Forums » Suggestions
Capital Ship Synthetic Silksteel Farming Change Revision
Years ago, players were exploiting multiple accounts with capital ships to mass farm Synthetic Silksteel from Arklans and other bots to mass produce capital ship parts and control the manufacturing industry, a good example of this was Pandoram, who farmed thousands of SSS per day using his multitude of accounts and jobless behavior.
The reason I am suggesting a change now, is because the vast majority of players who do have capital ships now, end up suffering in their efforts to be able to build tridents or other parts. If the change was to be review to make it possible to get SSS from capital ship farming again, but at a significantly reduced rate than normal, then I think it would make collecting SSS more accessible, as well as allow players to use turrets to actually gain license levels if they manually use the turret.
A downside I can see possibly in the distant future, is guilds might make it a habit of fighting over specific sectors for farming SSS, and an influx of capital ships because of it. Ill suggest a new capital ship in another thread at a later date once everything is figured out for it to act as a sort of SSS sink for said capital ships.
A positive I see in the short and long term, is more capital vessels will be created because of ease of access to silksteel collecting for capital and non-capital players, and the overall price of Silksteel will drop from 25-30,000 credits per, to roughly 15-20,000 credits per depending on where it is located. This holds the added benefit of being cheaper to buy from players for manufacturing, as well as making finished parts/capship kits cheaper to purchase outright.
Please discuss it below, as its just a suggestion, and is always open for input on the matter.
The reason I am suggesting a change now, is because the vast majority of players who do have capital ships now, end up suffering in their efforts to be able to build tridents or other parts. If the change was to be review to make it possible to get SSS from capital ship farming again, but at a significantly reduced rate than normal, then I think it would make collecting SSS more accessible, as well as allow players to use turrets to actually gain license levels if they manually use the turret.
A downside I can see possibly in the distant future, is guilds might make it a habit of fighting over specific sectors for farming SSS, and an influx of capital ships because of it. Ill suggest a new capital ship in another thread at a later date once everything is figured out for it to act as a sort of SSS sink for said capital ships.
A positive I see in the short and long term, is more capital vessels will be created because of ease of access to silksteel collecting for capital and non-capital players, and the overall price of Silksteel will drop from 25-30,000 credits per, to roughly 15-20,000 credits per depending on where it is located. This holds the added benefit of being cheaper to buy from players for manufacturing, as well as making finished parts/capship kits cheaper to purchase outright.
Please discuss it below, as its just a suggestion, and is always open for input on the matter.
It might be worthwhile to read the 2021 thread where this was changed for context.
Specifically, that we were trending rapidly towards fully automated solutions in which capships would farm SSS on their own. This would probably be easier now with the expanded capship remote command set (along with agentic AI, etc).
The reason I am suggesting a change now, is because the vast majority of players who do have capital ships now, end up suffering in their efforts to be able to build tridents or other parts.
I'm not clear on how capship owners are "suffering" any more than anyone else? They have the ability to launch from, repair, and store their accumulated drops in a convenient nearby capship. That seems helpful?
Or, to raise the issue that started this, I wrote the following in 2021:
1) Full AFK automation of large-scale farming is not something we currently support.
If you're confused about that, hopefully re-reading the above sentence will clarify this for you. This is a game, not a place where programmed client-bots compete to see who can accumulate the most stuff.
Even if there's a "reduced rate" the problem of automated farming is.. significant. Far from capship owners "suffering" that would create a huge disparity in the ability of capship owners to produce an item, one that was really intended to be the result of a one-on-one style PvE combat mechanic in a fighter craft.
This would also have long-term knock-on effects for any other item that was dropped via PvE combat, as the same technique could be applied to any future NPC drop. It would practically negate the concept of the "rare drop", because capship people could "economy-of-scale" farm things to a point that made it irrelevant.
A positive I see in the short and long term, is more capital vessels will be created because of ease of access to silksteel collecting for capital and non-capital players, and the overall price of Silksteel will drop from 25-30,000 credits per, to roughly 15-20,000 credits per depending on where it is located.
Why is this a positive? Why do we want endgame activities to be easier? The original expectation model for Trident construction was months of effort, maybe upwards of half a year (depending on solo vs guild resources).
Making capship construction too trivial risks depreciating the efforts of veteran players who put in a lot of time. Conflict Diamond had it worse than anyone else (building the very first Trident, when the requirements were significantly higher), but how "easy" do we really want this to be? And why is that a good thing?
MMORPGs are unique in the game space because we actually have achievements that are really difficult. I'm not a huge fan of "grind" as a concept, but working towards long-term goals is generally something people want in an MMORPG.. I know because people ask me for new and larger goals on a regular basis. Trivializing high-level goals should be approached with caution?
In closing, I'm not actually against enabling SSS drops for capships, but I would value greater nuance as to why we should pursue that.
Notably, the "plan" back in 2021 was to make a rate-sensitive adaptation to the game: if a given ship extracted more than (N/unit-time) spawn some incredibly nasty stuff to come after them (which is capable of killing a capship). So, technically we could return the drop rate to its original state, but farming would be infeasible.
This was not implemented due to.. well, obvious time issues and other emerging problems at the time, although it's still on a background TODO list.
Specifically, that we were trending rapidly towards fully automated solutions in which capships would farm SSS on their own. This would probably be easier now with the expanded capship remote command set (along with agentic AI, etc).
The reason I am suggesting a change now, is because the vast majority of players who do have capital ships now, end up suffering in their efforts to be able to build tridents or other parts.
I'm not clear on how capship owners are "suffering" any more than anyone else? They have the ability to launch from, repair, and store their accumulated drops in a convenient nearby capship. That seems helpful?
Or, to raise the issue that started this, I wrote the following in 2021:
1) Full AFK automation of large-scale farming is not something we currently support.
If you're confused about that, hopefully re-reading the above sentence will clarify this for you. This is a game, not a place where programmed client-bots compete to see who can accumulate the most stuff.
Even if there's a "reduced rate" the problem of automated farming is.. significant. Far from capship owners "suffering" that would create a huge disparity in the ability of capship owners to produce an item, one that was really intended to be the result of a one-on-one style PvE combat mechanic in a fighter craft.
This would also have long-term knock-on effects for any other item that was dropped via PvE combat, as the same technique could be applied to any future NPC drop. It would practically negate the concept of the "rare drop", because capship people could "economy-of-scale" farm things to a point that made it irrelevant.
A positive I see in the short and long term, is more capital vessels will be created because of ease of access to silksteel collecting for capital and non-capital players, and the overall price of Silksteel will drop from 25-30,000 credits per, to roughly 15-20,000 credits per depending on where it is located.
Why is this a positive? Why do we want endgame activities to be easier? The original expectation model for Trident construction was months of effort, maybe upwards of half a year (depending on solo vs guild resources).
Making capship construction too trivial risks depreciating the efforts of veteran players who put in a lot of time. Conflict Diamond had it worse than anyone else (building the very first Trident, when the requirements were significantly higher), but how "easy" do we really want this to be? And why is that a good thing?
MMORPGs are unique in the game space because we actually have achievements that are really difficult. I'm not a huge fan of "grind" as a concept, but working towards long-term goals is generally something people want in an MMORPG.. I know because people ask me for new and larger goals on a regular basis. Trivializing high-level goals should be approached with caution?
In closing, I'm not actually against enabling SSS drops for capships, but I would value greater nuance as to why we should pursue that.
Notably, the "plan" back in 2021 was to make a rate-sensitive adaptation to the game: if a given ship extracted more than (N/unit-time) spawn some incredibly nasty stuff to come after them (which is capable of killing a capship). So, technically we could return the drop rate to its original state, but farming would be infeasible.
This was not implemented due to.. well, obvious time issues and other emerging problems at the time, although it's still on a background TODO list.
Yeah I'd prefer not to have a cappie slaughter team show up while i got a full hold of loot. Not to kill a suggestion but I'm good with the current state if this was the other option. LOL
Yeah I'd prefer not to have a cappie slaughter team show up while i got a full hold of loot.
Well, it would be triggered on the capship killing enemies at a high rate. So, I don't know.. kill more than N NPCs with your capship per 5-minute period, or something, and you may trigger an increased response. It could also scale up to give some sense of warning, but it would persist across all sectors and not be per-sector. Probably measured as like a 24h rolling average, or something, so play-sessions would not reset it either, obviously.
It wouldn't be based on how much loot you had in your hold, only on whether the capship was being used to farm NPCs.
Well, it would be triggered on the capship killing enemies at a high rate. So, I don't know.. kill more than N NPCs with your capship per 5-minute period, or something, and you may trigger an increased response. It could also scale up to give some sense of warning, but it would persist across all sectors and not be per-sector. Probably measured as like a 24h rolling average, or something, so play-sessions would not reset it either, obviously.
It wouldn't be based on how much loot you had in your hold, only on whether the capship was being used to farm NPCs.
I'm still for the escalation response from the hive. I think it would actually add something interesting to capship drop farming, Capships are supposed to be end-game content, so adding advanced content resulting from their use seems like a sensible progression.
The warning message makes this mechanic seem fine to me.
fun fact. pando bought almost all his sss exclusively from a handful of players and didnt farm it at all.
farming sss is the same as its always been really, except you have to move to a new sector.
enter sector with capship, set ten to twelve minute timer.. undock.. bomb for the whole duration of the timer.. spend the last 3 to 5 minutes collecting.. store it.. change sectors.. repeat.
by the time you finish all of bractus, the beginning sector should be good to go again.
it takes effort. two people can build a ship in a weekend if properly motivated. things work fine now.
farming sss is the same as its always been really, except you have to move to a new sector.
enter sector with capship, set ten to twelve minute timer.. undock.. bomb for the whole duration of the timer.. spend the last 3 to 5 minutes collecting.. store it.. change sectors.. repeat.
by the time you finish all of bractus, the beginning sector should be good to go again.
it takes effort. two people can build a ship in a weekend if properly motivated. things work fine now.
farming sss is the same as its always been really, except you have to move to a new sector.
I'm not sure what you mean by that? In 2021 the SSS drop rate of NPCs killed by capship fire was massively nerfed, as linked in my response above.
enter sector with capship, set ten to twelve minute timer.. undock.. bomb for the whole duration of the timer..
There's no limit on the drops from ships killed by fighter craft. So, when you say "undock", what do you mean exactly?
I'm not sure what you mean by that? In 2021 the SSS drop rate of NPCs killed by capship fire was massively nerfed, as linked in my response above.
enter sector with capship, set ten to twelve minute timer.. undock.. bomb for the whole duration of the timer..
There's no limit on the drops from ships killed by fighter craft. So, when you say "undock", what do you mean exactly?