That's it. I am legitimately angry, confused, and just plain astounded by what you have done to the economy.
I have been attempting to formulate trade routes for Ageira for a week now. Something that seems legitimate in both roleplay, and is worth our time with the pay it offers.
So, Planet Kurile. Kusari is building gates and/or lanes out in that area, I haven't quite read up on if Gates are still being built, but I'm wholly sure that Trade Lanes are the idea, and are well in progress of being made.
But the profit sucks, I'm going to be honest. Gate/Lane parts have always had the issue of being lacking in profit, but you know, it's okay, it's decent RP cargo, and I can still make a decent buck off of it. 2577/unit (12889 profit / 5 since it takes up 5 slots per 1) is pretty decent.
And then, I saw Light Arms. 2954 profit/unit for the same exact trip, to a planet that is very far from any warzones. No Gallia to worry about, Bretonia is obviously too busy being invaded by the Gauls to ever invade Kusari, especially out in the Sigmas, but no problem. So why are guns so drastically more profitable than Trade Lane parts, which are obviously in high demand?
Not only that, a single company has monopoly on them, which could cause the price to sky rocket, but that's another discussion.
But, that's just a minor gripe, I got over it, and actually had a fun convoy with Ageira two nights ago. Decent money to be had, pretty sure we told Kruger Minerals to suck it, everyone chuckled.
So tonight, I thought I'd change things up a little. Light Arms out to the front! Support our allies, and frankly, best providers of metals and alloys that made Ageira what it is.
Except, for a House that's lost most of a system, and pretty much an entire planet, you're hard pressed to find a sell point for over 2,400 credits. But you know what? I still wasn't mad. A little bothered that it still doesn't make much sense within the storyline, that being Bretonia desperate for military aid, but whatever!
I then tried to find a return commodity.
Oh my god.
I started crying. Not out of depression, not out of the hopelessness of life, being driven to work myself to the bone to earn a meager living, no.
I was crying out of sheer rage and incapability of understanding how someone could believe that these trade routes made sense from a balance, or roleplay standpoint.
All over FLCompanion, four out of every five commodities would consist of sell points to Gallia for ridiculous profit, while it would be a moderate 2200c/u, and more commonly, a laughable 1500c/u or so. Don't get me wrong, I didn't scour every base for every commodity, because frankly, Ageira doesn't move half of this crap.
But everywhere I looked, Gallia sellpoints, Gallia sellpoints. And when it wasn't Gallia? It was, most of the time OUTCAST GUARD SYSTEMS and other various garbage that House corporations get shafted over. Let me just fly out to the Omicrons.
Now, don't get me wrong. Pirates have commodity needs and desires, as does Gallia. In fact, it's great if a pirate can get these goods all the way out there.
...So when do Houses get the ability to make money?
The rage doesn't end there. I almost had an aneurysm as I went over all of the new metals and various other industrial commodities. They're almost entirely focused solely on Gallia, and most of the time, aren't purchaseable anywhere else but lawful bases. While in itself isn't a massive balance issue, it's making me question if there was actually any care put into the distribution of commodities within the game. Unless I'm missing something, and Gallia has always had a monopoly on these metals.
I mean, besides the fact that Bretonia was the super-giant for making metals and metal alloys.
I should go on, I can keep going on in fact, but I won't. I've already figured out what has gone terribly wrong in the economy.
You base things based on distance and difficulty to get to the location, largely through FL Companion, not on ingame testing and interaction. You do not encounter pirates in FLCompanion. You do not encounter disrupted lanes, getting stuck in said lane, or waiting for NPCs to carry on.
You do not take into account current lore and roleplay situations. Bretonia is at war, and they're accepting military equipment for pathetic amounts of money. Who would want to log on and aid them when they're receiving pathetic amounts of money? Just fly out to Kurile and make 50% more profit.
I do not care for the number of spreadsheets you have. I do not care for the entries, or the 'time' you put into them. While I must applaud you for going through all of it manually (despite there being mechanical alternatives), that's all I can do.
If you would like to argue on the finer points of this, I would be more than happy to argue back.
But if you can't respect the story and lore of the server, just so you can balance the economy in a way that just makes it difficult for everyone, then I recommend you step down and allow someone else take your place.
Yes please, we need more weapons to Kurile.
This place has been stockpiling ever since the GMG's last attack and does indeed spend a good bit of money on defenses now.
What counts when trading is the profit per second in flight tbh. Of course, that is hard to get at, since, as you said, pirates, lane disruptions, etc. are hard to estimate correctly. And of course the RP counts. And that's the part where it most definatly breaks at the moment.
I felt like a brick hit me in the face when I saw that Java doesn't sell Niobium for example. Instead it sells Beryllium, which is alright, but iRP IMG and GMS more or less agreed on that IMG sticks to Niobium in the Taus, while GMS goes at the Beryllium fields. But I'm fine with having Beryllium on the base tbh. Just an example. One of many.
Another weird thing I saw is for example that Mannheim in Frankfurt sells Nuclear Warheads. I thought that station was solely focussing on H-Fuel production and that warheads were being produced by ALG - especially by the new Wuppertal station, which was to take over the production from Helgoland. Yet another example, I guess.
Also, I saw that many of the new commodities are sold in "very few places". Those "metals (?!)" for example. I can't remember which planet it was, but there were like 10 of them being sold there. It would be much better if they were spread out more, to give new trade routes.
Also I noticed that some stations still don't have decent return routes. With as many commodities as we have now, quite a few could get good new routes, even if it weren't all due to for example it making sense that a border station would only "sell" prisoners (and contraband, maybe? 8| ).
Hm...it is quite sad overall, since I can imagine redoing the economy not just being a massive pain in the bum, but also how it is not going to happen. I doubt Xoria will want to bring up the time to redo the whole thing, and I can very well understand him in that...still doesn't mean that it all makes sense or that it's done as good as one would think it could be.
I think you guys are doing it the wrong way at the moment.
Why do you flame a person who has spent A LOT of time designing it for minor flaws that you encountered?
The much better solution would be to cut the anger out and to make suggestions on how it can be made better to fix the issue that you encounter.
But it I read the first post... and imagine I was in Xoria's boots... I would say: ye, typical rage mode. Ignore it.
If you want something, explain it (not every designer knows every faction, ever faction base, every commodity), and have a few suggestions ready of how to make it better.
This is the time atm to do that.
Start to be creative instead of just going "this sucks".
(10-22-2013, 08:49 AM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: Why do you flame a person who has spent A LOT of time designing it for minor flaws that you encountered?
Minor flaws?
There's no logic or sense behind most of the economy. Supply and demand is barely followed, a majority of the commodities go to places that they don't need to, and absolutely none of it is driven by lore or the current storyline.
The economy was based on one guy with FLCompanion, who punches in numbers, and ends up making trade routes impossible to follow with some RP goal in mind, and resort to hauling random items that have little to no reason to be on most corporation ships. Player interaction is not taken into account, NPC interaction is not taken into account, and worst of all, nearly zero feedback from the players is taken into account.
"Switching Mox and HazMat Canisters between Wuppertal and Dortmund will be in Update 4, if it didn't make it into Update 3."
Seems change is not impossible.
But one has to of course be prepared that not every suggestion gets through. That's the way it is. That's why I said offering alternatives makes sense.
A guess making suggestion of what should be sold where and what should be bought where and so on might help, even though that also takes quite some work to change.
For example you could say that
"Niobium is mined around the Taus. Java should sell it for a good price, but not as good as Falkland of course."
And then it'd be a good idea to sort out where it should be brought to. For Niobium that is easy, since it's only mined in two places (Taus and Leeds, to a much lesser degree): every house needs it, so I could imagine decent (cr/sec) prices could be available for every house. Smelters should be prefered, or Planets with smelters on them: like New Berlin or Hamburg.
(10-22-2013, 07:18 AM)Saronsen Wrote: I do not care...
These things were enough for me to be sure you are only here to QQ. Seriously, if I'd be dumb enough to rate route profitability based on raw profit/slot rather than on profit/slot/second, I'd shut my mouth. I'd advice the same for you. Learn what really determines the profit and then come to cry. (Hint for the challenged: If Route A takes 5 minutes and profits you 7 mills while Route B takes 10 minutes and profits you 11 mills, Route A is the more profitable.)
The only thing I can agree with is that the new bunch of extra commodities for Gallia shouldn't be metals, but fixing that would rather be an infocard question than economy balance. And I would be glad to help at that.