I forsee a major problem with economy.

Asmoth

So the admin are making sweeping changes on the way the player driven economy works and such.

However, I noticed it when one of Scatterhomes people placed a finished good on sale and mailed about it.

They are using the raw materials that were refined under the old, super expensive refineries.

So using that value they are pricing a finished good that is still more expensive than buying the stuff from the ShipForge.

Now I don’t fault them for trying to stay profitable or at least not lose their asses in the transaction.

The problem I feel could only be fixed by waiting for the economy to be in a working state and resetting it, clearing all store materials and craft goods and starting over.

This way the factions or people who bought helium11 for 150 per say, won’t lose their asses on their huge stockpile of too expensive products.

I am aware people will be against it, but that’s the only way to normalize prices unless the people who have those stockpiles are just fine losing their asses.  Or for some reason people are willing to pay more just because a player made something.

discuss

zacc

We've known for some time that those features would be tweaked at some point. I spent a fair amount just to fulfill large market orders for captaincy xp. No regrets.

Players were complaining about resource prices from the start. Anyone who planned to stockpile resources for use or profit could have seen that prices at the time weren't going to work and that something would have to be tweaked to encourage people to participate in the economy.

Speaking of market orders and captaincy XP, was the amount of XP gained from orders buffed to compensate for the lowered refinery output? Previously, it was 800 or so units to go from lvl 11-12 (or maybe it was 10-11... idk). That was when 40 raw resources equaled 40 refined resources. Now, 40 equals 4. That's A LOT of grinding and time, which only gets worse as lvl increases. An overall increase by a factor of... 10? Ouch. Doesn't seem fair to those who didn't catch on early and zoom through captaincy levels by using clever market orders.

Asmoth

zacc said:

... That was when 40 raw resources equaled 40 refined resources. Now, 40 equals 4. That's A LOT of grinding and time, which only gets worse as lvl increases. An overall increase by a factor of... 10? Ouch. Doesn't seem fair to those who didn't catch on early and zoom through captaincy levels by using clever market orders.

Well I sorta get why it takes 10-1 for a refined resource because think if you're collecting oxygen from water, you have to seperate all those other elements to get just the Oxygen, so you're taking slivers of the whole.

But yeah, if they don't do something, it looks like everyone is either going to price their resources too high and as a result the end product will be too high, or everyone is going to just lose their asses and consider it fine to get back a percentage of the marks they spent to refine/make goods.

Cubey

Asmoth said:

looks like everyone is either going to price their resources too high and as a result the end product will be too high

No.

Asmoth said:

or everyone is going to just lose their asses and consider it fine to get back a percentage of the marks they spent to refine/make goods.

Yes. This.

Starmourn devs aren't responsible for the players' poor financial decisions. Just eat a loss and be happy the economy is finally working.

zacc

Eventually, there's going to be more resources available at current costs than there are at the old costs, so those who stockpiled will take a loss in some form. Some will even take a hit if admin offered to buy the resources at the old refining costs. Unless everything was tracked and logged, and someone wants to invest the time to go through it, I don't see how they could fairly compensate everyone.

I'm concerned with the amount of effort it's going to take to earn captaincy XP after the changes. Right now, unless it was changed as well, the best source for XP is completing huge player-created market orders. Assuming gas clouds are the same, that's 8000 (I hope I'm wrong there) purple squares you'll have to fly over and then wait to refine to go from lvl 11 to 12. Well, you'll have to find market orders asking for that resource, which is easy if you have someone to collude with (waiting to hear back from admin on whether this is allowed or not). Have them create the order, you fulfill and transfer back the marks, and, if they can transfer materials, they transfer back the materials, repeat until finished. Supercruisers in no time. Increasing the amount of time and effort for XP gained through refining your own resources makes swapping materials via market orders all the more enticing, not that it wasn't to begin with.

Crorr

zacc said:

Eventually, there's going to be more resources available at current costs than there are at the old costs, so those who stockpiled will take a loss in some form. Some will even take a hit if admin offered to buy the resources at the old refining costs. Unless everything was tracked and logged, and someone wants to invest the time to go through it, I don't see how they could fairly compensate everyone.

I'm concerned with the amount of effort it's going to take to earn captaincy XP after the changes. Right now, unless it was changed as well, the best source for XP is completing huge player-created market orders. Assuming gas clouds are the same, that's 8000 (I hope I'm wrong there) purple squares you'll have to fly over and then wait to refine to go from lvl 11 to 12. Well, you'll have to find market orders asking for that resource, which is easy if you have someone to collude with (waiting to hear back from admin on whether this is allowed or not). Have them create the order, you fulfill and transfer back the marks, and, if they can transfer materials, they transfer back the materials, repeat until finished. Supercruisers in no time. Increasing the amount of time and effort for XP gained through refining your own resources makes swapping materials via market orders all the more enticing, not that it wasn't to begin with.

We've been specifically told that Bad Things will follow if someone is caught doing that or anything similar. Possibly even the removal of market captaincy gains altogether, or shifting them to the refining instead of the delivery. 

Though as it stands, from random testing today it's going to take at least 1000 ordered materials delivered to go from 13 to 14 unless Marks earned are taken into account when determining gains. I went from 13.20 to 13.21 after delivering about a dozen assorted goodies, which took, I might remind you, 4 hours to refine. And that only because it was several different materials rather than one big rock.

zacc

The needed materials appear to be the same as before, which is why I'm raising concern. Not only have the required raw materials increased x10, the time requirement for refining has effectively timegated progression via harvesting your own resources to the extreme. Finding clouds of the same resource is randomized, so it can be time consuming to gather enough for a large batch, and we can't tow around a dozen asteroids. I think I had to wait 20min to refine an asteroid worth 7 titanium...

I see how the market orders could be abuse and I agree that it is. But is it not an intended feature to set your own market order prices? If you had 1000 probes and I set a market order for 1000 probes @ 5 marks/probe, you get an instant captaincy level. Considerably more levels if you're starting low and fulfilling an order of 1000+ units. The system was used as intended - unless we discussed it in-game, the admin wouldn't know our intentions. The grey area is when those probes and marks are transferred back to the original owners or the process is reversed. It's clearly not a bug. An oversight, possibly. However, giving out a broad warning is pretty much telling us to work with an honors system... and those don't work well in F2P games. Someone(s) is going to make it through without so much as a slap on the wrists. It would be too costly to have someone continuously monitor transaction logs. The system could flag suspicious activity for the admin but that still requires someone to look over it at some point. The only plug I can think of that would be a surefire preventative for abuse is some sort of XP cap, modifying ship capacity (if you want to fulfill a 1000 unit order you should probably be using a heavy freighter, for example), gating, or some combination of the above. Daily XP cap and modified ship capacity/unit weight? Can still fulfill orders for marks but you can't go from lvl 1 captaincy to level 20+ in a day or three.

Edit: I couldn't find a warning regarding the abuse of market orders, other than the mention of no autmation. Is it announce post #8?

Edit: Nevermind. Updates #98 plugged the hole. That was fast!

Crorr

Before the general announce, we'd asked about it as a workaround for something unrelated to captaincy ratings and had gotten that answer. It was sort of obvious in hindsight that trading materials back and forth wasn't an intended behavior though since as you pointed out it could make a feedback loop that made one or two people untouchable in the ranks.