As I'm sure most of you know, profit rates of different mineable commodities at different buyers vary pretty significantly.
Because simply pointing out these prices without specifics wasn't going anywhere, we've taken the systematic approach and created an overview of suggested new prices calculated with a straightforward credit per distance formula.
Well, mostly Jammi did.
There are two prices listed, a base price calculated solely on travel time (Flat Adjusted Price or FAP) and a price with a constant value added to account for mining time (Mine Adjusted Price).
This is because Flat Adjusted Price benefits longer routes disproportionately, as the indicated credit per second rate may be only 5% lower than the actual rate on a very long route, but 25% lower on a short route as mining makes up a greater proportion of the total time investment.
Both values have a more or less arbitrary base credit per second value used to calculate the price.
The one used for Mine Adjusted Price is obviously lower as the time values are higher.
These values of 900 and 800 respectively, as well as the mining constant of 3 minutes are quick draft numbers and obviously not final.
Finally, Mine Adjusted Price of course relies on mining rates being very similar which currently is not necessarily the case. We have assumed some degree of standardization will take place in this regard.
Please post if you have suggestions or found mistakes.
is the intention behind this to standardise the profits from mining? some parts of space are more dangerous than others (texas is pretty tame compared to the arse-end of the taus, for example. can we have a house space/borderworld/edge world increment?
The system we used doesn't really have space to account for danger, just like it doesn't account for potential connecting routes. That's simply outside the scope of this project.
It's intended to serve as a basis, not a final price list.
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Nice job, it'll be pretty useful.
What's the difference between red and green numbers though? It's not price, are they here just to make things more recognizable?
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Honestly, it would be relatively easy to modify the prices to reflect dangers and other environmental issues. For example, all of our prices are generated by looking at the cent/second rating, which then generates the suggested price based on the length/time of the route.
To amend that, all we'd need to do is set the table so each individual ore can have its own c/s specified again. Currently it's a universal variable that's applied to all of the listed ores. At that point, we'd just have to adjust the desired c/s to reflect whatever hazard we're interested in. For example, you could look at it using the following system:
Mined in safe system: no modification.
Mined in moderately dangerous system: +50c/s
Mined in very dangerous system: +100c/s
Traded across embargo: +100c/s.
The above isn't necessarily a good idea though, because the idea of imposing a flat rate is to make all ores equally viable against each other by normalising profits. Currently, ore balance is absolutely buggered.
There's been no consistent system applied to ore prices whatsoever. Instead, it looks like they've been roughly "eyeballed", with a general aversion to (balanced) larger numbers and reactionary knee-jerk nerfs as exploits are uncovered. Check the first sheet of the link to see what I mean.
The entire thing needs to be more consistent, to have a method applied to it that makes all ores equally viable and logically priced. This kind of suggestion would be best combined with field standardisation and merges, but honestly, the sooner this kind of thing is implemented the better.
Ore prices shouldn't be subjectively decided at a whim - they should be calculated evenly, the same as the rest of the economy.
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(07-22-2015, 06:58 PM)LordVipex Wrote: What are your travel times based on?
Mining bases placed in the centre of the primary mining field for each ore/destination using FLC. It's been pointed out that the default cruise speed setting for FLC is 290m/s though, so routes involving large amounts of open space are going to be slightly skewed.
We're going to adjust the speed up to the Discovery standard and then recalculate and see where that leaves us. That said, we've tested a few of the more lane based routes, and the FLC timings have come out as astoundingly accurate. This method can be used to calculate route times from ore fields, PoBs or whatever.
All you need to do is double click on the area of the map you want the temporary base to appear at. You can either then go to another system in the drop-down menu and return, or select another base in the system and hit the "<-" return button. Either will cause "Mining Base" to appear in the drop-down selection of bases for that system.
From there, use the "To" selection filter to find your destination and check the timings.
There is an inconsistency in Omega-7, where Cobalt and Copper can be mined with about 5k distance in between the two locations, yet the travel time lists one with 1 minute of additional travel time and gives an increased price for the same route, thus 'balancing' one ore as objectively superior to the other.
This is probably caused by overlooking that multiple mining fields exist for certain commodities. While this is just a small example without major impact, other mistakes can lead to other mining fields becoming enourmously overpowered since they were not considered while calculating the prices, one of the reasons why scrap metal mining in Gallia was so heavily abused by scrap miners until the exploit was adressed and the rightful nerf came in.
To prevent another problematic exploit like this to appear, the sheet shouldn't be suspectible to these inconsistencies in the first place and should be reviewed again.
After testing several routes, we've used new FLComp settings that yield more accurate results.
Also included more accurate mining locations, which should be the best realistic mining options available.
Things not included are for example the Independent fields in Dublin, as they are inferior to BMM fields despite being somewhat closer to the Île-de-France and New Tokyo sell points.
Also not included are very slow fields closer to the sell points, such as Premium Scrap in New London or Raw Hydrocarbons in Manchester.
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