Best Of
Re: Mining spec
Double post because I can't edit and probably meant "overstatement" in there. I meant to say that I disagree, in that the artifacts should not be considered requirements to mining.
Azlyn
1
Re: Mining spec
For the record I don't disagree with @Slander regarding profitably. Just that they don't have all the other costs or time investment.
Poet
2
Re: Mining spec
I agree with every part of what you're saying about mining. That being said, refiners absolutely cannot not 'sit on their hands and make marks.' I realize I've brought this up numerous times, but I'm going to continue reiterating it as long as people misstate the profitability of refineries (not autofactories, those have it easier from what I can tell).
Note - I'm rounding down numbers here, if I were being exact it would look worse. Cost+5 is the standard charge to use someone else's refinery, which means that it will take 5,000 batches being run through the refinery by someone else for that refinery to break even. At 10 minutes per batch, this comes out to a little over 35 RL days of queued material with no stops. So, yes, eventually a refinery can be possible. I'm the 7th ranked manufacturer, I've had refineries since January and the closest a single one of them has come to paying for itself is 2635 batches at this moment, barely over half. So I'd argue that, all things considered - no, refineries are not generally profitable.
Note - I'm rounding down numbers here, if I were being exact it would look worse. Cost+5 is the standard charge to use someone else's refinery, which means that it will take 5,000 batches being run through the refinery by someone else for that refinery to break even. At 10 minutes per batch, this comes out to a little over 35 RL days of queued material with no stops. So, yes, eventually a refinery can be possible. I'm the 7th ranked manufacturer, I've had refineries since January and the closest a single one of them has come to paying for itself is 2635 batches at this moment, barely over half. So I'd argue that, all things considered - no, refineries are not generally profitable.
Slander
1
Mining spec
Ok. So I am mining spec'd. Can we talk for a minute about how this is the worst specialization?
I liked the note in the announce post today about the hyperscanner (cause I really want one now) but it got me thinking. Mining spec now has not one but two artifact requirements. You are going to want a hyperscanner and a beacon artifact.
You also want a mining ship which will run you hundreds of thousands of marks.
You have a massive time investment. You pay for scoops and tethers and probes. You pay for refining.
Meanwhile those who went refining or autofactory spec? They have a minor, basically one time investment of marks and they are done. They can sit on their hands and make marks. At least at some point. Yes there are taxes or fees or whatever, but those are minor. There's no time investment at all. Particularly refining. Even if you wanted to do something, there's nothing to do. Except hope people use your refinery.
tl/dr
Mining = huge upfront costs, ongoing costs and massive time investment.
Refining and autofactories? Minor upfront costs.
I liked the note in the announce post today about the hyperscanner (cause I really want one now) but it got me thinking. Mining spec now has not one but two artifact requirements. You are going to want a hyperscanner and a beacon artifact.
You also want a mining ship which will run you hundreds of thousands of marks.
You have a massive time investment. You pay for scoops and tethers and probes. You pay for refining.
Meanwhile those who went refining or autofactory spec? They have a minor, basically one time investment of marks and they are done. They can sit on their hands and make marks. At least at some point. Yes there are taxes or fees or whatever, but those are minor. There's no time investment at all. Particularly refining. Even if you wanted to do something, there's nothing to do. Except hope people use your refinery.
tl/dr
Mining = huge upfront costs, ongoing costs and massive time investment.
Refining and autofactories? Minor upfront costs.
Poet
1
Re: B.E.A.S.T Issues
I disagree. Tear+Wristblade is still more effective over Backhand+Minigun because of the passive bleeding caused by Tear. Bleeding alone can reach up to 400 damage which is about the same damage of Tear, effectively doubling your damage output.Rylek said:Also, BEAST bashing is now minigun after backhand. Wrist blade works but is less efficient as most MWP and all of plasma scale off aim.
Though, I admit I play a melee-oriented B.E.A.S.T., Strength is my highest stat and my Aim is shit. I have no idea how good Minigun is if you ignore Strength to focus on Aim.
EDIT: Meh, I forgot to mention the damage of the wristblade itself which scales with the level of Bleeding your target has (Usually around 600-700 when the target is bleeding for a lot, 800 if you're really lucky). Unless I'm missing something, I don't think the minigun can even begin to compare to the wristblade, to be honest.
Jerom
1
Re: B.E.A.S.T Issues
Points 2 to 4 are less of an issue than it initially appears because for all their wide collection of weaponry, BEASTs actually end up using very few of them - at least damage-wise. For pve it's basically just the wristblade and maybe the minigun, for pvp replace minigun with railgun (minigun is still used, just not for damage). So you need to mod and possibly artifact/customize only your wristblade and you're good to go. Point 1 is still a problem: you have 16% chance that any new weapon drop will actually be good for you, while for most other classes it's 100%.
That being said: BEASTs are currently underpowered and it shows - they're the least populated class and for a good reason. Very slow in PvE and they are absolutely terrible in PvP*, with slow subsystem damage and harshest instakill reqs from all classes. This used to be balanced out with their damage in the past and they were actually rather *too* good and needed a nerf, but got hit by the nerfbat too hard and became too weak instead.
Starmourn devs are overworked as they are and I know balance updates are on their to-do list - just not the priority right now, and that's frankly fine. Just don't forget when the time comes, BEAST is currently the class that needs buffing the most.
*Except for some pretty sweet utility and crowd control skills for group combat, but that's a poor tradeoff for having bad offense
Cubey
2
Re: Economy Miscellaneous Bugs
While we're listing requests...
Is it possible to search market orders/offers by item type? eg. MARKET ORDER LIST ALLOYS or similar for the type of thing you want? I mean, I don't think it happens now, but would this be possible to implement?
It's a nice compromise between getting spammed when you just MARKET ORDER LIST, and doing a search for each battery type, for example.
eel
1
Re: Manufacturing Recipe Spreadsheets
Nice work on this latest one, once again. I went through and plugged in my prices for resources/production to the spreadsheet and compared this with what I wrote in JS. Our numbers match.
I love that there's a sheet called 'SensorBS'
Re: Starmourn on the Titans of Text
Listed to this while walking the dog the other night. Nice job. It was interesting hearing you both talk about your experiences. And, your love of the game really came through. We players think you both rock as well. The storytellers too.
I also listened to the episode discussing the Evennia engine, cause one of these days I still plan to make my own game, and I've played with Evennia a little. I just wish it had a GUI.
I also listened to the episode discussing the Evennia engine, cause one of these days I still plan to make my own game, and I've played with Evennia a little. I just wish it had a GUI.
Poet
2
Re: Kinetic battery buffs to batch size and damage vs. organics would alleviate new pilot problems
@Cervantes CA is currently buying up space resources, then paying people to take said resources out to autofactories and refine them. If the haulers produce extra resources (using production bonuses for example), they get to keep the excess to use or sell on their own. These products then go toward station maintenance or (in the case of ship supplies) sold at Crossings, with 50% of the profits being redistributed to the miners and haulers according to the number of resources that they personally delivered. This is the sort of thing that Zhulkarn is talking about when he talks about LOB doing 'economy stuff'.
In other news, I've put up 200 kinetic batteries for sale at 190 each and will be aiming to put out around 400 per week, depending on the availability of resources and continued demand. I know it isn't enough to supply the entire sector, but here's hoping that it'll push prices down a bit.
In other news, I've put up 200 kinetic batteries for sale at 190 each and will be aiming to put out around 400 per week, depending on the availability of resources and continued demand. I know it isn't enough to supply the entire sector, but here's hoping that it'll push prices down a bit.
Grek
1