Crafting = worthless + Fixes <Updated>

[Jacob Elston]

So ships guns were changed from being a group to individual guns, but the prices stayed the same?

It's going to cost a huge amount of money to outfit anything.

[Lady Athena]

12 minutes ago, Jacob Elston said:

So ships guns were changed from being a group to individual guns, but the prices stayed the same?

It's going to cost a huge amount of money to outfit anything.

So this is how it looks to a new player.

Pickle: 45,000

12 36lb medium cannons: 83,304 (atm they are being sold for 6,942 per 1)

Rig repairs (lets say 5) : 3,025

Hull Repairs (lets say 5 again): 5,800

Rum well its cheap cuz you can buy it from NPC for 144 each. 

Final Price for a complete beginner: 137,128.......

 

Ridiculous.

[Hethwill]

Pickle with 36 pounders ? I want one.

[Remus]

18 hours ago, Lady Athena said:

PIckle:

Final resources:
184x Oak Log = 13,432
76x Fir Log = 4,560
57x Hemp = 3,420
20x lignum vitae logs <Buy at 80 per 1> = 1,600
48x stone blocks =  <Buy at 25 per 1> = 1,200
60x Iron Ore = 4,800

100x fish meat <Buying at 42> = 4,200
8x salt <Buying at 40> = 320
Final cost= 33,532

<If you ignore fish meat and salt since those are easy to come by>

Final cost= 29,012

The costs are what it costs me to pull out of my buildings, naturally a crafter is most likely going to build the buildings that he needs the most of to save money. The "Buying at" price is me adding 5g to whatever it'll cost a person to pull out of their economy building to sell to me. costs a person 75-70 gold per lignum viteae log to pull from their building as an example so I'll buy it at 80.

I agree with what you are saying, and the costs for someone starting out crafting are huge compared to sources of income. Crafters are nothing special in this respect - everyone is short of money - but our start up costs are higher than others.

But you are overstating the difficulty of crafting once you have set up your outposts and buildings and got some stock, small stocks, of materials. In your Pickle, for example, I reckon you need 21.25 iron ore; I could be mistaken since the best data I have to hand is Testbed Hotifix 11 which doesn't quite match the current game (but is after the coal to charcoal change), but I had a quick check on Live and I didn't spot any differences affecting the Pickle. Now, clearly to make your first Pickle you cannot harvest 21.25 iron ore and then make the ingots, fittings, barrels, rudder thingies, etc, and I guess the 60 you mention is what you need for the first one. But for the second, you'll have spare iron ingots, spare rudder parts, spare barrels, so you won't need so much, and your second ship will cost a lot less. I reckon an Oak/Oak Pickle costs just over 19k in harvesting resources.

It's not just money. The Pickle and all its constituent parts takes 628 LH - about 15 real life hours without perks. But to harvest all the materials takes less than 12 level 1 resource building hours. You can see it from the numbers you post, even though you list start up rather than ongoing quantities. 184 oak logs take 5 hours; 76 fir is just over 2 hours. 3 hours 25 minutes for hemp and so on. With a shipyard and a workshop you have 3 resource building slots to play with, easily enough to make all the resources you need by rotating buildings every .... well after my initial rotation on Testbed hotfix 7 I didn't swap a building out till the next wipe, which I think was well over a week. In a short while you'll maybe swap one building over once a month when you need more stone, lignum or fir. So no need to rely on other people or buy goods from the marketplace (and don't complain if resources can be bought cheaper than you can make them - just buy them and save yourself the LH).

I reckon this unexpected overabundance of harvestable resources has caught a lot of people out. They've seen they need to give up two slots for a shipyard and workshop, seen that resources aren't seeded in shops any more and have panicked, built iron mines, oak forests and fir forests and are desperately trying to find the money to harvest nearly 1000 of each resource every day. But you don't need to. Scrape together some money by all means but use it to tear down that fir forest when you've extracted a few hundred logs and build a stone mine or lignum forest - it is cheaper to put up a new building than it is to harvest 200 fir logs you don't really need .

[Lady Athena]

10 minutes ago, Remus said:

I agree with what you are saying, and the costs for someone starting out crafting are huge compared to sources of income. Crafters are nothing special in this respect - everyone is short of money - but our start up costs are higher than others.

But you are overstating the difficulty of crafting once you have set up your outposts and buildings and got some stock, small stocks, of materials. In your Pickle, for example, I reckon you need 21.25 iron ore; I could be mistaken since the best data I have to hand is Testbed Hotifix 11 which doesn't quite match the current game (but is after the coal to charcoal change), but I had a quick check on Live and I didn't spot any differences affecting the Pickle. Now, clearly to make your first Pickle you cannot harvest 21.25 iron ore and then make the ingots, fittings, barrels, rudder thingies, etc, and I guess the 60 you mention is what you need for the first one. But for the second, you'll have spare iron ingots, spare rudder parts, spare barrels, so you won't need so much, and your second ship will cost a lot less. I reckon an Oak/Oak Pickle costs just over 19k in harvesting resources.

It's not just money. The Pickle and all its constituent parts takes 628 LH - about 15 real life hours without perks. But to harvest all the materials takes less than 12 level 1 resource building hours. You can see it from the numbers you post, even though you list start up rather than ongoing quantities. 184 oak logs take 5 hours; 76 fir is just over 2 hours. 3 hours 25 minutes for hemp and so on. With a shipyard and a workshop you have 3 resource building slots to play with, easily enough to make all the resources you need by rotating buildings every .... well after my initial rotation on Testbed hotfix 7 I didn't swap a building out till the next wipe, which I think was well over a week. In a short while you'll maybe swap one building over once a month when you need more stone, lignum or fir. So no need to rely on other people or buy goods from the marketplace (and don't complain if resources can be bought cheaper than you can make them - just buy them and save yourself the LH).

I reckon this unexpected overabundance of harvestable resources has caught a lot of people out. They've seen they need to give up two slots for a shipyard and workshop, seen that resources aren't seeded in shops any more and have panicked, built iron mines, oak forests and fir forests and are desperately trying to find the money to harvest nearly 1000 of each resource every day. But you don't need to. Scrape together some money by all means but use it to tear down that fir forest when you've extracted a few hundred logs and build a stone mine or lignum forest - it is cheaper to put up a new building than it is to harvest 200 fir logs you don't really need .

I'm confused.. are you really argueing that tearing down buildings and reubilding them when you need the resources is cheaper? I hardly think so. 10k a building.. + the gold needed to extract the goods does not = less than just buying it from a player.

Nor is sailing around for 8 hours building and tearing down buildings and pumping another 20-50k for ports, or whatever to build your buildings in the first place a good use of your gold either. If you're trying to argue that being an independent crafter is possible, or should be possible.. I have to greatly disagree with you, as no game where a crafter can be 100% independent ever works out well. Despite the fact 90% of MMO's do this, it's not the best way to do it. Every MMO or multiplayer game that has had it where no crafter can be independent has always had the best economy, best player base, and the most fun and rewarding crafting.

My first initial pickel will cost this amount, the following ones crunching the numbers will cost me maybe 5-10k less, but that's still an extreme amount for a new player who is going to be spending 60+ thousand on a ship, cannons, etc. only to run the risk of losing it before he even nets back 20k in the OW.

------------------

Also want to say, I don't think anyone's suggesting, or arguing, or is even stupid enough to think you have to spend 100k and pull out 1000 logs or iron every day. You pull out what you need, nothing more.

[Lady Athena]

27 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

Pickle with 36 pounders ? I want one.

Just going off of what the frack the websites tell me. Seeing as how there's no website or at least I couldn't find one that just straight out tells you the size of cannons ships use, instead adding a confusing formula weight of all of them combined so hardcore players and staff can stroke their epeen knowing what it means while beginners, or semi new people are left scratching their head from nonsensical way you explain it is not my problem. The complete and utter lack of any proper information in-game for basic stuff like this <unless you have the ship, item, etc. already> is also a disturbing trend by the developers, and one I would of thought would of been easy to rectify a few months after testing. Well over a year, the devs are still apparently struggling to fix basic stuff. 

Not to mention the messed up tooltips saying crap like Manpower_modifier_special_<insert more senselesscrap> .4.... completely and utterly useless to players unless you've been playing a crap ton already and already know what it does, or what code words are used in the code of the game to understand wtf it's supposed to do.

So before you get on anyone's rear about false, or wrong information, fix the god damn information, tool tips, lack of information, and everything else in between on your damn sites, and in-game.

 

[Remus]

3 minutes ago, Lady Athena said:

I'm confused.. are you really argueing that tearing down buildings and reubilding them when you need the resources is cheaper? I hardly think so. 10k a building.. + the gold needed to extract the goods does not = less than just buying it from a player.

Yes. that's exactly what I'm saying. Sure, if I knew someone willing to sell lignum for 80 and stone for 25 I'd get them to harvest everything for me and save myself the ever-so-valuable labour hours, but I don't happen to know anyone so generous. But I'll get at least 500 lignum (4 days output) or 1000 stone (2 days output) out of my buildings - both enough to keep me going for at least a couple of weeks - which adds 20 and 10 respectively onto the price. Of course, stone for 30 rather than 20 is one hell of a markup, but it's a tiny cost in the scheme of things, and next time I need a stone mine I'll maybe get 5000 out of it, so they'll cost 22.

21 minutes ago, Lady Athena said:

INor is sailing around for 8 hours building and tearing down buildings and pumping another 20-50k for ports, or whatever to build your buildings in the first place a good use of your gold either. If you're trying to argue that being an independent crafter is possible, or should be possible.. I have to greatly disagree with you, as no game where a crafter can be 100% independent ever works out well. Despite the fact 90% of MMO's do this, it's not the best way to do it. Every MMO or multiplayer game that has had it where no crafter can be independent has always had the best economy, best player base, and the most fun and rewarding crafting.

Outposts are a start up cost. Pay once only. Terribly punishing I agree and probably not the best way for a new player to start out, but I only needed 4 outposts on Testbed to make ships and guns (and sell them for profit, I might add) so it's manageable if you pick your ports wisely. Surely you have to haul your stone and lignum whether you harvest them or someone else does, or does your friendly trader deliver as well as harvest, and all for 5 gold a piece? Gosh!

I will readily agree with your 'no game where a crafter can be 100% independent ever works out well'. That the NA economy allows me to solo with practically no punishment demonstrates how poor it is compared with other games. The punishment is that I can only run two level 3 buildings (less LH for harvesting). It's not much of one, is it?

To be fair, ships are now a poor option for players to start out crafting, and only really worth considering because you'll get CXP and so increase your LH storage. I'd probably pick one or two of the repairs myself (hull repairs will combine with either rum or rig repairs for buildings), but profits don't look too great at the moment. Guns are probably a better bet but that 150k together with the stone is rather a hurdle. Start up costs again.

32 minutes ago, Lady Athena said:

Also want to say, I don't think anyone's suggesting, or arguing, or is even stupid enough to think you have to spend 100k and pull out 1000 logs or iron every day. You pull out what you need, nothing more.

It's what I'm reading on chat. But I'm sure they'll learn quickly enough.

[Teutonic]

The mats cost for a pickle may be 20-30k but i think athena is factoring in the building costs too. So I must say i definitely see where athena is coming from.

I think the econ/crafting portion drastically needs some quick changes l. I understand players need to work together to build things fastet and more efficiently and I like that, but a solo player should also be abke to contribute in some way. 

Your gold figures for buying resources from playets seems too low in my opinion, i havent met any players yey who would be willing to sell their resources at only a 5 gold profit.

[ironhammer500]

Just add exp back for making bits like frames and carriages and stuff so people sell them on the market, add back in port produced resources, these player produced buildings are useless right now.

Why? Cost is far to high for people to bother with production and the LH cost is to high plus no Craft xp so new players will not bother.

 

Maybe remove exotic goods so people trade resources not focus on making gold quickly through non used trade goods.

Edited May 27, 2017 by ironhammer500

[Lady Athena]

15 hours ago, ironhammer500 said:

Just add exp back for making bits like frames and carriages and stuff so people sell them on the market, add back in port produced resources, these player produced buildings are useless right now.

Why? Cost is far to high for people to bother with production and the LH cost is to high plus no Craft xp so new players will not bother.

 

Maybe remove exotic goods so people trade resources not focus on making gold quickly through non used trade goods.

Trade should be focused around what players need to craft items, not goods that are entirely useless and do nothing to help the economy.

Making cheap locations like it used to be where ports would sell resources cheap, while players like myself who used to craft and would put up buy orders. This allowed traders to go buy iron, or wood cheap, and sell to me through my buy orders at another port. I could still make ships and make profit as a crafter, and the traders could still make a pretty penny selling to crafters like me.

[randommexi]

this is what i came up with from level one resource buildings.

Raw resource cost,

Oak Log            - 73
Iron ore        - 80
Hemp            - 53
Fir Log            - 60
Stone block        - 20

manufactuered resource,

Charcoal        - 29
Iron Ingot        - 83
Iron Fitting        - 125
Ballast            - 60
Canvas Rolls        - 106
Blocks            - 90 (LV logs bought from npc)
Tar            - 60
Rigging Parts        - 300
Rudder Parts        - 52
Cable and Howser    - 61
Cordage and Oakum    - 55
Wooden Fitting        - 30
Oak Plank        - 44
Barrel            - 92
Small Carriage        - 149
Medium Carriage        - 201
Provisions        - 19 (because of fishing)

Planking and Frames,

Fir Frames        - 36
Fir Planking        - 36
Oak Frames        - 44
Oak Planking        - 44

 

with these numbers, a OAK Brig costs over 25000 to make.  plus you need cannons for the brig.  now how much does a NPC vendor sell this ship for?

[Lonar]

Another strange thing about the Eco is that in some Harbours Goods have already Sell-Prices of 1 Gold at the same time the Buy-Prices are extremly high that makes Economywise no sense, since it would mean the market is filled and there is more then enough there so no one wants to pay money for the good so the prices you need to pay for it for it should also go down o.O

[Lady Athena]

1 hour ago, randommexi said:

this is what i came up with from level one resource buildings.

Raw resource cost,

Oak Log            - 73
Iron ore        - 80
Hemp            - 53
Fir Log            - 60
Stone block        - 20

manufactuered resource,

Charcoal        - 29
Iron Ingot        - 83
Iron Fitting        - 125
Ballast            - 60
Canvas Rolls        - 106
Blocks            - 90 (LV logs bought from npc)
Tar            - 60
Rigging Parts        - 300
Rudder Parts        - 52
Cable and Howser    - 61
Cordage and Oakum    - 55
Wooden Fitting        - 30
Oak Plank        - 44
Barrel            - 92
Small Carriage        - 149
Medium Carriage        - 201
Provisions        - 19 (because of fishing)

Planking and Frames,

Fir Frames        - 36
Fir Planking        - 36
Oak Frames        - 44
Oak Planking        - 44

 

with these numbers, a OAK Brig costs over 25000 to make.  plus you need cannons for the brig.  now how much does a NPC vendor sell this ship for?

NPC sells the ship for about 10-15k. Of course that's like a fir or so, but still.. basic wood none the less.

[randommexi]

25 minutes ago, Lady Athena said:

NPC sells the ship for about 10-15k. Of course that's like a fir or so, but still.. basic wood none the less.

so... if i wanted to sell that brig with a 20% mark up, and charge for labor hours. i'd have to sell that thing for 35000.  who is gonna waste their money on that.  when they can get one for half the price from a npc vendor.

 

something has to change, either make ship building cheaper OR make npc ships cost more.  i'd go with the second one.

[Sir Texas Sir]

On 5/26/2017 at 10:02 AM, Remus said:

 

• players do not have enough labour hours to make ships in sufficient quantities

 

It's not really the labor hours that are killing me, it's the cost of the production of things like woods mainly.  I'm burning through so much money just trying to produce that as soon as I make it from grinding it's gone.  And this is with clan mates pooling in other resources to help each other.  We got several guys making cannons now so that is going to cut a lot of guys cost, but if they sink we can't get new ones built fast enough to replace them.  Only one player has a shipyard but we haven't gather mats other then to make one LVG.  Which by the way holds less than a Trader Brig (not much about same).   So that was a suprise to us.

1 hour ago, Lady Athena said:

NPC sells the ship for about 10-15k. Of course that's like a fir or so, but still.. basic wood none the less.

I just found a white oak fro 18K so I think your price is a bit low.   

[Blackbrook]

3 hours ago, randommexi said:

this is what i came up with from level one resource buildings.

Raw resource cost,

Oak Log            - 73
Iron ore        - 80
Hemp            - 53
Fir Log            - 60
Stone block        - 20

manufactuered resource,

Charcoal        - 29
Iron Ingot        - 83
Iron Fitting        - 125
Ballast            - 60
Canvas Rolls        - 106
Blocks            - 90 (LV logs bought from npc)
Tar            - 60
Rigging Parts        - 300
Rudder Parts        - 52
Cable and Howser    - 61
Cordage and Oakum    - 55
Wooden Fitting        - 30
Oak Plank        - 44
Barrel            - 92
Small Carriage        - 149
Medium Carriage        - 201
Provisions        - 19 (because of fishing)

Planking and Frames,

Fir Frames        - 36
Fir Planking        - 36
Oak Frames        - 44
Oak Planking        - 44

 

with these numbers, a OAK Brig costs over 25000 to make.  plus you need cannons for the brig.  now how much does a NPC vendor sell this ship for?

What is your price for labour hours? LH are the limiting factor here and you should add that to your calculations. 

[Remus]

20 minutes ago, Sir Texas Sir said:

Only one player has a shipyard but we haven't gather mats other then to make one LVG.  Which by the way holds less than a Trader Brig (not much about same).   So that was a suprise to us.

Indiaman is 4000 you might be relieved to hear. TBrig at 1750 is the next biggest. LGV 1335, TSnow a measly 900. TLynx and TCutter both 500 if you can get them.

Or you could haul with a l'Ocean 1251.

All without guns, of course.

[shaeberle84]

On ‎26‎.‎05‎.‎2017 at 6:04 AM, admin said:

how did you come to this conclusion? Iron ore is not available from NPCs in fact no resource except monopolized woods is available from NPCs. You cannot get resources like iron or coal or oak from NPCs. 

It IS on the market. Players capture NPC trades and just sell it to the harbour. An these prices they are cheaper than the extraction costs through buildings.

Edited May 28, 2017 by shaeberle84

[shaeberle84]

On ‎26‎.‎05‎.‎2017 at 11:49 AM, admin said:

the npc ship prices can be updated of course. we will see if will be necessary over time. We do want crafted ships to be cheaper than NPC ships. 

If you want to do this, you also need to adjust labour hours. Right now, labour hours go into cannon and repair production, since this is the most profitable way to use them. If you make crafting ships valuable again, then we need more labour hours.

[ironhammer500]

Crafted ships need bonuses again something that a captured ship can never have and only crafted ships get like some kinda of special traits to make them worth the money and time.

 

Like Warships get extra cannons slots or hardened wood makes them stronger, Trade ships get extra cargo holds or increase speed on OW.

Edited May 28, 2017 by ironhammer500

[Remus]

1 minute ago, ironhammer500 said:

Crafted ships need bonuses again something that a captured ship can never have and only crafted ships get like some kinda of special traits to make them worth the money and time.

What, you mean like a trim other than Crew Space

[ironhammer500]

1 minute ago, Remus said:

What, you mean like a trim other than Crew Space

Yea but on top of the planking bonus instead of picking crew space or a planking type, like extra sails or something like we had before a 3rd option to make crafted ships special.

Same with crafted cannons i think they need a special trait to make them better then npc bought/looted. 

Edited May 28, 2017 by ironhammer500

[randommexi]

23 hours ago, Blackbrook said:

What is your price for labour hours? LH are the limiting factor here and you should add that to your calculations. 

those calculations for 25000 to build the brig was at zero cost for labour.

if I sold for a markup and labour cost, it would be probably around 35k-40k.  so, no one would ever buy it.

I personally haven't looked to deep in to labour cost.  or rather what I should charge for it.  but, 10g per hour would be low. even at that, it would add a huge amount to the cost.

[Lady Athena]

2 hours ago, randommexi said:

those calculations for 25000 to build the brig was at zero cost for labour.

if I sold for a markup and labour cost, it would be probably around 35k-40k.  so, no one would ever buy it.

I personally haven't looked to deep in to labour cost.  or rather what I should charge for it.  but, 10g per hour would be low. even at that, it would add a huge amount to the cost.

Yup all my costs don't include labour hours, I don't charge for LH personally, never have. I find LH themselves to be an arbituary limitation for no reason other than to add more taxing to an already crippled and broken crafting/economy.

Any game that had good crafting/economy balance never had to put in timers for crafting like LH..

Edited May 29, 2017 by Lady Athena