Architect Archive
Thread: Renewable Revenue
Hi,
sorry, forgot to say that I would only use decay for housing, not for harvesters.
Read ya.
I don't like the idea of decay on houses, harvesters, and now that I think about it, furniture. The arguements for and against harvester and house decay have been gone over a thousand times, but there's one reason that I want to make sure is pointed out against furniture decay as well. Furniture decay by sitting/using or by players walking into the same room could easily be used to grief owners of public structures. I know I've spent several thousand credits to furnish my home to make it appealing, since I run a shop, and to have one irate customer come in and sit and stand from each piece of furniture until it broke would put a large dent in my pocket.
Here's my suggestion: Instead of requiring some architect-crafted item with maintenance, require it only when redeeding something. This could be anything from a set number of structural modules to a new item that requires considerably less resources to make. Tons of people redeed their harvesters every few days, and I could see this as something that wouldn't defer too many people. Personal harvesters would likely still be cheaper to just destroy and buy another one, but many classes, like weaponsmith, use medium harvesters that buying a new one every few days isn't an option. This would be fairly realistic with houses, because while a house may stand for MANY years at it's original location, trying to move the house is almost always going to require some repair.
Also, I think we need some combat-related structures, usable by both factioned and non-factioned players. If we had a generic turret, for example, it could be placed at a PA to deal with people from opposing factions, or it could be placed near your harvesters out in the wild, to keep the beasts away and hopefully prevent your death while out collecting resources. Obviously it would only target hostile creatures, and creature AI would have to make sure they attacked it back. These structures could be either completely destroyed, or possibly just damaged, requiring the same units I mentioned above to repair it.
Comments? Critisims?
Hi,
i really like the idea of turrets made by architects, where you can mount a Weaponsmith made Weapon on, to protect buildings and Structures. I really miss them, especially as a part of non-faction world, cause i will stay neutral, cause i am a crafter and businessman.
Read ya.
I'm not an architect but I think a good way to give a renewable money flow to them would be to get rid of the credit cost that is used to redeed something and make them require some sort of architect made item instead.
If people want to redeed something of thiers, they will need to buy a "redeeding tool" from an architectin order todo so. These can come with a few redeed charges at a lower level and at master they can have a bunch of charges.
You can also make a "house repair" tool for houses that can replace the maintenance.
I do not want any decay on my harvesters or house period. As a master architect i have no desire replacing my 25 heavy's, 10 meds, factory and med house.
New Content is the best route, fixing bugs would be nice. Add more design features to generic houses, or add storage schematics that allows us to place furniture that can actually be used as storage. Have a limit on the amount of storage containers.
I'm not sure I can come up with anything totally helpful here, but here's a thought. Everyone was upset by the storage space changes in houses... Well, in real life when you run out of space you can do one of two things, get a bigger house, or buy extra storage space for your house (in the form of sheds or building additions).
understand that we probably couldn't get graphical additions to houses, but can we possibly make storage "sheds" that would be add on storage facilities for houses. They would work like a factory ingredient hopper in that you could use the radial menu on the house's control terminal to access them. Now, the size of house determines how many and what size shed you could add to your house. Additionally, whena house is redeeded, these storage modules are used up and would have to be reinstalled with new ones.
Maybe additionally, we can allow a house add on sockets where a harvesting mechanism could be compiled into the house at no extra lot cost. The size of the house would determine how many sockets could be added. Nothing larger than a personal harvester could be added to a socket. These items could again be maintained through the control terminal and would increase the maintenance cost of the house and/or require it to take power depending on what was added. Again, if the house is redeeded, the sockets are wiped out.
One other thing, not sure a ton could be done with it. But at some point we'd supposedly have vehicles and rideable animals available. How about garages and stables? Heck, even with base pets out there, maybe something can be done with stables. They could be structures that allow a player to specifically store pets outside their datapad. They'd require maintenance and food (instead of power). There's a lot of CH's out there, maybe it would be nice to make them want a different structure?
Ok, I rambled a bit, hope some of this is useful...
Ibev wrote:As I read all these arguments about how people think houses should break down I wonder how much they would appreciate things like resources or skills breaking down.
The main difference is that skill breakdown (and the other effects you mention) aren't going to help anyone with anything, whereas structure decay is going to help architects. Nobody is saying that structures should decay because it's realistic, but because it will ultimately make the game more fun. (And it will, after some initial grumbling.)
Ibev wrote:If you want constant income make furniture because people redecorate all the time. I personally turn a better profit per resource on furniture then I do on houses.
The same problem exists with furniture - eventually people will own four of every kind of furniture, and then they won't need to buy any more, ever, even if they want to redecorate.
Ibev wrote:You take the casual gamer aspect away from the game when you start to make houses decay and that's what the game is about, this game is not just for the people that run 100 harvestors and bank a few million credits.
Alright, let's be realistic here. A small house deed goes for about 10k, and a casual player is going to have a small house. Let's round it up to 12k to make the math easier. Feeding that to a house once every two months to keep it from falling over would cost about 200 credits per day. Even the simplest missions give you 1k for a pair (everyone does them as pairs, remember). So, you'd have to do a mission pair every five days in order to be able to afford this (plus the other mission pair you'll have to do every five days in order to pay maintenance). Yeah, we're driving those casual players away in droves. And that's assuming that they somehow never graduate to the 1k missions (at which point they'd only have to log in once every ten days for an hour to do four missions).
For the non-casual players: large houses are going to require you to do a mission pair a day (non-casual players will be making at least 1k from missions), and that's assuming they don't last longer than small houses. The horror...
Ibev wrote:It's pretty simple. Just make more stuff for us to make, Devs. Someone will want the new stuff, if it has any purpose. Maybe Player Cities will be just that. We can only hope.
As I've mentioned before, the devs will never be able to create enough new content faster than it can be consumed by players. That's pretty much axiomatic. As Raph Koster (Holocron) points out below, the only way to prevent the game from turning into a contest between developers who create new things and players who consume them is to keep re-using the existing things:
http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q3/msg01027.php
This has direct application to the structure question. As it is, all of our structures will be consumed, and will become unimportant to the game. New structures may be added, and they also will be consumed. So, a massive set of development resources would have to be added to continually make new structure types that players would actually want to buy, and even then there's an inequity here - a couch that took some 3D artists two months to get exactly right can be bought by everyone that wants one in a single day. You'd have to be adding some kind of interesting new structure every day, or at least every week, and that doesn't seem likely at all. (For "likely", read "possible".) And if they do dedicate enough resources to do that, say goodbye to any other kind of new content. Goodbye, Space Expansion! Sorry, we need purple houses so the architects won't starve!
On the other hand, decay lets you continue consuming the same structures again and again, because you have to keep buying them. The devs can still add new content, and in fact the decay will inspire more people to actually use it (if your couch is falling apart, maybe you'll replace it with the new Hypersuede Mk. VII Deluxx Couch of Doom, which otherwise you never would have tried out because the old couch looked fine), but we're not reliant on that for basic income.
Vredek wrote:I had a thought. Since we already pay maintenance on houses and harvestors, perhaps a portion of that maintenance could go to the Architect that created the harvestor/house in the first place? That way you would get a steady income stream, and it would not have to change significantly how the game operates right now from a user perspective.
We've talked about this one a couple of times. Problems:
- Architects become the only class that can make money without doing anything. Literally. We could pull in our harvesters, redeed our houses, and go play on other servers for a month, then come back as millionaires. We could drop all our architecture skills and be a completely different profession, except with an eternal revenue stream.
- New architects are screwed. They won't be making any maintenance money because they won't be able to sell anyone any structures. No new architects could ever appear, even if the old architects stopped playing the game.
- This essentially causes the maintenance payments to remove a smaller amount of money from the game, when in fact there is not enough money flowing out of the game right now.
Here is an option that seems fairly straightforward to me....
1.Currently, Harvesters and Factories require both Maintenance and Power.
2. Currently, Houses only require Maintenance.
3.Modify the House object to require a supply of X to remain functional
4. Modify the Architect Skill Tree to include the schematic for X.
5. X becomes a renewable item required by all home owners
The only significant risk with this is a lack of architects producing X, which would leave homeowners in a vacuum...but I don't really see this happening. If it were to occur - a schematic forfactory that can produce X could be introduced at a later date to eliminate the persistent community dependence upon the Architect.
If YOU are the architect that built it, then you get nothing. It would be similar to usage experience, only it would take on a cash form.
How many times have you placed a house only to have a hill sloping through the front door, or most of the house buried all together under a hill. The homeowners would be really pissed off if they place their house they payed 55k+ for, only to find out that the landscape has swallowed it and that it can't be moved again. I propose that instead of restricting houses to one placement, give the user an hour to place it where they want it. That will allow them to get the spot that they really want before the house becomes cemented in place.
Robai
I like the idea of only allowing architects to place buildings. You can only place the types you can build, a bulit-in certification system. It's more realistic to have the architects and engineers placing structures with other players guarding them if necessary, rather than a Han Solo smuggler planting a factory and a house .. even a PA Hall! into the ground by himself.
I also like the no-redeeding allowed too. You can't move structures without destroying them, unless they are meant to be mobile. However a Preview option needs to be inserted, allowing you to preview a better look than that overhead map allows. Have the building enterable only after you have done your preview and are happy with the placement. (Like a vendor initialize)
If you want to uproot it, arecycling or salvage option for engineers would be nice, to reclaim some of the resources. If you don't remove it, the building willl remain there in ruins, providing no protection against enemies, the same way npc structures are in the field, until someone does come along and salvage it. (after a pre-defined time elapses, so no one grief-salvages your building when you are moving)
Edan Foxx
Bria Server.