(02-15-2018, 12:37 AM)Karlotta Wrote: Thank you for your feedback, Taeni and Teresa.
I understand your concerns and anticipated them, but weight them against these factors:
-During the time when the cardamine smuggle was at its peak, routes were both more focused than they are even in the proposed map, and there were 4 to 5 times the number of players as now. I therefore think it wont be totally killed, even if it will have more interactions and more risks than now.
-Not all alternative routes are visible in the map, because there can be jump holes as well as gates between the same systems (for example colorado-new york and bering and hudson to hamburg).
-If people are shadow-logging your smuggler even now, there's always the possibility to have several smugglers and avoid them the same way they are stalking you. There are also creative ways to get lawfuls out of the way, such as hiring a noob or a friend to distract lawfuls while you fly past them.
If you see concrete choke points which are too easy to block, you can tell them here or PM them to me if you dont want to go public about your smuggle route. You can also suggest work-arounds that are less remote as for example new hampshire. For example additional jump holes between systems that already have a direct link.
That works.
The rule of thumb is that there should always be three routes out of a system for a Smuggler, and/or safe-havens in accessible regions of a system, to survive having a clued-on lawful in system.
The nature of the beast is that once police and navy learn the smuggling routes, they'll learn where the transports intend to head, so it's a game of die-rolling on hole selection, using sacrificial advanced escorts, etc. Blockade running isn't easy. The challenge (for both lawfuls and unlawfuls) during smuggling is the hunt itself, the PVP at the end is usually a fairly run-of-the-mill composition/CD game.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)
(01-24-2018, 01:15 AM)Karlotta Wrote: Activity needs to be focused into certain systems, so that players find players to interact with more easily. Travel times towards and between active areas should also be made shorter. This can be done without removing any systems or any other content by changing jump hole connections so they focus travel along certain "highways":
(01-24-2018, 01:15 AM)Karlotta Wrote: Although this may seem counter-intuitive at first, it's NOT necessary to re-balance any commodity prices before implementing the changed jumpholes into the game:
Okay, first off, disclaimer time: I've not read the entire thread, but I'm going to give my two cents anyway.
Basically, you're dead wrong.
The problem with focusing activity hasn't got anything to do with travel time or amount of jump points. It has everything to do with economics. Activity in FL follows where traders go. In an effort to keep trade routes interesting for traders, commodity prices have been set so that basically no matter where you are, you will always have a variety of commodities to pick from, and they'll always fit within the same tight profit per second range. This is the real cause of activity being so spread out. When it doesn't matter where you start and where you go, players go anywhere, resulting in them being scattered randomly across the map.
What needs to happen is for commodity prices to be completely redone so that trade flows in the following way:
1. Ores are mined in border systems, with the same asteroid giving different types of ores to the miner.
2. Mined ores are then transported to heavily guarded depots within the same system.
3. Mined ores are sorted at the depot into discrete packages of the same types.
4. Traders then haul the sorted ores to smelting facilities in neighbouring House space (Leeds, Colorado, Dresden, for example). Sorted ores from the same source of mined ores can go to different places after they've been sorted, depending on what's needed where.
5. The sorted ores are then processed into alloys at smelter stations.
6. Traders haul alloys to factory planets like Leeds, where they are further processed into consumer goods.
7. Consumer goods are transported to the big population centers (House capitals) within the same House.
8. House capitals primarily produce services such as financial products and cultural goods and services (like entertainment, software, education, art, etc).
9. The services and cultural goods of capital planets are then traded with the capitals of other Houses.
Generally speaking, what you want to be doing is create a flow of goods from the outer system to the inner systems within the same House, with inter-House trading being restricted mostly from capital to capital.
What should be avoided at all costs is the inverse flow of goods from the inner systems to the outer systems, because this is what's fucking up Discovery's economy by making it profitable to haul anything anywhere. Because Freelancer completely lacks any kind of supply and demand mechanic to compensate for bulk numbers, prices should reflect lack of demand and not lack of supply.
To make an example: currently, luxury goods have extremely high prices in border and edge systems. This sounds like it makes sense because it would be expensive to transport those goods there. But, in fact, the opposite is true. Because edge and border worlds are generally low population backwaters where economic activities produce very little added value, they have very little capital to bid up prices. As a result, if they're buying luxury goods at all, they should buy them only at absolute bargain prices that make it economically nonviable for bulk traders to sell 5000 crates of extremely expensive whisky in a space station that has little more than a skeleton crew.
Within the same logic; at no point should a capital planet be buying ores or even alloys, as they have absolutely no use for them. They would have to transport them to where the factories actually are, which is generally in a completely different system. I've personally dropped off hundreds of millions worth of gold ore at New Paris, and it's absolutely ridiculous that I've been able to do that. The only viable thing to do should've been to drop them off at some smelter on the edge of Gallic space.
The main thing to take away is this: activity goes where traders go, and traders go where it's profitable ... which is pretty much everywhere at the moment. This is what needs fixing. Not jump point locations. The end games is that you'll find traders where you'd expect to find them because it makes economic sense for them to be there and not elsewhere. Discovery's commodities prices should be structured in such a way that the vast bulk of freighters fly along the same very busy routes.
Ones you've got the economy structured like that, you can start thinking about further detailing which factions and which kinds of ships are allowed to dock where and which cargo capacities they should have for which types of cargo to maintain a roughly similar profit per second amount without destroying the physical flow of profit.
TLDR: Disco's economic assumptions are wrong and it's wrecking player activity focus. This needs fixing more than anything else. Jump points are fine where they are. They are not to blame.
(01-24-2018, 01:15 AM)Karlotta Wrote: Activity needs to be focused into certain systems, so that players find players to interact with more easily. Travel times towards and between active areas should also be made shorter. This can be done without removing any systems or any other content by changing jump hole connections so they focus travel along certain "highways":
(01-24-2018, 01:15 AM)Karlotta Wrote: Although this may seem counter-intuitive at first, it's NOT necessary to re-balance any commodity prices before implementing the changed jumpholes into the game:
Okay, first off, disclaimer time: I've not read the entire thread, but I'm going to give my two cents anyway.
Basically, you're dead wrong.
The problem with focusing activity hasn't got anything to do with travel time or amount of jump points. It has everything to do with economics. Activity in FL follows where traders go. In an effort to keep trade routes interesting for traders, commodity prices have been set so that basically no matter where you are, you will always have a variety of commodities to pick from, and they'll always fit within the same tight profit per second range. This is the real cause of activity being so spread out. When it doesn't matter where you start and where you go, players go anywhere, resulting in them being scattered randomly across the map.
What needs to happen is for commodity prices to be completely redone so that trade flows in the following way:
1. Ores are mined in border systems, with the same asteroid giving different types of ores to the miner.
2. Mined ores are then transported to heavily guarded depots within the same system.
3. Mined ores are sorted at the depot into discrete packages of the same types.
4. Traders then haul the sorted ores to smelting facilities in neighbouring House space (Leeds, Colorado, Dresden, for example). Sorted ores from the same source of mined ores can go to different places after they've been sorted, depending on what's needed where.
5. The sorted ores are then processed into alloys at smelter stations.
6. Traders haul alloys to factory planets like Leeds, where they are further processed into consumer goods.
7. Consumer goods are transported to the big population centers (House capitals) within the same House.
8. House capitals primarily produce services such as financial products and cultural goods and services (like entertainment, software, education, art, etc).
9. The services and cultural goods of capital planets are then traded with the capitals of other Houses.
Generally speaking, what you want to be doing is create a flow of goods from the outer system to the inner systems within the same House, with inter-House trading being restricted mostly from capital to capital.
What should be avoided at all costs is the inverse flow of goods from the inner systems to the outer systems, because this is what's ***** up Discovery's economy by making it profitable to haul anything anywhere. Because Freelancer completely lacks any kind of supply and demand mechanic to compensate for bulk numbers, prices should reflect lack of demand and not lack of supply.
To make an example: currently, luxury goods have extremely high prices in border and edge systems. This sounds like it makes sense because it would be expensive to transport those goods there. But, in fact, the opposite is true. Because edge and border worlds are generally low population backwaters where economic activities produce very little added value, they have very little capital to bid up prices. As a result, if they're buying luxury goods at all, they should buy them only at absolute bargain prices that make it economically nonviable for bulk traders to sell 5000 crates of extremely expensive whisky in a space station that has little more than a skeleton crew.
Within the same logic; at no point should a capital planet be buying ores or even alloys, as they have absolutely no use for them. They would have to transport them to where the factories actually are, which is generally in a completely different system. I've personally dropped off hundreds of millions worth of gold ore at New Paris, and it's absolutely ridiculous that I've been able to do that. The only viable thing to do should've been to drop them off at some smelter on the edge of Gallic space.
The main thing to take away is this: activity goes where traders go, and traders go where it's profitable ... which is pretty much everywhere at the moment. This is what needs fixing. Not jump point locations. The end games is that you'll find traders where you'd expect to find them because it makes economic sense for them to be there and not elsewhere. Discovery's commodities prices should be structured in such a way that the vast bulk of freighters fly along the same very busy routes.
Ones you've got the economy structured like that, you can start thinking about further detailing which factions and which kinds of ships are allowed to dock where and which cargo capacities they should have for which types of cargo to maintain a roughly similar profit per second amount without destroying the physical flow of profit.
TLDR: Disco's economic assumptions are wrong and it's wrecking player activity focus. This needs fixing more than anything else. Jump points are fine where they are. They are not to blame.
Now I remember why I didnt reply.
You've missed the entire point of the thread, and answering to long posts by people who obviously didn't get the point is kind of useless and tiring.
The idea is not to make the economy seem more realistic. Even if redoing the entire economy somehow made player interactions more likely (which it could if you reduced the number of attractive trade routes considerably, which I and others have proposed multiple times) the huge economy overhaul in the way you describe would do nothing to increase interactions by itself by simply making the economy seem more realistic.
The idea is to simply to reduce the number of possible routes and travel-through systems so people are forced to bump into each other more often, with as little work as possible, and without removing any game content.
(07-09-2018, 11:57 PM)Karlotta Wrote: Now I remember why I didnt reply.
You've missed the entire point of the thread, and answering to long posts by people who obviously didn't get the point is kind of useless and tiring.
Bit sassy, are we? Your point is more than understood (it really isn't complicated at all), but your solution is simplistic to the point of uselessness.
(07-09-2018, 11:57 PM)Karlotta Wrote: The idea is not to make the economy seem more realistic. Even if redoing the entire economy somehow made player interactions more likely (which it could if you reduced the number of attractive trade routes considerably, which I and others have proposed multiple times) the huge economy overhaul in the way you describe would do nothing to increase interactions by itself by simply making the economy seem more realistic.
The idea is to simply to reduce the number of possible routes and travel-through systems so people are forced to bump into each other more often, with as little work as possible, and without removing any game content.
It's not about realism. It's about maths. Yours being way off, as explained in the other thread.
(07-10-2018, 02:26 AM)Batavia Wrote: It's not about realism. It's about maths. Yours being way off, as explained in the other thread.
No actually, you didnt explain anything you claimed, so please do it here.
Actually, he did with a bit of economics. As a third party to that dispute, I bet on economics explanation because it works and you can read real scientific papers on this "bottleneck" effect. Between some post on the Internet and economics theory proven by decades I would choose the latter.
(07-10-2018, 02:26 AM)Batavia Wrote: It's not about realism. It's about maths. Yours being way off, as explained in the other thread.
No actually, you didnt explain anything you claimed, so please do it here.
Actually, he did with a bit of economics. As a third party to that dispute, I bet on economics explanation because it works and you can read real scientific papers on this "bottleneck" effect. Between some post on the Internet and economics theory proven by decades I would choose the latter.
He put up claims of conclusions from "math" and put up numbers without explaining how he arrived at the conclusions and numbers. You can read real scientific papers about microbiology too but that doesn't mean every unsubstantiated claim I make about this subject linking it to microbiology is automatically true, unless I can explain why it's true. So...
(07-10-2018, 02:59 AM)Karlotta Wrote:
(07-10-2018, 02:10 AM)Batavia Wrote:
(07-09-2018, 11:49 PM)Karlotta Wrote: My proposal doesn't cut any content , just a few jump hole connections while rerouting others. "In return" for the removed connection, a connection that allows for farther (and thereby faster) travel across Sirius along "highways" is given, while making two systems that are intended to be emptied for the benefit of the "highway" systems and connections.
You've not demonstrated that at all. If you'd actually do the math, you'd fine that the increased chance of encountering another player along these highways is a negligible percentage increase because all haulers are randomly distributed along all equally profitable paths. Chance increases in the 10's percentage range, not the multiple 100's of percentage increase that you need to notice any effect. You're dramatically overestimating the efficacy of cutting paths.
So show me how you did the math, and how you arrived at "chance of encountering another player along these highways is a negligible percentage increase because all haulers are randomly distributed along all equally profitable paths. Chance increases in the 10's percentage range, not the multiple 100's of percentage increase that you need to notice any effect."
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