A solution to catalog buying lag and infinite resources ruining the economy

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    Why doesn\'t the ships in the catalogs cost the same amount as the total cost of the materials it\'s made of?

    This results in no profit from shops.. due to the cost being the same if you bought the ship block by block..
    This would also mean that the prices shouldn\'t be editable.. or then again maybe they should, because after all.. you dont HAVE to cheat..

    But anyway, the default price for ships should be the total cost for each of the materials the ship is made of..
     
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    Yes of course, but what many people seem to not like is the ability to spawn massive amounts of materiels out of thin air, regardless of if there is a single block of that materiel within 100 sectors.

    Even a simple economy system can\'t be put into place until something is done about that. There is no scarcity. Only factory blocks can\'t be made in bulk this way, but what do factory blocks do? Make the blocks that can be much easier bought in bulk.

    There is no reason to ever leave a shop once you made some money. If you need materiels, why go salvage or factory it up when you can just buy that 10k_X_Blocks ship in the catalog.
     
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    Wow, so glad to have more responses. I thought the thread had gone dead.

    @D-Car


    Forcing players to have all the blocks to build their ships would only exacerbate the problem of shops constantly being out of everything.


    This is something I had not thought of. Thank you for raising the issue. It seems to me that to build an effective economy, we also need ways to facilitate trading between shops. Perhaps shops could broadcast advertisements for needed items, and offer higher than normal prices to buy them off players. That would encourage players to manufacture items for sale, and where a surplus exists, trade between shops. This is something that ought to be discussed in another thread however, as we\'re heading well away from issues with catalogs here.

    @Grieger


    but you don\'t have to spend two days scouring the universe for a few of some stupid rare part everybody needs and bought out of every shop in 100 sectors.


    The idea is that players would have to actually manufacture new materials, or interact with one another to buy materials from one another. This is the basis of an economy, and we won\'t see anything other than a free-building battlefield without it. If that\'s what some servers want, they can arrange that, but others want economy simulation.

    @Planr


    Have you actually even tested this scenario to prove it? You cannot get more money from the blueprints you buy except by using exploits


    Yes, I have tested it. I have a number of catalog blueprints for \"ships\" that contain nothing but rare materials needed for ship and outpost building. In exchange for selling random pirate loot or tons of hardened hull, cheap and easily available materials, and get tons of shields and AMCs in exchange. Its not about duping extra credits, its about transmuting one material into another, credits are just the means of doing this.


    Capital ships take a lot of effort to create. But to actually buy? Absolutely not, and that\'s the way it should stay.


    Why? An argument with no reasoning is not an argument.


    There are alot of servers out there that can support heavier loads such as buying large ships. It\'s not a problem with the game, it\'s a problem relative to server strength.


    So some servers can avoid crashing from loading ships that others cannot handle, it doesn\'t alter the fact that there exists a ship size that CAN crash a server, nomatter how large it is, and the reason for this is the attempt to instantaneously spawn the entire ship at once.


    Most capital ships are built out of a greater variety of blocks than what your inventory can accomodate for


    That\'s not a problem if we are using the shipyard approach. You can always just make regular trips to deposit more materials at the construction site to allow constructions to resume.


    Not quite. It depends on how good your computer and the server can handle it.


    Nomatter how good your server and computer are, there will always be a potential ship out there that it cannot handle. Instantly spawning a ship is just not scaleable.


    This method, no matter how it would be implemented, would cause immense lag, as MichaelSeph said


    What are you basing this on? It is no different to a player constructing a ship manually in build mode. Does that cause immense lag? The instructions to execute building a new block automatically would take only nanoseconds, and that is not hyperbole.


    I would rather just give up and use admin commands to spawn my stuff than to wait a whole entire hour to get my ship to \"build itself\"


    Well actually the rate I suggested with auto-building would typically allow for the ship to be created faster than a player could do it by hand using the materials. However, I think here we come to the crux of your issue with this idea. You don\'t want to have to wait to get stuff you want. If you want ships to be spawned in very quickly, I am sure cheats could be added to allow this, but for a lot of server admins, things like this are undesirable so it should not be the standard that is forced on everyone.

    @epicbastion


    This should be a choice made by the server owners not just a standard way it happens everywhere


    Agreed 100%.


    Oh you mean I have to plan out and place storage for my shipyard to be able to build a ship, with all the items neccesary for the design, that is so hard and requires so much thought. You are right, most players will not be able to handle the concept of actually planning and forthought.


    Sarcasm ftw :P
     
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    What if we could only spawn in ships via the catalog if the shop has the necessary components to build it in stock? That way, factories become highly prized on servers as we go on.
     
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    That\'s the basic aim of this, except it ought to be possible for players to find or build the materials themselves too.
     
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    How about adding a spawn timer as well directly related to the mass of the ship? Spawning a small ship should take less time than a gigantic cruiser. That could possibly help with lag as well, if you could only queue up one ship.

    You could also have the concept of buying ship \"blueprints\" instead of actual ships. The blueprint is put in your inventory, you right click it, and if you have the required mats it will begin construction. This way, you won\'t have to be near a station. I think this is a better idea than spawning a ship from the catalog if the staition has the resources, it should pull it from your own resources.



    You could also create a player driven economy with the catalog. Essentially you would be selling the ship to the station and someone else could buy it. The catalog won\'t create an infinite amount of the ships.
     
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    @ XHawk87


    This is something I had not thought of. Thank you for raising the issue. It seems to me that to build an effective economy, we also need ways to facilitate trading between shops. Perhaps shops could broadcast advertisements for needed items, and offer higher than normal prices to buy them off players. That would encourage players to manufacture items for sale, and where a surplus exists, trade between shops. This is something that ought to be discussed in another thread however, as we\'re heading well away from issues with catalogs here.


    I completely agree with you on making ships from the catalog require resources and thereby tackling the problem of \"infinite\" resources. However I think your catalog idea and an improved ingame shop/trading system are so closely linked to eachother that they also should be discussed together.

    I would suggest the following:
    As suggested, in order to buy a ship from the catalog you need the resources for it.
    Those ships won\'t spawn all of a sudden, but will be constructed in shipyards (e.g. docking areas big enough and connected to a shipyard module). In doing so, both your idea of gradually building a ship and the problem of the too small inventory can be considered, as you would be able to store the items needed in attached storage units.

    Subsequently, the demand for certain blocks would increase dramatically but I don\'t agree with Geiger, that you then would have to search 100s of sectors for power modules. If you\'d implement a \'market hub\' similar to the faction hub, where players can enter and read sell or buy offers with variable prices, you\'d enable a market that can repsond to such shortages. For example, player A is looking for 40k power modules and made a corresponding buy offer at a certain price. Player b has those modules in stock or produced them in his factory and is willing to sell them at that price. He stores the modules in his shop, accepts the offer and player A now can collect his items at the shop of player B.

    In doing so, the dependency on NPC shops will be very low and them being out of stock won\'t be a big problem, as the inter-player trade will take care of it.
     

    NeonSturm

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    While you raise a good point about things getting in the way of ship construction, this is something that can be considered while writing it. Construction can be halted while something is obstructing the build site, and no other blocks can be filled in.


    And maybe someone get catched inside :)

    *Joking* I would design a lava/water sphere with average shielding to catch annoying little fighters :P
     

    NeonSturm

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    Most capital ships are built out of a greater variety of blocks than what your inventory can accomodate for


    Repair would solve that problem. You place only as much blocks as you have, but you need to be able to pay a whole 10^3 (or 8^3) cube at once (to make it clearly visible that you didn\'t pay everything)

    This feature is coming, already available in pre/dev.



    I think newbe-essential parts should be buyable in shops. A low capacity and low but \"continuous\" regain of credits and items would make it unattractive for advanced players (demands).

    These setups should be available through npc shops for newbes at spawn:

    • Core, 1 power, 2-3 thrusters, 1 shield
    • Core, 1 power, 2 thrusters, 1 jammer
     
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    An 18k block capital ship would take about an hour to build itself, whereas a 100 block fighter would take only 20 seconds.


    How about no?

    Because my personal ship I use to RP (consisting of more than two million blocks), would take...oooh...

    Over one hundred hours to make.

    Yeah, no mate, I honestly do not want to use up a shit load of electricity just to spawn a ship that I have every right to simply comandeer.
     

    lupoCani

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    I personally don\'t see your problem with large ships requiring a lot of time, rescources and infrastructure to construct, with or without a schematic.
     
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    Just remove the credit cap, and tripple the blueprint price.

    Massive ships allready reach the cap, thus removing it, and making it more expensive, will help.
     
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    Dudes, you know you are talking to a one-year-old thread, right ?



    The before-last idea already existed as a server-setting feature (the admin of that server picks if he wants people to buy ships with the resources, with both, or just money, the default), the last idea was bad, and the rest is just chatter :P
     

    NeonSturm

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    Yes of course, but what many people seem to not like is the ability to spawn massive amounts of materiels out of thin air, regardless of if there is a single block of that materiel within 100 sectors.


    That is not the problem.



    The problem is, that the price is defined in block-config.

    block config always store the minimum price. You buy your ship, salvage it and sell it in a shop with double prices.

    And that is my main concern on this.



    Although buy-with-blocks already is implemented :) thank schema :), It would be cool if a ship can be bought part-by-part (some ships don\'t fit into your inventory) or there would be a item-list and it would allow to pay with items in plex-storages of your current ship..



    True, there would be some big ships which require a lot of work to collect, but it\'s a server setting how much shops can have and factory balance is still not the final one.




    Dudes, you know you are talking to a one-year-old thread, right?


    That makes the topic not less valid.

    Do you know how many pages of suggestions we already have? :) 2 Days and some suggestions already moved to page 3...
     

    Ithirahad

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    I don\'t really like buying with blocks, however buying with credits should require both a secure shipyard, credits, and some amount of time.
     
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    Not exactly sure what you mean by this... Factories greatly reduce price of manufactured item, I personally use them to stock up shops for a cheaper price so I can sell for lower than regular market value but still get money. There is also a setting where you can pay for your ships with blocks -_-