Bio Engineer Archive

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Zadokk wrote:

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LloydPickering wrote:

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droidekasnightmare wrote:
If I may, I'd like to point out the backside of having a maintainance cost based on the amount of money a toon currently have in his bank/inventory. This mainly come into play with the lot trade system but is still very valid since many people own multiple accounts.

What's there to stop people from doing something like this?:

Lot/Alt account ----> zero to little money in their account ----> lower maintainance cost
Main account ----> has admin on above characters account ----> pays less cost on all of the building above account own

Now... multiply that with the static lot trades... someone would stand to save a hefty sum of creds if the system was unchecked as so.

Fortunately, I've a (partial) solution Namely ---->

Let's say that a factory has a fixed maintancance of 15% of your total sum of money per week

Char X has 100000 credits available to pull maint from and he currently have 6 factories placed and he now wants to place a 7th factory, however he can't since his budget don't allow it. ^^

Naturally, the above monetary balance will shift once you place the money into the factories... Hmm... It could be solved if the pull-money-from-bank-for-maint-when-money-reaches-0 system was made standard practice for maintainance paying... *ponders*

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Another way to deal with this is to deduct the money from everyones account who is on the admin list...That will stop lot trading, and people switching money from one char to another.

If you think about this, the more it makes sense. The devs are worried about database space so put a sliding scale on maintenance based on the number of items. The people who NEED more space tend to have more money than those who dont. A new player will not have many items, and will therefore have an almost non-existant maintenance. A heavy crafter who doesn't get out of bed for a few million will have a maintenance possibly of a few hundred K. Moving back slightly to the devs wish to decrease database load, if you are going to be charged for more items in your house, you are going to make damn sure that the stuff you do have in your house is worthwhile. No more CDEFS and useless bits of crap lying around the house because it actually costs the player something to keep it.

(The only down side I can think would be people who want to decorate houses, but u could make it so that certain items were exempt from the item count, ie furniture.)

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Lloyd, think about it. I could add the entire galaxy onto my admin list and spread the cost of maintenance over thousands of people

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ArthurDentOnBria wrote:

Hylidex,

One thing I'm wondering about when I read this is: is there a server-wide shortage of bio-engineer-additive-made food on your server then? Or it is just that there is meat, but only chefs can afford it?

I tend to think that such imbalances will eventually sort themselves out for the most part, but sometimes they need time, and they need to reach crisis-levels before they do. The fact that people are going out looting, and earning credits, and buying goods requiring creature havestables with that money, means that somebody, somewhere is trading loot for creature harvestables, and probably valuing his time less than the looter is. That's very likely a temporary situation which will self-correct. It may very well be that people have stockpiled vast amounts of meat from when it was relatively cheap, but those supplies will eventually dwindle, and when they do, the new realities will set in. If worse comes to worse, people needing creature harvestables will simply not accept credits for their goods, but will demand meat in return.

I recently had kind of a "fun" experience with something similar. An aquaintance of mine asked for a custom pet, and he asked if I'd like to barter for it, him being a ranger and skilled hunter. I said "absolutely!", but rather than telling him a fixed amount of resource, I simply told him that it would probably take me 2-3 hours to go get the dna needed and get his pet made. I simply pointed at a resource I wanted (turned out to be avian bone from dantooine) and asked if he'd spend around the same amount of time hunting for me, and whatever he could get would be fine. The next day, the swap ended up being, I gave him his pet, and he gave me around 20k I believe it was, of dantooine avian bone. I was kind of shocked, and started to feel a bit bad because such bone would probably fetchseveral hundred kon the open market, assuming you could buy such a thing at any price, and then he told me how happy he was with this deal, because he had made over 100k in mission money while hunting for the bone, in addition to getting a custom pet out of the deal.

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Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 02-17-2005 04:57 PM

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Strangely, not yet, although there is a shortage of BE additives. I think many chefs have figured out ways around the professional BE, either by stockpiling or by having a BE alt.

I've been very patient with the meat shortage. Looking back, I noticed that six months ago someone posted an offer for 100 cpu for herbivore meat that no one responded to, so the shortage has been going on in one form or another for months.

I personally thought that this would result in people offering exhorbitant prices for BE tissues, but this hasn't happened.

I think this issue with this and the GWS from the bazaar are the same. It is not a matter of the end result (which, given market forces should balance itself out), but the temporary market impact. The problem is that time is accelerated in the game, but market forces seem to work at about the same pace they do in real life.

I'm hoping the increased meat yields will attenuate the market forces a bit, while at the same time giving a little love to one of my favorite professions: Ranger. I don't even have a good relationship with a ranger right now, but the description sounds exciting, and I'd love to see rangers reappear in the game again.

The meat issue aside, I honestly believe that if the GWS were implemented in the game as originally designed, the market would eventually reach its current levels again. However, the question is really how long it would take, and what would transpire in the mean time. In real life, for a person to master two professions is unusual. Three is virtually unheard of. In the game, people can master every profession if they so desire. They can change professions much faster than market forces can react, so by the time the market returns to the the players who were hurt by a change, they are no longer the same players for the most part. I've seen some players end up on the good end of several professions, just by going with the crowd. I think this really hurts the game as a whole, though, by removing diversity from the player base. It seems right now that everyone is either a TKM, master Doctor,or a master Rifleman. TKM can deal out a lot of damage in a hurry while also recovering from damage dealt, and thus loot more per hour than most other people, and riflemen can deal out more total damage than any one other player that I'm aware of, and therefore can steal a kill out from under an entire group. Master Doctors are in extremely high demand, and can earn quite a bit of money at no risk just by buffing.

I see very few crafters, but those I see are usually shipwrights, weaponsmiths, and armorsmiths. I can't remember the last time I saw an image designer or droid engineer, even though DE is supposedly still a very profitable profession.

Almost every developer change has one effect or another on the economy. Some are minor effects, and others are major ones. But with major game updates coming out every few weeks, the chance of natural market forces driving an economy seems to me to be less and less. In the six months required for market forces to begin to take effect, the rules have changed so much that the end result is completely unpredictable.

Mypersonal conclusionis that the most powerful economic forces are not player-driven in any natural sense, while most economic arguments I see on the forums are all about the player-driven side.

Again, I don't have any great suggestions for change here, or even an opinion yet whether it should be changed. I'm still exploring the issue itself and wondering what others think. It almost looks more complicated than real-world economies.

I hope Rangers make a comeback...too few of them around. I've got a good replationship with one. I'm able to get decent meats at 5cpu...Just wish he'd stock the better meats more often.

One fo the biggest things I've seen peope do as crafters is go for the cash. Its a matter of demand. Doc's are great because there's little risk, just time to sit and buff and they're needed on a daily basis. Most of them don't even have to go hunting, they can buy buff packs. AS and WS will always be in demand - weapons and armor wear out. Chefs will always make cash since their products are use driven. DE's and Arch's are screwed. They create use them, keep them items (for the most part..except for the BH tracing droids or the survey droids..how many houses or droids do you really need?). Tailors are pretty much the same way since you can still wear condition 0 items.

BE is a mix.The number of CH's buying pets are very few and far between. CL10 pets are in demand, but are one time buy. Hopefully the CURB will bring CH's back to the game. Tailor tisses are low demand items...the few that are in demand...active bioscanners and enhanced myoflex mostly and these aren't in that high a demand. Chef additives are the biggest seller for most of us....and our bane. To make full runs requires 20k of meat plus the organics. When I have to spend 20cpu for a stack of meat, the cost is 400k and that doesn't include the organics just to break even. A full run of BSN's cost us around the 800-900k mark and chefs aren't willing to pay much more than that. The profit is so low, its hardly worth the time to make them.

Personally, I most make chef additives for our guild chef. I've only recently really gotten into the pet business and am having fun...and making some credits.

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Bonestein wrote:

to look at the problem, just take a visit to the gorath trade server and look how much they are selling their free gifts of 30k resource deeds. They are selling them at prices of 200cpu, Just because the doctors were paying 200cpu for the real good avian meat. I tried to explain to them that the resource deeds are only worth that much to maybe 2 professions, doctors and armorsmiths. avian for the doctors, the woolyhide for the armorsmiths. I then tried to explain that the REASON for the prices of avian meat was so high is because it takes a lot of work to aquire it. The free gift of 30k units of whatever you want took no work and therefor had less value. The prices have dropped down to about 100cpu after that, but it is still way too high for any BE to purchase. There is no way a BE could make a profit for paying 100cpu for one resource of a tissue, unless we charged 5k per tissue.

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Actually, although I understand the mindset, the logic used hereis flawed. I can go out and harvest all the meat I need to make tissues. Doesn't cost me a thing (in Lala land, but play along for the sake of the example) and I get paid for the time because I took missions when I hunted. Now I take the meat and make chef tissues. What do I value the tissues at? Does the meat have zero value because it cost me nothing, actually I made money while I harvested it? Absolutely not.

The reason the answer to that question is no is because of the "value" of the resource. I can take that meat and sell it on the market for the inherent value the resource has. The fact the resource cost me nothing really has no bearing, remember I was paid for my time with the mission payouts.

Telling someone the 30K veteran resource gift has less "value" than a resouce someone actually went out and harvested really isn't true. You've also allowed doctors and chefs to purchase high quality resources at a much lower price. Does that mean their user products have less value? Absolutely not.

The 30K veteran gift actually has more value because the best resource on a given server can be claimed as long as at least one unit exists. I claimed 30K of the best fish I've ever seen. That fish is worth a ton of money to me which, taking one step back, makes the "value" of the veteran gift equal to the resource being claimed.

To the topic of the thread, Some of the chefs asked resource gathers to set a scaled pricing for bio-engineers. That went over like a lead fish. Alt BE's have no effect on the economy simply because they still have to have 20K of meat to make tissues. An alt is no different than any other player on the server. If the chef has combat and can go out and hunt while the BE, with scout skills, harvests the meat the act is no different than if a guild member or friend helped out a fellow BE. Even so, that meat still has a value and the tissues still have a cost. The chef can make tissues and turn that into food but unless they incorporate the value of the resource into their price they've actually lost money.

As long as I can sell raw meat for more than I can sell chef tissues I will not be making chef tissues. It's that simple.

Message Edited by Zigabob on 02-21-2005 04:42 PM

1. First... At some point, Alan Greenspan will have to retire. After reading this thread, I think some of you may be qualified for the job; more so than the Devs. Please fill out a resume and have it ready when Mr. Greenspan reaches his term limits.


2. Hand in hand with that... has SOE realized the true goldmine they have in terms of a research tool? The game may be considered a micro-cosm and controllable laboratory for economic research and study, in so much as right now economics is still such a morass of production, consumption, and the millions of factors (individuals) that steer it in terms of statistical trends and generalities that "voodoo" is not far off from the job description involved. Here is a number of microcosms with detailed controls and perfect statistical analysis tools that may be used to trend how variance among factors can impact positive or negative a whole economy? For example, if the Devs introduce the concept of "fuel" for speeders (similiar to the customization decay), and control sources of fuel by minimizing the available extraction points, then gradually phasing out one fuel for another (more costly to produce because of crafting issues) fuel source, could we study in miniature a shift from petroleum based economy to a wider energy base?


3. More on topic with this thread... I think, over all, ArthurDent has a valid point. The best actions may be to allow the crisis level to be reached (let's face it, no one is going to starve and there will be no "real" impact in the long term of a market bubble bursting, except perhaps the occassional stock trader jumping from high places in Coronet) and the market to mellow out in a period of readjustment. There will be widespread whining, but at this point I don't think most people are playing SWG because it is "1337" gaming at its finest. We as players can move through this. I myself am having some trouble selling chef tissues, but when the time comes that BEs won't produce these tissues for any price, and chefs grind their way to BE to find out that we aren't cheating them, comprimises will come in to play. If there were ways of enforcing "financial" contracts, (maybe merchants?) we may now be ata point of seeing lending institutions forming to cope with the nearly constant inflation that has taken place across all galaxies since the launch.


4. Something I haven't seen taken into effect in any of the posts I read (or, in some cases, skimmed because my head started to throb), is the attrition factor. A real world equivalent might be a massive plague, flood, or other population reducing effect. The various galaxies are contracting in terms of inhabitants, and this leads to fewer people, more credits in circulation. Overall, many people prior to leaving will sell at low prices and then pass the credits on to friends, increasing the affluent. A lower influx of "newbies" with lower credits is leading to a galaxy where more people have more money, and if you have the money to spend, the merchants will charge for it. Giving players 75k credits didn't help this, I don't think. But in general I'm against "free" money from "the government", even if the money is at the cost of being "alive" for awhile and the government is the devs. (It's late, if I'm not making sense, please let me know and I'll try again.) What I'm pointing to is that in addition to a decrease in interest in hunting for meat, there has been a decrease of people that are available to hunt for meat. A decrease in population can have wide effects on the economy; in this case, that portion of the meat supply that formerly came from scouts and rangers grinding away to master has effectively ceased. (Perhaps if we were to advertise that "scout" xp converts almost as well as DNA sampling and BE crafting xp at the village...)

As for my own two cents... yes, I think all of the galaxies are entering into a period of inflation, with a coming recession once the market reaches a critical mass. The Devs, in creating a wonderful new idea (totally player driven economy, although slightly tainted by junk dealers and space loot buyers), let loose a potential managerial nightmare. Economists the world over have a hard time analyzing past trends in real world economies; sometimes it's impossible to find two economists that agree on even 1 point. Computer programmers, Software Developers, and Business Management attempting to regulate a restricted but unfettered economy is truly a noble thing. I'm surprised the economy hasn't collapsed; maybe SOE can talk Mr. Greenspan into applying some of his knowledge to their smaller, "imaginary" problems. The system is very free; there is no FTC watching for scammers, regulating committees, or large "Imperial" controls. Capitalism and free trading are running the economy, which relates to another thread discussing prices of CL10 high kinetic pets.But there are few methods to take significant amounts of capital out of the system, which means people have large amounts of money to pay for products and services, so they do not balk at high prices. Since they don't mind, people slowly creep their prices up to take advantage, and people correspondingly seek larger sums of money. There is nothing in SWG to keep players from dropping whatever they are doing to chase the maximal credits for their time investment.

And of course, just how many players (outside of people the caliber of Zaddok or Hylidex) actually terms of "if there's no meat, there's no food..."? For that matter, how many people in general think about where the products they buy comes from?

(Can I buy Public Service Announcements in the MOTD, SOE?)