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+--- Thread: Why FL economics does not work (/showthread.php?tid=133703)
Why FL economics does not work - Swallow - 12-08-2015
I would like to bring this up again to cover all the issues and make some conclusions for myself. This is the main idea of the thread, I am not proposing to change anything.
This is like a research to reveal the weak spots of the model.
So basically, this covers economics itself, vessel and equipment prices, ways of earning credits, ways of loosing credits and how this all affects the gameplay and addictivity of the game.
I'll start with a statement that Discovery RP is not a pure RP. Unlike on fRPGs, we are still having single-player arcade and trading sim element, this means that this side of gameplay is regulated by "credits" but not imagination, rules and pre-sets (though, when accumulated enough credits there is no more clear division on that).
The RP is based on the space side of Sirius life, and follows the main gameplay ideology "trade, fight".
Many times it has been mentioned that we have a food chain "trader-pirate-lawful" in its basics, and that it is the key of not pre-arranged activity.
If there is nothing to spend money for, then there is nothing to trade for, and so on (in a nutshell).
The issues that I see in FL economics are:
- Indefinte emission of credits;
- Statical economics;
- Fast wealtg saturation;
- Indefinite equipment resourse;
- Cheap ammunition.
The main things like vessels and guns are bought only once, thus ways of loosing money are as follows:
- Ammunition;
- Occasional repairs;
- iRP reasons;
- Sanctions.
Im am excluding PoBs because the idea behind them being short-resourced without support is actually great.
Now, it has been brought up many times that one might go EVE's way of loosing ship after destruction, and rejected with the mind of the idea is being too harsh.
From another hand this would have eliminated the permanent wealth saturation of a player and need in expensive things for such ones known as "moneysink".
This would, from the other point of view, equalize the income sources, or at least make fighting way of earning money self-sustainable, considering risks. As well it'd provide much tighter relationships between trader and lawful groups for the sake of safety and enrichment on mutual basis.
The current way of treating defeat of a player seems to harm every aspect of the game. For example, when one is trading for oneself, he or she earns cash untill the point of wealth saturation, making the trading role less self-sustainable and more auxilary for gameplay. When the same happens in faction - there are still issues on the matter of saturation, because faction barely has a use of the credits aside from personal wishes of individuals and PoBs in general. The role of trader is not appealing RP-wise (PvP is generally out of question here) because the economy of game world does not rely on trader for real.
I would also like to point out that the gaming environnment with no death penalty (ship loosing) requires different classes to be balanced almost to the point where there are no advantages for any of them. To equal cheap and expensive equipment when player never loses one in case of defeat means making cheap and expensive nearly the same in performance, which leads to lack of logic and so on.
FL is not having a natural way of treating winner or loser, gameplay-wise no one here loses. This alongside with quick wealth saturation brings rather boring gameplay-wise experience, and with rather low player activity it harms the RP side of playing.
RE: Why FL economics does not work - Jack_Henderson - 12-08-2015
Disco players cannot be trusted to use something like penalty after death in a way that would not be causing massive problems. Therefore I doubt that this path will ever be chosen.
I agree that the game lacks money sinks.
Repairs, ammo could be made more expensive. However, they would likely still not classify as money sinks. Veteran players have billions in ships, banks and armors stored.
For me it is a fact that money sinks do not come without giving a player who invests heavily an advantage.
This is where the crying normally starts: "Money cannot buy advantage!!!".
Sure it can. See every other multiplayer game. Why not Disco?
If thruster X costed 200 million and gave you +5 thrust speed, you would have your money sink.
And if scanner Y costed 200 million and gave you +3 k detection range, you would have a working money sink.
And if Disruptor Z costed 100 million for the launcher and 5k for each missile, but had superior stats, it would be bought.
Let's assume a veteran player has 50+ ships (which is likely a very conservative guess).
Let's assume he flies 10 ships so regularly that he cares and wants them to be top tier.
Let's assume he would invest 10x 400 million to equip his ships with +3k scanner and +5 thrust speed...
That's what money sinks would be.
This would make people log their traders, go to trade events, have a money maker... and not sit on billions, self-complacent and happy to never have to trade again.
Yes, we need money sinks.
Penalty on pvp death is not the way, imo.
Our beloved grievers would rejoice and shoot half the server empty while celebrating exstatically on TS. (ok, exaggeration, but you get the point)
RE: Why FL economics does not work - DragonRider - 12-08-2015
Moneysink this moneysink that. Why does it always have to be a moneysink?
I don't see why it's a bad thing to have lots of credits. Battleships and armors are expensive as it is, do we really need more moneysinks?
If you get to a point there you have so much money and so little to waste them on, I have one question for you: why have you made so much money in the first place?
Seriously.
RE: Why FL economics does not work - mayu20 - 12-08-2015
I hever had more than a billion, never needed more, but I don't fly caps so ye. Right now I am at 7-800 millions.
RE: Why FL economics does not work - Oldum - 12-08-2015
I'm sitting on about 2 billion, plus just bought a load of stuff and still can't figure out what to do with the rest. so I fly my liners in hopes of some RP or something. But deffinately not for the purpose of trading.
So something that would make trading to actually have a point or reason would really be nice.
RE: Why FL economics does not work - Epo - 12-08-2015
(12-08-2015, 03:14 PM)DragonRider Wrote: Moneysink this moneysink that. Why does it always have to be a moneysink?
I don't see why it's a bad thing to have lots of credits. Battleships and armors are expensive as it is, do we really need more moneysinks?
If you get to a point there you have so much money and so little to waste them on, I have one question for you: why have you made so much money in the first place?
Seriously.
Pretty much this, not everyone has enought spare time to spend it in game. And even if he has a while, he has to spend it on a trader to earn some money. It's sometimes killing the RP, IMHO. Just think about all those situations and stories which didn't happen cuz you were spending the whole day on trading just to earn enough to buy a BS with BS scanner and some guns. Now, a week later (bacause you were pretty busy during the week or you were spending every spare hour on earning another 100m if possible), another wasted day to buy a CAU8 for it. Now you can't play for another two weeks cuz of being busy in RL. Result? A month of doing nothing. And after a week you have to sell it either for you don't like it or wishing to buy a cap from another faction. Really, they are expensive as they already are, there's no need to make them more expensive. People are already wasting enough time on the most boring thing known as the trading
RE: Why FL economics does not work - Thyrzul - 12-08-2015
(12-08-2015, 03:14 PM)DragonRider Wrote: Moneysink this moneysink that. Why does it always have to be a moneysink?
So that credits retain their value. Inflate the economy with enough cash that everybody could buy anything they want and nobody will bother with trading, then you can say goodbye to an active food chain, and with that to overall activity on Disco.
I personally would be fine with a slight, limited death penalty too, like 1% of ship cost taken from account upon blowup in case of combat ships, while none at all from accounts of tradeships (freighters either rebalanced to be more cargo ships than combat ships, receive 0,5% or the full 1%).
Though many opposes the above idea even the slightiest (like no compromise), so I guess the future is more in equipment giving a slight additional advantage for a great amount of additional cost, but I dare say that even despite their high cost, if they remain intact after purchase, it'll be just a one-time sink, a temporary one, not really helping, rather just delaying the inflation of the economy.
We either need money sink equipment requiring ammo/fuel, or - as somebody suggested it in OFL chat, implying such thing exists - the implementation of a certain plugin by Adoxa adding wear&tear damage to certain guns upon usage, requiring it to be repaired over time. These could be all guns with low maintenance cost, or a select few with above-than-average stats and with moderate maintenance cost.
Unless we have a constant money sink the utter loss of in-game activity drive is not a matter of "if", but "when".
I personally would be fine with a slight, limited death penalty too, like 1% of ship cost taken from account upon blowup in case of combat ships, while none at all from accounts of tradeships (freighters either rebalanced to be more cargo ships than combat ships, receive 0,5% or the full 1%).
Though many opposes the above idea even the slightiest (like no compromise), so I guess the future is more in equipment giving a slight additional advantage for a great amount of additional cost, but I dare say that even despite their high cost, if they remain intact after purchase, it'll be just a one-time sink, a temporary one, not really helping, rather just delaying the inflation of the economy.
We either need money sink equipment requiring ammo/fuel, or - as somebody suggested it in OFL chat, implying such thing exists - the implementation of a certain plugin by Adoxa adding wear&tear damage to certain guns upon usage, requiring it to be repaired over time. These could be all guns with low maintenance cost, or a select few with above-than-average stats and with moderate maintenance cost.
Unless we have a constant money sink the utter loss of in-game activity drive is not a matter of "if", but "when".
RE: Why FL economics does not work - Oldum - 12-08-2015
(12-08-2015, 04:27 PM)Epo Wrote: Pretty much this, not everyone has enought spare time to spend it in game. And even if he has a while, he has to spend it on a trader to earn some money. It's sometimes killing the RP, IMHO. Just think about all those situations and stories which didn't happen cuz you were spending the whole day on trading just to earn enough to buy a BS with BS scanner and some guns. Now, a week later (bacause you were pretty busy during the week or you were spending every spare hour on earning another 100m if possible), another wasted day to buy a CAU8 for it. Now you can't play for another two weeks cuz of being busy in RL. Result? A month of doing nothing. And after a week you have to sell it either for you don't like it or wishing to buy a cap from another faction. Really, they are expensive as they already are, there's no need to make them more expensive. People are already wasting enough time on the most boring thing known as the trading
And with your way of looking at things, we just killed the pirate-trader interaction .. .and if there is no pirate-trader interaction, there is no ( or minimal ) random pirate-lawful interaction , only pre-made ones, which are not that exciting then random things , so we basically can downgrade things to having premade PvP events and GL, HF ....
RE: Why FL economics does not work - Swallow - 12-08-2015
I just don't see the wealth dissipation. It piles up. And I want to analyze how to put this at correct place when (if) I will start my long-term FL project.
RE: Why FL economics does not work - Epo - 12-08-2015
Well, we can encourage people to trade not only via creating hundreds of moneysinks.
Just by removing pob supplying if you pay for it or maybe adding an special *op* ships for about 2 bil /each.
I'm not against giving an adventage for guys who have earned a lot of cash. If you really want to keep the trader-pirate interactions you should make people being happy from it, not feeling that it's the necessary thing to do. You won't gain activity by forcing someone do do something, it could work only in the opposite way
OP ships like those mentioned could be eg. capitals with large amount of light turret slots (at least 20), bigger amount of docking modules (at least 6) and maybe a slot for a special scanner even better than the current BS one? This ship could use a special countermeassure dropper using expensive flares etc. to make mantaining of it even worse. This way you can buy a ship for 1,8 bil, 6x 100 000 for docking modules for it, maybe 500 000 000 for this scanner and lets say 10m/each for improved light turrets?
This toy should be big, fat and slow; however with a lot of firepwoer: max impulse speed of 50 or less, cruise engines loading for 3 minutes.
Vuala, you've gained an super expensive ship for 4 or 5 billions which would be really worth earning all this cash. Or maybe this ship should cost 10 bil, just to reduce amount of those beasts encountered in space. You woould need to send this 10 bil to admin's char and this ship would be basically given by admins after sending the payment. If this price is too low yet, make it bigger
Role: Basically support one, repair facility for snubs, while being able to keep hostile ones away and a fear for other capital ships (note that this ship almost can't cruise, so even a battleship would leave its range withno problems. It wouldn't be that OP then
And well, adding such a toy would make more use for mortars: big = easy to hit from long distance
Maybe it should also have some repair turrets to repair friendly capitals?
About its size: lets say ~6x atlantis:
![[Image: biggycappy.png]](http://wnko.pl/i/biggycappy.png)
See? That's an very expensive toy which is really worth earning all those money