Architect Archive
Thread: How to avoid needing dumb artificial constructs like fast decay in a player economy
Decay is real becausethe universe is entropy. However, in real life, we build things to last when they are expensive, and we don't when they are cheap. A decent shirt will wear out in a few years, tops. A house will last 100 years if taken care of. Therefore a house in SWG should simply continue to require maintenance and have no destructive decay for the life of the owner (generallyless than even a perceived 100 years I'm guesing).
Pretty much anything you carry around with you should decay, but be repairable. Anything with moving parts should decay, but that's what maintenance is for.Why do I have to pay a fee every day if it's not keeping the machine running well? How long does an oil well last in real life. I'm guessing awhile.
The problem is that in a small population like we have here (opposed to millions of customers in RL), once all the artisans have as many harvesters as they plan to buy and want to maintain, the architect is done.
No one has an incentive to upgrade because things don't get better. In 6 months, how much ore will a personal harvester extract? I wager it'll be exactly the same as it is now. And it'll probably cost about the same to run, too (barring major tweaking).
In real life, technological advances improve things. My old stove (10 years old) still works fine, although the oven was a bit uneven in heat. I could have paid to have it tuned up or repaired. But instead I bought a new one with lots of new features that weren't available 10 years ago. Technological advancement promotes consumerism muchmore than wear and tear does (at least in the US). But there's none of that in any MMO I've ever seen as soon as enough people reach master to make everything there is to make.
Right now, you can buy yourself a large harvester, and you know it's the best you can get and will be able to get, so there's nothing to "upgrade" to. Soon we'll have experimented storage, so you may have to upgrade to one with better storage. Big deal. Once someone figures out the optimal materials to use and makes heavy miners with maximum storage, you'll buy one of those. Then you'll never have any reason to sell that old piece of junk and buy a "better" one.
But what if, every now and then (monthly maybe?) some new discovery was made? A new schematic comes out for, say, the "Heavy Harvester DX", which has a tiny improvement to speed? Or maybe a slightly lower maintenance cost? Some people would upgrade right away (early adopters) and most others wouldn't. Then a month later, another harvester breakthrough was struck, and now they also have a more efficient engine requiring less fuel. Now more people would upgrade, except maybe the ones who upgraded the first time won't want to again so soon.
The effect snowballs, just like in real life. Some people buy the new GeForce4 when it first comes out. Most wait until the super-edition comes out, then buy either that, or the older model because it's now discounted. Eventually, everyone has a computer on their desk that's more powerful than the supercomputer of a decade ago, and an order of magnitude cheaper. Maybe in 6 months I should see a personal harvester that mines as fast as a medium of today.
It will cost only 20% more than a current personal does to build. And what will I do with all that extra ore? Well, I'll be using it in the new model of the small house, which has improved maintenance costs, but takes 20% more ore.
Yeah, the more moving parts it has, the more complicated it is, the more expensive it gets to maintain.I see the repair regimine for a harvester as very similar to armor. The first few times you repair one are "free". But eventually repairs result in permanent damage to the overall quality.
So perhaps maintenance on harvesters should start lower than they are now, and gradually increase? I wouldn't be opposed to that at all. You could calculate the average lifetime cost you want a harvester to have, and amortize it over the desired lifetime. Payments toward the "principle" (sort of what the theoretical maintenance of the unit is) start low and gradually increase.
At some point you have to decide whether to keep running the old, worn out machine, letting it limp along producing only 60% of the original output, or to buy a new one that actually has 15% higher output than yours did new anyway.
I actually agree,
And by the way I don’t think houses should decay either, just remove the ability to re-deed.
I think that extractors should start out with cheap pay maintenance ( half of what we pay now ) and 100% efficiency, and over time the pay maintenance increases while the efficiency decreases. Until you end up with twice the maintenance we pay now but only 50% efficiency.
You can live with it, or you can replace your harvesters.
I think the decay should be based upon time that the machine is in operation. It should take about 3 months to go from 100% to 50% and high maintenance.
The decay will swiftly increase if the machine does not have proper pay maintenance. There should be no way to make a decrepit machine like new again.
Just my opinion
I also think the maint for buildings should increase over time as they do in real life. Along with harvesters to slowly degrade over time. But some argue that they paid the maint, why should it degrade?
I haven't heard anyone say they wanted 'fast' decay. Structure turn around is needed though. In the case of housing, simply not allowing them to be redeeded would be good enough. People move around or decide they want a bigger house. The old house simply goes back on the market now in the form of a deed. Now I am all for keeping /transferstructure, is one of those great commands in this game. If someone wants to build a bigger house on their current land, the old house is often destroyed. Very very rarely would a house get moved. The damage and moving cost tend to be more than simply building a new one.
As for harvesters or factories, they should be givena life span. This should be fairly long, maybe a few months and even based on use. Limiting factories to x number of runs is a way to do that. Limited number of redeeds on a harvester is another. Make the decay use base, so those that use those structures a lot tend to have the money to replace them.
To me no decay is like giving everyone a free ride.
Ases_Pewhas wrote:
I think it would be great if they implemented new technological break throughs in the game. But to a certain point where will it end? I mean.. the game got saturated with small houses in 2 months if not even that. I'm sure that SOE will probably not want to spend the time to improve current schematics every month or so.
Well they certainly wouldn't need to improve every schematic every month! In fact if they really wanted to be realistic, they would require us to pay experience to get the new schematics, which would come in the form of training. Then they could make them all up front for, say, the next 6 months, and release them slowly. The changes would be minor, just to stats and the name usually. And with the decay rate taking out all the old ones eventually, they wouldn't have a huge database problem where people have 6 different kinds of heavy harvesters running.
However, this would add to the database pressure I suppose, at least a tiny bit, so I don't expect it. They simply aren't set up to worry about age of things. Personally I'd think you could have each "type" of item improve every 2 months. So one week, all mineral harvesters get a productivity boost because someone came up with a better mining bit. The next week, all new laser-based guns geta +3 to base damage. The next week, Food Crafting stations get a small bonus to experimentation.
Ahh well, probably much to big a project for them to undertake now. But it sure would be cool.
Anyone who says that is an idiot in my book. Nothing doesn't degrade eventually, no matter how much maintenance you pay, and the maint cost always goes up over time in RL.
But some argue that they paid the maint, why should it degrade?
To me the solutions that make the most sense are
1. No re-deeding of houses, PA Halls or Factories.
2. Rising maintenance costs as harvestors age. This is sort of decay, but I don't think someones extractor should ever just disappear. Let them notice that it is costing more and more over time. Let them decide when it is beneficial to replace them.
I love this idea personaly, and the idea behind it already exists, just allow new/different/better sub components to be made
these new subcomponenrts cajn add special benifit to the final product, better turbines/harv mechanisms etc
I actually agree, don’t make them disappear, just increase the pay maintenance while decreasing the efficiency and the owner will make them disappear themselves.
Have them bottom out at around 20% efficiency and 4 X pay maintenance if you want after say 6 months.
No need to make them disappear, they will do that on their own. 