Rebalance Ship Costs (for real this time)

[greybuscat]

The ships need to be rebalanced in relation to each other. Previous changes were across the board increases.

For example, Surprise is ~90k with 140 BR, superior guns, and almost all superior stats. Renommee is ~130k with 110 BR, inferior guns, and only one real advantage: running with the wind.

If this is WAD, then please explain your design because this pricing is incomprehensible to me. To head off the most obvious way of dismissing this out of hand, "we want you to buy ships from each other" is no excuse for NPC ship sales to be nonsensical. If it isn't meant to be used, take it out. If it is meant to be used by players, do it right.

Edited June 14, 2017 by greybuscat

[Cpt Fred]

The reason behind the high NPC ship prices is an easy fix to allow player-crafted ships have a more competitive price compared to NPC ships.

Even in this case i don't feel like any decently crafted player ship needs to compete with a crew space NPC ship... Except if you can afford loads of NPC ships. Other then that i notice in my nation (UP) there's almost no player crafted combat ships in the store because ship crafting is already severely limited due to furnishings, marks and LH.

What they should've done is probably something that takes a bit longer: instead of increasing NPC pricing, they should've decreased resource (esp. furnishing) cost in buildings and/or lowered LH for crafting ships / resources entirely. This way it will have a huge impact on everything; all player crafted ships will be cheaper and anything else will also be cheaper which can only embrace current meta: the 1-dura meta.

I feel like the devs made a huge change to the naval action meta with the 1-dura meta, but didn't take in consideration crafting and the economy. You need to remember that crafting any ship (which takes gold for buildings, gold for resources and LH for resources + ship materials + the ship and hard earned furnishings) can be lost in the blink of an eye due to the 1-dura meta. Ship crafting in general should be cheaper and so should the ships be. I feel like pre-increased ship pricing patch the prices were do-able because they can't solo a fleet order anyway and with the re-introduction of solo fleet missions anyone can purchase a NPC frigate and start doing CPT orders straight away, without having to spend too much money in mid-game.

Opening up mid-tier ships even more will only help the economy in multiple ways. Frigates are the first ships anyone will extensively use in PvP combat and PvE missions (especially fleet orders) earn way more money, marks and possible loot compared to lower fleet / combat orders. High rate ships are limited anyway due to conquest marks which is a different story. If they really want refits and such to be limited they can always increase the mark cost of them (despite them already being pretty high).

Edited June 14, 2017 by Cpt Fred

[Rick Astley]

2 hours ago, Cpt Fred said:

The reason behind the high NPC ship prices is an easy fix to allow player-crafted ships have a more competitive price compared to NPC ships.

Even in this case i don't feel like any decently crafted player ship needs to compete with a crew space NPC ship... Except if you can afford loads of NPC ships. Other then that i notice in my nation (UP) there's almost no player crafted combat ships in the store because ship crafting is already severely limited due to furnishings, marks and LH.

What they should've done is probably something that takes a bit longer: instead of increasing NPC pricing, they should've decreased resource (esp. furnishing) cost in buildings and/or lowered LH for crafting ships / resources entirely. This way it will have a huge impact on everything; all player crafted ships will be cheaper and anything else will also be cheaper which can only embrace current meta: the 1-dura meta.

I feel like the devs made a huge change to the naval action meta with the 1-dura meta, but didn't take in consideration crafting and the economy. You need to remember that crafting any ship (which takes gold for buildings, gold for resources and LH for resources + ship materials + the ship and hard earned furnishings) can be lost in the blink of an eye due to the 1-dura meta. Ship crafting in general should be cheaper and so should the ships be. I feel like pre-increased ship pricing patch the prices were do-able because they can't solo a fleet order anyway and with the re-introduction of solo fleet missions anyone can purchase a NPC frigate and start doing CPT orders straight away, without having to spend too much money in mid-game.

Opening up mid-tier ships even more will only help the economy in multiple ways. Frigates are the first ships anyone will extensively use in PvP combat and PvE missions (especially fleet orders) earn way more money, marks and possible loot compared to lower fleet / combat orders. High rate ships are limited anyway due to conquest marks which is a different story. If they really want refits and such to be limited they can always increase the mark cost of them (despite them already being pretty high).

I wish I could agree but this is not the case, when you see crafted trading lynx being sold at a higher price that an npc surprise, then you know what the devs implemented is not working.

 

kindly show us screenshots where player crafted ships are cheaper than npc.

[Celtiberofrog]

40 minutes ago, Rick Astley said:

I wish I could agree but this is not the case, when you see crafted trading lynx being sold at a higher price that an npc surprise, then you know what the devs implemented is not working.

 

kindly show us screenshots where player crafted ships are cheaper than npc.

We are just starting this new wipe phase.

After a while, the ships market will settle with reasonable prices. It's just question of offer Vs demand balance (today offers are low)

Edited June 14, 2017 by Celtiberofrog

[Baptiste Gallouédec]

Go look at navalactioncraft , you will see that crafting a trader lynx is not that expensive even if you include shipyard cost, labour hour, effort, it's just some crafters taking advantage of the market. Not the fault of npc price

[Rick Astley]

2 minutes ago, Baptiste Gallouédec said:

Go look at navalactioncraft , you will see that crafting a trader lynx is not that expensive even if you include shipyard cost, labour hour, effort, it's just some crafters taking advantage of the market. Not the fault of npc price

This is proof that a player base crafting economy is broken and always has been. 

There excuse was the npc ships were cheaper so demanded the devs increase the costs... now he trading/crafters has the higher prices on npc ships do they make competitive or cheaper ships ?? No of course not! they milk the system by increasing ship costs.

[Rick Astley]

7 minutes ago, Celtiberofrog said:

We are just starting this new wipe phase.

After a while, the ships market will settle with reasonable prices. It's just question of offer Vs demand balance (today offers are low)

Oh please... pull the other excuses! Crafted ships should be competitive in price now that the devs increased the costs of npc ships in port. Not milking the players who are already grinding like mad to setup in the new system.

[Hethwill]

Greed will always be present. Remember the hemp crisis ? It was needed by the nations to really build the fleets but a lot of less scrupulous captains did drive the prices to insane values.

Hell, even daily groups do proceed with "indentured servitude" of newcomers for their LH.

NPC shop ships should have variable price according to player naval Rank.

[Rick Astley]

20 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

Greed will always be present. Remember the hemp crisis ? It was needed by the nations to really build the fleets but a lot of less scrupulous captains did drive the prices to insane values.

Hell, even daily groups do proceed with "indentured servitude" of newcomers for their LH.

NPC shop ships should have variable price according to player naval Rank.

I agree with this 100%, people want to "get rich" quick and will scam there nation in the process.

I like the idea of variable npc prices... 

[Remus]

I think (but I have not checked) that NPC ship prices are related to crafting cost. Possibly not in direct relationship and I don't know if wood type is factored in. From the prices in the OP it sounds as if the NPC price is double the crafting+wood purchase costs* and, in keeping with other NPC prices, labour hours aren't factored in at all.
*if the Renommee is Teak or Live Oak and the Surprise is not then double is pretty much spot on

Surprise and Renommee are at pretty much extreme ends of ship prices for size of ship (you can also compare Navy Brig and Mercury). I have no idea why this is, but earlier correspondence with Admin confirms it is intentional.

There is no way in the current economy I would match NPC ship prices. Currently I only sell traders where I only have to compete with (and invariably undercut) other players (I charge 39k for a fir/fir TLynx in the shop, or 35k for a direct trade), but my main production is guns. For a cheap wood Surprise (eg Sabicu//Sabicu) I'd charge about 190k. For Teak/Teak it would be about 225k. Again, with the economy the way it is I'm not sure there is demand for ships at such prices, and I'm too poor right now to lock up such sums in speculative ventures when I can use all my LH and far more besides making items which do sell.

However, if LH generation were increased 4-fold, I would probably reduce the amount I charge per LH 4-fold to preserve the same income, which means I could match the NPC Surprise price of 90k if it were cheap woods. I'd probably charge a premium for Renommees because of their gold and silver content (other harvestable resources are not a problem for me) and I'd probably also charge a premium for teak and white oak, and wouldn't offer cedar or live oak at all). But, and here is the crucial thing, I am not sure even at these prices ships would actually sell. Potential ship buyers in the shop simply do not have enough money; the wealthy 'extreme traders' are mostly tied up in clans and don't go anywhere near the shop. This is why I'd like the money generation side sorted out first. Give higher rewards for combat.

[Vllad]

6 hours ago, Rick Astley said:

I agree with this 100%, people want to "get rich" quick and will scam there nation in the process. 

 

While I find Rick's statement true I have difficulty understanding why people want to be so rich in NA. Money has very limited uses in this game. The value of resources far exceeds the value of this games currency. In-fact other than buildings and some upgrades you could make a case that you no longer need cash. You could trade other things with far more value for anything else you could possibly need.