I think we need some anti gas farming stuff

Kitrana

Like it says in the title, i think gas farming is getting a little out of hand. wild gas cloud spawns are getting rarer and rarer due to all the gas cloud farming going on around cosmpiercers.
I think we need a weekly or possibly daily on sync purging and replacing of gas clouds in the sector.

Indi

I think the very concept of gas farming is stupid. I like it mechanically - people fighting over a resource like that is great - but the suspension of disbelief required is a bit much.

If defendable resources are a fun mechanic, we can have them (why not actual mining stations for example) without it being... gas farming.

Matlkael

From my observation of the market (which, admittedly, is far from being as comprehensive as what the administrators can observe), gas farming is one of the main reasons that supply can even meet demand. That, and asteroid incubation. 

Lhundrup

I agree, and I think a purge / reset of all resources is a good way to prevent hoarding.

I'm leaning more toward the reset being daily at sync. Or, every other day. Weekly seems a little long... But that would be effective too.

Kitrana

Matlkael said:

From my observation of the market (which, admittedly, is far from being as comprehensive as what the administrators can observe), gas farming is one of the main reasons that supply can even meet demand. That, and asteroid incubation. 

the problem is that you can hardly find any gas clouds not around cosmpiercers, unless you want elessium and i half suspect someone started that farm because they figured it would stifle the miners of other factions. 
basically, it is becoming a game of who has the biggest farm, which is not very fun and if you are in scatterhome i feel for you. and honestly, the clouds don't grow that fast so gas farming isn't helping as much as you think. what has helped more is it has become a little profitable and that has gotten people out and mining.

Matlkael

We've run the numbers in Song, and the convenience of having a gas farm far outweighs the drawback.

Being able to fill up a scoop in 5 minutes tops (because you don't have to go looking for 2-3 clouds of the same type, which could be 10+ zones apart) allows people to gather more of it. Time is a resource, not just raw spawn numbers.

Matlkael

With that said, I support upping raw numbers. Or just anything that values the time that players invest into the system. Simply cutting out gas farms and asteroid incubation will just bring us back to the days of 0 supply.

Indi

Put asteroids back in the wild. The moment they are dragged anywhere they stop growing.
Do similarly with gas clouds.

Then:
Introduce other methods of resource gathering for factions and clans to engage in. Larger rocks for permanent mines, the need to construct a mining station there and defend it.

Buuut in the meantime (as ideas like that will take time to implement) simply putting the mining back into the wild and increasing the spawn numbers would be a stopgap measure allowing the economy to chug along.

Lhundrup

I agree, spawn rates need increased; In addition to a regular reset of resources.

I only see Starmourn devolving into a game of king of the hill to see who controls all the resources if this keeps going the way it is.

Kitrana

Matlkael said:

We've run the numbers in Song, and the convenience of having a gas farm far outweighs the drawback.

Being able to fill up a scoop in 5 minutes tops (because you don't have to go looking for 2-3 clouds of the same type, which could be 10+ zones apart) allows people to gather more of it. Time is a resource, not just raw spawn numbers.

Yeah it is convenient for you but what about scatterhome players, and like lhundrup said this sort of thing only leads to making the game a king of the hill situation. i don;t want to see that happen myself.

Kitrana

also i didn't even know about asteroid incubation, are you guys the reason there is so little vandium out in the wild?

Matlkael

Vandium is naturally rare; it's one of the main reasons why I (and others) started incubating vandium (and titanium) asteroids. Then, it's just more efficient to incubate all kinds of asteroids.

Scatterhome still has a level 5 cosmpiercer, which should be sufficient enough to starting up your own farm.

For the record, I agree that farms are the undesirable way to fix the supply side of the economy, but it's the only method we have at the moment.

Kitrana

Matlkael said:

Vandium is naturally rare; it's one of the main reasons why I (and others) started incubating vandium (and titanium) asteroids. Then, it's just more efficient to incubate all kinds of asteroids.

Scatterhome still has a level 5 cosmpiercer, which should be sufficient enough to starting up your own farm.

For the record, I agree that farms are the undesirable way to fix the supply side of the economy, but it's the only method we have at the moment.

it doesn't fix it though, you now have resources and everyone else is strangled. i do not call that fixed.

kamyr

generate resources at full to start (can frontload the delay)
higher overall amount
larger spawns in cp zones (pvp risk for higher resource gain)
occasional depot (structure which drops some cargo with resources when killed) spawns in npc territory with some swole guards/turrets [pve risk for resource gain]
allow storage and trading of raw resources (removes refinery trips, so less time sunk. Just farm where you want, then refine/produce/sell/ship after that)

Might need some production recipe tweaks as well, but I'm not comfortable enough to speak on that.

Matlkael

Kitrana said:

it doesn't fix it though, you now have resources and everyone else is strangled. i do not call that fixed.

Right. That's why it's undesirable: at best, it barely manages to be a bandaid. But it's what we have right now, so we must work with and hope for better (actual) fixes in the near future.

Tiase

@Matlkael

GRRR! *SHAKEFIST* WHY YOU DARN VARMIT! 

Kitrana

Matlkael said:

Kitrana said:

it doesn't fix it though, you now have resources and everyone else is strangled. i do not call that fixed.

Right. That's why it's undesirable: at best, it barely manages to be a bandaid. But it's what we have right now, so we must work with and hope for better (actual) fixes in the near future.

or you know you could share and not choke out everyone else just because your miners are unwilling to hunt.

Matlkael

It's less about an unwillingness to scour approximately 1000 zones, and more about valuing the time we spend on the game.

Indi

@Kitrana
The game has an active dev team. It's slow at the moment because of the producer change, of course, but it is still active.

So there is no need for the playerbase to self-police in situations like this, and in fact it's not in the best interest of the game itself for us to self-police.

We're far better off playing the mechanics as they are, highlighting the problem mechanics in the process.

Tiase

Matlkael said:

It's less about an unwillingness to scour approximately 1000 zones, and more about valuing the time we spend on the game.

I'm with @Kitrana but I get where Matlkael is coming from.

Kitrana

Matlkael said:

It's less about an unwillingness to scour approximately 1000 zones, and more about valuing the time we spend on the game.

yes well, my time is just as valuable and your farms are causing me to waste more of it so you get no sympathy from me. 

Matlkael

You just found our gas farm and reaped the benefits, so I don't know what you're still on about 

Kitrana

Matlkael said:

You just found our gas farm and reaped the benefits, so I don't know what you're still on about 

yeah yuo guys will just move it again to somewhere i won;t find it and then back to square one.

Paqu

Matlkael said:

You just found our gas farm and reaped the benefits, so I don't know what you're still on about 

The fact that there are armadas in there  means that we're not really supposed to be there, aren't we? Nope, you're goal was to reap the benefits for yourself, or your faction. Thank Garryn for broken mechanics.

Matlkael

I find the objections here disingenuous, especially since CA has also started up their own farm.

While I agree that spawn rates of resources should be raised (and that a modifier be added so that it's possible to support a larger population, something that static rates don't allow), the problem that people really have isn't with farms themselves; rather, it's that one faction of the game (not theirs) figured it out first.

Hroden

Let's focus on the mechanical implications rather than forum pseudo-political blame game, please. If you have a legitimate complaint about mechanics, you are free to discuss it in a civilized manner in an effort to improve the game. 

We will avoid the us v. them mentality though. We're all working hard to make the game better. Thank you for the input!

Tiase

I want to state for the record, I'm okay with farming and that song has their own farm. Still very salty about the spawn rates and the way the farm strangled spawn rates until we all figured out what was going on. But it all worked out in the end.

RocketCat

The gas scramble at CS-4937 was great fun! Was one of those great gaming moments: high drama, high action!

Reeloc

RocketCat said:

The gas scramble at CS-4937 was great fun! Was one of those great gaming moments: high drama, high action!

It was! I hate how I was at work at the time and something came up, so I could only be half-present. :-/

Kitrana

Matlkael said:

I find the objections here disingenuous, especially since CA has also started up their own farm.

While I agree that spawn rates of resources should be raised (and that a modifier be added so that it's possible to support a larger population, something that static rates don't allow), the problem that people really have isn't with farms themselves; rather, it's that one faction of the game (not theirs) figured it out first.

we started farms in response to the song farms strangling of wild farms. i was more then happy just leaving scraps of gas clouds i harvested in the wild

Tiase

actually I started a farm, because I wanted to be a gas farmer. I want to work out "how much is too much?" to avoid strangling the spawn rates for everyone else. It's no fun trying to haul gas back and having to run to the other side of the sector just to find some.