Commodity System Revamp

Khizan

Garryn said:

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2859
Date: 10/21/2014 at 19:18
From: Garryn
To : Everyone
Subj: Commodity system updates

The commodity system has seen a big series of changes today, including:

- Caravans are gone. You now simply BUY the materials, then SELL them at the refinery. They are riftable, too, although
they have no other use.

- Refining has been reworked entirely - instead of the refineries working autonomously, there is now a REFINE <x>
<commodity> to convert materials into commodities

- Stealing from towne commshops remains an option using PLUNDER <x> <material> - you will want to set up some guards to
prevent this

- A series of quests is available that lets you improve the production of your towne for one Imperial year - these are
mainly meant for newer players as a way to get involved with cities and townes, but obviously anyone can do them

- Refining material requirements have all been reworked; most notably, one material no longer yields multiple
commodities; REFINE CHECK <commodity> displays the costs (if you have the Trade power). Overall, the amount of produced
commodities will be significantly smaller than before.

- Towne material production formulas have been altered - most notably, the desirability factor is largely gone; it only
reduces production of the desirability is very low due to frequent plundering or low material cost

- Towne material production speed has been reduced across the board, with the caravans being intended as the source of
the difference

- HELP TOWNE PRODUCTION and HELP COMMODITIES have more info on the above changes

- Several trading posts have sprung up across the world - these are owned by the Horde, and are used to dispatch
caravans between the posts

- Caravans can be plundered (PLUNDER CARAVAN) - but first you need to kill off the guards protecting it

- Caravans are transporting materials, gold, and a new item - pieces of glowing quartz

- Caravans also have a small chance to contain a random soulstone

- Two new shard trees are now available - both of them require the glowing quartz pieces, as well as significant amounts
of commodities

- The commodity costs are mostly meant to clear out some of the huge stockpiles of commodities

- The pieces of glowing quartz are also used in the construction of so-called Beacons, which are intended as a conflict
source of sorts - researching the Beacons shard tree will give you the specifics on these

- The steel commodity has been discontinued - it is no longer produced or required anywhere, and you can convert the
remaining stocks into stehl at a 50:1 ratio (REFINE <x> STEHL)

- Lustration (Devotion) and Isa (Runelore) now require platinum instead of stehl

- Evoke bone (Necromancy) now requires 2 bone commodities to produce one necromantic bone; bones are no longer evoked
from mob corpses

- Engineering item commodity costs have been changed

- Rozri now gives +20% material production speed, as well as faster refining balance

- The 75cr caravan crop artifact now makes the 'plunder caravan' command faster

- The token saddlebags are now discontinued, and the tokens refunded

- INFO RIFT output has been altered a bit

As with any big change, there will undoubtedly be bugs - please report any issues you find in the usual way. The
production numbers may need further tweaks, we'll handle these as needed.


Garryn


Penned by my hand on the 24th of Letum, in the year 60 AM.

New system, new thread. So what do people think?

Khizan

I've only participated in  few caravans and it's still early, but I have a few issues with the system as it is now that I'd like to throw out there.

1. Off-hours caravaning is going to be a steel-plated bitch with the amount of guards they have, because you need a pretty decent sized group to take the guards without getting murdered to death. Maybe traders could be more like bosses? Long fights due to no crits and high health, risk of death due to boss mechanics, but not the "zerg this or corpse run it" feeling of the giant guard clots.
   
   
2. I don't mind a slow quartz acquisition rate and a large amount required to learn skills, because I want the caravans to remain relevant for a long time. I am sort of irked by the fact that building beacons costs quartz as well, because we're going to be in a position where we're putting off building beacons to learn all the skills, and that's just a frustrating position to be in.  Shards were sort of like this, but single shards were always an option to get personal shards, and shards fell in large quantities so that it was easy to maintain a personal stockpile while still giving shards to the city.
   
   Perhaps make actually building the beacons and such require another special mineral the Horde mines? Maybe even rarer than quartz, to account for the fact that it won't be needed in the large research quantities?  This is a complaint that will resolve itself eventually, granted; I just hate the idea that once we learn to build beacons we won't be able to build any without massively slowing down how fast we learn the new skills.
   
   
3. I'd like a clarification of the rules where PK is regarding caravans. The way I see it right now is pretty much like shardfalls; if you're in the vicinity of a caravan you can be killed for it without warning, and there's no retribution for a caravan fight after you've left the area. After all, they're part of the shard system now.
   
   
4. Can quartz become a generator-stored resource? Right now, it seems like we've got to all hang on to our quartz individually and then pool it on one person? It would be a lot easier to manage if we could just slam it in the generator and not have to worry about having our quartzholder quit on us, and being able to have reliable logs of who's putting it in would be nice for the city.
   

Cassius

Quartz is handled like other commodities in the comm shop I believe.  Your trade minister will need to set a buy price first I think.

Ahkan

I'm sort of against the 'boss mob' thing since it's painfully easy to brute force boss mobs in the game nowadays. Guards force you to actually pull a team together and work through a fight scenario instead of cheese your way through mob. It helps keep the system less poop-sock-y, which it would totally be if it was too easy.

Eoghan

Commodities required by shard research must be held by the city/council starting the research. This includes quartz, which can be sold in the same way other commodities can. Your trade ministry must first set a buy price for the commodity.

It is true that you need (or at least want) to pool quartz to one org, but you don't have to pool it to one person.

Khizan

Ahkan said:

I'm sort of against the 'boss mob' thing since it's painfully easy to brute force boss mobs in the game nowadays. Guards force you to actually pull a team together and work through a fight scenario instead of cheese your way through mob. It helps keep the system less poop-sock-y, which it would totally be if it was too easy.

It's even easier to brute force the clots; you just get your dudes to make an alias that does "attack soldier|attack trooper|attack warrior|..." and then you hold it down and eventually you win. There's no "working through a fight scenario", it's "everybody spam your bash macro and if there's enough of us we win effortlessly". And if you don't have a large enough team it's either hit and run or corpserushing and neither of those options are particularly interesting or challenging.

And boss mobs on PvP objectives could be pretty fun, depending on what their powers are. 

Ahkan

But you need people and likely cross circle cooperation.

Shou is a monument to why poopsocking and boss mobs is a sort of underwhelming experience. Likely why he's not  fan of the Underworld.

Garryn

Khizan said:

Off-hours caravaning is going to be a steel-plated bitch with the amount of guards they have, because you need a pretty decent sized group to take the guards without getting murdered to death. Maybe traders could be more like bosses? Long fights due to no crits and high health, risk of death due to boss mechanics, but not the "zerg this or corpse run it" feeling of the giant guard clots.

Off-hours anything is always tricky, yes. Will see how things go, for now I'll say that one of the unlocks in the Beacons tree, combined with some fore-planning, should help with this issue.

I don't mind a slow quartz acquisition rate and a large amount required to learn skills, because I want the caravans to remain relevant for a long time. I am sort of irked by the fact that building beacons costs quartz as well, because we're going to be in a position where we're putting off building beacons to learn all the skills, and that's just a frustrating position to be in.  Shards were sort of like this, but single shards were always an option to get personal shards, and shards fell in large quantities so that it was easy to maintain a personal stockpile while still giving shards to the city.

Them being on the same resource is necessary, otherwise one of the resources will become meaningless as soon as the research is finished. The alternative would be to add maintenance costs, which I don't really want to do.

I'd like a clarification of the rules where PK is regarding caravans. The way I see it right now is pretty much like shardfalls; if you're in the vicinity of a caravan you can be killed for it without warning, and there's no retribution for a caravan fight after you've left the area. After all, they're part of the shard system now.

Same as shardfalls.

Iniar

The alternative would be to add maintenance costs, which I don't really want to do.

Why not? Curious.

Iniar

So twice I have not been able to locate the caravan. Is there some trick I'm missing? I've been spending a long time just looking for them, using soulsense and walking through all the surrounding areas.

Ahkan

After dunking magic,  anti-magick, and the horde we plundered  the caravan for dead rats. Multiple dead rats to the point where it was an annoying percentage of the loot haul.

Not cool given the time commitment, pk, pve.

Menoch

4 plunders yielded me 2 dead rats, some gold, and 1 quartz. 50% rats. Could they at least be alive so my hound feels important?

Iniar

@Garryn, how long do the caravans last for? Ours disappeared (again) after Ahkan and I ate one death apiece. We arrived within the minute of the call going out.

Also, is it random as to which councils receive the call? We missed ours when Ahkan got his.

Iniar

So, because I am not always a nice person. What's to stop someone playing a rich alt, and perpetually hoarding up the produced comms? Eh?

For example, I could use Djen's $ to just keep draining out AMs comm production. Nothing to stop Djen from doing so. Nor is it, technically speaking, meta-gaming.

Garryn

Iniar said:

@Garryn, how long do the caravans last for? Ours disappeared (again) after Ahkan and I ate one death apiece. We arrived within the minute of the call going out.

Also, is it random as to which councils receive the call? We missed ours when Ahkan got his.

Yeah, their speed and paths will probably need adjustments. You can also try putting walls into their path.

For the calls, each time the caravan enters a new area, ther's a 5% chance for each city/council to get the notice, separate for each. Having a beacon in that area increases the chance to 100%. There usually are several caravans generated simultaneously, each of which has a separate chance for a notice.

Garryn

Iniar said:

So, because I am not always a nice person. What's to stop someone playing a rich alt, and perpetually hoarding up the produced comms? Eh?

For example, I could use Djen's $ to just keep draining out AMs comm production. Nothing to stop Djen from doing so. Nor is it, technically speaking, meta-gaming.

Not sure which part of the process you're referring to, but both material purchases and comm refining are in the revlogs.

Garryn

Iniar said:

The alternative would be to add maintenance costs, which I don't really want to do.

Why not? Curious.

No big reason, just seems that the added micromanagement wouldn't really be worth it.

Iniar

Garryn said:

Iniar said:

So, because I am not always a nice person. What's to stop someone playing a rich alt, and perpetually hoarding up the produced comms? Eh?

For example, I could use Djen's $ to just keep draining out AMs comm production. Nothing to stop Djen from doing so. Nor is it, technically speaking, meta-gaming.

Not sure which part of the process you're referring to, but both material purchases and comm refining are in the revlogs.

Yeap, so someone with malicious intent and deep pockets (aka Mantlus :P) may have a cashed up alt in a circle he would want to hurt, say.. demonic.

He then uses his cashed up alt to keep buying demonic comms from Trevka, Annona, Kragge, Blackthorne, Cetara just to hard-deny us access to them.

Not much we can do? I would say to myself, "Believe in human nature and that no man has that kind of time to game the system." but I've recently met some players that make me question that.

Cassius

You could enemy him in the Townes. Problem solved.

Ultrix

Cassius said:

You could enemy him in the Townes. Problem solved.

I think Iniar's point is, what is stopping a malicious (?) citizen from buying out his or her council's comms? Generally speaking, you don't see Kinsarmar enemying its citizens (or Celidon's) to Kinsmarian townes, etc. 

I think Garryn's response point is - well, people aided to trade can see who is buying up all the stuff in the revlog, so if you see someone who seems to be hording mats and comms, maybe you should talk to them about that.

Iniar

23:30:13.917 You ransack through the items loaded on the caravans and find a group of 3 packages of livestock.

23:30:14.218 Theophilus ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds a multicolored quartz.

23:30:15.973 Maglust ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds some gold sovereigns.

23:30:19.053 Baasche ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds a group of 3 packages of livestock.

23:30:20.157 Theophilus ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds the corpse of a young rat.

23:30:21.514 You ransack through the items loaded on the caravans and find some gold sovereigns.

23:30:23.347 Maglust ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds the corpse of a rat.

23:30:25.797 Baasche ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds the corpse of an old rat.

23:30:26.402 Theophilus ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds some gold sovereigns.

23:30:29.011 Linslet ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds a group of 3 pieces of lumber.

23:30:29.016 You ransack through the items loaded on the caravans and find some gold sovereigns.

23:30:31.112 Maglust ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds the corpse of a black rat.

23:30:32.247 Onaedan ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds a group of 3 chunks of ore.

23:30:32.546 Baasche ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds some gold sovereigns.

23:30:32.771 Theophilus ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds the corpse of a black rat.

23:30:35.745 Linslet ransacks through the items loaded on the caravan and finds the corpse of an old rat.

23:30:35.746 The reckless plundering proving too much, the caravan collapses into a pile of useless wood and debris.

Sadly, blatant alt-ism is not stopped by a stern word. But I see your point.

Mathiaus

Cute little bugger. I love rodents.

Khizan

Garryn said:
For the calls, each time the caravan enters a new area, ther's a 5% chance for each city/council to get the notice, separate for each.

Could this chance be increased? You need caravans to get quartz and you need quartz to get beacons and from from what Ultrix was saying, AM got a resounding zero warnings about caravans yesterday.

I don't particularly want to have to go physically patrol areas for caravans, nor do I want to spend all day holding down SCAN ENEMIES waiting for enemy concentrations to clue me in that there's a potential caravan.

Garryn

If a four-caravan group passes through three area boundaries, the combined chance to receive a warning is around 50% per city/council, which does not seem unreasonable.

Khizan

The thing is, caravans should be something that we rush out and fight to control, and that means that everybody should see when they move.

As it is now, if AM doesn't get a warning at the first mark but Stavenn does, the demonic circle could clear up that caravan before we ever get word of it, especially with the ability to wall them in and such. Even if they don't, they'll have advance warning and they'll be prepared before we even start forming up.

This system seems like it's designed to generate conflict; random alerts seem like a strange design decision because they go against that.

Ahkan

I believe that is intended and remedied with beacons.

Conversely, if AM gets a warning and we don't, the same problem occurs in your favor, which is clearly not being complained about.

Easy solution,someone always  dies  to guards. Look for those guards and dog pile.

Don't see the problem.

Eoghan

Khizan said:

This system seems like it's designed to generate conflict; random alerts seem like a strange design decision because they go against that.

Garryn said:

Having a beacon in that area increases the chance to 100%. There usually are several caravans generated simultaneously, each of which has a separate chance for a notice.

Long-term, the conflict comes not solely from caravans, but also from beacons. You'll discover more as the beacons skill is researched.

Mathiaus

If we could ever hold the caravan in place. They seem to move with level 9000 crop.

Ultrix

Mathiaus said:

If we could ever hold the caravan in place. They seem to move with level 9000 crop.

That's clearly because the horde all finished the 100k caravan lot achievement. 

Ahkan said:

I believe that is intended and remedied with beacons.

Conversely, if AM gets a warning and we don't, the same problem occurs in your favor, which is clearly not being complained about.

The problem that we are currently having is that with the 5% chance, some orgs will go an entire RL day without seeing any caravan notices by their guards. Antioch had that problem yesterday where we went approximately 23 RL hours without getting a guard notification. I think Ithaqua got 2 in that 23-hour period. 

Maybe instead of being org-dependent, the alerts could be circle-dependent? So that way, if no one is awake in one org (or paying attention), at least the other corresponding org sees the notification?

Ahkan

I still don't see this as a problem because you're using a sample size of one day, which when we consider the frequency of caravan events is small. Additionally, every caravan I've been at, you've been at. For an organization that went 24hrs without an announcement you dudes were 100%  as accurate as we were with our overpowered and unfair  number of vague hints.

Given the fact that the body guards are ass kicking badass that walk around like a pack of druids, someone ALWAYS dies. They are your canary in the coal mine. Whether or not you participate is a function of your own awareness and decision making and thus is not a flaw in the system.

Oh, and as you can see, seems like beacons are going to be sort of important, so keep on keepin' on. (It would probably help if you actually tried to stop the caravan instead of zerg pking with claymores-that-needed-to-be-upgraded or having Shou shard terrify your team into the caravan room because 6vAhkan was too hard.)

Iniar

Let's not rush this.

Let it occur.

Don't be impatient.

Send the kids to scout.

After all, if we hit every caravan 100% of the time, the longevity for this new 'toy' will be drastically shortened.

Plus extra-ninja caravans means circles who are behind -may- have the chance to catch up with someone using shard disrupt.