Economy thoughts

Comments

• Grek

  April 2021

  Also, at that rate, all the batteries on the market are sold at a loss, cause that price was set based on Iriil being worth about 40/unit.
  

  This is specifically untrue, and I don't know why people keep repeating it.
  
  A batch of thermal batteries requires a grand total of 4 titanium, 2 duramine, 4 diamene, 10 iriil, 2 astrium and 1 stesium as well as 874 marks for autofactory costs, including the intermediaries of paristeel, disheets and HDS. CA currently pays 100 marks per unit of iriil, 80 for titanium, 70 for duramine and diamene, 50 for astrium and 40 for stesium, so that comes out to a grand total of 2754 marks for one batch of batteries. Assuming that you're willing to fly out to Kholod Station for the final autofactory job (but don't give enough of a shit to do it for the HDS/disheets/paristeel, even though you probably should) that rounds up to 207 marks per battery. Current market offers are all 250 per, so they are (or at least should be, if they're using economy bonuses at all) making 43 marks per battery sold, which I feel is a perfectly acceptable level of profit. If you're willing to chase economy bonuses for the intemediaries or even the raw materials (looking at you, Iriil), you can nearly double the profits while maintaining the same standard price of 250 marks per battery.
  

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• Poet

  April 2021

  Well at 120 marks/unit I can't get any. So we haven't hit the actual price yet. I hate math. I don't want to have to spreadsheet to play a game. Now, you could say that's what the economy is about, and some people like that, and you'd be right. But they all seem to have left, because the gains were insufficient.
  
  It just feels like when I'm paying more than twice the base cost of the material with the largest requirement in the process, that'd throw the final cost off. But apparently not as much as I thought.
  
  And, given I can't buy any of the material, it's mostly just me doing the mining, and refining and factory work. And paying all the costs. And investing all the time.  And, for time invested, it's definitely a loss.  Even if I pay Crazy Jerry to deliver me thermal batteries in space, I'm way ahead doing incursions over doing anything economy-related.

  [Cassandra]: Poet will be unsurprised to learn that she has unread news.

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• Poet

  April 2021

  I left a couple of systems out. Performance.  You can make a few marks doing the practice thing, and pretty good money doing concerts, but I feel like that's ok. I've not made all that much at it to date (though I've yet to make the top of the charts) and I think the return on time invested is fair.  I suppose you could do one crappy concert and just repeat it over and over, but nobody would buy tickets after a couple of runs. If you work at it, it's fairly time-consuming to do well. Set up for my last show took me about 8 hours of work, on and off, not counting the time spent writing the song originally.
  
  Daily credits.  So this is huge at getting people to do things obviously. And once again, the thing to do is incursions. In fact, it's the only reasonable way to max daily credits. Kill 5 targets. Repeatable. Compare this with scooping gas. It's the same 5 scoops of gas or rocks delivered, but the time investment is just so much higher. Even if you 'cheat' at it and bring in scoops with 1 mat in them, it's still more time-consuming than blasting 5 things.
  
  Ground bashing is also repeatable, but you have to kill 100 things instead of 5. For me that's, I dunno, about once an hour, give or take.
  
  Daily xeno bounty. Not repeatable, which is fine since you can only do the bounty once, and it's a nice bonus to the other rewards from that.
  
  Two practice performances, not repeatable. I mean, fair enough. Other than waiting on the cooldown, there's no investment other than walking to a bar somewhere.
  
  The economic related ones are odd. So craft 10 items, not repeatable. Easy enough. In fact I do it every day. And then put those items in the incinerator cause I don't need them for anything. My shops are all set up with autocrafters, so there's no need for actual inventory. Which I will say is extremely convenient, one less thing to have to track. But incinerating items does nothing for the economy either, other than the pittance it costs me to craft those things.  Submit a design. Only worth one credit, and doesn't repeat.... not a great incentive for designing things, which adds to the game, if not the economy. I'd say, bump this to 2 credits, make it repeatable, but tie it to accepted designs. Yes, you miss out on instant gratification, but you can jump start some credits in a day or three when your designs are approved.
  
  Hack 10 terminals, not repeatable. I hate hacking. I've no idea how this compares to the rest, but it certainly seems like the time investment is fairly large.
  
  Harvest a crystal. Easy enough, but opens you up to PvP. Probably fine as is.
  
  Win a duel. Normally traded between willing victims, but it still gets people involved in PvP and serves it's purpose. Not repeatable, so you can't just kill Bob over and over all day for free creds.
  
  So, I'd say look at the tasks tied to economic stuff, and up the rewards/lower the time investment. Add in something for people who are doing the autofactory thing, not just mining.
  
  
  

  [Cassandra]: Poet will be unsurprised to learn that she has unread news.

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• Picram

  May 2021

  The hacking task can be done in about 20 min, or whatever amount of time it takes you to hack four level 15 terminals. Back to the topic at hand though...

  
  

  I agree that what you call "economy things" are generally neither too entertaining nor profitable to really make them tempting to do over an incursion, which right now is the prime way to make money and daily credits. Hard devourer incursions with a targetwarp being used for both getting there and back again, we're talking about 20 minutes of "work" tops, with a reward of about 70-80k marks and 10 credits (I am certain leviathan incursions are 50 enemies, devourers might as well). I burn through about 20 batteries per organic incursion, could be less if I cared more for staying in optimal range. Using the 250 marks per battery as standard, we're talking about an "entry fee" of 5k marks per incursion, assuming you do all repairs at a station of your choice, so at the lower end we're talking 65k profit per incursion. I think an incursion takes me about 15-20 minutes (I've never looked at the exact times, sorry), so with targetwarps you're able to do three incursions an hour rather comfortably, meaning potential net profit of 195k marks per hour, paid whenever you feel you're done with incursioning and dock at a station. During the incursion itself, enemies will generally spawn around your ship, so if you don't fly around at full speed all the time you won't even have to look for them too hard, and once you've gained enough captaincy to use a skip drive, lining up shots becomes easy, especially because interceptors and corvettes can turn on a dime and give you nine cents change. There is no need for any artefacts, either.
  

  
  

  Contrary to that you have mining, which requires you to find your desired resource to begin with. Without artefacts, you would have to either get lucky or comb sectors manually for resources, assuming nobody told you the location of one you were interested in. With hyperscan 3 (900 creds!), you can scan for a resource every 15 minutes. Average yield for one asteroid/gas cloud feels like 20 units, with wild deviations both ways being possible - I've had my hyperscan lead me to what can only be described as traces of iriil being left by another miner quite a few times. Granted, you can get lucky and sometimes find multiple resources in a sector, but it's far from guaranteed, and many people seem to only mine in their starting interceptor, so even finding a second titanium asteroid means you get to do a second trip to haul it. If memory serves, it used to not be possible to have a specific asteroid refined in the refinery, so one would either have to only pick up asteroids of the same resource with a freighter or superhauler, or forego the bonuses on refining completely. On top of that, remembering what my tethered and probed asteroids contain is apparently below my shipsim, so even if it were possible I'd either have to write it down or hope there's already a handy nexus script to do that as I can't code my way out of a paper bag. Either way, let's assume the worst case - all four resources found per hour are there by themselves, and you don't find anything during the cooldown, netting you roughly 80 of the resource you wanted... in some hours, unless you queued them up at different refineries. The best profit can currently be made with iriil, which costs about 15 marks per unit to refine at Danica for no bonus, and can be sold for 100 marks and more, so if we ignore the costs for tethers/scoops/probes, we end up with a profit of 85 marks per unit, so my 80 units from an hour of mining earn me 6800 marks. While captaincy xp for large market orders is generally decent, we're talking several hundreds or even thousands of resources shifted here - far more than my one hour of mining can get me.
  

  
  

  Talking credits... In our example, I would stand at zero for my hour of mining as I'd only brought in four scoops/tethers. This can obviously be better with a freighter or a superhauler, as I could simply bring in all the asteroids I can find, but you're still talking about a very slow gain. I'm picking up pretty much everything with my superhauler, but positioning this spaceworthy monstrosity only becomes somewhat bearable once you get the 180 and overload maneuvers. We're still far from calling it "fun" though, and I dread to imagine how the turning rate of a superhauler with eight asteroids strapped to it would be without the mining specialisation. My suggestion would be to change the credit task to "queue up x batches of resources", with x being 25 or more. That way, credit gains might become comparable to incursioning, although still somewhat slower if we're using 25 or more (which would slightly more than one average asteroid, and about one good sized gas cloud). On that note, increase resource yields as well. No more single digit yield asteroids at least, and maybe a slightly better conversion rate of scooped gas to refined gas wouldn't go amiss either. I think 4:1 instead of the 5:1 we currently have could work. Maybe even tweak that on a per-gas base.
  

  
  

  The thing with the economy right now is that nobody wins. Resources are produced to be destroyed again, mainly in the form of upkeep or spent batteries (which, talking from the perspective of an RL environmental engineer, you might want to probably save for some degree of recycling, especially if so much of a valuable resource went into them...). Refineries have to be cheap, or go unused, meaning the owners sit on the costs for the foreseeable future - refineries at Danica cost a little more than 50k marks, and people either set the price to be exactly the cost, or make one or two marks profit per unit, meaning we're talking of 50k units of resources going through just to break even! It's the same with autofactories, to a slightly lesser extent.
  

  
  

  Economy things are not just ironically unprofitable, but also intangible in Starmourn. There is no impact on anything whether a market order is fulfilled or not. Starships are conjured from thin air, as are most other things. If it neither makes a profit nor a direct difference for the player, why do it? People have only so much time at their disposal, and will naturally gravitate towards what is most "profitable" or "fun", and right now economy is only fun if you either really hate yourself, are extremely altruistic or an unhealthy combination thereof.
  

  
  

  How to solve that is a different question, and a difficult one as well. I say make economy more visibly impact other systems as well, but not in the "you need x of this and y of that, or you can't do z" way, but perhaps more in a "we define certain criteria, and if so many are met, the faction gains access to certain perks". Those criteria could be something like "x amount of things refined/produced in the faction territory", or "x amount of materials stored", "x denizen orders fulfilled in the faction territory"... the resulting bonuses could be fancy shops in the capital opening up, or other perks like better prices at the existing shops, or new denizens perhaps with new quests, maybe even given only to those who have contributed in some way to the economic success. You could also try to slap them with an honors line or a fancy new title, but that will likely not motivate people for long. Of course, in lieu of other options, there's also always jacking up mark and xp rewards for doing them, but that alone might also not be a feasible long term solution, as there will always be a "better" option. So in order to avoid the arms race for more marks, the purpose of the economy could be more focused towards giving people a common goal to work towards.
  

  
  

  P.S. Sorry if people said those things before I posted, I've been writing on this for a rather long time and should probably go to sleep.

  P.P.S. Also sorry for text wall.
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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• Steve

  August 2021

  I dunno. It's complicated. Removing refineries would be good, I think. Let the miners add ship mods to refine materials onboard the ships. Better yet, create 2 or 3 classes of mining ships: one available simultaneously with Corvette (rename the ability to Class 2 ships or something), one simultaneously available with Freighter, and one at Superhauler.
  

  
  

  I have not done much math on this, either, but I figure adding a zero to the end of most of the commodity hauls (or recipes?) would probably be in the best interests of the game. I certainly think that's true for wilderness resource caches. 15 gas is not worth picking up. 150 gas is.
  
  Freighters ought to be able to haul goods around. I'd like to see player and NPC contracts for hauling large quantities of goods. The amount of goods could be whatever for player contracts, but the NPC ones would be more like station missions and the amount of goods would be tailored towards freighters and superhaulers. Also, if this route is the way to go, adding a courier style vessel available early would be good.
  
  Agreed on cargo capacities being all out of sorts. The cargo bay mods need to be improved drastically and the combat ships need to have their cargo stores slashed.
  
  Specializations are OK. They're not great. They're certainly not explained well, which could be remedied easily enough with a quest or two. I'm not sure what I would want to replace it. Perhaps more ship types, like mining ships and functional haulers, and content to go with those ship types would illuminate how specializations ought to work, or what ought to replace specializations.
  
  That economy grants almost no experience is questionable. I'm thinking it may be worthwhile to develop a skill for space economy so that doing space economy grants some captaincy but a lot of space economy skill. This is not even half baked, but the point is that captaincy feels like a space combat skill and should be kept separate from space economy.

  
  

  In other words, I largely agree with Poet and other comments here.
  
  However, I don't mind that trade skills are reduced to a marks cost per design pattern to create the goods. The upshot would be giving space economy people more to do, but I am not convinced the purely RP tradeskills should have anything to do with space economy. Additionally, the space economy commodities are largely irrelevant for most of the things tradeskills make; we'd need to add more tradeskills for gathering. Would I enjoy the addition of something like botany? Sure. But the list of ways to get materials that are close enough to what the final product might be made of would be long... Easier to leave this as is and abstract the cost of making things as is currently done.
  

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• Solus

  August 2021

  Previously my dynasty and I attempted to set up refineries but like it's stated here it's just unprofitable. So my experience with space economy can be summed up in one sentence. Way too complicated for minimal profit.
  
  Limiting the economy purely to space also killed any drive for me to partake in. I, like many others, find space to be pretty damn lonely to do. I said it before and I'll say it again, I play multiplayer games to do multiplayer things. Top this off with making little to no marks when mining and scooping gas made me avoid space in it's entirety.
  
  Poet being the prime example of someone who does this anyways brings major profits to players because without them we'd probably not enough supplies in Scatterhome to go do hard incursions which nets us bound credits and roughly 50k-80k marks after deducting ammo and repair cost. This makes it to where players who mine, scoop, and refine which all takes considerable more time and mind numbing effort are getting the shaft. Although recently I just got back into space stuff I only do incursions because I want fun engaging things to do with my time, not suffering to benefit others, especially Solus as a character would not be so altruistic in this endeavor.
  
  My question is why limit things to space? We've so many planets and areas that are unique enough to be harvestable. This may be the human in me but I would of plundered so much material off these planets and shipped them off to be sold ages ago. We've already got the Ta-deth crystal mining command so all we'd have to do is place resource nodes around for players to harvest or mine. These planetary resources could then be combined with space resources to make plenty of other things ranging from ships, ship components, weapons, armors, clothing, food, and other items. Then just like station missions just hual the cargo off to a place that needs it. Open a commodities market on these stations and have players purchase them to craft.
  
  Let's get into crafted armors and weapons now. Personally I think that we've opted for the path of easiness and convience over roleplay and economy. We literally kill mobs to acquire our gear, whether it be through rngesus or xenos for gear token. I get why some people would like it but it destroys the roleplay of anyone wanting to be a blacksmith. I'd much rather have craftable equipment that takes up resource and player effort be better than spamming 40 gear tokens to get that 9660 PIECE. I'd want to go to a crafter and have to befriend them or pay for my gear. Why? Because not everyone wants to be a combatant and we've taken an avenue of roleplay away from others. Give players the ability to craft gear and use higher quality mats to make strong gear and you'll see a stark increase in the interest of mining, scooping, and harvesting.
  
  Overall you'll never see me doing any of the current activities simply because it does not benefit my character and that's cruel yes but that's just how my character would react. I could and have been living perfectly fine without any space activities. To me the economy simply does not exist nor will it ever until it's changed.

  (Scatterhome): You say, "Do you like things up your ass? Is your record clean? Are you looking for a job in the near future but not right now? Smuggle drugs for Solus and get stuffed across the galaxy."
  
  

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• Squeakums

  August 2021

  I like so many of the ideas I've read here so far. I agree that the space component of the game could use a lot of love in the mining department. I like taking my freighter our, finding four rocks, parking in a field of gas and collecting it with drones, then returning to port with a full haul for a dailycredit. The harvest drone module in particular was a huge game changer for me. The few things I would love to see changed as just a minor tweak:
  1. My freighter is not a combat vessel. I think it would be nice if, lacking weaponry altogether, it could turn fast. Normally it's a maneuverability vs power tradeoff on other ships: I have no power. I'd like to not move like molasses.
  2. Most (>50%?) of the time, I find a decent haul pretty quick. But sometimes I hit an unlucky streak or happen to take the wrong path and it can be a long time until I get a full load of 4 rocks and a gas. If there were areas that more dependably had them, or some similar way of countering unlucky paths, that'd remove those few awful experiences of not finding anything.
  
  Those are the "quick" changes, but #2 in particular brings me to suggest a broader-scale change that might address some of these grievances:
  
  Have NPC (for now :P) planets that buy and sell different resources for different prices.
  
  This makes sense to me. In the original lore description of the different races, there was usually a blurb about what made that race good in the galactic scale. Vonikin Krel make shipsims. Tukkav have great mining groups. I think it would both help the races or planets feel more meaningful if, say, we could go to Uycheon and purchase titanium for 50mk. Far off in the opposite end of the sector, there may be another station buying titanium at 130mk. Space truckers can find good combinations of stations that can turn a nice profit in exchange for the time spent flying around. Pick up titanium at Uycheon, sell it at Krell, pick up iriil at Krell, sell it at Pylos, pick up duramine at Pylos, sell it at Uycheon. Could even have different buyers for finished product too. Possibly at fixed price, so the RNG of personal market orders might still have a more lucrative buyer elsewhere.
  
  But what about targetwarp, Squeakums? Well, one solution is to say targetwarp jostles the cargo too much and you can't use it. A better solution, in my opinion, is to just... let them. You can targetwarp to incursions already. And that consumes the cryosealed tablet, which is good! Maybe people start selling tablets. Maybe people do more caches and cosmpiercers to face the increasing demand for tablets. 
  
  What about the current mining system? No problem, that one can still exist. Since there is a reliable alternative source for minerals and gas, perhaps they won't be as hotly contested. If somebody wants to go out mining, there's a higher chance they get a quicker and bigger haul. You exchange reliability in getting exactly the material you want from an NPC "forge" to a cheaper cost but RNG materials (whatever you happen to fly across). 
  
  Regardless of whether the NPC forges are added or not, increasing the mineral and gas yields by a significant factor like Steve suggested still seems like a good idea to me. 
  
  Finally, I suggested this on discord, but since it's relevant I'll also repeat it here. It might also be a good source of demand for refined goods if the purchase/assembly of a new ship in the shipforge had its marks cost adjusted down, but then required the equivalent amount of marks in finished goods (UMM/paristeel/R-glass/etc). 

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• bugbo

  August 2021

  An idea that would give players more of an incentive to invest in a refinery or autofactory - perhaps for every 100 goods they produce for other people it produces one for them. This could cap out at 1 per 20 or 25 (1 for every 10 may be too much).
  
  

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