Patch 11.0: New ships, Unity 5, Improved clan based conquest, and many other changes.

[shaeberle84]

14 minutes ago, admin said:

Don't be silly.
Single player game economy only has to make one player happy. It does not have to think about the other 1000 guys. 

The NPC economy can work the same way whether it is a single player game or a MMO with 1000 players. You just have to adjust the margins, reckognising that not only 1 trade is active, but many are.

Right now, YOUR GAME is making players happy as it is way too easy to make money with the type of trading bombs described above.

[admin]

9 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

I am not silly, you must be silly because we have NPC market (just like in single player game) and this game is not 100% player driven economy. Thus, it must combine single player + multiplayer market model. Market model as example from Port Royale (similar is in many other games) and to fill the multiplayer aspects we have buy/sell contracts for player to player interaction and trade.

It is exactly working as you described. 
If you capture a first rate with long guns it was build by a player and guns were built by a player, probably with interaction with others and use of buy/sell contracts with players. 

NPCs provide additional trading opportunities which you don't have to use if you don't want to. Parisian furniture trade does not affect the ability to build a first rate, it just provides additional money making opportunity to afford it. 

[shaeberle84]

4 minutes ago, admin said:

It is exactly working as you described. 
If you capture a first rate with long guns it was build by a player and guns were built by a player, probably with interaction with others and use of buy/sell contracts with players. 

NPCs provide additional trading opportunities which you don't have to use if you don't want to. Parisian furniture trade does not affect the ability to build a first rate, it just provides additional money making opportunity to afford it. 

Is this your way of saying "we do not care about traders in our game"? It pretty much sounds like it.

You have many very well experienced players here (either from real life or from playing a lot of economy games) and they all tell you the current system is bad design. We have arguments. We proof you patch after patch that we can rig your system, making millions of gold by exploiting your weak design elements. Then we tell you how to solve it. You do nothing. Instead you say "you do not have to trade if you dont like it". Wow.

The thing is that soon there wont me much player-build first rates with long cannons anymore if we solely rely on the player-driven economy. Look at the capital ports, there are, five days after the patch, no more long cannons to buy.

You cannot build a working econony with fixed prices, with fixed labour supply (LH hard cap) and with fixed goods supply (cannot build more than 5 production buildings, even if I wanted to pay lot for a 6th, 7th, etc).

[admin]

11 minutes ago, shaeberle84 said:

 

The thing is that soon there wont me much player-build first rates with long cannons anymore if we solely rely on the player-driven economy. Look at the capital ports, there are, five days after the patch, no more long cannons to buy.

You cannot build a working econony with fixed prices, with fixed labour supply (LH hard cap) and with fixed goods supply (cannot build more than 5 production buildings, even if I wanted to pay lot for a 6th, 7th, etc).

You contradict yourself here. 
The fact that there are no long guns in capital ports actually means that economy IS player driven. Lack of long guns means = not enough people making them. Maybe someone will step up and start making them - showing everyone how player driven economy works.

[Captain Lust]

2 minutes ago, admin said:

The fact that there are no long guns in capital ports actually means that economy IS player driven. Lack of long guns means = not enough people making them. Maybe someone will step up and start making them - showing everyone how player driven economy works.

Wanted to say exactly this, thank you.

[Quineloe]

The main issue remains that the severe labor hour limit makes playing as a dedicated trader and crafter unattractive. If I were to play that role, I'd get 30 minutes of gameplay out of the game every other day. 

If the game made it possible to play economy for hours (just like PVE grinding is available for 24 hours a day), we'd have players who do exactly that.

But we have a labor hour limit similar to the energy bar of a facebook game -  You're out of energy! come back tomorrow!

Admin you say we have a player driven economy.. but we don't have the player type driving the economy because of that.

Edited September 15, 2017 by Quineloe

[admin]

2 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

Profits from making cannons are not good enough at the moment. Players prefer to do a mission and earn gold+combat marks, make cannons on their own with their personal workshop. I had huge issues finding someone in the nation to make cannons for me, 90% of cannons I got since Patch 11 come from my clan mates making them for me.

The prices of long guns (or crafted uncapturable ships) will go up until it becomes profitable to make them. Which to my opinion is as player driven as it can be.

[Quineloe]

1 minute ago, rediii said:

You can buy labour contracts with marks.

 

one Mark is easily 5k. Ten Marks make a Labor contract. 50k to get 500 hours? Unreasonable if you're doing economy for profit. No one will be paying for that kind of markup.

Edited September 15, 2017 by Quineloe

[admin]

5 minutes ago, Quineloe said:

But we have a labor hour limit similar to the energy bar of a facebook game -  You're out of energy! come back tomorrow!

labor hours are not energy. Its a CPU saving mechanism.
The proper implementation would be this

• You gather resources for a week (waiting for forests to grow)
• Then you start building a santisima (waiting for 3 days for it to build) 
• Then you pick up the santisima. 

But this generates multiple timers that needs to be tracked on server (so they are not hacked). Timers needs ticking and for 10000 players having a lot of timers creates huge tax on the CPU increasing the server costs that would be impossible to maintain given fixed price for the game. 10000 players can generate up to 1 mln timers to track

So we have another method
Instead of having to wait for 3 days for santisima to build you wait for 3 days for labor hours to generate 
And build santisima in 1 click

So result is the same in both cases

1. Individual construction time for each item or ship: You wait for 3 days
2. Universal labor hours: you wait for 3 days

But option 2 is 100x cheaper server wise. We only have 1 universal timer per player. 

[Quineloe]

I know why you have labor hours instead of timers. It does not change the impact of the mechanic. It literally works like that energy bar in freemium games, once you have no labor hours left, you can log out for the day. (or pay an obscene price to refresh your labor hours).  Combat Marks are now up to 6500 in Gustavia, at that price it would be insane to keep a profit-oriented crafting business running beyond the provided hours.

[Boingtone]

Exactly, new players need to earn the economy on a combat mission. To set up their own (craft) economic station.

Starting in your game is a real headache against the old ones who already know all the pnj / contract money / tips / change routes.

Moreover it immediately amuses itself to distort the shops of other cities in smuggler thanks to their tons of millions to buy on the spot and to resell to x200% of the price to block any possible purchase with the contracts ...

which discourages the new players after the wipe to go further, not being able to sail without being hunted, and thus remained in neutral.

Cities should not be spoiler by ultra rich smugglers who block the purchase of city resources

It's really easy to stop all production in the city ..just make contrat buying /sell by days with some millions Crédit .(look number Traderlynx spoted in open sea)

[shaeberle84]

17 minutes ago, admin said:

You contradict yourself here. 
The fact that there are no long guns in capital ports actually means that economy IS player driven. Lack of long guns means = not enough people making them. Maybe someone will step up and start making them - showing everyone how player driven economy works.

I cannot make more cannons if nobody is selling iron and coal and my labour hours are all used.

Congratulations, you have created a player-driven economy that does not generate enough supply of the simplest goods.

If it were not from mission drops of cannons, we would all play a naval action game not being able to shoot each other.

[Skully]

53 minutes ago, admin said:

Don't be silly.
Single player game economy only has to make one player happy. It does not have to think about the other 1000 guys. 

If we had a working player economy, it would make 500 guys happy, 500 unhappy and that one player filthy rich... 

12 minutes ago, admin said:

You contradict yourself here. 
The fact that there are no long guns in capital ports actually means that economy IS player driven. Lack of long guns means = not enough people making them. Maybe someone will step up and start making them - showing everyone how player driven economy works.

I did (but maybe not enough).

And made a list of all issues and suggestions.

Which probably still need to be addressed before we can actually show a player economy.

[BetaVape]

Can someone explain the production of resources. KPR fir building is 350per day and if i goto Placer i get the same crappy 350. My understanding was if you go out of safe area you get way better goods. Whats point of capped ports?

[Quineloe]

3 minutes ago, BetaVape said:

Can someone explain the production of resources. KPR fir building is 350per day and if i goto Placer i get the same crappy 350. My understanding was if you go out of safe area you get way better goods. Whats point of capped ports?

No, that whole part was not in the patch. You capture ports for the weekly victory mark shower. 

The only thing you can do is ask the port owner to pay more money on maintenance so you can harvest 20% more resources...

Edited September 15, 2017 by Quineloe

[Quineloe]

@admin is it intended that former free towns (such as Hat Island) don't allow for any resource production?

[Sir Texas Sir]

2 hours ago, Siegfried said:

Some players realize that charcoal is not necessary now for crafting. At least for casting metals and guns.

Is charcoal a dead good now?

Wonder this too cause it's not used for the small carros any more either.

[greybuscat]

1 hour ago, admin said:

You contradict yourself here. 
The fact that there are no long guns in capital ports actually means that economy IS player driven. Lack of long guns means = not enough people making them. Maybe someone will step up and start making them - showing everyone how player driven economy works.

You're being obtuse. Why would experienced players with hundreds or even thousands of hours all simply choose not to make Long Cannons, for no reason, even if it would make them money?

Sure, it's player-driven, but the players are driving it into the rocks. Apparently, this doesn't concern you in the slightest. Thanks for never replying to my PM about not being able to play the game at all for a few weeks, by the way. Real professional. Not even a "we have a forum for that."

[Quineloe]

I'm not making cannons because which size is it you want? 4 6 9 12 18 24 32 - that's  seven different cannons. Add carronades you get another 4 relevant sizes,

That is 11 different products. Putting a working number of all of them into the store would require more labor hours than I have available. I pay a lot of taxes to do that and then half of the contracts just expire for nothing. Nope, not gonna work it like that.

[Sven Silberbart]

I dont sell any things to the market atm. I ask myself: Why I dont participate in the nations economy. The answer is: "No need for that!". We are a group of players working together for gathering ressources and crafting ships. We have all we need and that is a good thing, i have fun organising the group and see how fine it works. The problem: The market dies as more players do that. Also solo players doing so by using some alt accounts. Before patch 11 I ve sold some things on market because of I needed money for gathering new ressources and keep our internal economy alive. Now it is very profitable to make PvE Missions, no need to sell something for earning money anymore.

But how to let the players play as crafting group and and have fun AND force them to be part of the nations economy?

MAYBE an idea could be warehouse costs. It is the same like in reality. The companies prevent to store as much as they can. Instead they prefer an "on Demand" system. There should be a warehouse capacity limit found and all over that must be rent and generates costs. The result: Players start to sell things on market.

@admin plz think about that or did you already do that?

 

Edited September 15, 2017 by Sven Silberbart

[Quineloe]

One huge issue is that you can't see what other ports are selling, so everyone relies on the capital being the port where trade happens (or another agreed hot hub like Belize).

Is "capital" even a thing anymore at this point? Is KPR in any way different from Belize? 

If I decided to sell stuff out of one of my clans ports right now, I'd have to spam nation chat to the point of a moderator shutting me up. Because no one would know I sold proper ships there for sale, no one would know I'd have all cannons there.

[admin]

3 minutes ago, Sven Silberbart said:

But how to let the players play as crafting group and and have fun AND force them to be part of the nations economy?

Prices for certain goods will go up until it becomes profitable to make them and sell them. 
Also you can get EVERYTHING for free by capturing from the enemy. 

[admin]

26 minutes ago, greybuscat said:

 

Thanks for never replying to my PM about not being able to play the game at all for a few weeks, by the way. Real professional. Not even a "we have a forum for that."

Why do we even go to this subject. We never promised personal conversations with due to the volume of the mail we receive, replies in PM should never be expected, we just can't make it happen on a daily basis.

There is a support forum and players are expected to ask question in the support forum - those questions are handled with good speed. 

 

[Quineloe]

37 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

Actually trading hubs are generated by players themselves. I encourage 5-6 clans to move their ships to port x and start selling there cannons and repairs with rum. There is port battle in Cartagena, I do the same, maybe selling also some screening ships too. Spotting where your nation operates or creating opportunities for it.

And how do you do that? Right, you talk people into it until they're sick of hearing about it.

By the way, one thing yet to be touched is super low supply resources for upgrades such as Cartagena Tar...
Surely we can have a better system than  random generation of the resource every X hours that whoever has the highest buy contract at the time will get?

Edited September 15, 2017 by Quineloe

[Teutonic]

Seems the option to increase resource production for clan owned ports does NOT increase building production which is a bummer in my opinion. Will it in the future?

Although for ports with special resources or rare woods, it is a good boost!