Zentor's EconoBlog & Forum

[Zentor]

Zentor's EconoBlog & Forum

In the spirit of transparency and improving channels of communication between Dev's and players, I'd like to launch this blog and forum, similar to how Xoria, Skorak and others have done in the past.
Not all details are revealed, gotta leave some hype for patches, but general direction, my thoughts, conclusions and perspective on certain economy topics, and wacky ideas can and will appear here.

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Smuggling Focus

Since joining the Dev Team, my primary focus has been showing some love to our forsaken smuggling commodities. This includes bringing up profit rates to the current standard (hovering around 500 csu's), adding or removing sellpoints/purchase locations where appropriate with lore, and progressing these routes along their storied expansion into new markets.

The profit rates aren't fixed at the above rates as I try to apply a sliding scale based off distance, base ownership, and potential risk.
For a side note,

CSU is calculated as Profit = ( time in second x CSU rate ) / 100

Currently Regular commodities hover around 350 csu's, smuggling around 500 csu's and mining ores somewhere between 650-850 csu's (not accounting for specific pob locations, or whether multiple ppl mined the ore etc)

To date, I have worked on (though as my experience grows in these reworks, some slight retooling will be done at some point):

• Nox
  
• Gaian Wildlife
  
• Kemwer Munitions
  
• Artifacts
  
  

with several more coming this patch.

Cardamine Cardamine Cardamine

Cardamine is the ubiquitous symbol of smuggling in Freelancer many would say. Cardamine is grown exclusively on the Planet Malta by Outcasts and brought down in bulk by them and their allies or quasi lawfuls into House markets. Historically, Liberty has been its biggest focus, where strong connections to the local underground has given rise to dedicated facilities designed to handle the bulk drug, repackaging it from their large vapour tanks into smaller portions for resale into more "local" markets.
Because of this, there exists a "cloned" commodity selling from Buffalo Base (Rogues) in New York. Having two commodities with completely different routes and sellpoints but named the same thing on the front end is confusing to folks not familiar with this subsector of the economy and so the repackaged commodity has been renamed "Cardamine Cartridges" for clarity and its routes updated and expanded upon.
The bulk commodity as well has been updated and new selling locations added showing the Maltese' push into markets previously not taken advantage of very much such as Gallia.

POB Repair Commodities

Though not directly for profit, the three necessary repair materials for base maintenance and construction of special equipment Hull Segments, Reinforced Alloy, and Robotic Hardware drew my attention as well this go around. Over several years of system changes and base moves, some of these selling locations have redundancies and inconsistencies that needed addressing. (i.e. having 4 RA sellpoints in 1 system).
To address this and keeping an eye out overall for areas that have become virtually impossible to launch a player base due to how difficult it would be to supply, a bit of rebalance has been done, trying to consider all spectrums of reps and distance to commodity sellpoints. In spite of this, the other side of the coin was to try and make sure one single base didn't become the golden horde of repair materials and therefore lead to over clustering of POB's around it. This I'm sure is a controversial subject, as most of the community have very strong opinions on player bases in their current form on Disco, but the idea and motivation is to make supplying POB's less of a soul sucking experience and more approachable to players. (Also keep in mind if anything is overlooked, its not spite, hate, etc and can easily patched based on feedback)
The perceived over-deployment, over-clustering of bases is left as always to the governing players in their respective regions to be played out through House/region/sovereign laws.

This has become long winded enough for now, so until next time ta-ta.


If you have idea's, questions, concerns or whatnot by all means, post below or dm me

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#JusticeForBurgundy

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"Music gives Wings to the Mind, Soul to the Universe, and Life to Everything"

[LuckyOne]

Since some time has passed with no comments or further public discussion developing, and I am feeling a bit inspired, I will note a few observations and thoughts as someone who regularly smuggles and from time to time dabbles in stopping smugglers - even though they rarely exist in current iteration of Disco gameplay.

As a smuggler, I can say that the most thrilling part of it is often the last leg of the trip, where the risk of detection or being stopped is the greatest. That's what smuggling should be focused on - shorter routes with plenty of opportunities for the smugglers and lawfuls to interact.


The unappealing parts for the curent iteration are the long haul from the Edge worlds (both Cardamine, Relics and some other routes suffer from this) and general lack of opposition (even the 46th stopped logging or switched to full Conn mode lately).

Not sure that CSU or route changes are going to do much to make smuggling a more interesting affair. They feel more like cosmetic changes at this point.


To make smuggling feel "fresh" and interesting again I'd suggest focusing on new gameplay ideas or improvements tied to this mechanic. A few of them were tried in the events made over the past year or so. Some of them proved quite popular, others less so, but all of them were a nice attempt to freshen up the same old gameplay.

From these I will mention ID bonuses for smuggling, multiple sellpoints (with boosted income for the freighters), confiscation sellpoints and other similar stuff.


I am convinced that smuggling should be one of the core pillars of Discovery's gameplay loop, the thing I'd like to call the Trader - Pirate - Lawful - Smuggler loop.

The premise is simple: trading by Traders should attract various Pirates looking to make a quick buck.
These in turn should make Lawfuls (and hired guns) log to protect these transports and make some cash from bounties.
The unfolding chaos of engagement should be the catalyst that would enable Smugglers and other Quasi-Lawfuls to slip through the patrols more reliably and earn increased income on their trades.
As the number of logged Lawfuls increases, regular trade becomes less safe and profitable than Smuggling so the trading part of server pop slowly switches to mostly Smugglers.
When the Lawfuls win the Smugglers switch back to Traders due to increased risk of detection and cargo loss.
If the Unlawfuls win the smuggling should become less profitable with the increased competition and supply of illegal goods, leading the players to go back to being simple Traders.
And the loop repeats.


The current loop is broken. Pirates are rare because Piracy doesn't pay enough compared to the required investment or chance of success and it's boring to pirate the same people over and over. Unlawfuls mostly log for raids instead of cargo piracy or covering Smugglers. Lawfuls mostly play caps (and military chars) without access to /net and reliable means of catching or identifying smugglers.


I am by no means a man of authority on any of this, but it seems to me the static nature of Freelancer's economy is something that prevents the loop from closing fully. Events add part of the dynamism (and bump profits) so the loop works much better in those cases.


Kudos for trying to offer some transparency in the dev process, and I hope your plan for the rework is coming up well.

[Zentor]

Excellent telling of it tbh. Freelancer has often struggled to maintain this balance wheel you mention due to the nature of its static economy (which, I believe was intended during orig development to be fully dynamic, or at least the files suggest they wanted to) and the declining population.

I too believe Smuggling should be one of the most important tenants of FL gameplay and have been looking at possible solutions to boost it, fresh from just keeping rates current and updating routes and hope to be able to share these soon as I flesh them out a bit more. Keep up the ideas and feed them this way!

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#JusticeForBurgundy

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"Music gives Wings to the Mind, Soul to the Universe, and Life to Everything"

[Zentor]

Development Blog


I've begun a video series on Youtube to share some of the coding and economy work I've been involved in recently as I find it a good medium for packaging each piece well for presentation to the community efficiently. I will make posts here as well with subsequent patches but this will fill the gaps between:

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#JusticeForBurgundy

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"Music gives Wings to the Mind, Soul to the Universe, and Life to Everything"

[Major.]

Finally, finally we got Ore refineries.

Thank god someone did that, really appreciate your work Zentor!

Edit: It would be awesome if the refined ore requires more then just the mined ore. (Water, Oxygen etc.)

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[Xenon]

You do realize that so many people love the ideas that you are working on, and they already gave good feedback and talked to you but you also know that most of them evade typing opinions on forums because of the excessive negativity and trolling replies, so I want you to know that a large sector of the community is very happy by your ideas, and we wish you best of luck implementing them in-game and adding more ideas from the ones we discussed several times - Cheers and best of luck, You are changing the history of POBs and Economy on discovery for the first time, dude.

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NEBULA INFORMATION BOT ☆ NEBULA DISCORD SERVER
XENON WEAPONS MARKET ☆ NEBULA GRAND PLAZA ☆ NEBULA TECHNOLOGIES
THE DISCOVERY POBCAST ☆ DISCOVERY SERVER RULES

[Redcroft]

When do we have the refineries ingame? Waited years for this.

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[Stewgar]

You do realize that so many people love the ideas that you are working on, and they already gave good feedback and talked to you but you also know that most of them evade typing opinions on forums because of the excessive negativity and trolling replies, so I want you to know that a large sector of the community is very happy by your ideas, and we wish you best of luck implementing them in-game and adding more ideas from the ones we discussed several times - Cheers and best of luck, You are changing the history of POBs and Economy on discovery for the first time, dude.

Ditto!

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It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.

[Nika]

Now all that is left is see the patch go live.

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Peace, being the distant dream it is, comes inevitably, and goes hand in hand with justice.
Cursed be the war.

Heroes never die! @Vitoniz30 @Connor

[Redline.Inc]

Zentor,
All of your ideas are excellent and I hope that they can be implemented sooner rather than later.

I have always been an advocate for sequential commodities pricing (as you have suggested for smuggling commodities) whereas the price of ALL commodities increases incrementally as the distance increases from the source, rather than it only really being profitable at a few sellpoints several systems away. It seems to me that, at least on the NPC shipping hub bases in major house systems (but not the capitol planets) the prices should allow traders to profit from moving most any commodity from house hub to house hub.
The long hauls would still be very profitable for those who choose to do them, but it would literally be very nearly as profitable making cleverly contrived trade routing from house to house. The capitol planets paying just a bit more than the local hub price would give every house a decent internal route for beginning players, who could range further afield to increase profit as their fortunes increase.
IMO, one of the most important aspects improved by this system would be that it makes unlawfuls actually work for their supper, rather than camp the logistical choke points of the currently necessary long-haul routes.

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