Development Cycle Archive

• Survey greater distances


• Increase Sample Rate


• Resource Stats display in Tools

Mining:

• New Content:




• Colony-6 or 8 lots "greater then 5 so players can only use 1"




• Walled Compond with 4 harvester slots and 1 house. House is a generic by design and has a additional terminal for harvesting operations. The terminals menu contains the following features:




• Add Harvester - You select a deed to add this harvester to the Colony. Colony has Statin spots where the harverter will appear, additionaly more harvesters increase the maintence of the colony, a medium mineral will add 60cr/hr to maintence.


• Remove Harvester


• Operate Colony - The following operations only appear if you have a harvester in the colony




• Operate Mineral


• Operate Flora


• Operate Gas


• Operate Floral


• Operate Power


• Operate Water


• Add Droid - Decreases Maintence or power by 1/2 for one harverster. Only 1 per harvester. Some droids are better then others, For example a power droid would be better at decreasing power requirements than a mouse droid.


• Storage - Access the bounties of your harvest.


• Add Component - The greater your mining level the better the componets you can add. The structure has a wide variety of upgrades, that decay with use, you can use.




• Mining Droid - Increases by 5% concentrations harvested, so if you are harvesting a mineral that is 59% in the area the harvesters harvest it a though it is 64% spot.Does not incease passed 99%


• Storage Upgrade +1,000 or more for resource storage


• Defense Network - Agro Repeler


• Parts Bin - Decrease Maintence by 20cr/hr


• Power Conserver - Same as parts bin but for power


• ect.


• The Base Maintence with no harvesters is 80cr/hr maintence cannot be decreased below that + 1/4 of the total required for the harvesters.

Manufacturing:

• Assembly Bonuses


• Less maintence


• Maybe a mainufacturing center like the harvesting colony above.

Engineering V - VIII tree

• Components for Starships/starfighters


• Heavy Weopon Powerups


• Armor Powerups


• New Vehicles


• Tools, Equipments, ect

Just a idea, I don't have any hope of seeing anything listed above. This is just to help create new ideas.

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isotropy wrote:

Ok, heres my point. You guys and gals have great ideas, but the one thing your missing is that everyone is bored with only being able to pick between crafting and fighting. These skills need to be separated; combat and crafting just like in Horizons and other games. Come on, it only makes sence if you keep adding professions then it will make things hard to get because no one will want to be a crafter and half ass everything else like fighting. People need change, why not separate crafting and combat skills so if we get bored crafting we can fight.........What a great idea!!!!!!!!!! Why has no one else thought of it? Beats the hell out of me. Also a little side note quit nerfing everything and taking the easy way out,just make everything in game more difficultso you can get thebalance your looking for. As of right now though the profession system is just way to boring and having to give up abilities to fight just to craft or the other way around is just plain stupid.

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This is a long post, you have been warned....

First of all I think the idea to focus the upgrades around central themes is brilliant. I know from experience that turning a project into a joint effort with a central theme can rally your team to great things.

I see from the website that upcoming themes include "Imperial Crackdown," focusing on the GCW and "Droid Invasion," focusing, logically enough, on droids. I suggest that an upgrade focusing on the economy be put in the works as well. This would deal with issues that touch on all players and all profession. I am tempted to suggest calling the upgrade: "The Great Leap Forward," but that might be tempting fate. I might also suggest "The Wealth of Galaxies," but the reference to Adam Smith is a little vague. So instead I will suggest the simple, but accurate, "Economic Reform" as a title.

Space Expansion

I want to insert a comment on the Space Expansion, tentatively scheduled for sometime this year. As I understand it, the goals behind the Space Expansion are to add a space combat element to the GCW, and to create a space trading network. The second point will be a "Privateer" type of space game, only played against the backdrop of the player economy.

If the second point is to succeed, a viable economy must be in place by the time the SE reaches it’s development phase. If merchants and crafters are going to require a steady supply of resources and equipment in large enough amounts to justify regular freight traffic, there must be a large, stable, viable economy in place.

Principles

Before I get into specifics, I would like to lay down some guiding principles here. I play as an Artisan/Architect/DE with some Merchant Skills thrown in. I have no combat skills. I would like to be able to use my character to play SWG like a strategy game. My goal to find plans and methods that allow my character to make money. This makes one of the following principle seem self serving, except that strategy games are very popular and I know that there are a lot of players who share this attitude.

1) Make the act of buying and selling basic items a simple matter for players who just want to buy their equipment so they can play the way they want to play.

2) Create an economy that is stable enough for players to play an economic strategy game if they wish.

Issues

Ok the next important step is to list the issues. I am not going to even attempt an exhaustive list here, I am just going to list those issues for which I can suggest solutions.

1) Inflation. Prices are out of control. New players have no chance of buying anything and veteran players cannot even think of doing serious shopping with less than a few hundred thousand in their bank account.

2) Uncertainty. Nobody really knows what to charge or pay for what. While resources have settled down to about 2-4 credits per unit, finished goods still vary widely.

3) Quality control. Nobody wants to equip their players with anything but the best, and only Master Crafters can provide it. This effectively cuts novice crafters out of the market.

Inflation

The most disruptive factor in the SWG economy is the sale of resources. The problem is that resources are not primarily used for manufacturing. Their main use is in training. Be it crafters climbing the skill ladder, or holo-grinders, most resources disappear into a bottomless pit of practice crafting sessions. In fact, resources cannot keep up with demand. Many players want to incorporate harvester certification into the game. But that is not viable given the high demand for resources. As a result resources, which can be harvested for about .5-.8 cpu (credits per unit) are sold for 3-5 cpu. A profit margin of almost 1000%! This is not the fault of the players, they are charging what the market will support. Nor is it the fault of the devs, the high resource requirement for training is also valuable. Crafting itself is relatively simple, but the effort in obtaining those skills is important. That effort is the value added by the crafter when he crafts and this is why the crafter can charge for his products.

The problem is that the high resource cost is squeezing out the crafter’s profits. Consider a Landspeeder which requires about 9000 various resources to craft. If the crafter sold the resources alone, he would stand to earn 18,000-45,000 credits. If he is going to make any real profit from his crafting, he would have to sell the Landspeeder for 30,000-50,000. However most Landspeeders sell for 20,000-30,000. This means that the crafter may take a loss, and is certainly not making a profit from his craft. The only reason that they are made at all is because they are fun, and crafters want them in the game.

However, this result is unacceptable as it runs counter to the principle of creating an economic strategy game for crafters. I believe the solution lies in the creation of a Mining Profession. There have been several excellent posts on this topic and I do not claim credit for any of these ideas. In addition to an advanced survey skill tree, there would also need to be a resource refining skill tree, and an advanced harvester certification tree. While these advanced harvester and refineries could only be operated by a master miner, they would be built by master architect. (I believe this is important for reasons I will explain later)

The refining and advanced harvesting are key. If resources can be refined so that their stats are improved, it will create two classes of resources: refined, and unrefined. Unrefined will be used for training but will almost never be used for crafting. Why? Because players always insist on the highest quality merchandise for their characters. If refined ore is introduced, it would immediately become the standard for all crafts.

The obvious concern here is that refined ore would be even more expensive than unrefined ore, and therefore this would only make the problem of high prices even worse. This is where the advanced harvester certification is important. Miners would harvest their own ore, and at a fairly inexpensive rate, using their advanced harvestors. This will increase the supply of unrefined ore. The fact that crafters would no longer be purchasing unrefined ore, would push down it’s demand. As a result the cost of unrefined ore would go down. This will also bring the cost of refined ore down because, for obvious reasons, the price of refined ore would be tied to the price of unrefined ore.

There are two foreseeable problems here. One is that it is impossible to predict exactly what the prices of ore (refined and unrefined) will be. It is possible that the price shifts will not be sufficient to meet our goals. (Or the shifts would be so great as to imbalance the game) However those problems can be corrected post-release by adjusting resources frequency and harvester efficiency according to need.

A much larger problem is the effect on the combat systems in the game. Better resources means better weapons and better armor, upsetting the balance in the game. However, this problem is easier to predict. By examining the results of refining before hand, the devs can determine exactly what percentage of improvement they can expect in weapons and armor. Armed [no pun intended] with this knowledge they should be able to introduce counter weights to maintain game balance. I understand that this is a gross oversimplification of the problem. However, the benefits to the economic game are legion, and I believe they justify this effort.

If successful the miner class will accomplish three things. It will bring the price of ore down. It will stabilize the resources market by separating the crafter demand from the training demand. Finally it will help create a three pillar approach to crafting. This is concept I will return to later. Basically the principle sets up three key elements to crafting: Miners, Crafters (Architects, Weaponsmith, Armorsmith, and Droid Engineer), and Merchants. (I have deliberately left Master Artisan out)

Uncertainty.

Prices fluctuate wildly in SWG. This causes a lot of harsh feelings between buyers and vendors. If someone pays 100,000 for an item, then finds another who sells the same for 10,000, he will invariably feel ripped off. It also makes it difficult for crafters to know what to craft as they do no know sort of profits to expect.

The key to the economy must, and should, be the merchants. While anyone can sell to anyone, the merchants should be the ones where the metal meat the meet. That is to say they should be the principle retailers. The ones who sell things to most players. Merchants need to be the easiest vendors to find, so easy that both the buyers and the sellers can comparison shop with ease. If we can do this we will solve most of the uncertainty issues. If the vendors can see the competition, then prices will settle down fairly quickly. There will be the occasional price war, but that is part of the game. It will also allow players to easily purchase the items they need. For that we need two things: Location and, that pariah of the modern world, advertising.

There is an old saying, the three most important things in real estate are: location, location, and location. Merchants need to be able to set up their shops anywhere, that means in the cities. Remember that cities are supposed to be built around merchants. Luke’s big excuse for going to Anchorhead was to pick up some power converters.

There are a couple of ways to do this. One is to set up bazaars. Not terminals, but set areas where any merchants can set up tents. Each bazaar would have a certain number of tent locations which could only be used by the merchants. I also believe that, unless it is a coding nightmare, merchants should be allowed to rent buildings in the main cities. If they cannot, and players can do this in players cities, then eventually those players cities that are well organized will supplant them.

One of the problems with this is monopolies. Players could monopolize key locations. A couple of things could be done to minimize this. First, players would be allowed only one building or tent per city. Second, high maintenance fees in the cities would force merchants to run an active business or move on. Also, a wait-list system which would give players automatic rights to a tent location or a building if a merchant is behind on his rent/maintenance fees would also promote turnover. It should also be bourn in mind that no one plays this game forever. Even the most established player gets bored and neglects his character. Finally, allowing players to rent out a central location in cities like Theed would create a pinnacle achievement in an economic strategy game.

Advertising. Though I mention this second, it is actually the most important element. In fact it is critical to a consumer economy which we are trying to create. Merchants need the ability to tell the Galaxy what they have for sale, what it costs, and where they are. Create this ability and the economy will stabilize. The bazaar terminals need to be given an advertising section. To keep it down to a manageable level, only merchants can advertise on it. The number of adds they can run, and the exposure those adds receive (IE: wether they can be seen from terminals on other cities or other planets) will depend on the level of the merchant. The add should list the item, it’s qualities, it’s price and a waypoint to the vendor which any player can download.

Now this is where it gets tricky. Merchants should only be allowed a couple of adds each, other wise they would bombard the terminal and defeat the purpose of keeping this easy to understand. That is not a big problem for the Merchant, since they can use the old trick of advertising their best deals and hope the customer buys other things when he gets in the store. Programing this will not be so easy. If an add is linked to one item, then as soon as that particular item was purchased, the add would be lost, even if the merchant has 100's of identical items in stock. Allowing the adds to float independent of what was in the vendor would only allow false advertising which would make the advertising useless. The add needs to stay in place so long as there is one item for sale that meets the ads specifications. It may be hard to code, but it must be done.

I would also suggest banner ads in the bottom of the map screen (Possibly the players could disable those ads if they wanted.) in the mission terminals, in the bazaar terminals and anywhere else we can think of. Again the nature and exposure of these ads would depend on the merchant’s skill. In order to guarantee that the banner ads are tasteful, there would need to be strict limits on content. The ads would have only, say, a dozen different formats, (though more could be added with time) which would only allow the merchant to enter his name, the name of the store, and the name or class of the item.

The Three Pillar Approach

I have mentioned this before. The idea is to split the crafting process into three co-dependant groups: Miners, Crafters, and Merchants. Crafters include Architect, Weaponsmith, Armorsmith, and Droid Engineer, but not Master Artisan. Master Artisan is excluded as it should contain the ability to build components which are critical to all three groups. This would strongly encourage any member of the groups to Master Artisan in addition to his own field.

Why? The three pillars should be designed so that a player can master 2 of the three pillars, but not all three. The co-dependancy encourages efficiency. Players have limited lots. Forcing them to specialize also forces them to dedicate their lots to their field, increasing their efficiency. This will improve the economy over all. Players would still be able to solo it, however, if the system is set to favor co-operative efforts, the co-ops will drive the economy.

Hence the dependancy on Artisan. Most players will see the necessity of also being a Master Artisan and thereby limit their skill points. Forcing them to take only 2 upper level crafting skills. (Or 1 crafting and 1 combat skill). Those who do not will still be forced into dependancy by their need for other Master Artisans.

There is another reason to introduce greater dependancy. If the economy begins to function like a real economy, it will be very competitive. Players with a business sense will do well, those without, will not. It is not going to be the New York Stock Exchange, but it will be a lot tougher than it is now. This will be especially hard on new players who are still learning the game fundamentals, as well as the business principles at play in SWG. If players need other players to succeed however, veteran players will be motivated to take in new players to assist in their business. This will give them a chance to learn the ropes rather than trying to break into the market solo.

In fact it is the risks posed by this greater competitiveness that will require the increased dependancy. The increased dependancy will force players to specialize, narrowing their effect on the market. This will help to keep the economic game from becoming too competitive. For example: if Donald Trump starts playing, he may become a weaponsmith and a merchant but that is all. While he will create fierce competition in the weapons market in his galaxy, the competition for armor, droids, and structures would remain less competitive. Basically increased dependancy means that it would take a lot of Donald Trumps before the economy became too competitive to be played by average players.

Players don’t like being dependant on others, this move would be very unpopular. However there are two important points that should be bourn in mind. First: the system should not force dependancy, only encourage it strongly. Second: if the economy functions as it should, that dependancy would be minor as it should become easy to purchase those components which players cannot craft themselves.

I will elaborate on that second point since it is likely to be a serious concern for most players. Droid Engineers, for example, are not happy with their current reliance on Master Artisans to craft certain components. They rightly complain that it forces them to become Master Artisans themselves as it is impossible to find an MA to make it for them. However, if the economic reforms are successful, it will be easy to find a shop that sells the components they need. Therefore, under the three pillar approach, the dependancy will still there, but it will not be nearly so onerous. Droid Engineers will have a real choice, become Master Artisan and make the components themselves, or use the skill points elsewhere and buy those components from the merchants. (Creating this sort of decision neatly contributes to creating an economic strategy game as well)

Conclusion

The reforms I am proposing here are sweeping. They would change the game, some would be popular others would not. There are infinite fine details which I have left out. Partially to keep this under 20,000 words, but also because I simply do not have the information to provide the answers.

Implementing these changes would require a great deal of courage, not just because of the size of the task, but because of the broad implications. I believe that they should happen, and that the reforms should be brought in together as each reform is tied to another. All the elements must be in place for this to function.

Finally I would like to restate the importance of these reforms. A stable viable economy is necessary for all players. It would provide the non-economic players with easy access to the goods they need, and it would provide economic players with a game to play. Finally the economy is a crucial element to the Space Expansion. Many players anxiously look forward to trade routes, conveys and shipping contracts. However without the economy to provide the demand, that simply will not happen.