Discover v4.88: Mining - Bugs, Balancing, and Feedback

[zslayern]

I mine eg. Helium in Pennsylvania and drop it (by trade or jettison) after that the voice of of the friendly woman says that my empty! cargohold is full - a cannot mine any more. Thats a little annoing.

About this i dont get your point , can you elaborate?

well i mine helim in pennsilvania - when i reach 2700 of them and sell them to a transport i cant mine any longer - i have to dock at erie, start and can mine again. if i sell 2700 or jettison 50 the problem is the same: no more helium for my cargohold :-(

Make sure you aren't targeting anybody.

[Alexander]

Yep maybe you are targeting someone, for me works fine I don't get that error so I guess you are doing something wrong.

[realekki]

thx for the help - my fault. zslayern was right, seems that i targeted another ship. now it works

[Lythrilux]

=======PREMIUM SCRAP=======

Valetta did nothing wrong. Seriously. In fact, all it did was do the right things: create activity and give Junkers a good mining commodity. Now, don't get me wrong, there were one or two flaws with the routes and the small unofficial premium scrap balance team had the ideas to fix them, however in the devs effort to 'balance' Premium Scrap they repeated the past mistake of being overly-harsh in the nerfing of the commodity and just going "lol, junkers, time to change some numbers" and have ignored all the data (ignore the first collum, it's from a different pscrap nerf) that shows that Premium Scrap was never overpowered, and was actually completely balanced behind other OP ores (I'm looking at you, Platinum ore from Alberta).

I did speak to alley about this right after the nerf and we did discuss better prices, however after allowing this change to exist in the game for a bit more, I can only see that the aims of the nerf haven't been met at all and the nerf has brought no positive changes - only negative ones.

Allow me to break it down.

What the nerf aimed to do vs what actually happened

The nerf was to prevent Junkers from continously jump trading Premium Scrap, since that was a bad thing and hurt the economy. Instead of just removing Jump Trading, the devs were going to nerf the commodity instead. What actually happened was quite the opposite.

I'm really not trying to pick on anyone here, it's just that Congress make good examples. I don't mean to start any flame-wars, it's just that jump trading is a key reason why Premium Scrap was nerfed. Sorry!
Echo had warned Congress previously that if they continued to Jump Trade Premium Scrap, it would get nerfed. The abuse that Jump Trading brought which would negatively impact the economy, so of course it was ideal to get it to stop. They stopped jumping it as frequently, although they still did it, however it was as big as an issue before when they were doing it often. Indie groups did it too, which was also problematic but sadly they could not be told to stop jump trading either.

Within the recent few months, Congress started jumping it again. People told them to stop, because of the consequences it would bring for the whole Junker faction as well as themselves, but they did not listen and continued. Eventually the nerfs came in, making Premium Scrap a lot less viable as a mining commodity for Junkers as they no longer had a good sell point like Valetta.

Here's the point where I can make a good comparison to show how the nerf has greatly prevented jump trading.
Before the nerf, JM activity was at roughly 13 days. Now it's at 7.22:46:48. Let's use JM to represent the average indie Junker, as it wouldn't have easy access to jumping.
Before the nerf, Congress activity was at roughly 20 days. Now it's at 49.12:53:49. Let's use Congress to represent the average jump trader.

So a faction that doesn't partake in jumping at all gets it's activity cut in about half after the nerf. A faction that frequently partakes in Premium Scrap jump trading (and still does, even with the Pscrap nerf) is able to more than double their activity. As you can see, the nerf really didn't stop Premium Scrap jump trading at all and instead it ruined the commodity for the non-jumpers.

Conclusion: The result was that Premium Scrap was nerfed only for non-jumping Junkers and Jump Traders still had a viable commodity because they are unaffected by distance and are mostly unaffected by time.

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Supposedly the route was easy, as Junkers didn't have many enemies en route to Alpha/Gamma. I'll actually slightly agree to that. Not the point about there being too many Junkers flying around, but that there weren't many enemies en route to Alpha.
It was nice to see that factions made themselves enemies on the route. IMG, GMG, CR, GRN, UC, Hogosha, KNF etc. would intercept Premium Scrap haulers and ask that they drop their cargo (to prevent it from going into the hands of Corsairs and Outcasts). This created a lot of activity within the (now mostly dead) Taus and Sigmas. You'd have the aforementioned factions logging on to go intercept the cargo and Junkers/Outcasts/Corsairs logging on to defend the convoys. It was brilliant. The reason why some of these factions requested PScrap sell points on their bases wasn't because they wanted the Alpha sell point gone and for them to get all the Pscrap instead, but so that they could encourage Junkers and other haulers to take Pscrap to their bases instead, rather than just straight up blowing up the cargo (Which is a bit of a waste).

Now that the nerf has been implemented, all this has gone. Take a glance at the faction activity list and you can see how active some of those factions now are.

Conclusion: The quasi-lawful flexibility of the commodity made it a great draw for activity. Nerfing Premium Scrap killed Borderworlds activity.

and as stated before, with the lackluster buy price for Premium Scrap factions are now more inclined to jump it than to trade it.

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The nerf was meant to encourage cooperation. As long as we have POBs, or ships such as the Golem, the Salvager and the Hegemon, aims such as that are pointless. Solo mining, or POBs, will always be in the way of true cooperation, no matter what commodity you nerf.

Conclusion: Nerfing a commodity in order to encourage cooperation did more harm than good.

What even is the Devs definiton of cooperation? JM would mine with each other all the time. I'd see ships flying up to Alpha and Gamma in convoys. And not just Junker ID'd, you could even see Pirate ID'd or Rogue ID'd ships taking up Premium Scrap to Alpha. As long as there is interactions and that there is room for interactions later on, what's the problem?

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Those are my arguments. Now I'll suggest some changes that could fix all these problems and bring the activity back.

>Bring back all the old prices.
14k at Valletta, 11k at Gamma and so forth. None of those prices were broken for their distance, they were balanced. If you believe the prices themselves are OP then that's ignorance, given I have proof that shows it's not OP. You won't believe the profit/sec for the GRN sell point right now though...
>Keep the 9k sell price on Yokohama
I kept asking for this and for good reason. Not only does it provide a decent sell point for lawful traders, but it also gives Hogosha and Kusari Lawfuls a good excuse to bust out some transports and go Junker hunting - they can take back the 'stolen' cargo to a good sell point for a decent profit. This would be a really good way to make activity and add some danger to the route.
>Remove Jump Trading.
If this is such as issue on the economy that it gets a whole commodity nerfed because of the actions of a minority, why not target the problem itself rather than stomping on the enjoyment of everyone else?
>Turn off all Scrap fields in Texas except for the North-Eastern one (the Pequena Negra)
I don't understand why there need to be so many active Scrap fields in Texas. The North-Eastern is the best one for generating activity, as it is nearby a Xenos base (the one in Penny, the JH to Texas is close to it).

That's all I have to say. Karst more or less covers any other points that I might have wanted to address.
And Devs PLEASE talk to someone like me or Karst if you want to 'balance' Pscrap again. We had made a skype chat with DSE, ALG, JM and Congress reps dedicated to balancing the commodity if it ever needs to be balanced. We were under the impression that we might have gotten listened to. Twice we've been shown otherwise.
We have all the facts, statistics and data. We're here to help and make sure that the commodity is just fun for our factions, but for everyone faction. Thank you.

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[HuggieSunrise]

=======PREMIUM SCRAP=======

Echo had warned Congress previously that if they continued to Jump Trade Premium Scrap, it would get nerfed. The abuse that Jump Trading brought which would negatively impact the economy, so of course it was ideal to get it to stop. They stopped jumping it as frequently, although they still did it, however it was as big as an issue before when they were doing it often. Indie groups did it too, which was also problematic but sadly they could not be told to stop jump trading either.

gotta disagree. premium scrap has to go. Permit the following for consideration.

First lets get a dumb idea out of the way.

What economy. ? there is no economy on this server its just the established principal rate of how many credits a second someone could possibly make.

Your debit from the scrap clouds depletes nothing but a "creative idea" of whats realistic int he minds of the devs but the true constant is there's infinity of every commodity out there.

The only work done is carrying a pale from bottomless pit A. filled with water to bottomless pit b. filled with the same water priced differently.

The credits are created at point b. there's no pool, there no shortages, there's nothing resembling economy just the rubric of how fast can you possibly get rich. This is important to keep in mind because ideas of people making a lot of money on a certain commodity being abuse? is pure bunk. Such a huge pile of bunk people believe it.

This "idea" that existed within any devs mind of premium scrap ruining the economy is purely dubious. I ask dear reasonable people where the abuse is? Got too rich cause one faction benefited too much from it? I could go into details of how the time spent harvesting, depot/storage, and final sale was no faster or advantageous then other routes as im sure lyth found out.

The money lost from the base storing the scrap "pre" jump were events to bring in more members. and more activity and thus keeping disco from reaching 5 or even zero people in the middle of the night. It was cool while it lasted but the commodity has a fatal flaw.. Its lazy its padding the variety needlessly and at the end of the day a useless duplication of plain old scrap.

SO you can go with the above post and try and rebalance a trash commodity when theres already several to haul OR you can do the right thing.

-Delete premium scrap.

-Get more then one person together to get on freelancer companion and work out to make scrap mining as viable as any other trading factions primary commodities.

-Junkers Mine Junk as a primary activity, and should continue to benefit from being able to produce it from either a.) more locations or

b.) sell to more remote locations that could afford to recycle this metal. OR

c.) sell scrap to junkers stations that in turn create manifolds (would make since they would all have forges/recyclers) that would be a general commodity anyone could hual which would make the market larger for indies and freelancers to participate instead of getting it from one station in PR.

[Tarator]

=======PREMIUM SCRAP=======
What @HuggieSunrise said, theres no actual economy that is running on the server, it all goes down on how fast you can get rich using infinite resources.
If the economy here was player driven then things would be different.

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[AceofSpades]

Before the nerf, JM activity was at roughly 13 days. Now it's at 7.22:46:48. Let's use JM to represent the average indie Junker, as it wouldn't have easy access to jumping.
Before the nerf, Congress activity was at roughly 20 days. Let's use Congress to represent the average jump trader.

Rofl'ed
If one thinks Congress Activity has more to do with profit than it does spite or ego-stroking, we'd have joined IND to dodge the perverse hate by this point..

Another realistic interpretation of the need for a Pscrap nerf would be the fact that everyone and their aunty made Indy Junkers to powertrade PScrap with no-RP, and that at one point ~60% of the active server would be Junker ID'ed.
To go way back... jumping started after POB supplies were moved, the credits are really icing on a useless cake.
I think the P-Scrap economy is better balanced now than it has been up to this point, besides perhaps the fact that Alpha suffers a penalty compared to the GMG and Corsairs while being a bit further.

My actual contribution to this tho besides a laugh is that i get an uncomfortably-strong sense of fulfillment when im able to process large amounts of data into realistic terms, and graduated with a mathematics degree.
Ive also wasted a majority of my hours on Disco trying to simulate my own economy and have done decently enough.
Id be happy to expand on that work and help Xoria or whoever with proper economy balance if people care much about it

[HuggieSunrise]

=======PREMIUM SCRAP=======
What @HuggieSunrise said, theres no actual economy that is running on the server, it all goes down on how fast you can get rich using infinite resources.
If the economy here was player driven then things would be different.

If there was a way to implement a player driven economy.. like a real production system for commodities in space that somehow complemented the system.. That would be totally awesome. I don't think anyone would doubt that. It would sure give pob's something to do besides create cloaks and jumps. Not sure if you could do straight up "ships" but anything to expand on possible crafting would be totally awesome.

[larzac]

=======PREMIUM SCRAP=======
What @HuggieSunrise said, theres no actual economy that is running on the server, it all goes down on how fast you can get rich using infinite resources.
If the economy here was player driven then things would be different.

If there was a way to implement a player driven economy.. like a real production system for commodities in space that somehow complemented the system.. That would be totally awesome. I don't think anyone would doubt that. It would sure give pob's something to do besides create cloaks and jumps. Not sure if you could do straight up "ships" but anything to expand on possible crafting would be totally awesome.

Well, i think that we gave some good ideas for PoB there. Alley said that she will take a look but i dont know if dev work on it.

[Lythrilux]

What economy. ? there is no economy on this server its just the established principal rate of how many credits a second someone could possibly make.

We do have an economy, although it's very limited and not as dynamic as it should be.

To be fair though, I don't really care about economy arguments. It's one of the Devs points for nerfing PScrap, so the less valid reasons for nerfing it the better I say.

Got too rich cause one faction benefited too much from it? I could go into details of how the time spent harvesting, depot/storage, and final sale was no faster or advantageous then other routes as im sure lyth found out.

The money lost from the base storing the scrap "pre" jump were events to bring in more members. and more activity and thus keeping disco from reaching 5 or even zero people in the middle of the night. It was cool while it lasted but the commodity has a fatal flaw.. Its lazy its padding the variety needlessly and at the end of the day a useless duplication of plain old scrap.

I will say that jump trading is a massive cancer nonetheless. What that faction did, as well as other small groups of people, screwed over everyone else. There is no argument to justify Jump Trading in the face of the damages it has caused to a majority, because of a minority. I could also list countless other arguments why Jump Trading is bad but that's for another thread. The Devs have acknowledged it's a Sin anyway. Furthermore lets please try not to acknowledge Jump Trading as a valid activity that breeds interactions, this is a serious thread, take jokes to flood.

SO you can go with the above post and try and rebalance a trash commodity when theres already several to haul OR you can do the right thing.

Premium Scrap =/= Trash.

Moderately damaged hull panels, salvagable engine components and other ship parts that are too valuable to be simply thrown in the smelters. These salvaged parts can be refurbished by some shipyards, and put back into service. They are in demand at shipyards that do not have a steady supply of new parts.

Why should we haul another commodity? I don't think it's fair that Junkers should simply keep quiet and go haul something else. Scrap/Pscrap is their commodity and it's in their lore.

-Delete premium scrap.

no

-Get more then one person together to get on freelancer companion and work out to make scrap mining as viable as any other trading factions primary commodities.

But why just not rebalance Premium Scrap to not only be a viable commodity for Junkers, but to be a commodity that breeds interactions and activity? If what you're suggesting is to turn Pscrap into something akin to Synth Paste, then you're mad.

-Junkers Mine Junk as a primary activity

Firstly they don't mine it, they salvage it. Secondly it's not junk.

and should continue to benefit from being able to produce it from either a.) more locations or

b.) sell to more remote locations that could afford to recycle this metal. OR

c.) sell scrap to junkers stations that in turn create manifolds (would make since they would all have forges/recyclers) that would be a general commodity anyone could hual which would make the market larger for indies and freelancers to participate instead of getting it from one station in PR.
[/b]

You could pretty much do this with Premium Scrap and still have the old prices. Normal Scrap could even serve this role, whilst Premium Scrap can be a good commodity like it was before the nerf.

Rofl'ed
If one thinks Congress Activity has more to do with profit than it does spite or ego-stroking, we'd have joined IND to dodge the perverse hate by this point..

It's not just one person thinking this Ace. This isn't something I've stated which is opinionated, it's a fact. The Devs really did nerf it because they didn't like people jumping it back and forth from Alpha to Texas/PR. Congress were warned by the Devs that them jumping it could have consequences. It wasn't the only reason, but it played a major role in the nerf.

Another realistic interpretation of the need for a Pscrap nerf would be the fact that everyone and their aunty made Indy Junkers to powertrade PScrap with no-RP, and that at one point

I can see your point, but honestly I think people like us just need to man up and accept the fact that if people want to use an ID to trade, they'll use it to trade. If they actually RP the role, that would indeed be nice, however we can't force indies to do that. Any ID suffers those problems as long as there's something to trade on that ID. IMG has it, DHC has it, Kruger has it, ALG has it. I will say that Jump Trading is the worst form of this, as they don't provide any interactions whatsoever.

~60% of the active server would be Junker ID'ed.

This statistic was taken before PScrap was decent, I believe.

To go way back... jumping started after POB supplies were moved, the credits are really icing on a useless cake.

To go way back.... jumping has always been a cancer to the mod. Fortunately it has been nerfed and it is getting more nerfs.

I think the P-Scrap economy is better balanced now than it has been up to this point, besides perhaps the fact that Alpha suffers a penalty compared to the GMG and Corsairs while being a bit further.

It's better if you've got an ALG ID. Junker ID though? Rip.

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