Discovery Gaming Community

Up to now, the results of commodity questionnaire threads has ranged from worthless to suicide-thought-inducing-at-the-sight-of-current-humanity, but I'm feeling daring today, so let's jump off that cliff again.

Currently light arms are what I term a regional commodity. It is produced locally in all four Houses at similar prices, and distributed within those Houses to police outposts, battleships, and gun hungry criminals. Light arms is also resold at many of these locations for two purposes : to add a commodity for sale at the commodity dealer, and to provide some degree of unlawful smuggling opportunities when traveling between unlawful bases.

The expected result is that there is no international trading in light arms, and the resale at so many bases requires the suppression of the overall profit margins, resulting in relatively low volumes of light arms being traded at all by anyone.

So, this can be changed in a variety of ways, or it could remain the same. First, Liberty and Detroit Munitions along with Ouray Base will always remain Light Arms production locations, because that is a part of longterm history.

POLL QUESTION 1
Apart from doing nothing, the options are :

Produced in 2 primary regions - For example, Liberty and Rheinland could both produce Light Arms at similar prices, and trade would go from there to Bretonia and Kusari.

Produced in Liberty only - This would make Light Arms similar to commodities like Boron and Diamonds - produced and purchased in one House and traded to all the other Houses.

POLL QUESTION 2

Additionally, Light Arms can be continued to be used to fill up "for sale" slots at commodity dealers, or it could be removed from this role at the moderate price points, allowing the overall profit margin to rise considerably, while remaining for resale at the highest price points, like most commodities are now.

Another aspect for discussion is unlawful trading in Light Arms. The Xenos don't have much in the way of allies for trading, but the Junkers' Rochester Base could sell them for distribution to criminals all over Sirius. This would effectively create two markets for Light Arms: lawful and unlawful.

From a modding standpoint, the Liberty only option is the simplest and quickest to create, and allows the highest profits and profit margins. The 2 region option is quite a bit more complex and time consuming. Increasing profit margins while keeping current buy and sell locations the same is so complex and time consuming that I am not willing to even attempt it. Been there, done that, can't get back that dozen hours of my life, not doing it again.

If you are willing to back up your opinion with the power of your financial assets, or a House government wishes to lobby for production in their House, persuasion may be sent server-side in denominations of 10 million, to Xoria:Hot>dusty.lens

And, as always, I reserve the right to either ignore this thread or instead turn light arms into oxygen, depending on my hormonal state and general level of annoyance at the respondents.

To be honest, since when did light arms matter? From what I last saw of them, they don't really have a fetching price anywhere, and are sold pretty much everywhere.

But, I like the idea of the Junkers and Liberty being the only producers, it would make them a bit more interesting to carry around. Plus Xenos would have to use duct tape for combat when not in a ship.

Both Lawfuls and Unlawfuls use weapons no matter the setting it oughta have markets for both sides and from 2 different sources at least. I know in RP GMG imports light arms for the security details on Planet Miura and I would like to see small arms getting tranported to Gaians, possible from Brigands since the are black market and have rumours of making attempts at communicating with Gaians or Outcasts.

More rumors tell you how the best side arms produced by Damann in Rheinland so please dont be this a Liberty only product.

Well. Liberty at Detroit Munitions and I -think- Daumann at The Ring are the two primary producers of Light Arms in Sirius... Where is that... Oh here we go.

Quote:056071

Quote:THE RING -- Daumann's weapons Research and Development Division announced that it had created a new Side Arm that would compete with the ever-popular Detroit Perforator. The new weapon will be called the Daumann Shredder, capable of firing extremely high velocity splinters made of depleted Uranium. The thousands of projectiles contained in a typical burst have been shredding targets in Daumann tests.

Which I think, assuming that rumor is indeed vanilla, provides a very nice foundation from which to split up the distribution of light arms in a way which honors Freelancer cannon (intentional typo for teh lulz. Get it? Cannon? Light Arms? HIYO!) on top of providing logical origins of manufacture of both for your distribution matrix.

It even gives you a rather nice naming convention for the infocards.

As for unlawful trading... I vastly prefer fewer re-sale points for higher value. I think that this sentiment is echoed for a number of commodities. While it's nice to have some "filler" commodities that you can use to bridge the divide between 1-2 points I don't think small arms is one of 'em.

Xoria:Hot>Dusty.Lens? Does that mean that not only are you greater than myself but are, infact, hotter?

How dare you sir.

I'd love to be able to trade in light arms and make more than 140 c/s. I'd also love to steal light arms from people trading them and make decent profits taking them to my unlawful base (there's news about the Xenos doing this with some regularity).

However, unless you add an import or three to Detroit, it isn't going to help much. I tried to make runs out of it awhile ago, but kept ending up in Hokkaido or other far off places that don't sell anything. Not much of a run if there's nothing to take back.

' Wrote:I'd love to be able to trade in light arms and make more than 140 c/s. I'd also love to steal light arms from people trading them and make decent profits taking them to my unlawful base (there's news about the Xenos doing this with some regularity).

Yeah, supposedly we <3 shooters. Problem is that we're -right- next to Detroit. Makes the prospect of trading them somewhat tricky at best. Even if you moved 'em to the Barrow or Refugio you'd still be within spitting distance of the source of production.

Produce Light arms in NY, Munich, and Kyushu.

A smaller production of Light arms in Leeds and, say, Crete, that gives you six sell points, and you can create 3 to 6 minute routes to the high peaks between them. The smaller sell points will be only slight dimples in the regional gradient, so that you can move light arms from, say, NY, into Dublin and 47 for a high profit, or for a slightly lower one, pick them up at Leeds.

Get a pretty high buy price for light arms in places like Vess and Coronado, Mactan, Bering/Hudson as well, the Criminal strongholds in the borderlands, and slightly lower at the battleships along the borders, and then out to omicron delta and Eta, also high.

Chose an area to leave out, like for instance, leaving out Munich, and that creates some long, high paying routes.

There's no country in the world that doesnt manufacture it's own light infantry weaponry or personal defense weaponry right now, no reason to limit it to one or two houses in that respect.

Selling locations... lawful and unlawful. I'd say that all prison stations should buy light arms for a moderate price, and maybe similar pricing on police stations. Lower prices on military stations and civilian stations, however - militaries would be using higher grade weaponry of their own manufacture (I tend to think of the light arms commodity as more low-grade weaponry) and civilians have little need for such weapons, I would assume.
As for unlawful locations, any main unlawful base - planet crete, planet malta, toledo, buffalo, etc. etc. No more than one selling location per unlawful faction, though.

Buying locations - obvious locations like detroit munitions, but we need to find places in the other houses which can sell light arms for decent prices.

Ideally, I'd say that light arms should be more profitable for 'lawful' routes, while black market munitions should be more profitable unlawful routes.

Resale value should be higher at unlawful bases. Right now the economy supports only lawful trade ... for instance mining Ore can only get you profit if you are a lawful miner. We pirates cannot sell the stuff anywhere that's worth our time ... thus ... not really much reason to demand cargo.