Architect Archive
Thread: solution to the economy
darthtut wrote:
right now there is just more and more and more and more money on the market, as a result prices are just going up and up and up and up. it is pretty basic economics if you think about it.
Darthtut said
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to be honest a fighter can make way faster money then a crafter, when u compare the work.
i got also a fighter char. dont think of newbies but an adv fighter can get so easy 10k credits or even more with 1 mission and he has fun while fighting to.
ask a Dev 
There are maybe three kinds of money sinks in a game.
Punitive money sinks are the kind that you pay, "or else". Repair your vehicle or else it falls apart. Pay your house maintenance or else it burns down. Pay your insurance or your equipment degrades even faster. You can avoid them only by avoiding all of the fun content related to them. People get used to them, but nobody likes them. They serve a purpose though by allowing the server to legitimately delete buildings of people who have not played in months.
Functional money sinks just make the game work in a reasonable way. Travel tickets allow you to go to different planets. You don't have to go, and there isn't always a great benefit to going, but sometimes you just want to go. Bank tip fees, bazaar listing fees, and paying NPC trainersare other good examples. People understand the purpose of these things but don't feel enthusiastic about them.
Perk money sinks give you somethingextra for your cash. I can't think of any current examples in the game, but when you buy a piece of decorative furniture from an architect, it is a perk cost because it has no function in the game. You buy it just for fun! It's not a money sink, however, because this money goes to another PC.
Perks make the best money sinks for a game with unlimited income (like the mission terminals of SWG -- money keeps coming in as long as people want it). Any money sink that is unavoidable (e.g. more expensive harvesters or vendors), becomes a "cost of business" and the player will tweak their prices upward to compensate, forcing the mission-takers to take more missions to afford the same goods.
Perks help regulate the economy. People take missions when they need/want more money. They buy perks when they have more than they need. When they stop taking missions and stop buying perks, then they have just about the right amount for their purposes.
Perkmoney sinks include things like:
* Instant shuttle travel for 10x cost. It's optional, so frugal interplanetary merchants can sell their goods cheaply and still make a profit.
* Renting extra lots from the server. This could be very expensive but would not be considered strictly a cost of business because it is only necessary for very large-scale operations. The small guy (living with his 10 lots) can afford to make things less expensively than the one who rents more lots.
* Donating money to your faction for Faction Points. If faction members can purchase their own faction's thanks on a smaller scale it becomes a money sink and a great way for crafters to feel like they are really helping the faction somehow. (Note that Smugglers should retain a better rate of conversion, so as to maintain superiority in the faction purchasing realm.)
* Donating money to "the game" for badges. Some people will pay money for extra badges like "Donated 1 million credits to the Meatlumps".
* Paying med. center NPCs for faster healing. When there isn't a PC doctor nearby, rich players would gladly tip the NPCs in order to get some faster healing. This should never be better/faster/cheaper than a PC can handle, but should be analternative to waiting when the PC isn't around.
* Paying Repair Centers for vehicle performance boosts. Currently vehicle repair is just apunitive money sink, best thought of as buying fuel for the vehicle. But if people could pay money to make their vehicle go faster or have better terrain negotiation, they would happily pay without complaining -- and would probably pay more money faster and more often than they do for repairs.
Ive seen citie in Tatooine with harvesters. Lets assume there is state owned harvesters that sale on the bazaar. These state sold items would be set at certain level...yet dynamic(how? beats me, that snot my job) That way thereare resources atreasonably available prices.This will encourage us to keep our prices somewhere around the state price. These state sold items would not re-saleable on the public market, but onecould sell it back to the state for the amountthey bought it for. this way you arent stuck with surplus resources, but people cant churn state sold items back on the public or their private vendors for a profit. The state sold resource coud be over average quality and sold just above the unofficaly agreed standard price of 3 cpu. Maybe it will start at 3.25cpu. It will adjust up and down based on the average local cpu for that town atroughly +/-7.5% of the average cpu but never droping below 2or exceeding4 cpu. That way there is a reasonable ceiling and floor for the price regulation. People can still price below 2cpu or above 4 cpu...the state just wont. The state will basically be setting the price for average quality resources and but high value an low value resources will still be influnenced by the market...the thing is that increase or decrease in price will need to reflective of the quality with respect to thecost of average resources.
Does that make sense?