Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Less materials when you Manufacturing in Bulk, a new idea. Has this been discussed?
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Barfalomue
Sat Feb 21, 2004 1:19 am
#1
I don't know if this has been talked about but...
I as a DE get many people who ask, "If I buy more than one, do I get a discount?"
I hate having to tell them: "Just because I create multiples, it still costs me the same to build."
My idea is as follows:
I create a schematic, let's say this schematic requires 1 Control Unit, 100 Steel and 100 Aluminum.
I walk to my factory and put in the materials/schematic.
The factory begins to churn.
After 150 items are made, the Steel and Aluminum requirements each drop to 75 (25% off oforiginal requirement).
After 250 items are made, the Steel and Aluminum requirements each drop by 25% of the previous dropped amount. So in this case 25% of 25, So Steel and Aluminum requirements now are each 56. (less the extra 1/4 unit of course)
(Note: The raw materials are all that should be effected, as you cant have 25% of a control unit.)
Programming on this should not be too difficult and could be attached to the schematic.
I.E.:
x=Aluminum
y=Steel
z=Control unit
With the schematic:
Onperson=0
Infactory=1
InActiveFactoryUsedOnce=2
So initially you have:
0 containing requirements for x,y and z
You put it on the factory, it becomes:
1 containing requirements for x,y and z
You initiate factory you have:
2 containing requirements for x,y and z
when 150 items are reached you have:
(N=modifier for factor of 100 after 150 items created)
requirements for x become x(.25)
requirements for y become y(.25)
requirements for z become z(1)
N=1
When you reach 250 items you set up the appropriate Growth algorithm to support it.
In any case, I think this would be awesome. It would give us an upper hand to some of the outrageous miners' costs on our servers. Also, it would make it more realistic. After all...mass production is cheaper per unit than creating just 1 of something. And, last but not least, it would give us another way to market our goods.
Barfalomue
Sat Feb 21, 2004 1:21 am
#2
BAH! after 250 items, requirements would be 69...miscalc...lol.
Kollos
Sat Feb 21, 2004 1:26 am
#3
It's currently more expensive to manufacture in bulk for a few reasons:
1) you have to waste one unit in order to make the manufacturing schematic
2) you have to pay maintenance on the factory
3) you have to provide power for the factory
4) it takes longer (real time)to make x items in a factory than it does by hand
The only thing bulk manufacturing saves is active playing time. For most people, that more than offsets the above disadvantages. But I won't give a discount for large purchases either simply because my costs are actually higher for bulk manufactured items.
But to the point at hand... personally I like things the way they are. If there were a discount provided for bulk manufacturing, then people would want you to discount bulk purchases. I hate haggling and the current system makes it really easy to say "sorry, can't do that."
Barfalomue
Sat Feb 21, 2004 1:30 am
#4
Kollos wrote:
It's currently more expensive to manufacture in bulk for a few reasons:
1) you have to waste one unit in order to make the manufacturing schematic
2) you have to pay maintenance on the factory
3) you have to provide power for the factory
4) it takes longer (real time)to make x items in a factory than it does by hand
The only thing bulk manufacturing saves is active playing time. For most people, that more than offsets the above disadvantages. But I won't give a discount for large purchases either simply because my costs are actually higher for bulk manufactured items.
But to the point at hand... personally I like things the way they are. If there were a discount provided for bulk manufacturing, then people would want you to discount bulk purchases. I hate haggling and the current system makes it really easy to say "sorry, can't do that."
lol, true...
Well, in reality, it does cost a lot for initial design & construction of whatever. I just thought this would be a good way to do this. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to discount your prices...but I sure know when people are buying 5 of the same thing, I wish I could discount them and sometimes feel bad because I can't.
Virtanis
Sat Feb 21, 2004 1:33 am
#5
An interesting idea.... but we're talking about SOE here. I think they would never consider doing any tweaks or modifications to the system which would remove or lessena money sink (ie.money in material goods / resources, in this case).
I think they'll alwayswantus to spend 100 bucks for 100 mass produced widgets, and never allow the creation of 100 mass produced widgets for a discounted 80 bucks.
Just one man's cynical opinion. 
duncje
Sat Feb 21, 2004 1:40 am
#6
This isn't necessarily true. When you figure in the 5% or so crit fails, along with all the mediocre-experimented "junk" that tends to get thrown (at least for those professions where experimentation matters) it really is more efficient to manufacure things in a factory. If you figure over a run of 1000, 50 of those (on average) would be absolute crit fail losses, then at least another 5% (at least, if not 10%) get experimentation crappy enough to get tossed or "practiced" on. So you're talking 100 or 150 items that get tossed out of 1000. Now if you were going for perfectly experimented items, the number of junk items increases greatly. So while it may take more power/maintenance to run a factory, it evens out or even costs you less over the long run.
Kollos wrote:
It's currently more expensive to manufacture in bulk for a few reasons:
1) you have to waste one unit in order to make the manufacturing schematic
2) you have to pay maintenance on the factory
3) you have to provide power for the factory
4) it takes longer (real time)to make x items in a factory than it does by hand
The only thing bulk manufacturing saves is active playing time. For most people, that more than offsets the above disadvantages. But I won't give a discount for large purchases either simply because my costs are actually higher for bulk manufactured items.
But to the point at hand... personally I like things the way they are. If there were a discount provided for bulk manufacturing, then people would want you to discount bulk purchases. I hate haggling and the current system makes it really easy to say "sorry, can't do that."
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