economic balance

[TheLongWorm]

How fast Mining will works will be the Key factor in the game to how easy and fast Player can Build constructs and fight in PvP Fights.

Its impotent that Resources are not completely worthless but at the same time not way to expensiv, that is an very impotent factor on how the game will play.

I think the mining it self should go pretty fast so that the main cost of Resources will be the transportation and the Risk of transporting the Minerals and not the Minerals it self.

So The main cost of Resources should be decided by the flowing factors: Risk for Mining, Risk of Transport, Defense of Transport, Finding Minerals, Claiming/Finding the Areas for Mining

And not the time you need to Mine the Minerals, that would be boring farming that no one or most people do not want to do.

What would be a Healthy for the Gameplay experience from my point of view. 

1. Not every Resource should be found in masses on all planets, every planet should have a Resources the have way to much and such they have way to less.

2. Mining times should not be a problem, this gets annoying very fast. The problem on mining should be Finding the Resources not The process of Mining them. 

3. Resources should be Cheap as possible not to cheap but so cheap that people don't risk a Lot of time/Money by Fighting in PVP.

 

[ATMLVE]

It seems here like you're grouping all resources into one big pool and referring to them as a single entity. You ask "should resources be expensive"; this is like me asking you if, in real life, gold and aluminum and platinum should be expensive.

 

I think you're worried that the whole mining and trading mechanics in the game will be shallow or boring; I can tell you right now that we as players now have the opportunity to help shape the game as it progresses, giving input and suggestions as time goes on. This goes for the processes of scanning and mining, as well as rarity. So I would say don't worry about that stuff now. However, the players and their actions will determine some of the things that it seems you're trying to set in stone, or want set in stone. We cannot choose now what the most efficient way of doing things will be, and circumstances and location will absolutely have effects on how cost effective certain operations will be. 

 

You said it would be dumb if all resources were evenly spread out, and I absolutely agree. Luckily, a while ago it was said that many resources will be rarer than others, and some planets will have 0 of some resources. The developers want you to go out exploring, and they will give incentives for that, don't worry!

[TheLongWorm]

18 minutes ago, ATMLVE said:

It seems here like you're grouping all resources into one big pool and referring to them as a single entity. You ask "should resources be expensive"; this is like me asking you if, in real life, gold and aluminum and platinum should be expensive.

You need an Specific amount of different materials in real life as well to build Cars and Plains but that is not what im talking about is how much should the material overall Cost to build Spaceships etc good now Space Ships an station could have different prices because they would need different materials but that was not the point as well i was just talking about Cargo ships and Fighters.

 

 

18 minutes ago, ATMLVE said:

I think you're worried that the whole mining and trading mechanics in the game will be shallow or boring; I can tell you right now that we as players now have the opportunity to help shape the game as it progresses, giving input and suggestions as time goes on. This goes for the processes of scanning and mining, as well as rarity. So I would say don't worry about that stuff now. However, the players and their actions will determine some of the things that it seems you're trying to set in stone, or want set in stone. We cannot choose now what the most efficient way of doing things will be, and circumstances and location will absolutely have effects on how cost effective certain operations will be. 

You're right im a little bit to early with that stuff, but the point was to set the motivation to test those different settings to get the best possible game experience for all and for that i think its not to bad to know what people want.

[wizardoftrash]

Also, the cost of various resources are going to be in-part at the mercy of the innitial "shop" NPC's, and in-part at the mercy of good ol' fashion supply and demand. Once the shop NPC's are taken down, then it'll all come down to how much material people need to use.

 

However I suspect that actually building things in the game is going to be much much more time and labor intensive than most of us are expecting. As someone who plays a lot of sandbox games of varying difficulty, the game-play pipeline that has been proposed for DU has some interesting hoops that many of those games don't have, but is missing some hoops that I would expect.

 

At a minimum, the starting planet will probably have most if not every kind of resource. Mainly because constructing an atmospheric ship that can also fly in space is supposed to be logistically and resource intensive, you'll likely need a bit of almost every kind of resource to make the parts you need for a ship that can fly anywhere. If the resources were scattered across different planets, then literally everybody would be stuck on the starting planet. There is a good chance though that there would be a few materials that can't be found on the starting planet that are used for upgrades, or higher-tier versions of existing ship parts for faster, tougher, more efficient ships.

 

But leaving the starting planet will probably have to be a group activity. It'll take a very very long time for a solo player to do everything themselves needed to leave the starting planet. Said player will have to scan for each kind of resource, harvest those resources, refine those resources, craft each of the parts needed for their ship, actually build the ship, and do all of that without getting killed too often (so staying in safe areas). Some of those steps might require you to gain levels in specific skills (like refining and engineering), so you might reach a point where you actually have all the raw materials, but are waiting days for your xp to increase enough.

 

That being said, there will be plenty of players who will want to explore, scan, and mine resources and not bother refining or crafting components exactly because of the exp and leveling time. Players will be specializing their skills in one or two areas, and relying on the in-game economy or teammates in an org to fill in where their specialties aren't. I expect resource costs to be reasonable because mining as a job is more exciting than refining or engineering, and therefor it will be more popular. If its popular, then supply will be high, and the choke-point on demand will be either the lack of refining-specialized players or engineering-specialized players. Thus I expect resource costs to be low in-general.

 

However I fully expect to see some resource costs to be high, especially if one becomes a defacto currency for some reason (yes there is an in-game currency in the form of quanta, but players might be trading in a resource that's a backbone of ship building for example instead). Mainly because the resource will be used, but also traded strictly as a currency.

[Miamato]

It's to early to talk about the price right now. The price should be determined only by rarity and popularity of the resource. The final ship price of any class would be correlated with initial base resource price and costs of manufacturing of other building materials. And building a cheap ship should mean you won't be able to have advanced weapons or resource gathering modules, that is why the cheaper the ship is - the less profit it should bring, as it's natural ratio of investment and risks. 

I agree that minerals should be spread somehow between planets, so only in pretty rare cases single planet may have most of them at small amount. But at the same time it shouldn't mean that some of the resources exist only in opposite corners of universe. 

Scanning of resources should be difficult and interesting process that takes some time and requires knowledge. But at the same time mining should be also not an easy task as you would need to have small and fast miner with small cargo, or big vehicle, that mines fast and much, but is much more expensive/slow and easy to find/catch/kill.

 

I totally disagree with statement about "ships as cheap as possible" because in this case what's the need to gather resources then? I hope this game won't be like Lineage 2 pirate PVP server with x100000 rates, with endless meaningless fights. 

 

You invest more - you can get more, you risk more - you can receive more, and at the same time lose more.

[TheLongWorm]

6 minutes ago, wizardoftrash said:

Also, the cost of various resources are going to be in-part at the mercy of the innitial "shop" NPC's, and in-part at the mercy of good ol' fashion supply and demand. Once the shop NPC's are taken down, then it'll all come down to how much material people need to use.

 

However I suspect that actually building things in the game is going to be much much more time and labor intensive than most of us are expecting. As someone who plays a lot of sandbox games of varying difficulty, the game-play pipeline that has been proposed for DU has some interesting hoops that many of those games don't have, but is missing some hoops that I would expect.

 

At a minimum, the starting planet will probably have most if not every kind of resource. Mainly because constructing an atmospheric ship that can also fly in space is supposed to be logistically and resource intensive, you'll likely need a bit of almost every kind of resource to make the parts you need for a ship that can fly anywhere. If the resources were scattered across different planets, then literally everybody would be stuck on the starting planet. There is a good chance though that there would be a few materials that can't be found on the starting planet that are used for upgrades, or higher-tier versions of existing ship parts for faster, tougher, more efficient ships.

 

But leaving the starting planet will probably have to be a group activity. It'll take a very very long time for a solo player to do everything themselves needed to leave the starting planet. Said player will have to scan for each kind of resource, harvest those resources, refine those resources, craft each of the parts needed for their ship, actually build the ship, and do all of that without getting killed too often (so staying in safe areas). Some of those steps might require you to gain levels in specific skills (like refining and engineering), so you might reach a point where you actually have all the raw materials, but are waiting days for your xp to increase enough.

 

That being said, there will be plenty of players who will want to explore, scan, and mine resources and not bother refining or crafting components exactly because of the exp and leveling time. Players will be specializing their skills in one or two areas, and relying on the in-game economy or teammates in an org to fill in where their specialties aren't. I expect resource costs to be reasonable because mining as a job is more exciting than refining or engineering, and therefor it will be more popular. If its popular, then supply will be high, and the choke-point on demand will be either the lack of refining-specialized players or engineering-specialized players. Thus I expect resource costs to be low in-general.

 

However I fully expect to see some resource costs to be high, especially if one becomes a defacto currency for some reason (yes there is an in-game currency in the form of quanta, but players might be trading in a resource that's a backbone of ship building for example instead). Mainly because the resource will be used, but also traded strictly as a currency.

You have to under stand under High Cost i under stand ----> you need a Lot of time to get that

So the problem with that is simply we want to build stuff ----> Citys that is the reason why i meant that it would be a good thing when there would be 1 Ressource that one planet have way to much because on that planet it would be cheap and if it is cheap i can build Citys and huge static structures with out any problems and that is something i want to see from this game Buildings, station and stuff going on every where and most impotent stuff that matters to other people. I don't know what the plans for Refining are but it would be cool if those could be build in huge Factories.

 

But what i already told is that Mining should not be slow it does not make more fun if the minerals take Ages to Mine it would be better if the Ores would have less Concentrations of the actually refined stuff. So rather you standing a Lot longer staring at Stone it would be more fun flying instead of that several time to the station or you can do like not perfekt refind stuff so you have 50% of that what you wanted to mine from the beginning and give that to the Refining station.

[TheLongWorm]

4 minutes ago, Miamato said:

It's to early to talk about the price right now. The price should be determined only by rarity and popularity of the resource. The final ship price of any class would be correlated with initial base resource price and costs of manufacturing of other building materials. And building a cheap ship should mean you won't be able to have advanced weapons or resource gathering modules, that is why the cheaper the ship is - the less profit it should bring, as it's natural ratio of investment and risks. 

I agree that minerals should be spread somehow between planets, so only in pretty rare cases single planet may have most of them at small amount. But at the same time it shouldn't mean that some of the resources exist only in opposite corners of universe. 

Scanning of resources should be difficult and interesting process that takes some time and requires knowledge. But at the same time mining should be also not an easy task as you would need to have small and fast miner with small cargo, or big vehicle, that mines fast and much, but is much more expensive/slow and easy to find/catch/kill.

 

I totally disagree with statement about "ships as cheap as possible" because in this case what's the need to gather resources then? I hope this game won't be like Lineage 2 pirate PVP server with x100000 rates, with endless meaningless fights. 

 

You invest more - you can get more, you risk more - you can receive more, and at the same time lose more.

Well you can still balance how much you risk by the size of your ship and the cargo ship that will be the defining factors of how much you can win or lose but it should be on you with how much you go in, you should be able to risk not so much by using small ships but you wont be able to attack large cargo ships with it and you will get smaller reward.  But those mechanics must be looked at when they are implemented in to the game to getting balanced like much of the other points as well we have to look what players like to do. 

[wizardoftrash]

I actually can't tell if you are joking here or being serious. you are kind of all over the place with your argument here.

 

Mainly though we have no idea how long it'll take to mine stuff. Part of that boils down to how long it'll take to scan for resources, part of it will boil down to exactly what you get resource-wise per-click of concentrated mining, and part of it will boil down to how efficient the refining process is.

 

Even if every resource is equally easy to find, and are in equal sized nodes, "expensive" resources like platinum might be really lossy in the refining step (10kg ore turning into 2kg of metal instead of 10kg of ore into 7kg metal for iron for example). The reality is that expensive resources will probably be harder to scan for, will have smaller nodes, and will be fewer. This will mean that building a "dumb" component (like a steel wall) would be easier than a "smart" component (like an engine that requires 12 different resources).

 

But how long a material takes to AQUIRE won't be the deciding factor in its "cost" on the in-game market. It might take me a whole play session to get 10KG of unobtainium, however if unobtainium is only used to make a cosmetic toilet item, then there won't be much demand, and it won't be worth very much quanta to other players. It might be super super quick to get 10KG of iron, but if players are using it faster than it can be mined, it might end up being worth quite a bit (an example of something that would "cost" very little time, but "cost" quite a bit of money on the market).

[Snipester]

The best answer is that it depends on the resource. Common materials that are easy to mine and safe to transport will be cheap. As the difficulty and risk of these two tasks goes up, so too then does the cost of the resource.

[Lethys]

Building cities and huge spacecraft SHOULD be very expensive. You won't do that alone, nor in a small group. It should be an enormous undertaking. 

 

Once the bots leave the market, everything will be regulated by players - supply and demand. And people will attack markets, not with guns but with their investments. And they will form monopoles to force ppl to buy from them. That's all emergent gameplay, and no there shouldn't be a minimal or maximum price

[TheLongWorm]

5 hours ago, Lethys said:

Building cities and huge spacecraft SHOULD be very expensive. You won't do that alone, nor in a small group.

 

 

Once the bots leave the market, everything will be regulated by players - supply and demand. And people will attack markets, not with guns but with their investments. And they will form monopoles to force ppl to buy from them. That's all emergent gameplay, and no there shouldn't be a minimal or maximum price

Well if your able to do it in Huge groups you will be able to do it in small groups the question is just the time, so yes for sure a small player should not be able to build a Gigantic city or a Death star with out an absurd amount of time, but that was not my point. My point of reference was if a good build Spaceship should building a ship should be more expensive or less expensive then the Resources and materials it is build with. You have no point of reference i don't what very expensive means to you  yes for sure huge buildings/ships are gonna be expensive i fully agree with you on that. my point of view is just that the build ships/Building should be more expensiv then the Resources they are build of.

 

 

I don't want a Minimal Price or an Maximum price that would not work.

We will have a very interesting market the price of Resources will be decided on where you are.

[NanoDot]

I cannot vote in this poll, the options either don't make sense to me or are too vague.

 

"Cheap or expensive" are a relative terms, and mean different things to different people.

"Cost of minerals" will vary wildly depending on how your org deals with the different aspects involved.

"Risk of piracy or stockpile theft" is a reality of the game, the only aspect that's up for discussion is how the risks should be managed.

 

Supply-and-demand will largely determine the prices for anything bought and sold in DU. It's a cornerstone of the player-driven economy. The only price regulation will be via the fake resource buy orders placed by NQ to create currency in the game. Those buy orders will set a floor price for specific resources, and only while they're active.

 

If a specific resource becomes "too expensive", that's an incentive to find new deposits of that resource. You may have to go to a different planet, asteroid or moon to find more, or even go to a new solar system, but there will always be more somewhere. Resources in DU are infinite. They have to be, otherwise the game grinds to a halt. Resources are only finite in a given area.

 

The distribution of resources is regulated by NQ to achieve balance, depending on how they are used in the game. The "rare" resources will always be "more expensive" than the common ones.

[Lethys]

6 hours ago, TheLongWorm said:

Well if your able to do it in Huge groups you will be able to do it in small groups the question is just the time, so yes for sure a small player should not be able to build a Gigantic city or a Death star with out an absurd amount of time, but that was not my point. My point of reference was if a good build Spaceship should building a ship should be more expensive or less expensive then the Resources and materials it is build with. You have no point of reference i don't what very expensive means to you  yes for sure huge buildings/ships are gonna be expensive i fully agree with you on that. my point of view is just that the build ships/Building should be more expensiv then the Resources they are build of.

 

 

I don't want a Minimal Price or an Maximum price that would not work.

We will have a very interesting market the price of Resources will be decided on where you are.

And as I said: people will regulate the price. If you ask more than resource price and ppl buy - gj. If they don't buy - tough luck. There is no magical system which guarantees you a certain price. People will pay what they feel like is a good price

[TheLongWorm]

3 hours ago, Lethys said:

And as I said: people will regulate the price. If you ask more than resource price and ppl buy - gj. If they don't buy - tough luck. There is no magical system which guarantees you a certain price. People will pay what they feel like is a good price

Yea, but the price will be the result of different factors implementiertet in the game mechanics. The price will be the time people need to do that stuff if it needs less work it will get cheaper, if more people want to Mine and less people want to build it gets cheaper. So if we make Mining more interesting more people want to Mine if more people want to mine and its easier to mine people will mine more and the market will get flooded causing the Price to go down extreme for those Ores.

 

No i don't want to have a certain price i just want don't want it to be to expensiv and to control that that's no problem at all, there are so many ways to do that.

[NanoDot]

The speed of mining will be a significant factor in resource prices. More supply means lower prices. The faster you can mine, the more you can bring to market, and the less your risk while mining.

 

But speed of mining also ultimately determines the intensity of PVP in DU.

If ship losses are easily replaced (fast mining, abundant resource supply, low prices), more people will engage in PVP. And it will also mean more "speculative" PVP, because ship loss will be relatively trivial. The balance of game play will swing in favour of combat and destruction, because it's always faster (and more fun) to blow something up than it is to build it.

[Lethys]

Well, I still can't see your problem. Because the market will regulate itself so prices may be high or may be low - the only valid assumption is that if prices are high, people will do less PvP because they think twice about attacking someone and possibly lose their ship. 

But on the other hand you don't want to make it too cheap, otherwise ppl would yolo anyone and it doesn't feel like an achievement to finally go to space. This balance has to be carefully determined in beta

 

But from the investment side (people who dont want to bother with mining and just want to buy resources) it doesn't really matter because if you mine the materials yourself and build a ship it's equally expensive/cheap to just buy the resources and build a ship. It's not free only because you mined them, you invest the same amount of money

 

Edit: oh and to elaborate a bit more on that: even if resources are expensive, it only means that the devs have a way to control PvP and guide the players. We just have to see how everything works together, it's not that simple in a sandbox

[TheLongWorm]

2 hours ago, Lethys said:

Well, I still can't see your problem. Because the market will regulate itself so prices may be high or may be low - the only valid assumption is that if prices are high, people will do less PvP because they think twice about attacking someone and possibly lose their ship. 

But on the other hand you don't want to make it too cheap, otherwise ppl would yolo anyone and it doesn't feel like an achievement to finally go to space. This balance has to be carefully determined in beta

There will be like zones places where Ores are more expensiv to buy and places where they are very cheap to buy--->if its expansiv/dangerous to travel between solar systems and on and off planets.

 

2 hours ago, Lethys said:

But from the investment side (people who don't want to bother with mining and just want to buy resources) it doesn't really matter because if you mine the materials yourself and build a ship it's equally expensive/cheap to just buy the resources and build a ship. It's not free only because you mined them, you invest the same amount of money

The cost in games are Time so you get Money for time you invested in the game but of cores you can just do it if you have a Job in the game if you don't your time is worth nothing so buying the Materials just allows you to do other stuff.

 

2 hours ago, Lethys said:

Edit: oh and to elaborate a bit more on that: even if resources are expensive, it only means that the devs have a way to control PvP and guide the players. We just have to see how everything works together, it's not that simple in a sandbox

Agree, they have to look how every thing works out and how cheap or expensiv resources in the end are, and then may balance it over the time of Alpha and Beta.

[Lethys]

21 minutes ago, TheLongWorm said:

There will be like zones places where Ores are more expensiv to buy and places where they are very cheap to buy--->if its expansiv/dangerous to travel between solar systems and on and off planets.

 

The cost in games are Time so you get Money for time you invested in the game but of cores you can just do it if you have a Job in the game if you don't your time is worth nothing so buying the Materials just allows you to do other stuff.

 

Agree, they have to look how every thing works out and how cheap or expensiv resources in the end are, and then may balance it over the time of Alpha and Beta.

Yeah true, that's the reason truckers make a profit. That's just natural and I see no problem there.

 

I just meant the cost resource wise, ofc you can charge ppl for your time, but they're not obligated to pay that

[TheLongWorm]

20 minutes ago, Lethys said:

I just meant the cost resource wise, ofc you can charge ppl for your time, but they're not obligated to pay that

No, they're clearly not, but if they have no better offer the only thing they can do is farming the stuff by them self and if there are no other Miners you can just find an other Buyer.

[Lethys]

23 minutes ago, TheLongWorm said:

No, they're clearly not, but if they have no better offer the only thing they can do is farming the stuff by them self and if there are no other Miners you can just find an other Buyer.

Yes they are, because it doesn't matter if you mine them or buy them. It's the same worth of materials. It's only different if you ship them to your location