, so I'm avoiding it at all costs. I think there are better ways of handling it.
For instance, one could have the ability to create "plans" for new types of items, and still yeild a 100% success rate, but you wouldn't know what the properties were of the item until you tested it.
How about: You spend time, money, and equipment researching. You indicate what you are trying to research. Your output will be either nothing, or (usually) something similar to what you wanted. (And, occasionally, a non-similar eureka.) You can try another round of research, this time including a copy of your previous output; now, you're more likely to succeed.
But fundamentally, a recipe is knowledge. Data. Information. Trivially and easily copied. Unlike EvE, where every invention yields a limited usage BPC, your research yields an unrestricted and copyable recipe. Low end recipes are common. Higher-end recipes less so, however, just like historical guild systems, unless your guild maintains strict controls over who gets information, it will leak and become commonplace. Maybe your knowledge will be raided by someone else. Whatever else, expect that your research will gain you, at best, a temporary advantage/exclusivity.
B) the station was too back-ordered for that particular item and wasn't taking further orders
Don't be silly. They'll add in a surcharge. Longer queues == higher prices.
Ultimately, this implies something along the following:
1. A production facility has so much storage space for parts. If you want to order something, they will report "Yea, we got that in stock, here's the price and time". Or, they might say "Yea, we can do that, here's the price, but we're short of stuff. This is what we need, and this is the estimated time".
2. They will buy stuff up to their storage space; if they have excess orders, they will buy more than their storage space, and temporarily buy surplus storage space from whereever they are located; this reduces the profit slightly (and helps to explain the higher markup as the queue gets longer) and may reduce the amount paid for items (the question being, is the stuff coming in faster than it is being consumed to produce the queue).
3. Player production centers will use both their purchase prices, their queue length markups, and their total base markups to differentiate themselves. (as well as who they will do business with.)
4. Items that you expect to be in demand can be pre-produced, and ready for immediate sale. Finished products take less space than the parts, in general. How much can you afford to stock?
LeberMac: I think it's important that crafting be skill-based/twitch-based in JUST the same way that Vendetta-Online combat is skill-based/twitch-based.
The only way I know of to do this is with some sort of time-based puzzle. (Hello YPP). Do you have other ideas on how to do this?
PhaserLight: From a single-player perspective, the only reason you wouldn't want to craft as many items as possible is scarcity of resources... if I had unlimited ore, tons of credits, and all the time in the world, is there any drawback to crafting 100 Vulture Mk Vs? What strategy is involved with choosing what and what not to craft? I think the answer lies in a different question:
Do stations have limited resources, or is crafting limited only per-player?
There has to be a limit. YPP used to have a limit of 24 units of production per account per day (it was recently increased); PotBS has a limit of 10 production lots per account (each lot has a maximum production rate).
For game provided NPC production, there can be a fixed production rate.
For player provided production, if there's unlimited ability to build production lots, then there's unlimited production potential. EvE somehow managed to do this and work; no other game I know of succeeded.
So what's the NPC's production rate? What's the NPC's supply of raw goods like? How much raw goods does the game spawn for player harvest? How do you prevent commodity shortages making some rare commodity "unavailable at any price unless your friend or guildmate harvests it"?
YPP solved that with a dynamic spawn system -- commodities have a "target price" set by the game designers (so you can balance the value of working in a sector with the risk of being in that sector). If the price of something on the market is going above that level, then the spawn rate increases; if the price is going below that, the spawn rate decreases. It prevents unavailability, and permits the game to expand as the player base/demand expands. It could also be applied to the NPC production queue if wanted; long NPC queues slightly increase the speed of NPC production. Equally, if NPC shops have a shortage of goods, they raise their buy rates (and possibly their charged amounts); if they get a shorter queue and sufficient stock, they lower prices. Presto -- dynamic pricing / trade economy.
LeiberMac: I'd like to re-state my STRONG desire that crafting not be purely "gather X items, put items through y device, get z super-cool item. Repeat."
Either you have a time delay, or you have some sort of "player crafting level" (yuck -- see WoW), or you have some sort of mini-game to play. Vanguard had simple mini-games. YPP has several different types of mini-games. It's doable. How much work is it to make a bunch of themed mini-games that are all fun? Is the time limit factor sufficient? As far as I know, that's all EvE uses.
Otherwise the guilds will quickly obtain every single item that it is possible to get and we'll be back to square one - there's no new items, people clamoring for new things. You should have to have high levels AND "real people" high crafting skills in order to make the most desired items.
I hate to break this to you: You have to assume that guilds will have everything, or at least the ability to make everything.
What's the solution? Simple. People don't like it, but it's a simple solution.
The rate of consumption of items has to roughly equal the rate of production of items
WoW got this right with "Bind on equip". Yes, people hate it, but it means that the production by a person (their mob drop rate, basically) equals their consumption rate (they either use it, and then it's bound, no one else can use it, eventually being sold as vendor trash when it's too weak), or they sell it -- in which case someone else consumes it. Case in point: Normal bags do not bind on equip -- and quickly reach the point where they are no longer worth making because the server is full of them.
YPP got a "close enough" match by saying that all equipment lasts so many days of play, and then wears out.
Is your guild producing 3 uuber-guns per week? Then it can be expected to lose / need to replace 3 per week. Balance the loss rate. If you can't, then put in a wear-out factor.
What's a warrior without a blacksmith to back him up?
"Dinner", said the canine/feline/etc :-)
Phaserlight: I want to manufacture 100 vultures to be sold. I don't want to sit there and try to draw 100 perfect circles or what have you... I want to make an executive decision to dedicate the station's resources to creating 100 vultures.
Then there are two possible game designs that I know of:
1. (PotBS): You pay NPC's X for labor to build it.
2. (YPP): You pay player workers Y per labor unit; there may be multiple grades with different pay rates.
YPP has a horrendous problem with trying to match the supply of players who are good with shops that need players. It has a big problem with "how many players are able to do high-quality work, and how many are just basic".
I don't know what PotBS's problem is, but I do know that people who played it had complaints on this issue. I don't know how vanguard handled this, or even if this issue came up.
(pg 2)
LeiberMac: Advertisements: Just require that it be in Galactic Trade Standard :-).
We've already determined that computers & robots themselves cannot mass-produce anything new, only copies of existing prototypes.(e.g. The Hive). Human input is required to create new objects.
All this requires is that creating a new recipe requires some sort of investment of (game resources? Human skill? Some combination?). Once you've got a recipe, you program your construction factory, and poof. (Are they fully automated? No actual workers?)
LordQ, http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11406?page=2#134855 seems to cover a lot of this, but I'm having trouble understanding this post.
Leibermac, responding to Phaser: Different "plans" could be stored in datapads, which can be transported from station to station (And STOLEN posibly by nasssty pie-rats)
Not only real, working plans, but how about fakes as well? You steal the datapad, you get a bunch of designs, but until you try them, how will you tell which are real and which are fake? This will give at least some protection to new guild recipes, at least for a while. It won't protect the eventual "everyone knows", but it will help.
Level "10" empty datapads would cost like 1 million credits
Level "3" empty datapads would cost maybe 10,000 cr.
AND, if you are experimenting with formulas to make new and excting variants on things, there is a good possibility that your formula will fail and you will have wasted the datapad.
This is bad. A plan is just information. Plain old data. The idea that it would be that much more expensive, or unreusable, is just silly.
Given the expected growth rate of storage density, you can assume that a single datapad can store effectively unlimited amounts of information.
(end of pg 2 / pg 3)
At this point, I'm aware of something that I wasn't aware of before. NPC's deliver raw ores, etc. Rocks spawn ore based on temperature, and people will heat up rocks to deny ore to others.
If you want a dynamic spawning system to work, how do you handle it? If you just send out more and more NPC's to mine stuff from the rocks, then just making the rocks hotter won't act to deny ore anymore -- eventually, the higher price will create more NPC miners and the heat effect no longer works.
But if you don't have dynamic supply, how do you handle more people playing the game? How do you handle a change in economy/crafting that has players making all the basic stuff from ore, instead of relying on NPC production?
I came up with a simple answer: NPC miners only spawn to go out and mine when the rocks are "cold enough"; they spawn and mine in a group to reduce the heat effect.
You can still keep the rocks hot to deny the mining.
Or, a large guild might decide that the best way to get the minerals that they need is to protect and defend the rocks long enough for them to cool and NPC's resume work. But that sounds like player-based law enforcement ...
Stations having production equipment, vs players having to build production equipment: That's easy. Yes, stations will have production equipment; different tech stations have different equipment. Busy stations will charge you more to use their equipment (they have less unused equipment hours), idle stations will charge you less. Or, build your own, and pay the fee upfront.
LeiberMac: There needs to be some limiting factor on creating every possible "uber" item. Because the JOURNEY towards those items is the POINT of crafting. (It's not the destination, it's the journey!) Once you reach the pinnacle and you have crafted the perfect item of every possible piece of equipment, there is no more interest, and the game is back at square one, as if the crafting system did not exist, because everyone will eventually have the "perfect" item of every piece of equipment, along with enough money to buy everything they ever wanted.
Ultimately, every perfect items needs to need replacing.
Ultimately, every game needs some sort of unrestricted money sink. RL has taxes, but we don't have that in games.
Players will find a way to break things
Yup. And if you find something broken, then what?
Well, if you have "wear out" factors, you just fix the breakage. Soon, the overpowered stuff will need to be replaced, and it's fixed.
Player owned stations being attacked:
Well, EvE apparently solved that. Anyone know how?
(pg 4)
Sieges, and switching alliances: If enough stations in a system change alliances, does the system itself change?
Insurance: I like it. Maybe you get 40% insurance automatically, and every +10% costs you 5% of the value every 3 months? (EvE style rates)
===
How about some sort of "logoff" for stations? After all, a player might go on vacation for a while.
The idea: Just as players have a 10 second delay before they are logged off, a station might have <N> days before it logs off. How big is N? Well, can you attack it directly? Are they allowed to have automated defenses, and how well are those automated defenses expected to hold up?
A logged off station is gone from the world map. It's in the server's database, but never drawn, doesn't interact, etc. At some point when you return, you can reactivate your stations; this results in an <M> day delay where it is present, and can be attacked, or defend itself, but won't have any other functions.
LeiberMac has a similar idea with stasis, but he wants the length determined ahead of time. No, it needs to be "as needed".
Everman7: Doesn't want to take expensive, time consuming specials into battle.
Well, lets see. You can pay $X to get a standard item, or you can spend $Y to get a player produced item. If a player production store has them premade and in stock, there's no time cost. So the question is, is the value of (Y-X) worth the improvement in quality?
Pg 6:
Do we want a single, fixed, unknown but discoverable tech tree, or do we want continual improvement (Before: strength 40 armor, strength 40 weapon. After: strength 39 armor and weapon, and that-guy-over-there has a 41. NPC's try to keep up, and are selling new stuff still at 40.)
This is an interesting idea. If you have this mechanism, then crafting -- individual experimentation to make for better combinations -- will continue to be of use. But now it can't be based on a specific tech tree, only "investing time, resources, and past experimentation" to try to make a new something.
Note that the combination -- I've made a new "best of the best", so all existing stuff gets weaker, stays evenly matched, and NPC stuff just keeps up with the typical/average -- doesn't hurt new players, and allows for ongoing play in this as the universe gets older. Now, at some point, the inventors are going to keep getting better numbers. So, every so often (once a week?), the NPC's improve a little. Everyone else goes down a little. Eventually, if you stop inventing, your uuber 45 will drop to 44, then 43, then 42, then 41, then 40 -- the NPC's have caught up with you. They won't go past you.
This is a nice mechanism. I like it, and it's not something I would have thought of. Kudos.
Once again, you have the case where half the items in the game eventually become worthless, and this punishes new players... mudflation.
No, the NPC made stuff doesn't change. New players are unaffected.
Equivalent Exchange: Well, technically, it violates the second rule. The original anime explained it by saying that it takes energy from the other side of the gate; not sure how the manga/second anime will explain it.
(pg 7)
Tech levels ...
I'd say you should never expect to see a pure tech 2 everything ship. Yes, you might see a ship with tech 2 weapons, and another with tech 2 armor. But that should not be the norm. Tech 2 should be maybe 5-10% of the demand, no where near 100%. Yes, this means that T2 should be a noticeable improvement over T1. That might mean more damage; that might mean less mass. That might mean special ability (maybe a T2 weapon is armor piercing; has little effect on a ship with little armor, while the T2 armor is hardened.)
But one thing must stay balanced: A t1 ship, in the hands of a skilled pilot, should be able to defeat a ship with some T2 in the hands of a good pilot. For equal skill, T2 should rule T1; for better skill, skill should rule at some point.
How much "extra skill" does a T2 buy? Mmm...
I'll say, at the high-end of the skill range, nothing. But at the low end, a lot.
A "knows the basic, good against bots" T2 pilot should get the biggest benefit. But even then, a skilled T1 should do better. Not sure what the spread should be.
===
Any production system needs to avoid the PotBS trap. From what I understand, while PotBS originally looked to be a large player economy, with lots of things to work in, it turned into guild oriented, vertical production -- instead of producing stuff for the market, you just produced what the guild told you to make. There has to be enough room for independents.
===
As it stands, if the devs want to have a crafting system, they'll have to keep track of individual widgets anyway. So additional complexity in the system should be anticipated regardless of what method the crafting takes.
The whole POINT of crafting is to make something that is different than everything else out there.
Remember, both a production system and a crafting system are being considered. It is possible to have production without crafting.
Production means that you are building ship/weapon type X. Maybe it's a plan that you can get in the deep greys. Maybe it's a well-known existing plan. Maybe players can make it cheaper than the NPC's, if the players first invest in an expensive production site.
But before you can produce crafted stuff, you have to be able to produce basic stuff. So a production system has to be in this; a crafting system doesn't. Some of us like being merchants.
As mentioned, a production system will really benefit from a good supply/demand trading model.
Lost Commander: The facilities should NEVER take resources from the station's inventory; you must buy them first, then place and pay for a production order.
Let me give you a counter model: I am a shop. I am open to the public. You place an order, I begin work on it. If I need to purchase supplies from the station to complete my job, I do so. If I need to place a buy order from traders who come by the station, I do so. When you place your order, you pay a down payment, set by my owner -- it is supposed to be enough to make sure that I can purchase the supplies needed. When finished, you pay the remainder as a delivery fee. If you don't pay the delivery fee in <x> days, you forfeit the product. Meanwhile, my competitor down there has a 100% down policy, but you'll never forfeit the product once it's finished.
The point being: Production can be for shops. Maybe some player shops pre-produce, and have it available now. Maybe some are "all parts are available, it will take N hours". Maybe some are "Not all parts are available; X, Y, and Z needs to be delivered. That one might be the cheapest, but it might also take the longest.
NO SPAWNING!!! !!! That is COMPLETELY against the idea of full economy. NPC ships have to come from SOMEWHERE.
I don't understand this.
Remember, I'm brand new here. It's my understanding that an NPC ship departs a station, goes to the asteroid, mines it, and then flies back; during this time, you can attack it and loot it's cargo.
Station destructability: The key question is, how long does it take to destroy one, and, are you expecting NPC ships to help you (are you in defended space; did you buy a defense contract), and are you in a large guild (the whole guild knows about the station, and sends people out there).
That assumes that it's possible for your guild to fill a small attack fleet any time of day or night. I don't know if that's realistic for most guilds. It kills the small guilds and independents. Do you want to kill those?
---
Lost Commander then has a very long, detailed post that almost looks like defining resources and expenses for three nations in a big, detailed, resource management board game (ala the old SPI wargames). I do not understand most of it.
---
Next, "The New Economy", http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/17418
This topic seems to be horrifically overcomplicated to build an economic model with a large number of flawed assumptions, the primary one seems to be that the activities of the players in-game is the dominant economic activities in the entire nation. It seems far more likely to me that NPC activity that we don't see far outweighs all player activity combined.
4. The underlying Model of the Economy must recognise that, for each Nation [or faction] there is an effectively LIMITED amount of wealth available, and money available for it to issue.
which is a total fail -- governments can and do arbitrarily issue all the money that they want.
In fact, there's so many flaws in this post ... it's just a disaster.
Here's a quick hint: the idea that there is a fixed, finite amount of money in the system is wrong. The system is not closed. There is, somewhere, a unbalanced source of money.
In the US, for example, that's the ability of the federal reserve to inject money into banks from nowhere. It's the increase in the money supply over time. It's the combined effect of bankruptcy and fractional reserve lending. Etc.
We are saying: the money in VO has problems (read my posts);
and the Devs are working on the Economy for VO 2.0;
and we are just chipping in with constructive ideas for a:
- dynamic economy
- which has a simple model that behaves fairly rationally
- which preserves the value of money (is devoid of "perpetual-money making machines")
1 - In an MMO, the supply of money increases as a function of player hours, character level, and player skill.
2 - In an MMO, the supply of money decreases with equipment purchase
3 - If there is too much money, the simplest fix is to introduce a big re-occurring expense that is much larger than the next big expense for a very minor, but noticeable/significant improvement, one whose re-occurring cost is too high for the benefit and income expected during the lifespan of that item.
4 - If you cannot reduce the fountains, you need to add sinks.
*5* If your game is designed around resource destruction (PvP), then you must ensure that there is sufficient resource production that the loss doesn't hurt.
A PvP game, where resource destruction is the name of the game, where you must buy new ships constantly, requires that all players get an influx of income. If you want a realistic economy, you cannot have that large level of destruction.
Remember: A realistic economy means that some people will wind up with more than their share of funds, and others will wind up with less than their share. If the less-than-average people cannot afford the next ship to be lost, they stop playing.
===
Any game like VO will have the basic operation be:
1. Mine asteroids for minerals. No change to the money supply. Increase in player commodity supply.
2. Sell minerals to NPC's. Increase in player money supply. Decrease in player commodity supply. Hidden opposite movements in non-tracked NPC supplies. For a dynamic economy, reduction in NPC demand.
3. Buying ships and equipment. Decrease in player money supply. Decrease in player demand. Hidden increase in non-tracked NPC money supply. For a dynamic economy, increase in NPC demand.
4. Loss of ships. Increase in player demand.
Now, keep that in approximate balance, keeping low-end players in ships capable of generating the player money supply necessary for PvP action. That's a "good enough" model.
Note that this doesn't address:
1. NPC mining of minerals
2. Dynamic supply of minerals based on changing mining demand or changing production consumption, or changing trading prices
3. Probably other things as well.
---
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/16119?page=2#204224
This is why, in all these games the currency of choice is always in a state of rapid devaluation and price inflation.
<Sigh.>
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. YPP solved the price inflation issue; on subscriber oceans, housing and furniture permit arbitrary spending of surplus funds (poe sink on commodities to manufacture decorations for your pirate home).
You can keep prices under control while still having a player driven economy with player manufacturing.
If players have something to spend surplus funds on, and they have the ability to show off what they have spent, then they have a reason to spend surplus funds.
If you restrict funds to be "realistic", then you run into the inherently unrealistic nature of payouts in most games, and the system breaks.
As a quick example of "realism", an EvE PLEX is "realistic". Yet it's out of the price range of beginning players, and dirt cheap to experienced players. If you have realistic pricing and the typical game's income model, then high level characters have all the money, and beginners are all broke.
All transactions should result in credits moving from one account, to another, and never, under any circumstance, create credits from nothing. Without this, inflation is inevitable and will continuously make credits more worthless.
I'll post in detail on this if you want, but this is false:
1. It fails to account for population change
2. It fails to account for hording of funds
3. It fails to account for the deflation that occurs when there is hording
4. It fails to account for population change
5. It fails to account for inflation actually being a relationship between production and perceived demand, desire and available funds, and population. Almost all accounts of inflation leave out population, and yet it is critical.
I do agree that different currencies for the different nations, along with a currency trading system, makes for a good idea; it's probably too complicated for many would-be players.
====
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/21125?page=1
RFC: Trading and economics (2009):
First, the idea of setting expected income per time period, which is what this sounds like (beginners earn 500 * 200 per what sounds like 30 minutes of shipping, experienced players earn 1200 * 200 per what sounds like 60 minutes, or 5000 * 200 per what sounds like 180 minutes -- or a scale of 1000, 1200, and 1700 per hour. Granted, those time periods may be off, but this is what the idea seems to be saying) is a good thing. Setting expected mining profits, and expected combat / mission profits based on that is the next thing. All sounds like good, basic game design.
(Ohh, slotbot, an excellent money sink! :-).
If it takes 30min to do a 100,000cr run, that 30min of game time can buy you approx 1.7 high-end ships. In other words, 30 minutes has bought you about 10min of PvP
Yea, as I mentioned above, a PvP game is all about being able to bring in enough resources to afford to lose the next ship. That's for 1-on-1. For armada on armada / guild vs. guild, you need even bigger income.
This is exactly the opposite of what is needed to spur player interaction in these days of low player base.
Just as a quickie, if low player base is an issue, then you want to make it easy for people to log in, and learn to play. Having only 8 hours to learn what I'm doing means I'm spending as much time as possible NOT logged in, to avoid wasting it; it means I'm not doing any sort of "atmosphere" immersion, such as deciphering the GTS signs.
Keep it simple: assuming I am not trying to return to the income levels of Old, how do the relative profits look for the different Intra, Inter, and Deep-Gray regions?
I want to be able to spend 2 minutes in PvP for every minute in PvE. And, I'm a horrible twitch reaction person. I'll use the auto-aim tools. I'll side and turn; I grew up with "warp" and learned to constantly vary my speed and direction. I'll probably have around a 35-40% win rate given the large number of people with more experience than me (less if they have better ships than me :-).
If I can do that with your deep-gray payout levels, then good!.
If not, then my question is: How many minutes of PvE do I spend per minute of PvP? What is your target goal here?
Just to give you another take on the numbers: I play poker online, with "fake cash". I go to tables where I am only bringing in about 1/10th of my available funds. I generally have a positive return, but I do have losing streaks.
If I had 1 million, I'd fly a 100K ship.
If I had 10 million, I'd fly a 1 mil ship.
Except: If I'm fighting someone in the same class of ship as mine, I'm expecting a loss from lack of experience. Doesn't matter if I have a 100K ship or a 1 mil ship -- I'll last about the same length of time. So, unless there's something I'm not understanding, I can expect <N> minutes of PvP for two fights (one win, and one loss), and that <N> doesn't change with ship class. So how much money can I make in N minutes of PvE? And if I want twice as much PvP time as PvE time, then (1) is that reasonable, and (2) what kind of ship can I get?
If the focus is on PvP, which seems to be the case, and PvP ends with one of the two destroyed (and in a large armada battle, more than half of the total are destroyed), then does the PvE generate enough funds?
Hence why I love shopkeeping/merchanting: I'm making money on the side, at the same time that I'm fighting the E. My income rate is higher than my PvE rate; I can afford more PvP time.
(Or have I misunderstood the point of this game?)
===
Hyper inflation:
Instead of multiplying all costs by a factor of 10, what's wrong with cutting all existing bank accounts by a factor of 10?
Ok, that's all the threads I saw about the economy, the change to dynamic, changing the profit per time model, etc. All more than a year old, so I'm starting a new one.
(NB: The changelog has version numbers, but not dates; the forum threads have dates, but no corresponding version number. It's really hard to figure out what forum discussions correspond to what version of the game. For the record, the current version is 1.8.139)
Eager lil' fucker, this one.
He does seem dedicated.
I got through "(So da rules say to start...", then I got bored. I'll wait for the Cliff Notes version.
I for one, like this guy :P
I bet he'd make a great cold read proofreader. I wouldn't ask him to do anything requiring actual thinking.
Dont mind the trolls, Keybounce. Looks like good stuff, but I imagine it'll be put into the giant file labeled 'backburner' like most of the other economy-related stuff because the devs (We only have 3 now? I heard someone left to take care of a kid or something) are working on some other important bit. Or maybe it'll get implemented right away. In any case, this is some well thought-out material from what I've read so far. Keep it up!
I have one question: Whats this binding thing you talk about? You mean once you put it in a port, its glued there? Or they are restricted to whoever initially buys/makes it?
I have one question: Whats this binding thing you talk about? You mean once you put it in a port, its glued there? Or they are restricted to whoever initially buys/makes it?
Binding: A object is attached to one avatar, and then can only be used by that avatar.
It ensures that objects "leave", so that new ones are wanted/needed/produced.
If you don't, then an object type that never leaves will accumulate, eventually going from rare to common.
And don't worry about me and the trolls. I can ignore Dr. Lecter.
The cliff-notes comment: Yea, I get that a lot. Unfortunately, I'm replying to a lot of stuff, so it's going to be long.
Cliff notes? Ok. Don't confuse production with crafting. Dynamic spawn rates of commodities are needed to adjust to different player levels, and different demand levels as the economy changes. The idea of "continual research for minor improvements over other players" seems like a good one, and can be done without impacting new players. The need for shops, and both "produce on demand" and "pre-produced stockpiles". Flaws seen in existing games, as warnings to avoid. Issues about money, and "realism". My thoughts on "Time in PvE per time in PvP." (I used to play Subspace, and it influences my thoughts on that). Hyper inflation, and potential ways to deal with it.
It ensures that objects "leave", so that new ones are wanted/needed/produced.
If you don't, then an object type that never leaves will accumulate, eventually going from rare to common.
And don't worry about me and the trolls. I can ignore Dr. Lecter.
The cliff-notes comment: Yea, I get that a lot. Unfortunately, I'm replying to a lot of stuff, so it's going to be long.
Cliff notes? Ok. Don't confuse production with crafting. Dynamic spawn rates of commodities are needed to adjust to different player levels, and different demand levels as the economy changes. The idea of "continual research for minor improvements over other players" seems like a good one, and can be done without impacting new players. The need for shops, and both "produce on demand" and "pre-produced stockpiles". Flaws seen in existing games, as warnings to avoid. Issues about money, and "realism". My thoughts on "Time in PvE per time in PvP." (I used to play Subspace, and it influences my thoughts on that). Hyper inflation, and potential ways to deal with it.
can you make an edition that uses pictures and smaller words?
Nope :-).
Pictures: Sorry, but:
1. I don't have a good picture tool,
2. I don't have a good way to include pictures in my post,
3. Forum and BBS software generally doesn't do rich text / text plus images.
It's amazing -- email has had picture attachments for over two decades, and inline pictures/images for more than a full decade. Google has written at least two, if not three different web page editors that support images.
Yet what is the state of widespread image support?
1: Paint-level software, or Gimp/photoshop elements level; nothing in-between.
2. The assumption that you will upload your images separately to some other site, and then link their address into your forum post
3. No software that I've seen yet that actually lets you easily use what you type and what you have on your harddrive, as well as what you have/find online, and stores it all online for your post.
I don't think google's blogging software lets you use images on your computer. Email does, but you need an add-on from labs.
It's sad. For all the "text / images / sound all integrated!" that mosaic used to have http wipe gopher off the map, you still don't have an easy way for users to compose that for their own use.
Small words?
Well, if I were to use small words, we would fine that it might seem like I was talking to a child. It might seem condescending. If you can tell me what part you found hard to understand, then I can try to explain it more clearly.
Pictures: Sorry, but:
1. I don't have a good picture tool,
2. I don't have a good way to include pictures in my post,
3. Forum and BBS software generally doesn't do rich text / text plus images.
It's amazing -- email has had picture attachments for over two decades, and inline pictures/images for more than a full decade. Google has written at least two, if not three different web page editors that support images.
Yet what is the state of widespread image support?
1: Paint-level software, or Gimp/photoshop elements level; nothing in-between.
2. The assumption that you will upload your images separately to some other site, and then link their address into your forum post
3. No software that I've seen yet that actually lets you easily use what you type and what you have on your harddrive, as well as what you have/find online, and stores it all online for your post.
I don't think google's blogging software lets you use images on your computer. Email does, but you need an add-on from labs.
It's sad. For all the "text / images / sound all integrated!" that mosaic used to have http wipe gopher off the map, you still don't have an easy way for users to compose that for their own use.
Small words?
Well, if I were to use small words, we would fine that it might seem like I was talking to a child. It might seem condescending. If you can tell me what part you found hard to understand, then I can try to explain it more clearly.
we would fine, would we?
I quote you :
" Or have I misunderstood the point of this game?"
Aye, ye have.
I would also quote Johnson :
" Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
There are many reasons why folk pay to play vo. Making huge changes, such as taking 9 billion cr out of their bank accounts is likely to upset them. Most players would like to see a more dynamic economy, better reasons for pvp , the ability to make the holding of resources significant .
Much of what you suggest is historic, these ideas are not new. To be fair, read the newsposts, stuff is moving in that direction. But like any game subscribers matter. Killing off the existing playerbase at a stroke just isn't sensible.
I'm a new player too. I joined in 2005. Completely recoding VO over the weekend is not going to happen. So, look for incremental rather than sweeping changes.
" Or have I misunderstood the point of this game?"
Aye, ye have.
I would also quote Johnson :
" Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
There are many reasons why folk pay to play vo. Making huge changes, such as taking 9 billion cr out of their bank accounts is likely to upset them. Most players would like to see a more dynamic economy, better reasons for pvp , the ability to make the holding of resources significant .
Much of what you suggest is historic, these ideas are not new. To be fair, read the newsposts, stuff is moving in that direction. But like any game subscribers matter. Killing off the existing playerbase at a stroke just isn't sensible.
I'm a new player too. I joined in 2005. Completely recoding VO over the weekend is not going to happen. So, look for incremental rather than sweeping changes.
"Just to give you another take on the numbers: I play poker online, with "fake cash". I go to tables where I am only bringing in about 1/10th of my available funds. I generally have a positive return, but I do have losing streaks."
If your not playing with real money your not playing poker. "Fake cash" poker games amount to nothing more than a semen splashing contest. You might have fun at the time, but you really haven't learned anything about the game.
That said, in VO, skill matters far more than what ship you fly. If your flying a ship valued at 1/10 your wealth, you are going to go broke very quickly- even if you win 50% of your fights. So unless your dealing a weaker opponent, your argument here only gives you access to 20 fights at most, which imo is not enough. Far better to fly a 10,000cr ship than a 100,000cr ship if doing so enables you to fight the duration of the battle. Also, your analysis fails to consider repair costs, which for the more expensive ships, becomes quite costly.
Otherwise, an interesting if overly long and excessively inclusive post.
As to PvE generating funds... I've made 3 mil cr doing hive skirmish in a weekend, about 6 million of my border characters wealth has come from taking the border missions, so, yeah, it does.
If your not playing with real money your not playing poker. "Fake cash" poker games amount to nothing more than a semen splashing contest. You might have fun at the time, but you really haven't learned anything about the game.
That said, in VO, skill matters far more than what ship you fly. If your flying a ship valued at 1/10 your wealth, you are going to go broke very quickly- even if you win 50% of your fights. So unless your dealing a weaker opponent, your argument here only gives you access to 20 fights at most, which imo is not enough. Far better to fly a 10,000cr ship than a 100,000cr ship if doing so enables you to fight the duration of the battle. Also, your analysis fails to consider repair costs, which for the more expensive ships, becomes quite costly.
Otherwise, an interesting if overly long and excessively inclusive post.
As to PvE generating funds... I've made 3 mil cr doing hive skirmish in a weekend, about 6 million of my border characters wealth has come from taking the border missions, so, yeah, it does.
If your not playing with real money your not playing poker.
I'm playing with something that represents time.
I risk representations of time, and generally come out ahead.
The last major PvP game I played was Subspace. You would spawn in a really low maneuverability, low firepower ship; fly around and collect powerups. When you collected more, you became PvP eligible, but you were still relatively weak until you collected more. So you would spend a lot of time getting stronger (basically, PvE time) before you got into combat.
Because of the large warm-up time, combat tended to be conservative; even though the ships were "Cheap" (free), the time factor was a real cost.
Now, a bunch of scenarios could be layered on top of this, but that was the basic game mechanic. Risking representation of time in a fight against someone else to see who's better.
" Or have I misunderstood the point of this game?"
Aye, ye have.
Alright, lets start with the most basic question: What is the point of this game?
I thought it was to be the pre-eminent PvP game set in a persistent universe where your actions and choices mattered. Now, there's no "lets alter who owns what part of the galaxy" system. But there is resource gathering/trade, combat, and ... (I'm too new to tell what the third is).
But that's the basic rock-paper-scissors of a PvP game. You've got mining, which brings in funds for your fighting. You've got fighters that can destroy miners without much trouble. Presumably there's some really expensive ships that clobber the fighters, but lose out economically to the miners.
If you fly in 10% of your wealth, even if you win 50%, you only get 20 battles
Yea, if you do nothing to bring in wealth. So you spend some of your time in your mining ships bringing in wealth, and some of your time in your combat ships killing the miners. If that's all you do, someone else comes along in the expensive to maintain big ships, and destroys you while going broke. A balance of all three sides makes for a challenge, especially in a group/guild -- how much of your guild is combat, how much brings in the resources for the others, and how much is the big capital ships that clean up the nasty fighters but are really too expensive to have a lot of?
(Remember, all PvP destroys wealth. You fundamentally have resource income activities, with fights along the way).
" Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
There are many reasons why folk pay to play vo. Making huge changes, such as taking 9 billion cr out of their bank accounts is likely to upset them. Most players would like to see a more dynamic economy, better reasons for pvp , the ability to make the holding of resources significant .
Much of what you suggest is historic, these ideas are not new. To be fair, read the newsposts, stuff is moving in that direction. But like any game subscribers matter. Killing off the existing playerbase at a stroke just isn't sensible.
I'm a new player too. I joined in 2005. Completely recoding VO over the weekend is not going to happen. So, look for incremental rather than sweeping changes.
A 5 year old player is not new.
Yes, this is historic. These are all older than a year, so I started a new post, per the rules of this forum. But the funny thing -- I still see current posts talking about these same things. So it's not "not current" -- it's still of concern.
We have really current threads talking about the state of PvP saying that there is so much surplus funds lying around that no one bothers to try to control their expenses. We've had developers posting about how the economy has had major income imbalances for years. We had one post that said "solve the hyper inflation by raising everything by a factor of X" (and I think X may have been 10 or 100, I don't know which). Instead of "raise all the prices, and make the inflated outputs the norm", the alternative is to lop zeroes off the bank accounts -- which is what some real countries have done.
As for newsposts: I'm reading the forums. I'm reading the sticky threads, and looking at the discussions linked in there. I'm trying to understand how things have changed. If there's something else I should read, please tell me.
As to original versus not original: Anyone who values history learns what works and what doesn't. Vanguard, PotBS, EvE, and YPP all did various things along these lines. Learn from them what works -- dynamic supply, player shops. Learn from them what doesn't -- an economy so complex that internal guild integration is the only solution (PotBS). Learn some solutions -- market tools that support independents (EvE). Etc. Improve on what has already come, rather than throwing out everything and starting from zero.
I'm not saying I know all the answers. I loved the idea of "inventions giving your numbers a boost, and other's numbers a decline". There's a lot about EvE and Vanguard that I don't know. Etc.
I want to be able to spend 2 minutes in PvP for every minute in PvE.
Subspace, looking back at it, was probably more like 3 minutes in PvE for 1 minute in PvP. So it cost time.
Last night I lost a ship full of cargo to a bot after killing 5 and getting a bonus. Yea, it stang a little, but the reality is, I'm bringing in much more money than I lost; at worst, I lost 10 minutes and probably less of time. Now, to most of you, it's probably 30 seconds of time.
I'm bringing in funds. I'm building up wealth. I'm also in the dirt-cheap ships, and would die quickly in PvP. So I'm still in PvE. As far as I can tell, if I wanted wealth, I'd sneak over to Corvus, get a trade-2 ship, and haul stuff. But if I want to get into PvP, I want to get my combat skills up more than I want to get my wealth skills up. So I'm fighting bots and trying to juggle cargo. Maybe that approach will change.
I'm playing with something that represents time.
I risk representations of time, and generally come out ahead.
The last major PvP game I played was Subspace. You would spawn in a really low maneuverability, low firepower ship; fly around and collect powerups. When you collected more, you became PvP eligible, but you were still relatively weak until you collected more. So you would spend a lot of time getting stronger (basically, PvE time) before you got into combat.
Because of the large warm-up time, combat tended to be conservative; even though the ships were "Cheap" (free), the time factor was a real cost.
Now, a bunch of scenarios could be layered on top of this, but that was the basic game mechanic. Risking representation of time in a fight against someone else to see who's better.
" Or have I misunderstood the point of this game?"
Aye, ye have.
Alright, lets start with the most basic question: What is the point of this game?
I thought it was to be the pre-eminent PvP game set in a persistent universe where your actions and choices mattered. Now, there's no "lets alter who owns what part of the galaxy" system. But there is resource gathering/trade, combat, and ... (I'm too new to tell what the third is).
But that's the basic rock-paper-scissors of a PvP game. You've got mining, which brings in funds for your fighting. You've got fighters that can destroy miners without much trouble. Presumably there's some really expensive ships that clobber the fighters, but lose out economically to the miners.
If you fly in 10% of your wealth, even if you win 50%, you only get 20 battles
Yea, if you do nothing to bring in wealth. So you spend some of your time in your mining ships bringing in wealth, and some of your time in your combat ships killing the miners. If that's all you do, someone else comes along in the expensive to maintain big ships, and destroys you while going broke. A balance of all three sides makes for a challenge, especially in a group/guild -- how much of your guild is combat, how much brings in the resources for the others, and how much is the big capital ships that clean up the nasty fighters but are really too expensive to have a lot of?
(Remember, all PvP destroys wealth. You fundamentally have resource income activities, with fights along the way).
" Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
There are many reasons why folk pay to play vo. Making huge changes, such as taking 9 billion cr out of their bank accounts is likely to upset them. Most players would like to see a more dynamic economy, better reasons for pvp , the ability to make the holding of resources significant .
Much of what you suggest is historic, these ideas are not new. To be fair, read the newsposts, stuff is moving in that direction. But like any game subscribers matter. Killing off the existing playerbase at a stroke just isn't sensible.
I'm a new player too. I joined in 2005. Completely recoding VO over the weekend is not going to happen. So, look for incremental rather than sweeping changes.
A 5 year old player is not new.
Yes, this is historic. These are all older than a year, so I started a new post, per the rules of this forum. But the funny thing -- I still see current posts talking about these same things. So it's not "not current" -- it's still of concern.
We have really current threads talking about the state of PvP saying that there is so much surplus funds lying around that no one bothers to try to control their expenses. We've had developers posting about how the economy has had major income imbalances for years. We had one post that said "solve the hyper inflation by raising everything by a factor of X" (and I think X may have been 10 or 100, I don't know which). Instead of "raise all the prices, and make the inflated outputs the norm", the alternative is to lop zeroes off the bank accounts -- which is what some real countries have done.
As for newsposts: I'm reading the forums. I'm reading the sticky threads, and looking at the discussions linked in there. I'm trying to understand how things have changed. If there's something else I should read, please tell me.
As to original versus not original: Anyone who values history learns what works and what doesn't. Vanguard, PotBS, EvE, and YPP all did various things along these lines. Learn from them what works -- dynamic supply, player shops. Learn from them what doesn't -- an economy so complex that internal guild integration is the only solution (PotBS). Learn some solutions -- market tools that support independents (EvE). Etc. Improve on what has already come, rather than throwing out everything and starting from zero.
I'm not saying I know all the answers. I loved the idea of "inventions giving your numbers a boost, and other's numbers a decline". There's a lot about EvE and Vanguard that I don't know. Etc.
I want to be able to spend 2 minutes in PvP for every minute in PvE.
Subspace, looking back at it, was probably more like 3 minutes in PvE for 1 minute in PvP. So it cost time.
Last night I lost a ship full of cargo to a bot after killing 5 and getting a bonus. Yea, it stang a little, but the reality is, I'm bringing in much more money than I lost; at worst, I lost 10 minutes and probably less of time. Now, to most of you, it's probably 30 seconds of time.
I'm bringing in funds. I'm building up wealth. I'm also in the dirt-cheap ships, and would die quickly in PvP. So I'm still in PvE. As far as I can tell, if I wanted wealth, I'd sneak over to Corvus, get a trade-2 ship, and haul stuff. But if I want to get into PvP, I want to get my combat skills up more than I want to get my wealth skills up. So I'm fighting bots and trying to juggle cargo. Maybe that approach will change.
Man, the trajectory on these eager-beaver noobs is always so predictable. Next he'll flip out, lose his self-important shit, and call Ecka a griefer.
...or it could be a game of trolling for trolls.
Hi troll. Now why would I call someone a griefer just for attacking me?
I accepted that that is the nature of the game.
I get to respawn in cheap, easily replaced stuff; if even one missile is used to shoot me down, then the ... (what is the name of game currency, anyways?) money cost for me is less. And either way, the time cost is basically just the time to fly back out to whereever, and the lost drops.
So I mine or hunt in a different location. It's a big universe. It's not like WoW where I had to go to a specific location, and find it camped by people 10 levels above me.
I accepted that that is the nature of the game.
I get to respawn in cheap, easily replaced stuff; if even one missile is used to shoot me down, then the ... (what is the name of game currency, anyways?) money cost for me is less. And either way, the time cost is basically just the time to fly back out to whereever, and the lost drops.
So I mine or hunt in a different location. It's a big universe. It's not like WoW where I had to go to a specific location, and find it camped by people 10 levels above me.
"I'm playing with something that represents time."
How you choose to spend / waste your time is your business, but to use the time you spend in group masturbation to bolster your argument is ridiculous as it has no relationship to the real thing.
I have played both 'free poker' and cash poker, I've also been to the casino's a few times to play the live table games and small tournies. 'Free poker' and real money poker are not even slightly similar when played. Don't expect your vast experience outwitting a bunch of 'all in' dumb fucks to give your argument credibility.
Also, if what you are 'risking' or investing is time, then all you will ever achieve is a shallow understanding of your pursuits.
How you choose to spend / waste your time is your business, but to use the time you spend in group masturbation to bolster your argument is ridiculous as it has no relationship to the real thing.
I have played both 'free poker' and cash poker, I've also been to the casino's a few times to play the live table games and small tournies. 'Free poker' and real money poker are not even slightly similar when played. Don't expect your vast experience outwitting a bunch of 'all in' dumb fucks to give your argument credibility.
Also, if what you are 'risking' or investing is time, then all you will ever achieve is a shallow understanding of your pursuits.
My last response to trolls:
Money represents time spent earning in RL.
Game coin represents time spent earning in a game.
And no, I don't play at the lowest tables dominated by "all-in" poor players.
I absolutely agree that RL poker at locations that rake is significantly different than online games with no rake. I know I'm not yet that good.
Money represents time spent earning in RL.
Game coin represents time spent earning in a game.
And no, I don't play at the lowest tables dominated by "all-in" poor players.
I absolutely agree that RL poker at locations that rake is significantly different than online games with no rake. I know I'm not yet that good.
My point does not refer to the rake, which does tend to make 'for money' games harder to achieve a positive return on over a given length of time. I'm referring to the mindset of the player. It is completely different when you have real money on the table, and makes for a much more intense and interesting game.
I would suggest tossing $100 and playing a bit at the 0.25 - 0.50 tables. Or if you can afford it, throw $1,000 in and play at the $1 to $2 tables. The cheaper the game, the harder it is to beat the rake though. Regardless, you'll get a better learning experience. Conversely, the more expensive the game, the more skilled some of the players you'll be facing will be.
I find that equating time spent to $ or game credits earned is a bit simplistic. For instance, most of my working hours are spent in a series of social interactions some of which are pleasurable and some (meetings) quite painful. Other time is spent plotting a better path for my department to follow that 1) makes my job easier 2) makes my staffs job easier and 3) creates a long term benefit to the company by increased productivity and less waste. These are just a couple of the compensations for my time that add to my pleasure, well being, and overall prosperity. The money is the one thing I am indifferent to, mostly because I am able to live below my means and in doing so, always have a surplus.
The same kind of mindset takes place when I play a game, whether poker or VO. What matters, is what am I investing of myself for my own long term enjoyment and benefit to the group.
I would suggest tossing $100 and playing a bit at the 0.25 - 0.50 tables. Or if you can afford it, throw $1,000 in and play at the $1 to $2 tables. The cheaper the game, the harder it is to beat the rake though. Regardless, you'll get a better learning experience. Conversely, the more expensive the game, the more skilled some of the players you'll be facing will be.
I find that equating time spent to $ or game credits earned is a bit simplistic. For instance, most of my working hours are spent in a series of social interactions some of which are pleasurable and some (meetings) quite painful. Other time is spent plotting a better path for my department to follow that 1) makes my job easier 2) makes my staffs job easier and 3) creates a long term benefit to the company by increased productivity and less waste. These are just a couple of the compensations for my time that add to my pleasure, well being, and overall prosperity. The money is the one thing I am indifferent to, mostly because I am able to live below my means and in doing so, always have a surplus.
The same kind of mindset takes place when I play a game, whether poker or VO. What matters, is what am I investing of myself for my own long term enjoyment and benefit to the group.