Droid Engineer Archive

The issues at hand are not Raph's 2002 Game Designer Conference slide show rather they are:

1) Vendor fees for droid engineers who used NPC vendors to stock large volumes of higher cost goods.
2) What sort of compromise we can hope for in the nearly 700 post thread Q-3PO requested feedback on.
3) How do we adapt if the proposed "Total Listed Value of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 45 minutes" takes affect as planned.

1) Vendor fees for droid engineers who used NPC vendors to stock large volumes of higher cost goods.

In short, if Q's approach is implemented as proposed, they will not be able to do so unless they have a very high turnover rate. It will just not be viable to keep droids in stock that don't sell.

2) What sort of compromise we can hope for in the nearly 700 post thread Q-3PO requested feedback on.

I beleive that the best possible compromise would be one of the following schemes:

1. A time persale pricescheme as proproposed by Q, but with a a much lower rate. I don't like this idea, but the 3.2% per day proposed by Q is pretty steep, especially since droids often sit in a vendor for several days.


2. A non-linear time perunit (not price scheme). Basically, a polynomial growth per unit, with a very tiny leading coefficient. That would control some of the issues of people using storage for vendors, and would allow some tailors and chefs to have a variety of items (I know that they must stock a lot of different items.)


3. A sales tax on all items sold.


4. A flat fee on the vendor.

Personally, I am mostly in favor of solution 3, maybe combined with 4.

Also, to remove the exploit of using a vendor to get around the storage limits, I would say remove the stockroom. A bought item goes directly into the pack, and an item removed from sale also goes directly into the pack. If 3 were implemented with this change, but the tax were paid before the item was placed in the vendor, it would keep people from using a vendor for storage by charging 999999 credits from the vendor.

Now, I will say that the reason that I look at motivation for this change is that it will affect what compromise we can expect. If the suspician that there are indeed database issues involved is correct, then we probably cannot hope for much of a compromise, as Q's approach WILL reduce the number of items in the vendor, and will cause many to be dismantled - especially the General Store type, which are good for droid sales.

On compromises, I direct you to a very precise, numeric analysis through example at:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=6722

3) How do we adapt if the proposed "Total Listed Value of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 45 minutes" takes affect as planned.

I am not sure how I will adapt. Many of my sales are done through personal contact, but enough are done through my vendor that it is still a critical part of my sales approach. However, often a droid will sit in a vendor for sevaral days, and then a few will go out the door all at once. I will have to do some analysis of how fast certain types of droids move, and how many I can stock at once. Problem is, if someone cones to your shop expecting to find a certain kind of droid there, and it is not there, especially multiple times, you have probably just lost a customer.

So, it will have to be a ballancing act to keep just enough droids in the vendor, and not loose money.