Ranger Archive
Thread: Harvesting More Resources: Devil's Advocate
Yes - I think that this is a valid objection, but I think that we might counter by suggesting that the mechanism that is in the game to prevent the over abundance of uber resources is not the harvesting limitation, but the resource shifts, and there is, after all, no equivalent restriction on non-organic resources (and hence on the crafters that only use non-organic resources). For example, the only thing that really hinders a determined weaponsmith from getting 1 million units of some uber metal is really the ievitable resource shift, whereas doctors, bioengineers, chefs, etc... are hindered both by the resource shifts and by limitations in our harvesting abilities. While we will never be able to out harvest an ocean or two ofharvesters that work 24 hrs a day, a harvesting increase will help us keep the crafters who use our resources better supplied.
Just my thoughts...
Iseult
Master Ranger / Mediocre Pistoleer
Bloodfin
First of all, the "rarity" of a particular resource (inorganic and organic alike) is determined and controlled by a shift system. If you want to keep particular resource rare, shift system should allocate an extremely small chance to spawn that kind of resource.
Unlike inorganics, where resource has specific location(s) and concentration, organics with qualities determined by shift is spawned everywhere where the corresponding creatures are. This is highly dynamic.
"Concentration" is also dynamic. For organic it is determined by creature type and population.
The problem is that organic resource is the same quality no matter what creature level is. And you may get a good concentration on low level creatures because there are many of them.
Rangers are by design better "organic surveyors". But as soon as surveying is done, anybody with scout skills and some fighting skill can take missions and harvest that particular organics from low/mid level creatures. In quantity. At that point rangers are practically no competition to these harvestors.
I would not ask for harvesting increase for Ranger if we had an alternative - be better at killing creatures.
Right now we mostly get "organics surveying". If you reallocate skill points that you spend for harvesting increase in Ranger to some fighting professions/branches instead, you'll get a better return.
Well, I am probably not that good at arguing our case. But this was "food for thought" (mind buffs).
Lots of non-uberitems require specific organics:
Ubese Armor (Wooly and leathery hide) - Composite is better
Stim-Bs (Herb meat) - Stim C, D, E's are better
Combat Med Poisons (Insect Meat) - They're the only weapon of a combat med, how can they need limitation?
Anything Chef Related (All organics) - Unless Chef food in general should be limited
What I'm saying is that not everything organic intensive should be limited. That would mean there would be a limit on chef's goods, tailors good, and armorsmiths goods. Even limiting what a BE or Doc can sell is a little unfair to those professions.
Also, the resources will be harvested either way. Right now Doctors are paying upwards of 200 cpu to get avian meat. Because of that, they can get about as much as they want. They are pulling people away from what they would otherwise be doing with a huge bounty. These bounties apply to other crafters as well (50 cpu from a chef or BE isn't too uncommon, AS pay over 200 cpu as well). So the resources will appear whether or not the harvest increase comes along. What the harvest increase would attempt to do is to stem the inflation present in most (if not all) server economies. If a crafter is paying 50 or 200 cpu for a resource, they won't be taking that hit out of their profits (at least most won't). So the price of the items will increase. This also makes it so that only people with huge bank accounts can afford the resources to begin with, making the rich even richer. Now one can argue that the poorer crafters can just go out and harvest themselves, reducing this gap. But that makes it so that the younger crafters have to work harder than the established crafters and that they might not be enjoying the game while doing so. This is meant to be a game. The organic resource situation is making it less and less so (especially for the newer players).
As far as keeping items rare, how many of you have seen people that "have been playing for 2 weeks" wearing composite armor? Now I don't know if the armor was a gift from a friend or if they harvested a good shift of organics for the money. But the goods are out there anyway. BE additives are meant to be rare but I see +400brandy all over the place. The current system is not limiting the goods. It is only ruining the economy.
In my personal opinion, forcing multi harvesting would be the best possible solution. If you HAD to harvest everything off a corpse then you would get stacks of resources that were not extremely good. This would bring non-uber resources into the economy. Right now, most crafters only care about the best. Part of that is because you can only harvest one resource, bringing the price of crap resources up to the same level as the good ones. If you had to take everything off a corpse then you might as well sell the extras. This would mean that you might still see 200cpu for the highest end meat but it would not be the only resource around. And I am definately better off selling the extra resources than deleting them. This would bring in a new type of crafter--the budget crafter (and the non master market). They use the resources that the uber crafters don't want but, because of that, they can offer their goods at much lower prices. So you would get the limiting effect on the high end goods while still having goods that people can afford without needing to grind a lot of credits.
On the other side of this argument is the fact that forcing all the resources to be harvested would not cause anyone to pick up the skills necessary to do it. If I need Tracking 4 before I harvest 2 resources or Master Ranger to get all 3 then the above situation doesn't really work. Very few people will climb the skill tree for those skills. The major mindset in this game is an attempt to be the best. If I can only harvest the good resources off a corpse (usually only 1) but can get as much as a Master Ranger due to my killing skills then why would I bother with the other resources? If I am out to make the most money possible then I only care to get as much of the best resource that I can. Only by making the harvesting skill mod worth the skill points anyway will I be attracted to Ranger. If it ends up that I get extra resources along the way then I might as well sell them. The straight harvesting increase is needed to make the skills attractive. The additional FORCED harvests need to be added to help the economy reach what the Devs want (or at least what I think they really were aiming for). But the forced harvesting needs to be an extra feature as it is unlikely to attract enough people to solve the resource problems. It might even be worth making Novice Scout harvest everything but then the Ranger harvesting bonuses need to really be worth it.
BTW, this was all written off the top of my head. I hope it is coherent. If you want elaboration on any point or if anything is unclear, please tell me. This is a very important topic that we definately need to discuss.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server
Most of these high end items do not touch us. Weapons and some armour (usually the ones that people buy, like Composite) are covored by the highly effecient miners. All we limit are the buff-packs and lower armour and food. Most of the PA's are self-contained markets for this and thier harvestors are the BH's that double for organics gathering for the rest of their PA.
Yet, the docs get their buffs and charge high enough prices to make a return. There are no shortages of buffs, foods, et al. The difference here is the price. The chefs and docs are altering their templates to be able to harvest now. Limiting our harvest only shuts us out of the economy.
Sir Vimes,
Actually, if they had put thought into it (the developers) would have implemented it the way you describe. With the most desirable additives using the rarest materials. However, for whatever reason, they did it just the opposite. The least desirable additives (the ones I never ever ever get any requests for although I work with 3 chefs, like your example of Cabocaloric Eliminator
call for things like domestic meat, milk, and herbivore meat, and the ones that *all* chefs want, namely the additves that increase the buff power of the food, can be made easily with dath carnivore meat which happens to be the one meat that bio engineers can buy in bulk and for reasonable prices because it is supplied by scouts running missions for experience and money, not rangers.
So what's happening now is that bio engineers can buy relatively inexpensive dath carnivore meat (@no more than10cr/u on Bria) and keep the prices pretty reasonable on the additives that chefs actually want. So I don't see where a ranger harvesting increase affects that one way or the other. We're not buying from rangers, we can't afford to pay 100cpu for meat, and we'll never be able/willing to pay what docs pay for avian, so whether of not they get increased harvests makes no difference at all in the chef additive space as far as I'm concerned. Rangers have already priced themselves out of that space. WAY out of it.
On the other hand this is more of an issue when we're talking about tailor tissues. Right now you have a situation where you can buy a +25 medical healing/buffing/wound healing shirt or pair of pants for well under 50k from a tailor, who buys the tissues at 3k or less from bio engineers. When you compare these to skill tapes, a +3 skill tape will often sell for 100k up to several million, so arguably the prices on bio engineered clothing is artificially low right now just simply because there is a pretty good supply of them relative to demand. If the supply of wild meat were to go way up, the price of bio engineered clothing would likely come down even more to the point where they had little value. So yea, I agree with you there completely.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 04-08-2004 03:03 PM
The purpoise of bio-engineered additives for food was to make food uber, especially the heavy additives. They were suppose to be a bonus, and getting them was not suppose to be that easy. This is why Cabocaloric Eliminator is 45 herbivore meat, and Edible Nano Constructors is30 wild meat. They didn't pick those resources at random, they picked ones that would regulate how much of the items were made. This is one of the reasons the chef revamp took a couple of months.
Increasing the amount of resources will increase the amount of these items that can be made. If the market is flooded with additives (which they already are, but that is besides the point) will they be as uber as the developers intended?
Increasing the amount of hides and meats and whatever will increase the production of items they are used in. For the lower end items this may be a plus, but with the higher end items this could be unbalancing.
Again, just playing devils advocate here...because I am sure this is what the developers are talking about.