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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

Joao Duarte wrote:
Norrdec wrote:

This is a MMORPG corporation based game. Doing stuff solo is hard. Everything working as intended.
We had enough resources to sell, but no one was making mods for anyone(Corps did that for themselves). That's why the market was dead.

Not sure things are working as intended, maybe we can have a dev shedding some light on that subject. For sure the market is not working as intended and this could help.

As for Perpetuum being a corporation based game, it means nothing, corporation 'based' is not corporation 'only', so you should cater for everything a player might want to do in a sandbox.



It's very interesting what you say though. According to you, no corporation can start from scratch, they can only offshoot from existing corporations, because the current market doesn't support newcomers.

Is that also working as intended?

It sounds crazy, but may actually be working as intended. The can lifetime is hardly the main reason there's no market. This whole thing of ratting not producing anything the ratter himself needs, costs ammo, and industrialists completely dependent on ratter, appears to be intended to work against free market development. Not to mention having trial accounts not being able to see the market is like asking them to not subscribe. No one wants to play a barren wasteland of a mmo.

I remember in the early days of Eve, there's no market, and if you want to fly a ship you have to mine and build it yourself. But that changed pretty fast once user base picked up, as rats have bounty, and industrialists need no kernals, both were self sufficient.

The current system in Perpetuum seems to be intentionally designed to keeping old players in larger corps, where they're more likely to stay subscribed. But the downside of having new players leave because they can't do anything, may not be worth the trade off. Solo players are still players, they pay the same subscription, interact and contribute to the community through the market.

The current anti-solo bias is quite extreme, and discourage formation of new corps as well as soloing. It may do the game some good if it's tuned back a bit, to still provide advantages to large corps, but not make it completely impossible to solo or start new corp.

27 Reply by Joao Duarte (edited by Joao Duarte 2011-07-01 17:06:30)

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

Sabre906 wrote:
Joao Duarte wrote:
Norrdec wrote:

This is a MMORPG corporation based game. Doing stuff solo is hard. Everything working as intended.
We had enough resources to sell, but no one was making mods for anyone(Corps did that for themselves). That's why the market was dead.

Not sure things are working as intended, maybe we can have a dev shedding some light on that subject. For sure the market is not working as intended and this could help.

As for Perpetuum being a corporation based game, it means nothing, corporation 'based' is not corporation 'only', so you should cater for everything a player might want to do in a sandbox.



It's very interesting what you say though. According to you, no corporation can start from scratch, they can only offshoot from existing corporations, because the current market doesn't support newcomers.

Is that also working as intended?

It sounds crazy, but may actually be working as intended. The can lifetime is hardly the main reason there's no market. This whole thing of ratting not producing anything the ratter himself needs, costs ammo, and industrialists completely dependent on ratter, appears to be intended to work against free market development. Not to mention having trial accounts not being able to see the market is like asking them to not subscribe. No one wants to play a barren wasteland of a mmo.

I remember in the early days of Eve, there's no market, and if you want to fly a ship you have to mine and build it yourself. But that changed pretty fast once user base picked up, as rats have bounty, and industrialists need no kernals, both were self sufficient.

The current system in Perpetuum seems to be intentionally designed to keeping old players in larger corps, where they're more likely to stay subscribed. But the downside of having new players leave because they can't do anything, may not be worth the trade off. Solo players are still players, they pay the same subscription, interact and contribute to the community through the market.

The current anti-solo bias is quite extreme, and discourage formation of new corps as well as soloing. It may do the game some good if it's tuned back a bit, to still provide advantages to large corps, but not make it completely impossible to solo or start new corp.

That seems to sum up things pretty well I think.
Would be nice to have a dev commenting on that situation...

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

This thread has gone way off topic. Start a new one to talk about the market.

The solo game is difficult, and the devs are working on adding more content and making the solo game better, which I am highly anticipating. Changing the can life-time effects more than just solo play however, it plays a prominant role in PVP ascpets too. It's balanced now, making the lifetime longer means they will also have to change something else, most likely making your can 'accessable' to pirates for a longer time. So if the time gets extended to say, 30 minutes, the original 10 min exclusive will remain, and your can will be pirateable for 20 minutes.

From a miner's perspective, having my can piratable for longer is not something I would want, but the devs will have to balance a longer can time with something, and will probably make the combat pilots giggle with glee.

29 Reply by Demiwar (edited by Demiwar 2011-07-01 19:35:36)

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

The whole idea is to promote teamplay, not require it. If you want to solo mine or rat, you either do so within 10min round trip of a terminal, or you fill your bot's cargohold and return. Teamplay = more efficiency, but that doesnt mean you have to do it.Take a look at RL, where do you think companies first came from? Two guys got together and figured out that by working together, they can earn x% more then working separate. In the same way, by having a team to work with in perpetuum, you are able to extend the range of your operations beyond the overcrowded spots near terminals.

The current timer on cans isn't anti-solo, its pro teamwork. Solo mining is completely viable without cans at 7.5/15/21U per trip, its just not as efficient as having a hauler.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

btw, for solo-mining without a can, you can go out without any heavy equip and fully speed fit... no need for recharger or accumulators.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

We are looking into the container mechanics as we completely agree, teamplay is a good thing, but should not be forced onto everyone. So far the ideas that came up:

- introducing tractor beams and reducing the container activation range to what it was
- being able to deploy longer term containers (lots of exploits and abuses involved though)

Please share your thoughts on these.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

DEV Calvin wrote:

We are looking into the container mechanics as we completely agree, teamplay is a good thing, but should not be forced onto everyone. So far the ideas that came up:

- introducing tractor beams and reducing the container activation range to what it was
- being able to deploy longer term containers (lots of exploits and abuses involved though)

Please share your thoughts on these.

Reduced loot range and tractor would force ratters to either fit tractor or aggro spawn more. I don't see how extending a can's lifetime by a small 5-10 minutes would be game-changing, as all the gloom and doom people forecasted. If you've already camped a can for 15 minutes, what's the big deal with another 5?

It may not seem like much, but would open up a lot of extra area that solo miners can access. Even a small increase in radius covers a lot of extra land. It's the difference between only being able to mine titan ores and having access to... everything else. I don't see why a game should bend over backwards to cater to a small minority, under a very narrow and rare set of circumstances, while limiting the masses of noobs to mining only titan ore.

Nowhere else can so little be given up by so few people for such great benefits to so many. tongue

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

calvin, there was already another topic about that.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

Can timer is just fine as it is, but your right, instead of argueing about that point, we could be discussing ways that will make mining better.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

DEV Calvin wrote:

We are looking into the container mechanics as we completely agree, teamplay is a good thing, but should not be forced onto everyone. So far the ideas that came up:

- introducing tractor beams and reducing the container activation range to what it was
- being able to deploy longer term containers (lots of exploits and abuses involved though)

Please share your thoughts on these.

Tractor beams would be nice, especially for harvesting (if I'm understanding the mechanics of it correctly).

As for having longer term containers I've stated my opinion earlier in this thread. I understand it's a delicate thing to ballance though, but overall i think everyone would win with slightly longer term containers. The potential ability to hack into containers is of course interesting and would be one step towards allowing for a piracy career in alpha, but that would mean even less ore being mined smile

36 Reply by Arga (edited by Arga 2011-07-01 23:39:32)

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

You can't have an infinite storage container, and the ability to drag it with a tractor beam. Eventually someone will figure out a way to haul thier 100,000U's of corporate goods from point a to b. And at 240U loads max currently with the Lithus, even if it averaged to 1 kph, it would still be faster. Or if you limit a container to x number of moves, then the lithus will just carry 1000 containers and transfer to the next one after each drag; or if it can't move more than x meters from the drop point... basically there's no mechanic that will negate the ability to move an infinite amount of goods. It wouldn't kill the haul trade, since it could be made really inconvient to do with anything less then a really large amount.

You can however create a tractor-container, that is loaded into the tracktor module like ammo. Each size ammo has a fixed U limit, based on the existing cargo sizes; 80 and 240U. A small tracktor loads 80U and a med tracktor loads 240U.

Each tier of tracktor it can lock 1 cargo module, so T1 can pull 1 tractor-canister, T4 can pull up to 4 tractor-canister.

The speed at which the bot can pull the modules is based on the amount of accumulator.

100% AP = 0% speed penalty.

For each tractor-canister, X AP/sec is used while moving.

In this way, even if a small bot was pulling too many tractor-canisters to be stable, they would be able to stop/start pull the entire way, it would just take longer.

This solves both the 'cargo' module issue and the tracktor issue.

Keep cans as is with 100m range.

EDIT: Sorry, had to rush this, work barged in on me. Probably plenty of holes that could be filled.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

Oh, forgot to add:

You can turn the trackor on/off to release - lock tractor-canisters, which would have a 15 min timer, and be lootable after 10 mins just like a normal can.

In this way, you could sacrifice a mining module for a tracktor module, mine 240U or ore, then pull the tractor-canister closer to the outpost, then go get your sequar/lithus and transport it normally when it was within an acceptable distance.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

our industrial robots got arms with hands... tractor beam to grab a container, ok, but pulling it around with a tractorbeam? no.

that moveable container get limited capacity is for granted. I can imagine that the "unlimited field container" concept will be gone too with the announced change about their server-mechanic (blogpost)

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

I want just to defend my post. I am not telling you that the corps are elitits, and the only way for a new corp is to be feed by the old one.

NO

The market is dead because OLD corps went beyond the market and are feeding themselves. We didn't have people TO POPULATE the market. Now we do. Production takes a bit mkay?

5 months ago the market was in better shape because everyone was trying to make profit of it. This trend is starting again. Can lifetime is not going to speed up this process.

As for making mining better, the problem atm is everyone is not educated in what to mine and where. Make more mining assignments pointing to random spots to scan and or mine, not only to same one every time.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

-1 the timer as it stands now imho is fine.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

Off topic but if you want to stimulate the market then the market needs to uniquely produce something that self sufficient corps need.  And the corps can only get this by selling on the market. rock peper sissors.

e.g Sell modules on the market get a Nian token.  Nian tokens are needed for outpost production on beta.

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Re: deployable container (can) lifetime is too short

DEV Calvin wrote:

We are looking into the container mechanics as we completely agree, teamplay is a good thing, but should not be forced onto everyone. So far the ideas that came up:

- introducing tractor beams and reducing the container activation range to what it was
- being able to deploy longer term containers (lots of exploits and abuses involved though)

Please share your thoughts on these.

Unless the tractor beam (presumably a fitting) allows you to actually drag the can back to the station, I don't see the advantage of this.

A counter to one potential problem with longer term cans would be to make them very expensive and reusable (making 'littering' very costly), with security codes that expire after some reasonable length of time (like npc loot cans but longer), so that it is possible to 'clean up' after another player (and so get a free expensive can) who is purposefully dumping cans on the landscape for malicious reasons.