Smithing is SOOOO profitable (Ty requesting design consult here)

[axefrog]

I know I'm a bit late to the party regarding the discussion on price modifiers, but just food for thought- why not think about the item *irrespective* of the material and use that as the baseline, with the value of the material then becoming the modifier?

e.g.
This ring is poorly crafted - $5 - oh but it's made out of $250 in gold, so the price is $255.
This ring is very well crafted - $50 - but it's made out of $4000 in unobtainium, so the price is $4050.
This statue is the most beautifully crafted statue in the galaxy - $7500 - and it's made out of wood, which adds an extra $10 to the price.

[Tynan]

umm tynan, I noticed another thing wrong with weapons. unlike art, all swords of the same material but different qualities are treated as the same object, this means that I could have 20 steel longswords and only 1 is legendary, but because of it's placement in my stackpile the traders think all 20 swords are legendary. that's another balance issue with smithing that is way to easy to exploit.

Crap that's a bug! I'll fix it thanks.

[mumblemumble]

I would say base it on real life. Make first : the demand for such goods spotty (besides exotic traders, who would always want statues / hand made weapons?) and 2nd, make poor quality items LESS than the value of the raw materials. After all, if you have a horrible quality weapon or other item, most people would only want it for scrap, AND since its not refined it would be LESS than the value of scrap. This is because they need to melt the metal back down into ingots, which means more labor instead of just raw ingots ready to go (or wood or w.e). Think about it...If you have a rusty and bent machete, whos going to buy it, even if they want a machete? Their money could be better spent easily, and sold to scrap dealers even, it would be at a low return "per pound" price... so having a poor crafter would mean tons of wasted time for the sake of training. Also, like other uncommon goods, it might vary from vendor to vendor if they know / appreciate the value of it, so unlike stock guns, supplies, someone might be unwilling to buy a legendary weapon / perfect statue for its whole worth.

On a side note...it would be fun if people could also tinker with guns to slightly improve stats, but I think a refined gun system (optimal range separate from range the bullet can possibly go(players shoot at 7 squares away, but can actually fire as long as 10(which would also fix the hunters issue)), accuracy of the gun seperate from the colonists accuracy(so even a perfect marksman can miss at long ranges, cause you know, pistols arent 100% accurate), perhaps even effects to movement speed for bigger guns(pistols give full speed, miniguns make you crawl)) would be necessary before this would even be worth it.

PS: I speak on the issue as someone who has worked in recycling work, and there is a lot of work to taking trash, taking it apart into its elements, delivering them to refineries, then sending them to other places to be used. Unless its readily usable and marketable, recycling something actually takes a lot of effort.

[Teovald]

I just hope that the skill decrease is not too aggressive. Seeing your colonists loose skill is very infuriating. 

A possible way to fix it could be to floor the decrease at skill level decrease (so the colonist loses his/her progress to the next level, but not his/her level) or maybe at max attained level - 1 so you can't decrease that much.

[woolfoma]

Crap that's a bug! I'll fix it thanks.

ok, glad I could help.

[Ironvos]

The insane amounts of money you can make by trading can be mitigated by making it so that traders only have a limited demand for certain items.
It's really kind of like the junk vendor syndrome you see in many rpgs.
Even if a vendor has enough money, they shouldn't buy all your crap just because they can afford it.
So you got 40 wooden swords? too bad dude i only need 3.
Maybe make it so that pawns with good social skill can persuade the trader to buy a few more or something.

[PotatoeTater]

I like the idea of making a persons social skill fit into trading.

Say you have 0 social skill on a person, that 40,000 dollar gold thing only sells for 1000 because you can't convince the merchant to pay more, while on the other side a skill of 15 or so gets you the full amount and so on. Allows you to use the skill more than just talking to each other.

[Matthiasagreen]

I like the idea of making a persons social skill fit into trading.

Say you have 0 social skill on a person, that 40,000 dollar gold thing only sells for 1000 because you can't convince the merchant to pay more, while on the other side a skill of 15 or so gets you the full amount and so on. Allows you to use the skill more than just talking to each other.

That has always been a thing....hasn't it?

[JKTD1919]

Tynan, I think I have a solution to your problem.

You said low-quality items would have trouble with offset modifiers. Why don't you formulate the algorithm like this:

Market Value = (Item Base Price) + ((Quality Offset)*(An assigned number for type of material)

i.e. Wood = 1, or a fraction, and Silver is 1.5, and Gold is 2, etc.

Could the code allow for something like that?

[madmagican3]

Just my thoughts on the subject, I would not limit the price of items, but make it so that there is a change in the money available on the trader. It seems strange to me that they are trading such huge amounts of silver when surely it'd be much better for them in the majority of cases to barter. If we take a trade system like the one in fallout 3 (top of my head), most traders don't have that much money. You can trade stuff however to offset the loss you're making on a deal. You may have a piece of art worth 40,000 but the trader don't have that much money, you can take everything he has and the 10,000 he owes you, but you cant just take the money as he doesn't have that much.
This seems like an especially fitting system based on the idea of the traders as some random ass people that fly around in their spaceship trading with other random ass colonists. They'd want to travel light in money due to the huge amount of pirates.
This as a system makes the most sense to me, that is of course subjective however

[keylocke]

iirc. the system already works that way. it's just that the traders often brings crappy items for trade most of the time.

[Oga88]

instead of a flat out x2 bonus, something like

(Base Value)*(Skill Bonus)+(Base Value)=(Trader Sell for value)

Were the skill bonus is a percent. So it would look something like this:

1000*.125+1000=$1125

In this example $1125 is the value of the item after the craft bonus is applied, this would scale evenly with item values.

Examples cont.:
100*.125+100=$112.5
10000*.125+10000=$11250

So then to find what the trader would buy from the colonists for would look something like this:

(Trader Sell for value)-(Trader Sell for value)*(Trader Profit Margin)=(Trader Buy Value)

Examples:

112.5-112.5*.4=67.5
1125-1125*.4=675
11250-11250*.4=6750

I agree with this solution. Aswell as with that melee weapons shouldn't be that expensive or if they are then range weapons (all but pila, bows) should cost more, based on there effeciency.

About art if you got a good artist then he should be able to make something form steel that will cost more than a bad one makes from gold. Also currently stockpile for silver is 500 maybe make it 2000 cause 40 000 is 80 tiles thats way too big.... or maybe 5000 per tile.

Also if the skills decrease agreesive than maybe some implants will help. Like have three kinds for every skill. They shouldn't let the skill drop less then 7, 14 and one that does not let it drop at all.

Maybe we should make some sort of a bank in the game. Were you can store your money and get interest, but also you will have to pay for keeping that money in the bank, so that you don't get overwhelmed buy the amount you got.

Maybe if you got a lot off money than space pirates will be more aggresive towards you and you will need to bribe them or they will beat it out of you. I think that bionic parts should cost more.

For me the problem is that you got all the resource you need and don't have a way to spend the silver you got. I like looting dead bodies for stuff, selling art, cloth, crafting from silver and gold, but were do I spend my profit?

[Team: Colonist]

I'm curious as to how you guys would suggest fixing this. I sense two separate issues:

1. Art and crafts can become too valuable. The base value of a gold sculpture 40,000. The quality modifier can add insane amounts of value, because it multiplies the entire base value of the item, while not really costing anything to obtain if you have a good crafter.

I think that you could make a new kind of trader that comes on a rotation, possibly seasonal, that has crazy amounts of silver for players to sell their high value stuff to. That's just the first idea that comes to mind.

[StorymasterQ]

I'm curious as to how you guys would suggest fixing this. I sense two separate issues:

1. Art and crafts can become too valuable. The base value of a gold sculpture 40,000. The quality modifier can add insane amounts of value, because it multiplies the entire base value of the item, while not really costing anything to obtain if you have a good crafter.

I think that you could make a new kind of trader that comes on a rotation, possibly seasonal, that has crazy amounts of silver for players to sell their high value stuff to. That's just the first idea that comes to mind.

"A ship has arrived on orbit. It's not a trader, but a lost cruise ship full of curious yet wealthy individuals."

Sells nothing, buys everything, has 2 billion silver in stock.

[Cimanyd]

Sells nothing, buys everything, has 2 billion silver in stock.

Buys everything. You don't get a choice. All your items and structures are sold. Your food, weapons, apparel, sculptures, bionics, production tables, even the walls, are all replaced by silver. Your colonists are left naked and freezing. You have to immediately start building rooms out of silver and chopping trees for firewood.

Or, the colonists are bought too, meaning every part of the entire colony is converted into a huge pile of silver, ending the game (unless you want to wait around for someone to show up to join the colony.)