Announcements post #61: Development updates - Upcoming economy changes!
<pre>From: Ilyos, the Arbiter
Subject: Development updates - Upcoming economy changes!
Greetings Starmourners!
We have talked, discussed and planned and we have a solid overview on what's to happen with the economy in our next update. So let's talk about it! There is some heavy stuff here!
First up, while commodity generation feels way better right now, we still believe we can improve the returns on how much time you spend seeking comms versus what (and IF) you actually find something. Combining that with a suggestion from players that we loved very much, we're going to introduce the first "Planetary Exploration" mechanic in the game. Here's an overview of what you might expect there:
- On specific planets that you can already visit, there will be a place where you will be able to begin your EXPLORATION. This will put you in a randomly generated mini areas, full of danger and excitement. Your goal there will be to set up triangulation equipment in certain spots around the area and initiate an area scan that will determine if there are exploitable resources in the area and what they are.
- Once everything is set up you might find something, a lot of something, or nothing at all. If you find something, you mark the spot and send a broadcast into space which allows anyone to come pick up the commodities found with their ships (you can't very well haul hundreds of kilograms of titanium in your backpack). Alternatively, you can outright sell your discovery to a NPC org.
- There is a small chance you might find a huge cache of commodities. If that happens, the area will be flagged as open PK for a few minutes, as a discovery so important becomes up for grabs. (details will come at a later date)
- There will be a cooldown per planet per player
Next on our list is the manufacturing chain. Now this one is VERY IMPORTANT, so please read on! We feel there is very little room for profit and growth for players in the manufacturing sector and close to no reason for a new player to join the manufacturing chain unless they want to do have some facilities for themselves. Also, a single player (with enough time on their hands) can perform every task in the manufacturing chain by themselves and doesn't require the help of anyone else. Additionally, a single wealthy player can completely fulfill the sector's refining needs and doesn't even need to be around for this to happen. This is not what we had in mind when we set out to create a balanced economy. As such, there will be some major revamps to the system.
Among them, we have the following:
- Players will be able to specialize in Mining, Refining or Processing. While performing tasks in all three areas will still be possible, you will have some bonuses while doing your specialization's activity and/or some maluses while doing things from another type of activity.
- You will only be able to own a fixed amount of refineries and autofactories spanning a VERY narrow spectrum of types. If you specialize in Refining or Processing, this cap will increase slightly
- Autofactories will be open to everyone, just like refineries
- If you go inactive and don't log on for a number of days, your refineries and factories become inactive and will be delisted from public service
- Based on your specialization, you will have special missions that will pay a great deal more than the average order/mission, hoping to narrow the gap a little between how profitable it is to be someone in the manufacturing industry and a hunter
There will be a few more changes, but these are the important ones so far. However, in order to make this possible, we will need to start anew with everything in manufacturing. Since there will now be many limitations to the system, it is required that you are all given the option to choose what you want to do and specialize in regarding the manufacturing chain. So, that means the following: WHEN THESE CHANGES WILL GO LIVE, ALL EXISTING FACTORIES AND REFINERIES IN THE GAME WILL BE DELETED AND PLAYERS WILL BE REIMBURSED.
This is not a decision taken lightly and we understand that it might be hard to swallow, but we feel it is for the best.
Alongside these changes, we will also be doing some more modding work and improvements to the CAC system (most notably increasing the duration of the rewards). We can discuss about those later, for now we believe that the information above is enough to mull over. It will still be some time until everything is implemented, so please, let us know your thoughts and comments on the above!</pre>
Subject: Development updates - Upcoming economy changes!
Greetings Starmourners!
We have talked, discussed and planned and we have a solid overview on what's to happen with the economy in our next update. So let's talk about it! There is some heavy stuff here!
First up, while commodity generation feels way better right now, we still believe we can improve the returns on how much time you spend seeking comms versus what (and IF) you actually find something. Combining that with a suggestion from players that we loved very much, we're going to introduce the first "Planetary Exploration" mechanic in the game. Here's an overview of what you might expect there:
- On specific planets that you can already visit, there will be a place where you will be able to begin your EXPLORATION. This will put you in a randomly generated mini areas, full of danger and excitement. Your goal there will be to set up triangulation equipment in certain spots around the area and initiate an area scan that will determine if there are exploitable resources in the area and what they are.
- Once everything is set up you might find something, a lot of something, or nothing at all. If you find something, you mark the spot and send a broadcast into space which allows anyone to come pick up the commodities found with their ships (you can't very well haul hundreds of kilograms of titanium in your backpack). Alternatively, you can outright sell your discovery to a NPC org.
- There is a small chance you might find a huge cache of commodities. If that happens, the area will be flagged as open PK for a few minutes, as a discovery so important becomes up for grabs. (details will come at a later date)
- There will be a cooldown per planet per player
Next on our list is the manufacturing chain. Now this one is VERY IMPORTANT, so please read on! We feel there is very little room for profit and growth for players in the manufacturing sector and close to no reason for a new player to join the manufacturing chain unless they want to do have some facilities for themselves. Also, a single player (with enough time on their hands) can perform every task in the manufacturing chain by themselves and doesn't require the help of anyone else. Additionally, a single wealthy player can completely fulfill the sector's refining needs and doesn't even need to be around for this to happen. This is not what we had in mind when we set out to create a balanced economy. As such, there will be some major revamps to the system.
Among them, we have the following:
- Players will be able to specialize in Mining, Refining or Processing. While performing tasks in all three areas will still be possible, you will have some bonuses while doing your specialization's activity and/or some maluses while doing things from another type of activity.
- You will only be able to own a fixed amount of refineries and autofactories spanning a VERY narrow spectrum of types. If you specialize in Refining or Processing, this cap will increase slightly
- Autofactories will be open to everyone, just like refineries
- If you go inactive and don't log on for a number of days, your refineries and factories become inactive and will be delisted from public service
- Based on your specialization, you will have special missions that will pay a great deal more than the average order/mission, hoping to narrow the gap a little between how profitable it is to be someone in the manufacturing industry and a hunter
There will be a few more changes, but these are the important ones so far. However, in order to make this possible, we will need to start anew with everything in manufacturing. Since there will now be many limitations to the system, it is required that you are all given the option to choose what you want to do and specialize in regarding the manufacturing chain. So, that means the following: WHEN THESE CHANGES WILL GO LIVE, ALL EXISTING FACTORIES AND REFINERIES IN THE GAME WILL BE DELETED AND PLAYERS WILL BE REIMBURSED.
This is not a decision taken lightly and we understand that it might be hard to swallow, but we feel it is for the best.
Alongside these changes, we will also be doing some more modding work and improvements to the CAC system (most notably increasing the duration of the rewards). We can discuss about those later, for now we believe that the information above is enough to mull over. It will still be some time until everything is implemented, so please, let us know your thoughts and comments on the above!</pre>
9
Comments
a miner goes out and collects gas and asteroids. They are spending time doing this and it’s a continuous process requiring effort
a refiner simply waits for others to use his facilities. This is very passive, an economic investment if you will
a manufacturer buys refined goods to produce stuff. This is also passive, simply an economic investment.
as a result you are segregating an active activity with two passive ones. I simply create an alt to run my refineries and autofactories while I mine since they do not require any ongoing maintenance of more than a few minutes (if that makes sense)
the point of the post was to highlight that refining and manufacturing seem to be boring activities you cannot spend time on (like bashing and mining)
If you want to add production to ground stuff, just put it in quests and drops (for non-combative) as well as raids, neutral planets with production over time, or distress calls for crashed ships (for contested production). Hell, you even added in instanced areas behind a mechanic needing attention that would be just as if not more fitting for finding hidden caches than prospecting. Why do it again?
With that being said, my experience of doing this for the past game year has been nothing but tedium. (My freighter's name is also "TDM XII"
With all that being said, I like the potential that's found in having to specialize in gathering, refining, or manufacturing. It helps focus the economic experience from an individual standpoint, and hopefully it promotes a much more vibrant interchange between players in each part of the manufacturing chain. I'm also all for trying out new things. Manufacturing as it is right now takes a lot of effort and time, while the reward for such activities doesn't come close to the effort put forth.
As far as specializing is concerned, I hope that we have a detailed explanation of the benefits of each specialization, so that we can make educated decisions on what to specialize in, or at least the possibility of changing manufacturing specializations down the road, should we find the need to do so. I don't think this will happen, but if everyone ironically decided to specialize is the same exact thing without any way of changing specs, the economy won't work.
I'd also like clarification of "planets we can visit" in planet exploration. Does this mean only the planets that can you can access from an existing station, or does it also include planets like "RS-4554-(insert planet name here)" that you can technically "visit" while in a ship, but doesn't have a dock?
But economical crises are part of the game (or should be part of the game rather) after all. I mean if there were no such impending issues policymakers would be out of business! So while that doomsday scenario would provide an initial setback, other people would rise to the occasion or people would get by with emergency supplies for awhile until matters are resolved.
Content advisory: Very Important Opinions(R)(TM).
Planet exploration and specialization missions sounds promising and I look forward to playing with these.
So I thought I’d chip in to the discussion from the perspective of a player who does not intend to mine at all. I’m much happier buying resources for top dollar on the market, paying others to haul, and making it all worth it by maximizing production bonuses and a) passing on my additional expenses to the buyer or b) donating it all to faction storage anyway. So far I’ve just been doing option B. The point is I just want to manage market orders, queue jobs, and get the products to market or to faction, without doing anything in between. People like me are necessary for other people do play the niche they want, mainly miners and haulers. I’ve been running things in the red for now just as I get my feet wet and help the faction, but eventually I’ll want to profit from all this on the open market.
Now that that’s out of the way, here’s my dream of what I think a fully functioning Starmourn economy would look like from the perspective of the end buyer: In a shipforge-less environment, anyone should be able to dock at any station and at least have access to the basics in sufficient numbers: em_batteries, thermal_batteries, kinetic_batteries, astromechs, repairkits, scoops, and tethers. Naturally, the more remote the station, the greater the inconvenience to a marketeer, and so greater the markup. Preferably this wouldn’t be facilitated by just one player (and codedly can’t be at the moment, more later), but rather there would be multiple such marketeers constantly trying to undercut one another but still turn a profit. That’d curtail the cost to the end consumer and bring market prices in line with what is profitable for all. Supply and demand of raw materials would be tuned just right so that the cost of raw materials would be high enough above the refining cost that miners could sell to the highest buy order and be overall happy with their profit.
What are the gaps between this vision and what we have now? Really all you have to do is MARKET OFFER LIST EM_BATTERY/REPAIRKIT/THERMAL_BATTERY/ASTROMECH to get a sense of how far we are. For my own incursion running, I rely on materials produced by the faction and on the efforts of a particularly eminent do-it-all-yourself industrialist
. The fact
that there are only a handful of offers for a very limited range of
end-user goods at Omni of all places is particularly troubling. It
should, by all measures, be the central trading hub of the Sector
simply by being in the middle and because of its conveniently-placed
voidgate. But it makes sense, overall. Factional economic efforts are
much stronger than independent ones, and supply is far short of
demand.
So let’s look at the limitations in the current system and do some projections based on the sounds of these proposed changes to get a sense of where we’ll end up.
1) The main problem is low supply for the free market and low velocity of money. To test this I put large market orders of Tritium up at Omni and Iota at a price far above the refining cost and above all the other market orders. They’ve been up there for about 5 RL days now, and in total I’ve received 33 tritium. So yay, 1.75 r-glasses for almost a week of waiting. Obviously most of the supply gets channeled into factional supplies. So if you don’t mine yourself and rely on the open market, at this rate it’d take you months to build resource supplies.
- The problem is mitigated by the proposed change to add planetary exploration. More supply is a welcome change.
- The problem is magnified by the proposed change to add specializations. Why? Well, it seems like it’s going to require a lot more working together in order to produce goods for the faction. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true with Autofactories going public. Nevertheless the overall sense I get from the changes is: “Work together to fill everyone’s needs.” But the actual way I think this will transpire is: “Work together as a faction to fill the faction’s needs.” Starmourn is a social game, and networks of cooperation naturally form around factions. My feeling is that we will end up not with one functional village economy, but rather with three functional house economies.
> In other words, the possibility for a healthy independent market to exist is either shrinking with the proposed changes or at the end of the day will be about the same as it was before.
* If we do end up with silo economies, we need something to make sure the independent market is healthy. Possibly this could be achieved in a player-driven IC manner without any mechanical intervention.
2) There are coded barriers to a “trader/marketeer specialization.” It’s these people in an economy who distribute goods to where they’re needed to turn a profit, make sure there are buy and sell orders, regulate the buy and sell cost of goods to balance the needs of the producers and the consumers. The coded barrier is the market order limit of 12. Market offers are fine, I don’t really know what the upper limit is to these but it seems really high. I don’t really understand what the justification is for putting such a low limit on market orders, vis a vis market offers. 30 seems a more appropriate number. You could even sell an artifact to increase the number, but I think first of all the baseline for everybody should be increased.
Okay this is getting long already, so I’m gonna stop here.
something which i think needs to be changed anyway because the offer system has the same flaw only moreso. if two people are selling the same thing at the same price on that same station i am not sure how the system determines who you are buying it from and you have no say in the matter.