For the record, the bandaid I was talking about was artificially creating market orders to NPCs for arbitrary mark sums to address the 'nowhere to sell materials to make marks' concern. There are some market orders for random materials at 5-6 m/u for things like Iriil and elessium, but we were told these are created by ships being destroyed/towed, and so are mark negative in the long term and are something I'd use to establish a floor rather than a precedent (though obv I'm not a producer). My point was more that making stuff cost reasonable amounts will allow players to create the market demand on those refined materials rather than Bob and a couple other people/groups propping up the starship economy based on potential profits that may not materialize.
Come one, come all W'hoorn, to the Cultural Exchange where we can talk about being catbird klingons!
So your solution is that instead of applying a bandage, we should bleed out while hoping we'll heal on our own?
I am a bit confused. I don't mean for this to sound like a personal attack, I'm just trying to understand. Where are you getting this from? Who suggested this?
So your solution is that instead of applying a bandage, we should bleed out while hoping we'll heal on our own?
Aside from .01 marks per unit per IG year, what do you lose holding on to those materials until we have a real economy? We aren't bleeding out, we're waiting until the real problem (see Matlkael's post above) is fixed. Once we can produce things like repairkits, astromechs, probes, and ammo for reasonable prices we obviate the need for the random orders and allow for the intended player-driven economy to happen without diverting resources to having NPCs buy materials (the refineries for some of which are broken in and of themselves), fine tuning the NPC orders, and later making sure that things still function after that bandaid is removed.
Part of that fix is probably going to be looking at the refinery fees that are the main point of this thread, part of it is going to be looking at autofactory requirements and batch ratios. Those are numbers that are already in the system so playing with them is likely a lot less work than implementing something entirely new.
Come one, come all W'hoorn, to the Cultural Exchange where we can talk about being catbird klingons!
It's taken me a bit to collect my thoughts on this system and I've come across a huge snag.
Miners mine gas and asteroids. This is an incredibly tedious and time consuming process, but they collect their materials and go to refine them. We'll assume refinery fees are fixed by this point. Nothing wrong there.
After refining, they sell to a player who has a factory, who will almost certainly pay as little over the average refining cost as s/he can, and they would be silly to do otherwise because there will always be more miners than factory owners.
The factory owner produces necessary supplies and can sell them cheap (assuming that factory numbers are fixed by then) and make a somewhat decent profit off of it. Nothing wrong with that.
Then the person who just performed this wholly commercial and entirely tedious pursuit of mining goes planet side, punches twenty things in the face, and probably comes back with 300% more profit at least.
Literally the only purpose to mining, a wholly commercial and entirely tedious pursuit, is to gain captaincy XP. While incursions are likely to be far more profitable and also less tedious way of earning captaincy XP and marks.
Mining isn't likely to be profitable without an alternative setting a price higher than bare minimum, it isn't fun, and it isn't even the only way to earn captaincy XP, so outside of rp reasons why would you do it?
By all means, you should bump up the factory production so that a single batch produces SO MUCH MORE than it currently does, but you should also probably make it possible to make a decent living mining.
These are my numbers I've run so far, have had these figures since before the new year.
Unless otherwise noted, current maintenance costs are 6 marks per ton refined. I've instructed refinery owners to set their prices at 10 marks per ton, unless that price would otherwise cause them to lose money (the refineries with discrepencies).
This is the full list of production costs for Auto-factories, if the factory owner buys ALL materials at 20 marks per ton AND with maintenance cost per production cycle included. Obviously, these numbers DO not work, that's why we're waiting for Tecton to make changes.
-----
Once things are fixed, prices should be designed to allow for a reasonable degree of profit at each level of production.
Miner pays 10 marks per ton to refine and sells to the factory owner at 20 marks per ton for a profit of 10 marks per ton sold.
Refinery Owner gets 4 marks per ton of material refined. The 'competition' problem will hopefully be mitigated by the fact that refineries have queues and miners will choose expedited service over the 4 marks per ton they would otherwise gain from waiting.
Factory Owner gets profit per item sold at wholesale prices.
Traders get profit per item bought from production site and shipped into faction space (Reynolds, Danica, Crossroads) where they can sell it at retail prices.
This is how Scatterhome's economic supply chain will work once Tecton finishes with adjusting the numbers, at least to start. Obviously it'll be adjusted as needed to adapt to how the market develops.
@Fyrel this is all based on the assumption that you have tons of miners that want to mine. If the system has miner profits as low as you suggest, then there might be much more demand for miners than the supply of them. Sure, there are more people that can mine vs people who own factories. That is not an argument at all. But how many of them are willing to do it?
Some factory owners might realize that paying better and loudly advertising for it gets them enough volume to compensate for the slimmer profit margin.
Maybe I'm totally off and that'll never happen, though. It just seems possible to me (of course, again, once refinery/factory costs are made not ridiculous)
@Fyrel If not enough people are going to go out to mine and/or produce actual items (because of low profit from those tasks), then the prices of those items (repairkits, astromechs, batteries) will rise, probably to a level higher than what can be made off of incursions and to a level that will make resource-gathering and item-producing actually more profitable.
It's the market, yo!
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
Refinery Owner gets 4 marks per ton of material refined. The 'competition' problem will hopefully be mitigated by the fact that refineries have queues and miners will choose expedited service over the 4 marks per ton they would otherwise gain from waiting.
It takes seconds for refineries to process a batch. For this to be a thing, it'd need to take hours at least. Or there'd need to be a truly vast number of miners pulling in to refine things every minute.
...But even if you did set refinery processing times to hours or longer, I don't think it'd really work. Price fixing is rarely sustainable, particularly in a virtual world where you can't really force anyone to do anything...
The more likely outcome of both mining and incursions having a bad return on time investment is that people stop engaging in both and just do other things/stop playing altogether.
I did say there's a distinct possibility I'm stupid. A few hours of sleep later and I'm appalled at my own behavior. I sincerely apologize for my tone (if not my mistakes as that's how i learn). Thank you for the education.
Though I am slightly concerned that newbies will be shafted by rising prices wrought by the market rising due to lack of miners. May I suggest that up until level 20 or so SF supplies remain a thing, to shield them from rising prices and make the level 15 main story quest less insurmountable in the event the market swings towards more expensive.
I like Fyrel’s idea, but one would also need to ensure these supplies -stay- in newbie hands. Otherwise it’s easy to foresee newbies buying supplies and reselling them to experienced players; a more convoluted method would be for experienced players to shoot down newbie ships and claim their cargo. There are ways to close that loophole, but it is one that would need to be addressed.
One solution would be to gather the data on how much an incursion brings in (in terms of marks), how much is spent (batteries, astromechs, repairkits, and time), and work from there to determine what the ideal prices of the raw materials are supposed to be.
Between repairkits, astromechs, batteries, and missiles, all the raw materials are already covered.
I'm using incursions as the foundation of prices because it's the only way marks are actually generated (from space junk); mining and scooping only generate resources, not marks, directly.
addendum: It might be best to bring down refinery/autofactory fees and bump up incursion junk income and have them meet in the middle.
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
And just to course correct a nitpick because it's been repeated: That is the level 10 quest. I know this because I JUST did the level 15 quest, and that required that I talk to someone who was on the planet being protected by the ships you shoot down in the level 10 quest.
Come one, come all W'hoorn, to the Cultural Exchange where we can talk about being catbird klingons!
Alright, so this is becoming unnecessarily confusing. Let's see if I've got this right... Refineries cost X amount - it fluctuates, increasing as more refineries are purchased, and has been temporarily decreased to encourage purchasing. Once purchased, unitcost can be set - the price per unit to refine. In addition, a fluctuating, mandatory batch cost is imposed upon the owner - I don't know if this is tacked to the yearly maintenance fee or taken out of marks account per completed batch. A yearly maintenance fee is also imposed upon the refinery. Are batch fees the same for all refinery types?
Batch fees currently are not the same, though I believe it was stated they're going to be reduced to all match. Although batch SIZES still vary, so it would cost more to refine, say, fifty Magnaril than it would fifty Titanium.
The cost per batch to the refinery owner is taken from their main mark account as the batches are being processed, so if they don't have enough it doesn't get refined.
@Shinonome batch times vary, some are in the minute+ range and these also tend to be the ones that are processed in smaller quantities, so there's still a good bit of waiting around.
Feraluna has called for the honoring of Razzy for the following reason: somehow setting Reynolds on fire, killing someone, and then calling for her own besmirching.
These are my numbers I've run so far, have had these figures since before the new year.
(Comments to follow on the entire economic model, this quote is just for clarity.)
So, a few things here:
1) Refineries are going to operate on razor thin margins. This is what will happen and I'm okay with that because refineries are 0-risk ventures with a relatively high entry gate. They will probably net a loss for most of their use-life unless the refinery owner can clear about 1500-2k units/year produced there, which is, I suppose, where the actual risk comes from.
2) As has been pointed out, the market is going to tear these estimates to shreds. If we assume that the SF prices are around where the admin want final products to be, we'd need to completely obviate the per-unit/per-batch owner costs on refineries and factories, set prices to something around "I break even if I do all the hauling" levels to offset taxes and explode the factory output numbers. Quick example being at a 2m/u production cost (which is utterly ludicrously low), factories would need to produce an order of magnitude more probes per run before it's just barely less expensive to make than to sell at SF prices. (this would net a profit for the factory owner of 4-5 marks per unit). Repairkits would need to, without touching the production costs, make 181 (which is 1 more than 12x the current run size) before you make a profit selling at SF prices and that's ignoring taxes. And again, these numbers are based on nobody getting paid but the factory owner, and only if they own all of the factories in the chain.
3) Even if we do somehow get the production and refinery numbers settled somewhere sensible and sustainable (making factories produce 3000 probes per run benefits no one in the long run if the owner of the factory could just make one batch of them and retire to space Key Largo), then we still run into a situation where there's no point in space if it doesn't interact with ground combat. Space would need to be super high-risk, insane reward levels for it to pay for the economy being profitable as well, because at the numbers your model is using the entirety of space is not just a mark sink but a mark black-hole in a sci-fi game. So even if SF prices are only for those under C10 and player-driven supplies are the only game in town past that point, without significant mark gains to be had in the black, nobody's going to be buying and it's still going to be a wash.
Hrm...I'm actually starting to think we might need alternative things to make to represent a production/economics/shipping endgoal that's mark-positive. Something that costs 10K to produce and can be turned in for 15K (numbers arbitrary), but only by passing through or delivering to areas that are PK zones. This creates a 'point' to space and to production, ties space combat into the production side more firmly, allows for space piracy, and if it's expensive enough it helps fuel the other stuff.
Come one, come all W'hoorn, to the Cultural Exchange where we can talk about being catbird klingons!
I'd be very wary introducing a lot of mark faucets. Not counting the ready-made SF SUPPLIES, then yes, space is an overall mark drain (its faucet is incursions, which aren't enough to offset the drain of producing items). But regular bashing is a huge mark faucet, too (I think 15k/hour is the highest I saw reported).
Hence, I think the better course of action is to find a way to further funnel more of the bashing faucet into the space drain.
If not, then tweak costs down + tweak space junk up. But the first option may be for the better, in the long run.
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
Hence, I think the better course of action is to find a way to further funnel more of the bashing faucet into the space drain.
I've expressed skepticism that refineries will ever be particularly viable. People go "But the game is new give it time!" but even IRE's 15+ year old games have the same problem. Economic systems are passion projects you funnel money into just for the fun of doing it, not something you really make any money from.
And it seems a lot of people want it to be this way.
The more likely outcome of both mining and incursions having a bad return on time investment is that people stop engaging in both and just do other things/stop playing altogether.
Achaea's mining system is basically a huge gold drain (spend gold to hire and pay salaries of miner mobs), in exchange for commodities. I've made a ton of gold (upwards of a couple million in profit) from it, as a miner, even though it's a gold drain, because the commodities I produced were in high demand for those that actually generate the gold (from faucets, like bashing).
I think that's the overall goal of Starmourn's resource-gathering system: not to turn it into another currency faucet, but to make it so that the resources produced are desirable enough that the players who do generate the currency will want to buy it from the producers (at a profit for those producers).
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
The more I think about it, the more I'm concerned that a sort of feedback loop with the entire production line may form. Once SF supplies are removed, the primary (maybe only) source for scoops and tethers will be players. Unless you're producing your own, expect to pay markups for others' profit. The collector pays for the tool and then pays for the refining, then recovers costs and a little profit by selling those materials. A manufacturer buys the materials, manufactures something and then tacks on a profit. The chain continues until the final manufacturer assembles the goods and tacks on their own profit. The refiner/collector then has to purchase that good to continue their work, and the cost for that is factored into their prices, etc., etc., etc. The end cost of the tether/scoop will eventually pass through and back to the manufacturer of the tool, who then has to increase price to preserve profit margin else have it gradually whittled away.
Owning all the refineries and factories needed bypasses that and batch/maintenance fees can be worked into final pricing.
What stops the players with the currency from producing their own goods from start to finish? If they have the currency to purchase from the producers, they likely have the currency to purchase the method of production as well.
We had that problem in MKO, where players were too self-sufficient and the economy stagnated.
The more I think about it, the more I'm concerned that a sort of feedback loop with the entire production line may form. Once SF supplies are removed, the primary (maybe only) source for scoops and tethers will be players. Unless you're producing your own, expect to pay markups for others' profit. The collector pays for the tool and then pays for the refining, then recovers costs and a little profit by selling those materials. A manufacturer buys the materials, manufactures something and then tacks on a profit. The chain continues until the final manufacturer assembles the goods and tacks on their own profit. The refiner/collector then has to purchase that good to continue their work, and the cost for that is factored into their prices, etc., etc., etc. The end cost of the tether/scoop will eventually pass through and back to the manufacturer of the tool, who then has to increase price to preserve profit margin else have it gradually whittled away.
Owning all the refineries and factories needed bypasses that and batch/maintenance fees can be worked into final pricing.
What stops the players with the currency from producing their own goods from start to finish? If they have the currency to purchase from the producers, they likely have the currency to purchase the method of production as well.
We had that problem in MKO, where players were too self-sufficient and the economy stagnated.
I'd say sanity. I don't know for sure because I haven't quite been able to grasp the scope of the entire system, but it sounds like an insane amount of time and effort for one person to attempt to produce everything that they would need. It's surely possible to become partially self-sufficient, though.
As T'rath has pierced the veil, so will I, and so will my life become complete in a good death. Jin VOTE FOR STARMOURN
Tecton-Today at 6:17 PM
teehee b.u.t.t. pirates
GrootToday at 2:16 PM if there's no kittens in space I'm going on a rampage TectonToday at 2:17 PM They're called w'hoorn, Groot sets out a saucer of milk
There are a lot of checks to prevent total monopolization and/or self-sufficiency.
For one thing, it will cost a Shit Ton (tm) of marks just to get every single type of autofactory and refinery.
Plus, stations have local economies and tax rates. If where you built your autofactories and refineries got popular, the tax rate could skyrocket and thus increase your costs.
And because of the yearly maintenance fees, you can't just plop every single type of refinery and autofactory on every single station, to take advantage of the one with the cheapest tax rate at the time: the cost would certainly be much higher than any benefit you could get.
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
Comments
1. cheapest OFFER price
2. most expensive ORDER price
3. arbitrary value of 100,
REPAIRKIT
7320 marks for 1 repairkit
- Ilyos (August 2019)
Unless otherwise noted, current maintenance costs are 6 marks per ton refined. I've instructed refinery owners to set their prices at 10 marks per ton, unless that price would otherwise cause them to lose money (the refineries with discrepencies).
This is the full list of production costs for Auto-factories, if the factory owner buys ALL materials at 20 marks per ton AND with maintenance cost per production cycle included. Obviously, these numbers DO not work, that's why we're waiting for Tecton to make changes.
-----
Once things are fixed, prices should be designed to allow for a reasonable degree of profit at each level of production.
Miner pays 10 marks per ton to refine and sells to the factory owner at 20 marks per ton for a profit of 10 marks per ton sold.
Refinery Owner gets 4 marks per ton of material refined. The 'competition' problem will hopefully be mitigated by the fact that refineries have queues and miners will choose expedited service over the 4 marks per ton they would otherwise gain from waiting.
Factory Owner gets profit per item sold at wholesale prices.
Traders get profit per item bought from production site and shipped into faction space (Reynolds, Danica, Crossroads) where they can sell it at retail prices.
This is how Scatterhome's economic supply chain will work once Tecton finishes with adjusting the numbers, at least to start. Obviously it'll be adjusted as needed to adapt to how the market develops.
Some factory owners might realize that paying better and loudly advertising for it gets them enough volume to compensate for the slimmer profit margin.
Maybe I'm totally off and that'll never happen, though. It just seems possible to me (of course, again, once refinery/factory costs are made not ridiculous)
It's the market, yo!
- Ilyos (August 2019)
It takes seconds for refineries to process a batch. For this to be a thing, it'd need to take hours at least. Or there'd need to be a truly vast number of miners pulling in to refine things every minute.
...But even if you did set refinery processing times to hours or longer, I don't think it'd really work. Price fixing is rarely sustainable, particularly in a virtual world where you can't really force anyone to do anything...
Between repairkits, astromechs, batteries, and missiles, all the raw materials are already covered.
I'm using incursions as the foundation of prices because it's the only way marks are actually generated (from space junk); mining and scooping only generate resources, not marks, directly.
addendum: It might be best to bring down refinery/autofactory fees and bump up incursion junk income and have them meet in the middle.
- Ilyos (August 2019)
Refineries cost X amount - it fluctuates, increasing as more refineries are purchased, and has been temporarily decreased to encourage purchasing.
Once purchased, unitcost can be set - the price per unit to refine.
In addition, a fluctuating, mandatory batch cost is imposed upon the owner - I don't know if this is tacked to the yearly maintenance fee or taken out of marks account per completed batch.
A yearly maintenance fee is also imposed upon the refinery.
Are batch fees the same for all refinery types?
The cost per batch to the refinery owner is taken from their main mark account as the batches are being processed, so if they don't have enough it doesn't get refined.
@Shinonome batch times vary, some are in the minute+ range and these also tend to be the ones that are processed in smaller quantities, so there's still a good bit of waiting around.
Hence, I think the better course of action is to find a way to further funnel more of the bashing faucet into the space drain.
If not, then tweak costs down + tweak space junk up. But the first option may be for the better, in the long run.
- Ilyos (August 2019)
And it seems a lot of people want it to be this way.
I think that's the overall goal of Starmourn's resource-gathering system: not to turn it into another currency faucet, but to make it so that the resources produced are desirable enough that the players who do generate the currency will want to buy it from the producers (at a profit for those producers).
- Ilyos (August 2019)
I'd say sanity. I don't know for sure because I haven't quite been able to grasp the scope of the entire system, but it sounds like an insane amount of time and effort for one person to attempt to produce everything that they would need. It's surely possible to become partially self-sufficient, though.
Jin
VOTE FOR STARMOURN
if there's no kittens in space
I'm going on a rampage
TectonToday at 2:17 PM
They're called w'hoorn, Groot
sets out a saucer of milk
For one thing, it will cost a Shit Ton (tm) of marks just to get every single type of autofactory and refinery.
Plus, stations have local economies and tax rates. If where you built your autofactories and refineries got popular, the tax rate could skyrocket and thus increase your costs.
And because of the yearly maintenance fees, you can't just plop every single type of refinery and autofactory on every single station, to take advantage of the one with the cheapest tax rate at the time: the cost would certainly be much higher than any benefit you could get.
- Ilyos (August 2019)