Bring back random elements to crafting

[Remus]

1 hour ago, Fargo said:

One golden 5th equals 5 golden 5th rate duras each 2 days, what seems more than enough. Labour has nothing to do with gold balancing, the high labour value we are used to is a result, not a cause of rising prices/inflation.

My reply was to a comment which I took - perhaps incorrectly - to be a complaint by a combat-orientated player that they had to spend time crafting. Personally I don't think players should be forced to craft, but at the moment everyone is because of the severe restrictions on labour hours.

Two days for a light frigate might well be fine if everyone makes good use of their labour hours, but this doesn't make it right. PotBS did many things wrong but construction times weren't far off, in my opinion. What would you say the equivalent ship is to a Surprise? A Raa, perhaps? Well, a Raa took 0.37 days; a Raa Mastercraft 0.5 days. Combat-orientated players could make a bit of money on the side by using all their labour hours to harvest resources in one port and sell them to guild mates or in the Auction House, with just a few mouse clicks. But simply harvesting resources in NA won't cut it because this uses so few labour hours and it is labour hours that are the problem. Okay, so they could make planks, frame sections, ballast and such like, but even this is unlikely to make much dent in their LH. Or they could set up a slave market labour office in a (generally) inconvenient port and sell their labour that way.

But - and I really cannot emphasise this enough - labour is of vital importance to gold balancing. Suppose we just had just one type of ship, there were no intermediate manufactured goods and resources were free and infinite. If this ship took 10 days of labour hours to make and cost 1 million gold, the most gold that could be sunk through crafting would be 100k per player per day. Furthermore these ships would be carefully preserved because it would take 10 days to make a new one. Finally, since it isn't too hard to make 1 million in a few hours playing, the price of these ships would be about 10 million, but this would increase over time because for each ship made - 10 player-days - only 1 million would be taken out of circulation.

Now, suppose the labour time was reduced to 1 day, still costing 1 million. Now players could sink 1 million gold per day in crafting. Probably not everyone would, but then not everyone goes out hunting LGVs to make money, so money in and money out of the server might be pretty close. And if enough money isn't coming in, then it's not too hard for the would-be ship buyer to go and capture a couple of trade ships to get the money he needs. Ships would be reasonably plentiful and people would be more willing to risk them since it wouldn't be too hard to get a replacement. The selling price would doubtless be significantly higher than 1 million as the crafter would want reward for his work, but the price probably wouldn't increase much over time.

Now set the labour to 2 hours. Every player could make 12 ships a day if they wanted. Well, even the most reckless player wouldn't lose that many ships, so many players would stop crafting altogether and do something more interesting (to them). Crafters can now each sink 12 million gold a day, far more than average income, so inflationary pressures pretty much die away. Oh, the crafter will still want reward so he may charge 2 million, but there won't be any pressure for the price to rise as so much gold can be sunk, and prices would be more likely to fall due to competition between crafters. Players can be as reckless with their ships as they like as they know it will be easy to get a replacement, and even if they have to pay 2 million for it, this isn't an unobtainable amount by any means.

I use these just to illustrate the point; I don't actually favour the last example as it wouldn't provide enough interest for people who do want to craft, but it sounds to me a damned sight better for the game than the first.

[Fargo]

3 hours ago, Remus said:

My reply was to a comment which I took - perhaps incorrectly - to be a complaint by a combat-orientated player that they had to spend time crafting. Personally I don't think players should be forced to craft, but at the moment everyone is because of the severe restrictions on labour hours.

Well you claimed that crafting takes too long, but thats not the case. In general it makes no sense to look at actual broken economy btw.

3 hours ago, Remus said:

Two days for a light frigate might well be fine if everyone makes good use of their labour hours, but this doesn't make it right. PotBS did many things wrong but construction times weren't far off, in my opinion. What would you say the equivalent ship is to a Surprise? A Raa, perhaps? Well, a Raa took 0.37 days; a Raa Mastercraft 0.5 days.

Be careful not to mix up stuff. 5 dura ship = 5 ships in 2 days = 0,4 days/ship. The question is if you can compare the combat speed in those games. In NA it takes quite some time to loose a ship, 5 dura ships not rarely lasted for weeks and longer.

3 hours ago, Remus said:

But - and I really cannot emphasise this enough - labour is of vital importance to gold balancing.

No, its not. Look, the balancing of labour cost and generation/player needs to make sure that players can supply themselfe. When X amount of labour is sunk (ships+kits) by 2k players each day, 2k players need to generate roughly X amount of labour each day. This is seperate and independent from gold balancing. 

Assume you earn 10 gold, and you sink a ship worth 8 gold (resource value) each day. Balancing is fine and independent from labour balancing. Labour in this case just needs to make sure that your not limited to craft the one ship you need each day. Assume you could craft 100 ships each day, thats a possible money sink of 800 gold/day. 1) This is not important and says nothing about inflation, because you only stack 2 gold each day. 2) The gold wouldnt be sunk, until the 100 ships you crafted are lost. Its doesnt matter if you stack gold, or items of the same value that can be traded back into gold.

Lets look at your example. A ship costs/sinks 1 mio., thats the pure resource value that goes to npcs. You earn 1 mio in a few hours, lets say one day of playtime, so 1mio/day. The ship uses 10 days of LH. This alone doesnt tell much, because its important to know the lifetime for that ship. If you sink a ship each 10 days, labour balancing would be fine, but gold rewards are 10 times too high/ ship cost 10 times too low. If you sink a ship each day, gold balancing would be fine, but either labour cost too high, or labour generation too low. 

 

Edited April 3, 2017 by Fargo

[Remus]

1 hour ago, Fargo said:

Be careful not to mix up stuff. 5 dura ship = 5 ships in 2 days = 0,4 days/ship. The question is if you can compare the combat speed in those games. In NA it takes quite some time to loose a ship, 5 dura ships not rarely lasted for weeks and longer.

I think we must be playing different games. I'd be happy enough if each playing session gave me three battles, one I won, one I escaped from and one I lost. Right now I'm levelling, checking out Testbed, spending time looking at game mechanics and such like, so I'm not playing quite as I would normally, but this whole game is about ship combat, and to my mind ship combat means someone losing a ship.

Replacing these lost ships, and supplying bigger, better ships to players as they level up and acquire wealth (these are separate things, btw), should be both the principle driving force of the economy and the primary gold sink in the game.

1 hour ago, Fargo said:

No, its not. Look, the balancing of labour cost and generation/player needs to make sure that players can supply themselfe. When X amount of labour is sunk (ships+kits) by 2k players each day, 2k players need to generate roughly X amount of labour each day. This is seperate and independent from gold balancing.

Not at all. Two things:

1. The X amount of labour does not need to be generated by all 2000 players. It would be an entirely satisfactory economy if only 50 dedicated crafters generated the X amount of labour and everyone else let theirs go to waste. What really does not work though if it needs 2500 players to generate the labour to supply 2000 players with ships.
2. Irrespective of how many people the X amount of labour is generated by, it should sink perhaps 75% of all the gold generated by those 2k players each day. I might have the percentage wrong, but 75% is closer to the mark than the perhaps 20% it is now. It cannot be 100% because gold disappears from circulation, either by hoarding (which pretty much everyone does, to some degree) or players leaving the game taking their gold with them. In an ideal world, the amount of gold in circulation divided by the number of active players should remain more or less constant over time.

1 hour ago, Fargo said:

Assume you earn 10 gold, and you sink a ship worth 8 gold (resource value) each day. Balancing is fine and independent from labour balancing. Labour in this case just needs to make sure that your not limited to craft the one ship you need each day. Assume you could craft 100 ships each day, thats a possible money sink of 800 gold/day. 1) This is not important and says nothing about inflation, because you only stack 2 gold each day. 2) The gold wouldnt be sunk, until the 100 ships you crafted are lost. Its doesnt matter if you stack gold, or items of the same value that can be traded back into gold.

It is a mistake to think of a ship (or anything else) having an intrinsic value. It is also a mistake to think of an individual player's gold acquisitions and spending. I might get 10 gold by capturing an NPC trader and taking its goods. If I sell this to the shop I have brought 10 new gold pieces into the economy, which needs to be sunk somehow so as not to cause inflation. If, on the other hand, I sold the cargo to another player, I would still have 10 gold myself, but no new gold will have entered the economy and no new gold sink is needed. The ship I am sailing in could be sunk in battle (no new gold enters the economy), captured or traded to another player (no new gold for this transaction), listed in the shop (some gold sunk), sold in the shop (new gold into economy) or broken for parts (no new gold). The subesequent owner, if there is one, has the same options. This is why whenever I refer to sunk gold it is at the point the gold passes out of the game. Crafters harvesting oak sink gold. Crafters listing ships in the shop sink gold. Players buying ships from NPC sellers in the shop sink gold. Players buying ships from crafters do not sink gold and players sinking ships don't sink gold either, for the gold was lost to the economy when the ship was made.

1 hour ago, Fargo said:

Lets look at your example. A ship costs/sinks 1 mio., thats the pure resource value that goes to npcs. You earn 1 mio in a few hours, lets say one day of playtime, so 1mio/day. The ship uses 10 days of LH. This alone doesnt tell much, because its important to know the lifetime for that ship. If you sink a ship each 10 days, labour balancing would be fine, but gold rewards are 10 times too high/ ship cost 10 times too low. If you sink a ship each day, gold balancing would be fine, but either labour cost too high, or labour generation too low.

To me, this says much the same as I was saying, that there is a relationship between gold costs and labour costs.

 

[Jesters-Ink]

Top marks for the worst suggestion ever.

How long has it taken us to be rid of the stupid RNG?

"Hey guys we are building a ship today, shall we build a good un, a not so good un, or a pile of shit"?

"We are building a pile of shit today master crafter"!

No thanks Snow.

[Fargo]

11 hours ago, Remus said:

I think we must be playing different games. I'd be happy enough if each playing session gave me three battles, one I won, one I escaped from and one I lost. Right now I'm levelling, checking out Testbed, spending time looking at game mechanics and such like, so I'm not playing quite as I would normally, but this whole game is about ship combat, and to my mind ship combat means someone losing a ship.

Thats why we need to talk about average numbers. You dont know them, neither do i. But playing since steam release i have a good idea of ship lifetimes.

11 hours ago, Remus said:

Not at all. Two things:

1. The X amount of labour does not need to be generated by all 2000 players. It would be an entirely satisfactory economy if only 50 dedicated crafters generated the X amount of labour and everyone else let theirs go to waste. What really does not work though if it needs 2500 players to generate the labour to supply 2000 players with ships.
2. Irrespective of how many people the X amount of labour is generated by, it should sink perhaps 75% of all the gold generated by those 2k players each day. I might have the percentage wrong, but 75% is closer to the mark than the perhaps 20% it is now. It cannot be 100% because gold disappears from circulation, either by hoarding (which pretty much everyone does, to some degree) or players leaving the game taking their gold with them. In an ideal world, the amount of gold in circulation divided by the number of active players should remain more or less constant over time.

1. Its bad to have people generating much more labour than needed, because this makes it neglectable. Labour inflation if you want so, it would loose all value. Labour is distributed to promote player interactions, to not have 50 crafters doin all by themselfe. Its hard to say what numbers would be best and i dont claim to know that saying "roughly". When 2500 e.g. is for mostly first rates, people would use some more second rates when labour becomes limitating, maybe thats not too bad.

2. Only labour used to produce resources sinks money. All material crafting and building the final ships doesnt. Ofcourse about 75% of the generated gold should be sunk, but labour has nothing to do with this! Independent from how much labour is needed for resource production, the production cost can be adjusted how you want it to be.

11 hours ago, Remus said:

It is a mistake to think of a ship (or anything else) having an intrinsic value. It is also a mistake to think of an individual player's gold acquisitions and spending. I might get 10 gold by capturing an NPC trader and taking its goods. If I sell this to the shop I have brought 10 new gold pieces into the economy, which needs to be sunk somehow so as not to cause inflation. If, on the other hand, I sold the cargo to another player, I would still have 10 gold myself, but no new gold will have entered the economy and no new gold sink is needed.

I always talk about average numbers and this was just a very simplified example. We need to look at the whole thing. When i say 10 gold is gained on average, this includes every source of income and every kind of player. You might earn 15 gold one day and 5 the other, but seen over some time 10 gold would be realistic. Maybe now the example explains it for you.

When you capture a trader you bring resources into economy, which have a certain gold value. If you sell to a player, then he does not need to harvest those resources from the npc and therefore no new gold entered economy, but less gold is going to leave. The effect is the same.

11 hours ago, Remus said:

The ship I am sailing in could be sunk in battle (no new gold enters the economy), captured or traded to another player (no new gold for this transaction), listed in the shop (some gold sunk), sold in the shop (new gold into economy) or broken for parts (no new gold). The subesequent owner, if there is one, has the same options. This is why whenever I refer to sunk gold it is at the point the gold passes out of the game. Crafters harvesting oak sink gold. Crafters listing ships in the shop sink gold. Players buying ships from NPC sellers in the shop sink gold. Players buying ships from crafters do not sink gold and players sinking ships don't sink gold either, for the gold was lost to the economy when the ship was made.

You need to look at the whole prozess. Harvesting resources removes gold, but only because someone sunk those resources previously. The amount of ships sunk defines the major money sink. 

11 hours ago, Remus said:

To me, this says much the same as I was saying, that there is a relationship between gold costs and labour costs.

Ofcourse there is a relationship, because seen in days of income and days to craft, balancing would be the same. When Z days of labour are sunk in Z days also Z days of gold income needs to be sunk in Z days. But thats not helpful not knowing Z.

The point is that you cant tell about balancing/inflation without knowing ship lifetimes. You are assuming that all resources bought are sunk, that ship lifetime equals crafting time, that labour is perfectly balanced already. But if you would know the perfect balancing for labour, you would know the amount of ships sunk. Its a contradiction in itself. 

You might say that resources produced even without demand are a money sink, but thats not true. As long as labour is not limiting, gold inflation partly becomes resource inflation, but that doesnt make anything better. 

 

[Kiefer Cain]

7 hours ago, Jesters-Ink said:

Top marks for the worst suggestion ever.

How long has it taken us to be rid of the stupid RNG?

"Hey guys we are building a ship today, shall we build a good un, a not so good un, or a pile of shit"?

"We are building a pile of shit today master crafter"!

No thanks Snow.

I don't like the suggestion, BUT it could be said that it would be a solid representation of a product designed by lobbyists vs. those that know what they are doing or want.  Some modern day military boondoggles as an example... lol.

[Remus]

8 hours ago, Fargo said:

1. Its bad to have people generating much more labour than needed, because this makes it neglectable. Labour inflation if you want so, it would loose all value. Labour is distributed to promote player interactions, to not have 50 crafters doin all by themselfe. Its hard to say what numbers would be best and i dont claim to know that saying "roughly". When 2500 e.g. is for mostly first rates, people would use some more second rates when labour becomes limitating, maybe thats not too bad.

Having multiple limiting factors is great: gold, labour hours, resource availability (location and quantity), refit availibility (location), blueprint availibility, number of building slots per player, buidling capacities, drop rates for compass wood - it all adds variety and interest to the game, and I think this is something we both agree on.

But they don't all carry the same level of importance. Gold isn't necessarily the most important, but it is the one everyone understands so generally receives the most focus. In this game, gold is farly easy to get hold of (admittedly this may well change), so the problem is not so much making sure ship click costs are affordable as making sure there are sufficient gold sinks. Again, I expect we both agree.

Restricting the availability of certain resources: live oak and cedar spring instantly to mind, and restricting the availability of blueprints (or introducing writs or some other mechanism), makes it harder to make certain specific types of ships, but not ships in general, and you can overcome these limits with more sailing (collecting cedar from Bermuda), some convoluted trading (to get live oak from Americans), more grinding to get Marks for writs (writs is a PotBS term - I forget what they are calling the Admiralty ships on Testbed): very much like gold, you can get what you want if you are willing to work for it.

But labour hours fall into a different category. They form a hard cap on production, on the number of ships being made. If players (for whatever reason) want more ships, then for an individual player is means paying more money so you get the ship rather than the other chap, but somewhere at the other end of the chain there is someone who doesn't get a ship. But this is a PvP ship combat game (ok, it's other things as well, but PvP ship combat is at its core). The last thing you want to do is place a hard cap on the number of new ships that can be made, for then you are placing a hard cap on the amount of ship combat that can take place. The game is called Naval Action, not Naval Conservation.

My 50 players doing all the crafting for 2000 players is rather extrreme, but we must never be at the position where 2000 players cannot make the ships that 2000 players want (want, not need - there should be no 'need' in a game) however hard they grind, haul, conquer, scavenge or anything else the game offers that makes players work for their goodies. I'd much rather 50 players being able to meet all the needs of 2000 than needing 2001, or even 2000 where 500 of them really, really don't want to do crafitng. It's bad enough they have to grind to get money to pay for their ships without having to haul coal to their iron ore port as well.

8 hours ago, Fargo said:

2. Only labour used to produce resources sinks money. All material crafting and building the final ships doesnt.

You are right, of course, but it doesn't have to be like this, and I don't understand why it is. Building ships surely costs as much money as mining coal. However it doesn't really matter as there is little point sinking money in iron ore unless you are going to use it to make iron ingots, and then iron fittings and carriages (for example) and ultimately making ships, burning hours in the process. Two of my five buildings have now been sat at capacity unharvested for days because I've got a month or more's stockpile of each resource, so I've stopped sinking gold there. I expect I could stop harvesting wood as well except I seem addicted to compass wood, even though I don't actually use any as I favour teak/planking over strength or stiffness and I'm not at a level to need knees. So I sell it at vast markup for money I don't need.

8 hours ago, Fargo said:

You need to look at the whole prozess. Harvesting resources removes gold, but only because someone sunk those resources previously. The amount of ships sunk defines the major money sink.

I disagree. I suspect that more ships are made for players to simply to add to their fleets or to replace ships they no longer want than are made to replace actual sunk ships. If you only look at sunk ships, you are missing half the picture. Replacing sunk ships is less than the absolute minimum the economy needs to do, for otherwise after server wipe you are consigning people to just having the four ships they are given, and replacements as they are sunk. I don't know about you, but I want at least 20 ships spread around my outposts. We also need to consider captures from NPCs, but this is difficult as we don't yet know the difference between NPC and player-made ships..

8 hours ago, Fargo said:

The point is that you cant tell about balancing/inflation without knowing ship lifetimes. You are assuming that all resources bought are sunk, that ship lifetime equals crafting time, that labour is perfectly balanced already. But if you would know the perfect balancing for labour, you would know the amount of ships sunk. Its a contradiction in itself.

I can tell, but only because we know (becasue of the high price paid for labour contracts) that at the moment labour hours are a limiting factor. If we were in the situation that 50 crafters could supply the need for 2000 players then you are right, we would need to know how many labour hours were actually being used. But right now I can assume everyone is using all their labour hours, farming all their resources or buying off NPCs in the shop (for almost exactly the same price - certainly this is what I find when I buy from NPCs). It seems a l'Ocean Gold, Live Oak Build Strength sinks the most gold per LH day at 70000, and I say it isn't enough. You might now say that only 1500 rather than 2000 players actually use all their labour, and I say, well, that makes the situation worse. 2000 players making gold Live Oak Build Strength l'Oceans (God help us!) would sink 140 million gold a day, but if only 1500 players are doing so then only 105 million is being sunk. Then you say some of the resources are being captured from NPC traders, so the gold isn't sunk after all. Situation worse again.

8 hours ago, Fargo said:

You might say that resources produced even without demand are a money sink, but thats not true. As long as labour is not limiting, gold inflation partly becomes resource inflation, but that doesnt make anything better.

I do say this, but I don't think this is any dispute between us, for if the demand isn't there players will eventually stop producing (as I have done).

I do not understand what you mean by resource inflation.

[Raekur]

So for the OP that wants random elements in crafting, how about answering this...If a PVP no crafter wants a specific ship built, say Live Oak, Build strength, Strong Hull who will pay for the resources for the ships that do not match that build? You will wind up with an increase in ship prices to cover the possibility of a ship being built not matching the desired build. So for instance, if it costs 112411 in materials to build a constitution and there are 6 possible options then instead of charging 200,000 for a single ship now the price will increase to around 600,000 to cover the chance of a ship not matching the desired outcome this allows for 2 failures to occur before actually building the desired vessel. Production cost increases are always passed on to the consumer. 

[Corona Lisa]

23 minutes ago, Raekur said:

So for the OP that wants random elements in crafting, how about answering this...If a PVP no crafter wants a specific ship built, say Live Oak, Build strength, Strong Hull who will pay for the resources for the ships that do not match that build? You will wind up with an increase in ship prices to cover the possibility of a ship being built not matching the desired build. So for instance, if it costs 112411 in materials to build a constitution and there are 6 possible options then instead of charging 200,000 for a single ship now the price will increase to around 600,000 to cover the chance of a ship not matching the desired outcome this allows for 2 failures to occur before actually building the desired vessel. Production cost increases are always passed on to the consumer. 

How about you read the actual post and not just the headline. I dont want completely random ships, I also dont want good and bad ships like the previous RNG ships (2-4 vs 3-5 ships). I want ships with different attributes on top of their stats. Means if you craft a Live Oak BS Strong hull consti you always get that ship + 3 random extra attributes (2% speed, 1cm more thickness, 5 more morale for boarding, etc...).

This way you always get a good ship when you craft it, but you only get an exceptional good one when you craft it multiple times. That means casuals can still afford ships and rich guys can waste all their money for perfect ships. Casual guy can still beat rich guy cuz ship difference is just minor.

On 3.4.2017 at 2:15 PM, Fargo said:

Where is the connection between inflation and rng?!

To reduce inflation the first step is resonable balancing between gold rewards and ship cost + further costs.

To control inflation just give people something expensive to buy/craft, that is valuable, but not necessary to play. This can be higher quality ships (only providing minor boni), first+second rates (not necessary in a 3rd rate meta), one specific ship of each class, or simply paints and marks.

Its just an idea, the points you make are also very good. I just think there needs to be something to stop inflation and I dont really care what it is.

On 3.4.2017 at 2:27 AM, Willis PVP2 said:

NO!

Building a ship is a process. There is NOTHING random about it. I've built several wooden boats myself, ........

RNG does not apply to shipbuilding if the shipwright knows how to make a ship and is using the proper materials.

If someone wants to point to certain ships of the same design with different handling characteristics, I'd wager that the ship that had a worse reputation as a sailor was probably stowed differently or canvassed differently. If plans are followed precisely, there is VERY LITTLE difference in one hull to the next.

This is about economy, not about realism. If you want more realism they could also add that you start from 0 everytime you sink? Is this still fun for you? Is it balanced?

On 3.4.2017 at 11:18 AM, admin said:

We experimented a lot with randomness in crafting, and found that players still try to build a better ship. There is no point to fight with that desire. 

Okay I get that, but the problem with the endless money generation is still there. Any ideas how to fix this?

Edited April 4, 2017 by NeeRo

[Raekur]

3 minutes ago, NeeRo said:

Okay I get that, but the problem with the endless money generation is still there. Any ideas how to fix this?

And how is adding random extra attributes to a ship going to increase cost of building? And, if you introduce something that causes an increase in ship building costs then you yes have created a money sink as those costs will be passed on to the consumers. Same would be true from what I said with randomizing the 6 current ship trims that exist. Adding 3 new possible items to a ship actually accomplishes nothing beyond that except a few extra "freebies" with the ship. If the "freebies" are not part of the building process of what kind of ship is ordered, then there is no increase in cost of building a ship and no increase in price to cover the cost of "random" builds that do not match the original order. So which way do you want it? Extra goodies on each build or a way to increase costs to create a money sink? 

[Fargo]

2 hours ago, Remus said:

I can tell, but only because we know (becasue of the high price paid for labour contracts) that at the moment labour hours are a limiting factor. If we were in the situation that 50 crafters could supply the need for 2000 players then you are right, we would need to know how many labour hours were actually being used. But right now I can assume everyone is using all their labour hours, farming all their resources or buying off NPCs in the shop (for almost exactly the same price - certainly this is what I find when I buy from NPCs). It seems a l'Ocean Gold, Live Oak Build Strength sinks the most gold per LH day at 70000, and I say it isn't enough. You might now say that only 1500 rather than 2000 players actually use all their labour, and I say, well, that makes the situation worse.

I think i found the major missunderstanding causing this discussion. As i said, you assume that labour is well balanced already. But you cant tell that just because people are using all their labour. People would always do this, until gold becomes a limiting factor. You could have high gold inflation and labour inflation at the same time, and you wouldnt notice it with your method. All you can tell is about limiting factors.

My question is not how much people use their labour to transform gold inflation into resource inflation. The question is how much labour do 2000 people need to generate, to supply themselfes with all consumption goods. When i can answer this, i will know the amount of goods that needs to be replaced. 

2 hours ago, Remus said:

I disagree. I suspect that more ships are made for players to simply to add to their fleets or to replace ships they no longer want than are made to replace actual sunk ships. If you only look at sunk ships, you are missing half the picture.

When i say sunk, i mean lost, or needs to be replaced. If you throw away an old ship, well its not technically sunk, but the result is the same. It needs to be replaced. "The major money sink is defined by all consumption goods that need to be replaced." Ships that you buy but never use for example are no consumption goods.

3 hours ago, Remus said:

But labour hours fall into a different category. They form a hard cap on production, on the number of ships being made.

3 hours ago, Remus said:

My 50 players doing all the crafting for 2000 players is rather extrreme, but we must never be at the position where 2000 players cannot make the ships that 2000 players want (want, not need - there should be no 'need' in a game) however hard they grind, haul, conquer, scavenge or anything else the game offers that makes players work for their goodies. I'd much rather 50 players being able to meet all the needs of 2000 than needing 2001, or even 2000 where 500 of them really, really don't want to do crafitng.

Well, of course it should be about needs. If it was about player wishes, they would take everything and for free. Balancing based on player wishes would be horrible. The need definition could exclude first rates for example, so by pure labour balancing those ships become limited. Your PB fleets would run out of ships if your nation would produce mostly first rates. 

And that is no hard cap on production numbers, it is a cap for production capacity. You still can supply the same number of ships, but 3rd and second rates instead of first rates. 

[Fargo]

1 hour ago, NeeRo said:

Its just an idea, the points you make are also very good. I just think there needs to be something to stop inflation and I dont really care what it is.

Well, you didnt made that clear looking at the topic name and your first post;)

1 hour ago, NeeRo said:

I want ships with different attributes on top of their stats. Means if you craft a Live Oak BS Strong hull consti you always get that ship + 3 random extra attributes (2% speed, 1cm more thickness, 5 more morale for boarding, etc...).

And in that way rng would be fine (probably you shouldnt make speed a random attribute). Rng for minor boni is no problem at all. The problem is crafting a fir or teak ship that relies on speed, when speed is based on rng.

But to be a gold sink, rng needs to generate ships that get thrown away. Either rng is fair and balanced, or its a money sink. One excludes the other.

[Remus]

7 hours ago, Fargo said:

I think i found the major missunderstanding causing this discussion. As i said, you assume that labour is well balanced already. But you cant tell that just because people are using all their labour. People would always do this, until gold becomes a limiting factor. You could have high gold inflation and labour inflation at the same time, and you wouldnt notice it with your method. All you can tell is about limiting factors.

I don't think labour is well balanced - but this isn't a disagreement, merely semantics. I think labour is poorly balanced. but I do think that most players do use all their labour. And I then use this to make shortcuts in my analysis - perfectly safely because if players don't use all their labour, the situation is even worse.In short, using labour does not sink enough gold.

Players won't always use all their labour if they don't have to. Why should they? And why should they have to? I mean, I will because I like that part of gameplay, But at the moment - despite being an active crafter - I use a small fraction of my resource buildings because the balance (with labour hours) is such that I don't need to. In a different scenario I might be anxiously getting every last twig out of my forests but not need to worry too much about labour hours; a third scenario might have me starved of gold; in a fourth my crafting capacity might be limited by the amount of real life time I need to spend hauling. None of these is wrong (though some are more disagreeable than others)

7 hours ago, Fargo said:

And that is no hard cap on production numbers, it is a cap for production capacity. You still can supply the same number of ships, but 3rd and second rates instead of first rates. 

No. That is the model that PotBS used. Something like two months of labour hours to make a 2-dura first rate, but a run of the mill 3 dura heavy frigate could be turned out in a day, and small frigates and PvP hunting ships built quicker still. But Naval Action has gone for a more linear approach, meaning that even small frigates take over two days to make. Restrict production of elite ships by all means but right now the stranglehold applies to light frigates.too. This is a PvP ship combat game, but it isn't much fun if all you can afford to lose is a Brig.

[Raekur]

1 hour ago, Remus said:

be turned out in a day, and small frigates and PvP hunting ships built quicker still. But Naval Action has gone for a more linear approach, meaning that even small frigates take over two days to make. Restrict production of elite ships by all means but right now the stranglehold applies to light frigates.too. This is a PvP ship combat game, but it isn't much fun if all you can afford to lose is a Brig.

Doing my impression of Sir Texas - 'Don't want to lose, travel with friends"

[Fargo]

2 hours ago, Remus said:

I don't think labour is well balanced - but this isn't a disagreement, merely semantics. I think labour is poorly balanced. but I do think that most players do use all their labour. And I then use this to make shortcuts in my analysis - perfectly safely because if players don't use all their labour, the situation is even worse.In short, using labour does not sink enough gold.

Players won't always use all their labour if they don't have to. Why should they? And why should they have to? I mean, I will because I like that part of gameplay, But at the moment - despite being an active crafter - I use a small fraction of my resource buildings because the balance (with labour hours) is such that I don't need to. In a different scenario I might be anxiously getting every last twig out of my forests but not need to worry too much about labour hours; a third scenario might have me starved of gold; in a fourth my crafting capacity might be limited by the amount of real life time I need to spend hauling. None of these is wrong (though some are more disagreeable than others)

Ofcourse its a disagreement, because your method assumes that labour is balanced.

Its another big claim to say that people refuse to use their LH, because they dont want to take 3 minutes each day to produce basic stuff. This is not sensible and nonsense to consider for balancing. If it would be much effort, ok, but it is not.

"labour does not sink enough gold" I mean just tell me how you would improve balancing based on that statement. How would you know if you have to decrease the labour cost for resources, if you have to increase the gold cost, or if you have to increase the general labour generation?! I dont think you can, because youre missing a reference point. 

Labour in general does not sink anything. The only connection between labour and gold balancing is that both are based on the amount of consumption goods that needs to be replaced. Another example. Assume we change the labour distribution and resources dont require labour anymore. Now resources are only restricted by gold and building capacities. If there was a gold-labour connection before, suddenly it disappeared?!

2 hours ago, Remus said:

No. That is the model that PotBS used. Something like two months of labour hours to make a 2-dura first rate, but a run of the mill 3 dura heavy frigate could be turned out in a day, and small frigates and PvP hunting ships built quicker still. But Naval Action has gone for a more linear approach, meaning that even small frigates take over two days to make. Restrict production of elite ships by all means but right now the stranglehold applies to light frigates.too. This is a PvP ship combat game, but it isn't much fun if all you can afford to lose is a Brig.

Again, we are talking about 5 dura ships each 2 days. Look at the facts instead of claiming what you believe: 1) People are able to stack hundreds of best quality ships. 2) Over two years it was no problem that ships took too long to craft. 3) With stiffness-speed rng, people could afford to throw away the trash ships. Ship cost was basically twice as high, and we had this for a very long time.

In general you cant compare those games directly, unless the combat speed is similar (=ship lifetime).

[Remus]

 

33 minutes ago, Fargo said:

Ofcourse its a disagreement, because your method assumes that labour is balanced.

I started off by assuming that pretty much everyone uses all their labour - this is true - and my evidence is the high value placed on labour hours. But I would never call this 'balanced'. As I say, this is a safe assumption to use to draw the conclusion that gold sunk per labour 'day' is too low because if it isn't true (and of course I don't think it is literally true - of course there are players who don't use all their labour), then the situation is worse than I portray. I also don't think everyone spends all their labour hours making gold live oak build strength l'Oceans. But as with players using all their labour hours, it provides a worst case scenario.

It is riskier to use this assumption to calculate what a fair average gold sink per labour day is, for then you do need some idea of how many labour hours are used and how much gold actually comes into the game per player day. Which is why I haven't done this, The devs have this information; they can do the calculation. All I am doing is pointing out the current ratio is wrong. If forced to make a guess I'd say that average gold per labour day should increase about fourfold.

33 minutes ago, Fargo said:

Its another big claim to say that people refuse to use their LH, because they dont want to take 3 minutes each day to produce basic stuff. This is not sensible and nonsense to consider for balancing. If it would be much effort, ok, but it is not.

Can you use all your labour hours in a useful way by just spending 3 minutes a day producing basic stuff, stuff that higher level crafters actually need? Genuine question btw. Merely harvesting resources won't do it because relatively little labour is used in harvesting and resources aren't much of a problem anyway: as I say, I do very little harvesting right now. So you need to make things with your oak, hemp, whatever, but most things that need making require more than one ingredient - even making notes (which can easily absorb labour hours) requires two - do copper, silver or gold ever occur in the same port as coal?

Of course you can use labour hours just to make labour contracts, and this I expect is what many non-crafters do.

28 minutes ago, Fargo said:

"labour does not sink enough gold" I mean just tell me how you would improve balancing based on that statement. How would you know if you have to decrease the labour cost for resources, if you have to increase the gold cost, or if you have to increase the general labour generation?! I dont think you can, because youre missing a reference point. 

Because my analysis is based on the assumption that all labour is used then it has to be increasing gold costs. I happen to think that decreasing labour times would increase demand for ships, so decreasing labour time would indeed have some effect, but this is more of a guess than analysis.

28 minutes ago, Fargo said:

Labour in general does not sink anything. The only connection between labour and gold balancing is that both are based on the amount of consumption goods that needs to be replaced. Another example. Assume we change the labour distribution and resources dont require labour anymore. Now resources are only restricted by gold and building capacities. If there was a gold-labour connection before, suddenly it disappeared?!

Somewhere in the crafting process there is a gold cost. Currently it is all in harvesting resources, but it doesn't have to be. It could all be moved to ship blueprints. Somewhere in the crafting process there is a labour hours requirements. Currently this is mostly in ship and note blueprints with relatively little in resource harvesting, but it doesn't have to be. It so happens that for all ships, the total gold cost more or less keeps pace with the total labour hour consumption - if it didn't I wouldn't have been able to carry out the analysis I have - increasing slowly as ships get bigger and of higher quality.

Labour hours are currently more or a restriction than building capacities, which is why my focus is there. If labour hours were removed from the game entirely then of course I'd look at building capacities as the limiting factor and I might come to very different conclusions. In another scenario where resources were free and infinite and there weren't labour hours either, I'd maybe look at item weights and hauling times. But right now, we know labour hours are the restriction (I assume you craft so experience this directly), and I assume (yes, yes I know - I have to assume this because I wasn't here long enough before the server wipe was announced to experience it myself) ... I assume inflation really is an issue because so many players say it is. Inflation merely means more gold is entering the economy than is leaving it (or being locked away); I could look at the supply side but I have chosen to look at the sink.

28 minutes ago, Fargo said:

Again, we are talking about 5 dura ships each 2 days. Look at the facts instead of claiming what you believe: 1) People are able to stack hundreds of best quality ships. 2) Over two years it was no problem that ships took too long to craft. 3) With stiffness-speed rng, people could afford to throw away the trash ships. Ship cost was basically twice as high, and we had this for a very long time.

In general you cant compare those games directly, unless the combat speed is similar (=ship lifetime).

Long term players have lots of ships, true. Hell, I have lots of ships, but almost all of these are NPC-made (I don't know how other players got theirs). As I understand, the devs want to progress to a player-made economy, and they are certainly changing to 1-dura ships.

I'd say PotBS dura loss rates are pretty comparable to NA, but there were no NPC-made ships whatsoever (except for pirates who could cap them).

[Fargo]

6 hours ago, Remus said:

All I am doing is pointing out the current ratio is wrong.

Well, you claimed that labour is significantly affecting gold balancing/inflation, thats why we started this discussion.

Lets get back to this, so maybe we can end it soonish;). You said income should be balanced with the possible gold sink. Your simplified example was a ship costs 1mio and takes 10 days to craft, the possible money sink is 100k/day. Now lets add to this that the ship is also sunk each 10 days. Max money sink and real money sink are 100k/day, income was 1mio/day.

To fix the situation by gold balancing, we can reduce the income to 100k. How should labour fix the problem? By decreasing labour cost to one day, the possible sink becomes 1mio gold/day. But the ship still only sinks each 10 days, the real money sink is still 100k/day.

What happened? Instead of fixing gold inflation, we generated labour inflation in addition. The result would be 10 times more ship supply than demand, everything looses value, eco crashes, etc. You could try to define that as a money sink, but over time the market would be saturated by cheap ships, materials and resources. And finally labour didnt had any affect on gold balancing.

4 hours ago, Remus said:

Because my analysis is based on the assumption that all labour is used then it has to be increasing gold costs. I happen to think that decreasing labour times would increase demand for ships, so decreasing labour time would indeed have some effect, but this is more of a guess than analysis.

What if gold cost was fine already and labour balancing restricted people to do pvp and sink enough gold? Decreasing labour costs would fix it in that case. I dont think you can increase demands by decreasing costs.

2 hours ago, Remus said:

Can you use all your labour hours in a useful way by just spending 3 minutes a day producing basic stuff, stuff that higher level crafters actually need?

Buy/gather oak to craft planks. Buy iron ingots to craft iron fittings. Buy/gather iron ore and coal to craft ingots. Those are not just simple to craft, but also belog to the most needed materials.

Craftable labour contracts are nonesense, lets hope they get rid of this again with the next patch.

2 hours ago, Remus said:

Somewhere in the crafting process there is a gold cost. Currently it is all in harvesting resources, but it doesn't have to be. It could all be moved to ship blueprints.

No, as i just said, assume resources dont require labour anymore. Nothing that costs gold and labour at the same time without changing the total amount of labour used for goods, no labour sinking gold. Balancing would still be fine, because gold and labour are balanced seperately.

2 hours ago, Remus said:

Labour hours are currently more or a restriction than building capacities, which is why my focus is there.

Its not important what is more restricting. Building capacities dont have much to do with general labour balancing. When they dont restrict the production of recources needed, they just define how resource production is distributed.

No doubt that labour is the most restricting factor here, but that doesnt mean it is restricting anything! Claiming that labour is restricting and ships take too long to craft is a ridiculous claim, while the whole server stacks incredible amounts of ships.

2 hours ago, Remus said:

Long term players have lots of ships, true. Hell, I have lots of ships, but almost all of these are NPC-made (I don't know how other players got theirs). As I understand, the devs want to progress to a player-made economy, and they are certainly changing to 1-dura ships.

Those ships are crafted, what do you mean by npc ships?

[Remus]

2 minutes ago, Fargo said:

Well, you claimed that labour is significantly affecting gold balancing/inflation, thats why we started this discussion.

Lets get back to this, so maybe we can end it soonish;). You said income should be balanced with the possible gold sink. Your simplified example was a ship costs 1mio and takes 10 days to craft, the possible money sink is 100k/day. Now lets add to this that the ship is also sunk each 10 days. Max money sink and real money sink are 100k/day, income was 1mio/day.

To fix the situation by gold balancing, we can reduce the income to 100k. How should labour fix the problem? By decreasing labour cost to one day, the possible sink becomes 1mio gold/day. But the ship still only sinks each 10 days, the real money sink is still 100k/day.

Yes, I agree. Reducing income would have the same effect. My guess is that making sinks deeper is easier as there are just so many different methods of making money in this game - but at least one of them will cease (gold for damage), so perhaps the devs want to throttle the supply side instead, or maybe do both.

2 minutes ago, Fargo said:

What happened? Instead of fixing gold inflation, we generated labour inflation in addition. The result would be 10 times more ship supply than demand, everything looses value, eco crashes, etc. You could try to define that as a money sink, but over time the market would be saturated by cheap ships, materials and resources. And finally labour didnt had any affect on gold balancing.

Labour inflation - now what on earth is that? Labour generation is fixed, labour for each recipe is fixed and the amount that can be stored is capped, in this game as in every other I've played. Okay, NA effectively allows infinite storage with labour contracts, but who will use these if labour plentiful, and neither of us like LCs in any case.

What you seem worried about is labour devaluation. Currently LCs can sell for over 500k. If labour were plentiful they would become almost worthless. What is wrong with this this? Eco won't crash unless players either don't want new player-made ships or they cannot get the gold to pay for them.

2 minutes ago, Fargo said:

What if gold cost was fine already and labour balancing restricted people to do pvp and sink enough gold? Decreasing labour costs would fix it in that case. I dont think you can increase demands by decreasing costs.

I don't want to increase demand - this cannot come from the economy. I want to be able to meet demand. I want crafting to be able to meet the maximum possible demand. The primary purpose of this game is PvP ship combat. Crafting has two main roles: to supply ships the PvP players need (not to restrict the ships they can have) and to sink gold that players grind for to get their ships. It need not be (and indeed in NA it isn't) the only way of supplying ships to players or sinking gold, but since Naval Action has crafting, it ought to be the principle means of both supplying ships and sinking gold.

This is not to say all ships should have unrestricted avaialibility. I think we are all agreed that first rates should be significantly harder to obtain than they are now, and part of this restriction could be through the economy, and may well involve labour hours too. But excluding 'elite' ships, any ship a PvP player is able to grind the gold for, the crafter should be able to craft in similar time. I deliberately use the terms 'PvP player' and 'crafter' as if these are two separate players because they often are, but don't take this to mean players shouldn't do both.

2 minutes ago, Fargo said:

No, as i just said, assume resources dont require labour anymore. Nothing that costs gold and labour at the same time without changing the total amount of labour used for goods, no labour sinking gold. Balancing would still be fine, because gold and labour are balanced seperately.

I don't understand what you mean. I don't mind assuming resources don't require labour, but I am only looking at the current scenario where:

• crafting ships costs gold and labour (somewhere in the process - it doesn't matter where)
• gold costs more or less keep pace with labour hours
• labour is in relatively short supply

If labour were unlimited, or labour hours were abolished altogether then gold per labour hour would be more or less irrelevent. In any case, I can only ever say that gold per labour hour is too low, because this is the only case I can safely assume that all labour hours are used, being the worst case scenario. If gold costs were 100 times higher I couldn't say gold costs per labour hour were too high, as to say this I'd need to know how many labour hours were actually used. Gold costs probably would be too high in this case, but it would probably be argued using some other method. Gold cost per ship perhaps.

2 minutes ago, Fargo said:

No doubt that labour is the most restricting factor here, but that doesnt mean it is restricting anything! Claiming that labour is restricting and ships take too long to craft is a ridiculous claim, while the whole server stacks incredible amounts of ships.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

2 minutes ago, Fargo said:

Those ships are crafted, what do you mean by npc ships?

Ships bought from NPCs in the shop or captured off NPCs. I've only got three or four player-made ships myself, all crafted by myself; all the rest are NPC ships.

[Fargo]

11 hours ago, Remus said:

Labour inflation - now what on earth is that? Labour generation is fixed, labour for each recipe is fixed and the amount that can be stored is capped, in this game as in every other I've played. Okay, NA effectively allows infinite storage with labour contracts, but who will use these if labour plentiful, and neither of us like LCs in any case.

What you seem worried about is labour devaluation. Currently LCs can sell for over 500k. If labour were plentiful they would become almost worthless. What is wrong with this this? Eco won't crash unless players either don't want new player-made ships or they cannot get the gold to pay for them.

Inflation is a process of devaluation, not specifically for gold. When we generate much more LH each day than needed to be replaced, low demand and high supply would decrease value. The amount that can be stored by yourself is limited, but you can store infinite labour within crafted items, unless gold is restricting you. 

Thats the difference between the actual situation and the example (not ment to reflect the actual situation). When we have equally too much labour and gold, nothing is limiting production, labour and gold both loose value equally. But the actual eco is much more inflated by gold, labour is limiting, thats why prices are high and the market isnt flooded. (Probably also because its dead anyway.)

Im only worried about, that you might just not want to understand. Your point is that reducing labour cost/increasing production rates works as a gold sink. Stacking resources, materials and ships is no gold sink for two reasons. You can trade those items back into gold, and they never rot/keep value forever. You can see it as different currencies, trading one for another 1v1 doesnt sink anything. Yes you payed the npc, but it doesnt matter if everybody is rich of gold, or rich of ships and therefore gold and labour, economy and crafting become meaningless. Eco is "crashed", when it becomes meaningless, when players stop caring about profit.

11 hours ago, Remus said:

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Well, than you must be ignorant.

11 hours ago, Remus said:

Ships bought from NPCs in the shop or captured off NPCs. I've only got three or four player-made ships myself, all crafted by myself; all the rest are NPC ships.

I ment competetive high quality ships, not grey ships or one dura ships you cant use with mods.

11 hours ago, Remus said:

I don't understand what you mean. I don't mind assuming resources don't require labour

Then i misunderstood.

11 hours ago, Remus said:

In any case, I can only ever say that gold per labour hour is too low,

That isnt helpful. x/y=1 has infinite solutions, i cant say if labour balancing, gold balancing, or both are causing the issue. You need to estimate x or y, and that would finally mean estimating the amount of labour or gold that needs to be replaced. 

Also that you can calculate a ratio doesnt mean that labour is affecting gold balancing. You can calculate ratios for anything.

Edited April 6, 2017 by Fargo

[Remus]

2 hours ago, Fargo said:

Inflation is a process of devaluation, not specifically for gold. When we generate much more LH each day than needed to be replaced, low demand and high supply would decrease value. The amount that can be stored by yourself is limited, but you can store infinite labour within crafted items, unless gold is restricting you. 

Well, we're never going to agree here either. Inflation is specifically about gold. If gold is overabundant, whatever is in short supply goes up and up in price. I've been looking at labour, but it also applies to rare drops and other things as well. If labour is overabundant, crafting the same ship doesn't consume more and more labour over time; if oak is overabundant, ships don't start needing more planks to make. Gold is special.

If labour were plentiful and gold still didn't have sufficient sinks, then inflation would attach itself to something else. Resource availability perhaps, or hauling time. Anything that players struggle to obtain or don't want to spend time doing.

If everything were plentiful - players could make any ship they wanted in any port for a few clicks - then even if gold had insufficient sinks you wouldn't get inflation because there is nothing to inflate. There wouldn't be a meaningful economy either and I'd probably not bother playing, so this isn't really a scenario worth considering.

If labour were restricted more than now - say everything took 10 times longer - but gold costs increased 100 fold so gold was in short supply as well, then you would not get inflation even though labour is in short supply, because there isn't any gold to drive it. Sure, players would charge for their labour, for hauling and other things buyers either don't want to or cannot do themselves, but they could only charge relatively small amounts which wouldn't increase over time.

[Fargo]

46 minutes ago, Remus said:

Well, we're never going to agree here either. Inflation is specifically about gold. If gold is overabundant, whatever is in short supply goes up and up in price. I've been looking at labour, but it also applies to rare drops and other things as well. If labour is overabundant, crafting the same ship doesn't consume more and more labour over time; if oak is overabundant, ships don't start needing more planks to make. Gold is special.

Then call it overabundant supply if you have problems with the word inflation, but stick to the point. When labour is overabundant, its value is decreasing, and it looses its function as a limitating factor. Thats the point, because gold also lost that function. Youre talking about other limiting factors, but resource availiability or production capacity is not ment to be a limiting factor. Those would intervene much too late.

Things are much more simple in the game, because the only purpose of gold and labour is ship production. In terms of gold it is no difference to own gold value to gather resources for 100 ships, to own resources for 100 ships, or to own 100 ships. 

You cant serioulsy tell that a situation of inflation and overabundant labour supply would be fine. You cant fix broken gold balancing by breaking up labour balancing as well. In any rational way this makes absolutely no sense, and you can easily proofe that it isnt working that way. 

 

Edited April 6, 2017 by Fargo

[Remus]

3 hours ago, Fargo said:

Then call it overabundant supply if you have problems with the word inflation, but stick to the point. When labour is overabundant, its value is decreasing, and it looses its function as a limitating factor. Thats the point, because gold also lost that function. Youre talking about other limiting factors, but resource availiability or production capacity is not ment to be a limiting factor. Those would intervene much too late.

Things are much more simple in the game, because the only purpose of gold and labour is ship production. In terms of gold it is no difference to own gold value to gather resources for 100 ships, to own resources for 100 ships, or to own 100 ships. 

You cant serioulsy tell that a situation of inflation and overabundant labour supply would be fine. You cant fix broken gold balancing by breaking up labour balancing as well. In any rational way this makes absolutely no sense, and you can easily proofe that it isnt working that way. 

 

Look, we are never going to agree here.

I contend that gold balancing is needed, and so I think do you.

I contend that there is no need whatsoever to 'balance' labour supply, resource supply, hauling times, maximum nunber of buildings or any other crafting limitation I may have omitted, at least not for 'ordianry' production.The balance needed is to provide interest and difficulty so that some players like crafting and others are willing to pay for their services (the two groups of players could be the same people), and this is what drives the economy. Elite ships and builds, such as the current live oak argument, may need very careful balancing indeed in one or more of the areas I listed, but these are special cases.

I have absolutely no idea why you seem to think it desirable for labour hours to be a limiting factor but 'resource availiability or production capacity is not ment to be a limiting factor.' Labour hours aren't either. Why on earth have a PvP ship combat game where players are prevented from building ships to fight with?

Gold has far more purpose than ship productioin. I'd hazard a guess that more gold is exchanged for random drop upgrades than for crafted ships.

And no, of course a situation of inflation and overabundant labour supply isn't fine. But it's only inflation that would be the problem, not the overabundant labour supply.

Anyway, we clearly have either a fundamental difference of opinion, a problem of communication or both and I see no point in continuing this discussion. If you reply I'll read it but I won't respond.

[Fargo]

3 hours ago, Remus said:

Look, we are never going to agree here.

I contend that gold balancing is needed, and so I think do you.

I contend that there is no need whatsoever to 'balance' labour supply, resource supply, hauling times, maximum nunber of buildings or any other crafting limitation I may have omitted, at least not for 'ordianry' production.The balance needed is to provide interest and difficulty so that some players like crafting and others are willing to pay for their services (the two groups of players could be the same people), and this is what drives the economy. Elite ships and builds, such as the current live oak argument, may need very careful balancing indeed in one or more of the areas I listed, but these are special cases.

I have absolutely no idea why you seem to think it desirable for labour hours to be a limiting factor but 'resource availiability or production capacity is not ment to be a limiting factor.' Labour hours aren't either. Why on earth have a PvP ship combat game where players are prevented from building ships to fight with?

Gold has far more purpose than ship productioin. I'd hazard a guess that more gold is exchanged for random drop upgrades than for crafted ships.

And no, of course a situation of inflation and overabundant labour supply isn't fine. But it's only inflation that would be the problem, not the overabundant labour supply.

Anyway, we clearly have either a fundamental difference of opinion, a problem of communication or both and I see no point in continuing this discussion. If you reply I'll read it but I won't respond.

Im sorry if i offended you, it wasnt intended. But this isnt much about opinions. If you claim nonesense and then try to defend your believes for all means, ignoring points, twisting arguments and searching for discrepancies, its going to be harsh. 

Look, i never said anybody should be prevented from playing the game how he wants to. I explained why labour needs balancing and why it makes sense to restrict production capacities by labour. The difference to only gold is that labour is independent from playtime (and gold). A rich crafter or clan is not able to pull out more ships than others.

Economy is driven by demand. Its the same issue you have with gold sinks. Not the production is important, but the amount of goods needed to be replaced that dictates it. Thats why gold balancing needs to be based on consumption goods needed to be replaced. Labour is seperate, it cant generate gold or gold sinks. And you finally agreed on that above, so we can end it here nevertheless.

You know that rare upgrades all stay forever? You should inform yourself how money sinks work, if you dont trust my words.