Announcements post #51: The Future of Shipforge Supplies.

Autoposter

<pre>From: Ilyos, the Arbiter
Subject: The Future of Shipforge Supplies.

Greetings, Starmourners!

It has always been our intention that you, the players, become the main drivers of the economy and that you would all rely on each-other for supplying the goods that make the sector run. Such is the case for the shipforge supplies as well: ammo, repairkits, astromechs, probes, tethers, etc. Having all those items readily available at fixed prices from a non-player entity does not do much to encourage the manufacturing and trading of those goods.
As such, the shipforge supplies will be slowly phased out. Over the next few days, we'll increase the price of all consumables sold at the shipforge and then, over another set of days, we'll start phasing out the consumables from sale. From that point on, the supply of ship consumables will rest solely in your hands!
We will be monitoring this transition closely to ensure that everything goes well and that we aren't left with a sector-wide shortage of ammo, repair kits or mining supplies.</pre>

Jassaet

We need more resources. 

It's better, but it's still a struggle to keep production going. I can't search for resources because I can't afford to refine them so I have to hunt for money so to get more resources, which means, since I don't have time, I have to hunt for more marks to afford the market orders. 

At least with the shipforge supplies, we'll be getting some money coming in, unlike the guard and station upkeep. I'm not involved with the farms, so I don't know if that's impacting what we can find out in the open, but gases seem to have gotten a lot harder to come by the last few months. And I had to fly around quite a bit to find a titanium asteroid. 

Kitrana

the titanium vandium and such asteroid problems is because we aren't colecting the astrium, stesium and duramine asteroids.

Matlkael

So we've been trying to decipher Updates #175; specifically, we're looking at this line:

* Adjusted asteroid / gas cloud spawning rate, it should now adjust faster to higher demand

There are a few possibilities, first, regarding spawning rate:

1. That there's a single, collective 'spawning' of resources. IE, there's only a maximum of 35 asteroids spawned per hour. It starts with an equal spread of asteroid resources (7 total, so 5 asteroids each). If, at the next spawn tick, vandium is determined to be in higher demand, then the spread changes to something like 11 vandium and then just 4 asteroids for each of the other resources.
2. That each resource spawns on its own. IE, each of the 7 asteroid resources spawns at a base rate of 5 asteroids each. A higher vandium demand increase that resource's rate to 11, but the rest will still remain at 5 (supposing their demand isn't high enough to warrant an increase).

Furthermore, there are a few possibilities regarding the "higher demand" factor:

1. That it's determined by how much a resource is refined. IE, the starting rate for vandium is at 500 per tick; if 250 (50%) of that vandium is refined before the next tick, then the next tick will be 50% higher (from 500 at the first tick to 750 at the second tick).
2. That it's determined by supplies use. IE, using more repairkits will increase the demand (and thus, spawning rate) for all its base materials: diamene, tritium, titanium, magnaril, helium11, duramine, and vandium.

Of these possibilities, I like #2 of the spawning rate and #2 of the higher demand factor more. Especially considering the constant drain of station missions (plus NPC orders, when they happen), the supply should be as reasonably liberal and generous as possible. In any case, hoarding concerns are few: there's a mark drain to storage, after all.

Kitrana

i figured the increased rate was based on market orders, and that part of rthe reason we havent seen a drastic uptick yet of high demand resources is old rocks that were around before the change havent died yet.

Matlkael

We've definitely noticed a large uptick on spawn rates, though. Titanium is far more common now. Even vandium (although it's still very small in amount).

Kitrana

oh we saw a large uptick but most of the rocks i was finding were still astrium, stesium, magnaril or diamene. but i figured it would take about a week from the change for that to shift.

Cubey

Autoposter said:

We will be monitoring this transition closely to ensure that everything goes well and that we aren't left with a sector-wide shortage of ammo, repair kits or mining supplies.

I was going to write a longer post but I'll keep it succinct and short.

Still not enough commodity supply. Don't introduce more resource demand before you increase the supply. With supply as it is currently, if you cut SF supplies then shortage of ammo and repairkits won't be a possibility, but a certainty.

Kitrana

Cubey said:

Autoposter said:

We will be monitoring this transition closely to ensure that everything goes well and that we aren't left with a sector-wide shortage of ammo, repair kits or mining supplies.

I was going to write a longer post but I'll keep it succinct and short.

Still not enough commodity supply. Don't introduce more resource demand before you increase the supply. With supply as it is currently, if you cut SF supplies then shortage of ammo and repairkits won't be a possibility, but a certainty.

i do not think this will create as much of a shortage as you think it will. vandium and titanium right now are very rare in part because the other stuff is common. and it is common because miners aren't harvesting it we let those rocks sit out there untouched because there isn't a market for them. repair kits and batteries use mostly those other materials. take out the shipforge or make it so players can compete profitably with shipforge and you give us a reason to bring in those rocks.

Kovac

Thank you to @Iyato! Demand for supplies needed some love!

That being said I have some major concerns before this is done.

1. How are players going to be able to purchase these supplies?
2. How are players going to be able to sell these supplies?

Using market orders would not be ideal, market orders are a passive system for purchasing resources. We need something more akin to a shop where players can put their good for sale. I can already imagine players getting frustrated because someone undercut their order and now they have nothing to go do space stuff with.

Kitrana

Kovac said:

Thank you to @Iyato! Demand for supplies needed some love!

That being said I have some major concerns before this is done.

1. How are players going to be able to purchase these supplies?
2. How are players going to be able to sell these supplies?

Using market orders would not be ideal, market orders are a passive system for purchasing resources. We need something more akin to a shop where players can put their good for sale. I can already imagine players getting frustrated because someone undercut their order and now they have nothing to go do space stuff with.

players can and already are offering things on the market. 
if you do a market offer list tether you can see where people are selling tethers and for how much.

Kovac

Kitrana said:

Kovac said:

Thank you to @Iyato! Demand for supplies needed some love!

That being said I have some major concerns before this is done.

1. How are players going to be able to purchase these supplies?
2. How are players going to be able to sell these supplies?

Using market orders would not be ideal, market orders are a passive system for purchasing resources. We need something more akin to a shop where players can put their good for sale. I can already imagine players getting frustrated because someone undercut their order and now they have nothing to go do space stuff with.

players can and already are offering things on the market. 
if you do a market offer list tether you can see where people are selling tethers and for how much.

I'm dumb . Didn't even realise we had market offer.

Tiase

Jassaet said:

We need more resources. 

It's better, but it's still a struggle to keep production going. I can't search for resources because I can't afford to refine them so I have to hunt for money so to get more resources, which means, since I don't have time, I have to hunt for more marks to afford the market orders. 

At least with the shipforge supplies, we'll be getting some money coming in, unlike the guard and station upkeep. I'm not involved with the farms, so I don't know if that's impacting what we can find out in the open, but gases seem to have gotten a lot harder to come by the last few months. And I had to fly around quite a bit to find a titanium asteroid. 

The farms are a bust. at least mine is anyway. Some clever smarty pants keeps hitting them everytime I put something new in. 

Matlkael

Kitrana said:

i do not think this will create as much of a shortage as you think it will. vandium and titanium right now are very rare in part because the other stuff is common. and it is common because miners aren't harvesting it we let those rocks sit out there untouched because there isn't a market for them. repair kits and batteries use mostly those other materials. take out the shipforge or make it so players can compete profitably with shipforge and you give us a reason to bring in those rocks.

This is assuming that elessium and ultarine availability affects tritium's spawn rates. It might not.

In any case, it's a terrible system if it relies on players to be dumb and harvest trash resources in order to work.

Ilyos

Just to clarify, each commodity tracks itself individually. So you don't need to harvest a type of resource just to make room in the world for another. If there's an abundance of helium11, it won't cause of shortage of titanium, etc.

That said, we recognize that maybe you aren't as incentivized to harvest certain kinds of resources because there isn't that big of a demand for them in crafting/missions/orders. Stay tuned today or tomorrow as we will release a new system which will give these resources a use .

Matlkael

Please no increase drains in missions. To give you a rough example, stesium is hardly used because its use is in kinetic/thermal batteries/missiles. These also require the dreaded rglass (vandium + tritium).

A lot of the vandium and tritium are reserved for station missions, which means none of them actually get to the stage where they can be crafted into kinetic_batteries or thermal_missiles. That is what I think causes the depression in stuff like stesium and ultarine, not because there's "too low an incentive" to harvest them. 

The problem is in the demand. There's too much of it for certain resources. Conversely, the problem is in the supply. There's too little of it for certain resources.

Kitrana

Matlkael said:

Please no increase drains in missions. To give you a rough example, stesium is hardly used because its use is in kinetic/thermal batteries/missiles. These also require the dreaded rglass (vandium + tritium).

A lot of the vandium and tritium are reserved for station missions, which means none of them actually get to the stage where they can be crafted into kinetic_batteries or thermal_missiles. That is what I think causes the depression in stuff like stesium and ultarine, not because there's "too low an incentive" to harvest them. 

The problem is in the demand. There's too much of it for certain resources. Conversely, the problem is in the supply. There's too little of it for certain resources.

there's no rglass in kinetic or thermal batteries. it's in repair kits and countermeasures 

Matlkael

I meant it's for the missiles part. rglass -> sensors -> missiles.

You're not going to see stesium being used because it's only for kinetics and thermals, and of those, missiles use vandium and tritium (in rglass) and batteries use titanium (in paristeel).

All of these are used in station missions, and only a small fraction of them (if there's any at all) make it to the stage when they can be used for missiles and batteries (and thus, stesium).