Round Table: Ship Recipes and Ships

[Tsushima]

To comment on various issues brought up here:

The general idea of producing one ship per click and have the guns and other components better correspond to the ship being produced is great. But only IF the cost of the various components (guns etc) gets reduced/rebalanced to keep the original cost per deed about the same as before. Also important to rebalance is the weight, so that hauling isn't increased in the process.

A regular non-blind auction house is also a good idea. Though I wouldn't use that as a way to lower prices on ships. Supply and demand will still rule and the low level players will still pay what they can. If they have to spend 20% or 10% of their total accumulated wealth on their new ship isn't a factor in how much they will enjoy the game. The biggest factor is if they have to sail for >1 hour across the Caribbean and back against the wind to get it. Top priority should always be to keep supply up and that means keeping the ship makers happy with decent profit margins.
The average new player will, even when regularly buying new ships while leveling, end up with 500k-700k db when they reach 50. That is more than enough to start you off.

Regarding the rebalance of ship handling and cargo space in relation to the ship recipes. Try to keep as much of the rebalancing on the recipe and cargo side. Unless of course the ship really needs a stat rebalance for performance reasons.

I'm not sure what this loss of reputation when trading with other nations really means. Is it only for face-to-face trading or also for the auction house? I'm not sure why this is needed.
If this is meant to affect the AH then I don't think the economy can survive that kind of segregation.
If it is only for face-to-face trading, then still: Why?
I use a second account in my economy setup using a different nation from my main account to spread my resources/risk. This is to ensure that if my nation gets crushed, I don't have to stop playing until the map resets. I am confident that FLS wants people to play the game and not the opposite.

The same goes for level restrictions on productions. They are already there for some things like shipyards and advanced recipes. That is enough incentive for dedicated players to level up their econ alts. But at the end of the day, the question to ask is again: Why?
What does FLS gain from having econ alts go through the leveling process? As long as the character is being played it should be all good, right? What forced leveling of econ alts will do is add more annoyance and time sink to a part to the game that already has plenty. It will also mean that new players will have to wait longer for the economy part of the game. If that potential player's main interest is econ he might not even get there before giving up the grind.

[Remus]

Originally Posted by Paul_kingtiger Originally Posted by Beouwolf750 So What your talking about now is doublingthe cost ov Vanillas No, they are talking about changing recipes so they only produce 1 ship deed and also adjusting other factors so that 'nilla ships don't cost twice current.

No, not doubling. Not increasing the cost of Bermudas five-fold (the example Fodderboy used). But having myself played around with some numbers FLS might change, I am pretty sure costs (and hauling weights - of hull, rig and gun components in particular) will increase, probably having a disproportionate effect on lower level ships.
Just what Fodderboy has written, in fact.

My guess is the devs have already drafted the new recipes. Fodderboy has not been writing like one who is guessing what the changes will look like.

Originally Posted by umebo We could get rid of the LSB if we did.

Odd that no one else has mentioned this before now.
I don't think getting rid of LSBs fits in with this change but I could be mistaken and, if LSBs are ever to be abolished, now would be the time.

[Remus]

Originally Posted by Khla I'm not sure what this loss of reputation when trading with other nations really means. Is it only for face-to-face trading or also for the auction house? I'm not sure why this is needed. If this is meant to affect the AH then I don't think the economy can survive that kind of segregation. If it is only for face-to-face trading, then still: Why?

This reputation loss thing has been puzzling me. I had assumed in an earlier post that it was TU rep Fodderboy was talking about, and of course this only affects the AH and setting up (but not running) econ in a port. It might make sense to extend it to running recipes, but I don't think anyone would favour yet more restrictions on using the AH.

However, I wonder if he is talking about national faction rep loss if you direct trade with foreigners. As national faction rep is fairly easily gained by normal game activities (including running some recipes), this would primarlily be an attack on people with econ alts on different nations. Hmm.
Restricting multi-nation econ setups might well be a good thig to do. But even if it is, would this be the way to do it? I don't think even being Hated has any effect on an econ alt who doesn't haul just running econ and direct trading - but I have a Hated character on Test Server, so I might see exactly what the restrictions are.

[Yulbrynner]

Originally Posted by Remus Odd that no one else has mentioned this before now. I don't think getting rid of LSBs fits in with this change but I could be mistaken and, if LSBs are ever to be abolished, now would be the time.

Haven't they announced drastic changes to LSBs itself a few months ago? or was that years and therefore no longer counts?

[will ed]

remember when they made the big econ changes and took out the small planks and stuff, and you had to turn in all those obsolete mats in for the raw ones they were originally.

how much would it suck if they did that to lsb's and you suddenly got back a bunch of components for lsb's and no refund for all the dabloons or time you spent making them.

[The Bad Touch]

Originally Posted by Remus This reputation loss thing has been puzzling me. I had assumed in an earlier post that it was TU rep Fodderboy was talking about, and of course this only affects the AH and setting up (but not running) econ in a port. It might make sense to extend it to running recipes, but I don't think anyone would favour yet more restrictions on using the AH. However, I wonder if he is talking about national faction rep loss if you direct trade with foreigners. As national faction rep is fairly easily gained by normal game activities (including running some recipes), this would primarlily be an attack on people with econ alts on different nations. Hmm. Restricting multi-nation econ setups might well be a good thig to do. But even if it is, would this be the way to do it? I don't think even being Hated has any effect on an econ alt who doesn't haul just running econ and direct trading - but I have a Hated character on Test Server, so I might see exactly what the restrictions are.

This is how I understood what FB said, and if so then I think it is a good move assuming the penalty was effective.

As it is, there is far too little national allegiance in the game which I don't think is a good thing.

[Kaede_Baq]

I don't think we could afford any mechanic that even remotely could prove to be a disadvantage to lowbie ship-building. We must remind ourselves over how vast the information is that newer players do not possess. I very much doubt enough of them will be setting up lowbie econ to cater for the market's needs if there were to be a high influx of new players.

Even for big ship builders, the incentives to keep the AH stocked with lowbie ships are not that tempting, and most big surges in the lowbie market has been philantropical in nature, or a complete rip-off. High level shipbuilders rather wanna stock the market with ships that will sink in the red, as these will carry a more enduring demand. Their labour is tight enough to barely meet these demands, in which LSB's are one of the culprits. On the other hand, we also do need a proper money/labour sink in econ aswell, not only a surplus.

I like all other changes though, including the rep functions for international trading.

PS. I didn't quite comprehend whether the rep loss would be for both the giving and the recieving in the trade? If the penalty is only for the giver, I already know an exploit to circumvent the protectionism in its entire. DS.

[PaulG]

Will someone please explain, in plain english with examples, how decreasing the output from 5 deeds to 1 deed does not mean the cost of the 1 ship has not increased 5 times because I'm really struggling to follow that part of the argument?

I'd also like to understand better what is meant by cross nation trade because in my mind that is exactly what the freetrader is supposed to do?

Any clarification would help because at the moment the incentive behind this looks suspicious to say the least.

[Remus]

Originally Posted by will ed (best crank out some morduants and alex's now guys! )

A word of warning:
When all ship recipes only produce a single deed, there is no reason for any ship recipe to use another deed as one of its ingredients; you might as well build sleeks and mastercrafts from raw ingredients.

This won't affect Mordaunts and Alexes (well, not unless you wanted the Mordaunts to be able to make Sleeks), but it is conceivable that the way we currently refit ships will change too.

[Tsushima]

Originally Posted by PaulG Will someone please explain, in plain english with examples, how decreasing the output from 5 deeds to 1 deed does not mean the cost of the 1 ship has not increased 5 times because I'm really struggling to follow that part of the argument?

I'm assuming that the cost of the components will get lowered as a part of this change. Naturally some ships will get more expensive to produce while others will probably get cheaper. It would be impossible to balance it so that all current costs remain the same.

Originally Posted by PaulG I'd also like to understand better what is meant by cross nation trade because in my mind that is exactly what the freetrader is supposed to do?

I don't get this either. Has this been a problem?

Originally Posted by PaulG Any clarification would help because at the moment the incentive behind this looks suspicious to say the least.

I get what they are trying to do here.
They are normalizing recipes, ship production and to a lesser degree ship stats. I'm guessing this is a way to have ship recipes require less moderation in the future when new ships gets added. It could also be a part of removing LSBs, like people have speculated. Having production cost scale with the actual stats of a ship without artificial money sinks like LSBs. So if you want a ship with more guns or a more complicated rig (faster/more agile) then you pay for those extra components. This makes for a smoother increase in cost with end game ships, not having to add a >300k db component to push the production cost up.
This is just a theory though, since they haven't announced anything about the LSB yet.