Weaponsmith Archive

First you want to set up a system to buy whatever you happen to mine at a fair price, then you want the game to be more realistic in how you transport it....I'm getting a conflicting message, if you don't mind my saying so.

I think the problem with setting a standard price on resources would be that some resources have different values to different professions.For example weaponsmiths use SR on almost all minerals for melee weapons. A resource can have up to 7 stats that a Weaponsmith may not care about. If these stats are all very high, then that would bump up the value of the resource, even though the main market for that particular resource may be weaponsmiths, so to the system it would be a very high quality resource, while to the person who has to use it it's not worth the cost.

The only way this would affect the economy would be to possibly undercut resource miners....not really a huge issue with the baffling number of resource gatherer's there are, but I see no way in which adding another artificial quality/pricing system could benefit anybody.

Most large scale resource vendors take 4 factors into account when selling resources:

1)Availability - How often does it come around

2)Usage - Who needs it, and for what?

3)Quality - What are the important stats, and how do they compare to the best on the server?

4)Overhead - How much does it cost to mine these resources...don't just think of the mines, think of the houses that you pay maint on, the vendors, the power, etc...

This gives you your total cost. Part of the fun of the business game has been that we the players set the market, not someone telling us what it's worth, so all merchants have a nice lee-way when figuring prices and can use many factors aside from the main four I just listed. If you take that away you've turned what little it left of the bussiness side of this game into a farcicle version of some console RPG.

As a last thought another slight problem I see with your idea of a "Galactic Pricing System" is that it would make some rarer resources virtually unnattainable, even by contracted mining, as there possible cost of the resources you could be mining that are worth more would outweigh the price based on quality of the resources you would be getting by contract. Sometimes desperation in bussiness is a healthy thing, and can bring new and stronger business.

Personally I'm for a free trade system where we the players control the economy, with as little interference as is absolutely necessary for our economy to work.

At first, I was against the idea of NPC resource sellers. However, after reading the first post, I had an idea:

There could be "resource markets" controlled by Imperial NPCs (that would still sell to anyone). However, since these are Empire controlled (ie communistic) vendors, there prices would be set galaxy wide. BUT, they only sell the base resources. You know, the resources that are created when you take a bunch of different ore and put it through the ore recycler. They could sell it at 1-2 cpu, and grinders/architects/or any other profession that doesn't rely on great quality/specific type resources could purchase from these vendors.

And, as for the resource vendors (PC) out there, they get to start raising their prices slightly to compensate for the "loss" of low-end grinder business.

ya take away the player economy

so screw resource gatheres with this?

I'm not sure where this comes from, aside from the standpoint of taking aspects of the game out of the players hands and putting them into the Devs hands...but that's exactly what the Developers don't want, and that's why they gave us the freedom of choice.

If we're going to have a communistic system, then it should go the whole game. 5% of the players should get to live in big houses, have all the best resources they want anytime, and live life like the upper-class (but they don't call it that, cause it's communism)

Then 95% of the players can use bad armor, low quality weapons, bad chef food stuffs (if any at all, supply shortage you know)to support the 5% of the player population who were lucky enough to be family members of the developers. But they can't charge their more fortunate commrades, because that wouldn't be the communist way.

The fact of the matter is there are plenty of low quality resources around for a reasonable price, most people just haven't bothered looking. The more specific the resource, the harder it will be to find. The solution isn't NPC vendors, it's getting out of your crafting house and doing some surveying, or hiring someone to do it for you, and finding it yourself (or hiring someone to do it).

If you can't find grind quality (insert resource name) for 1-2 CPU, I just don't believe you're looking very hard. With the galactic vendor search it's even easier now...you can look at thousands of vendors instantaneously....they put these systems in the game for a reason. People should use them instead of asking for more systems.