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Wanted Features
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Complex Economy (Keep the player busy)
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7/11/2012 2:35:50 PM,
Old PRE-ALPHA topic
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109 months ago by
Jestersheepy
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Wouldn't it be cool to mine all day long, collecting resources and then refining them on your own very limited small refiner (In which would make your load lighter due to the throw out of waste)? Then further develop those refined materials to start making your own little base.
First things first, you will be wanting more cargo storage no doubt, you will also be wanting a faster more efficient refiner. Once those are built you might like to build a little manufacturing facility in which you can finally produce small turrets that you can attach to your base to defend it.
Pretty basic, for now but that could be expanded upon... How about each of these facilities has levels of upgrade which will ultimately either make one more efficient, bigger, stronger (etc you get the idea).
But, there will be restrictions to this system, you are going to have power limits and your base facility wont be able to sustain a large amount of turrets or refining stations.
Just an idea I thought, would keep the player very busy and have a really big risk element trying to defend your base.
Just imagine placing one inside a giant asteroid, imagine having to physically mine a gigantic cave inside your asteroid in which you base will be placed.
Discus, enjoy. I am sure this game needs or can support a similar system (Some sort of economy to keep the player using it).
If requested I have thought this through a lot and I wouldn't mind creating a professional document on how I feel this system would work, both in terms of balancing, game play and general creating of the system (Art wise, as I am a 3D artist).
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109 months ago by
TiberiuS
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Yery nice ideas about the economy imo.
But you should not be able to refine ore with your ship only. It's just too small (Miner Ship = 15 meters long and wide?) for this, and it wouldn't make sense.
Having a small outpost with a storage, refinery and production facility on the other hand would be really cool. Maybe you can also open a small shop and set the AI to sell some stuff from your own basic production. Like Mining Drills or ammo for the autocannon.
The outpost could also have a docking station for cargo ships that come from time to time and collect the refined raw materials you have in storage (and you get money for it).
Edit:
Facilities for Outposts with modular design
Storage
Refinery
Basic Production Facility
Power Generator
Hangar
Repair Station
Cargo-Ship Docking Station
Shop
Oxygen Converter (needs Ice to work)
Oxygen Tank
Sensor Array
Sensor Scrambler
Autoturret
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109 months ago by
Jestersheepy
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Ha, the idea was that it would take AGGGEEES to refine on your ship as you only have a very small module for it. So you would strive to create and force the player to create a base with a rather large refiner.
Also I didnt mention more facilities because then it starts getting complicated. Would be nice if one of the developers could read this and give their thoughts on the idea.
But, by the way, the modules you mentioned seem great and would work in my opinion.
Not too sure about the shop though, if there was a shop at all I think it would be in far better hands of an NPC station. However if this game is going in that direction then it would be awesome to own a 'shop' that NPCs or even other players could come visit to sell/buy wares.
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109 months ago by
TiberiuS
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The shop has to be fully automated (AI-controlled) of course. Maybe the owner of the outpost can set the prices for his stuff but he doesn't have to trade with players who visit his outpost himself.
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109 months ago by
Jestersheepy
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Ah I thought you meant the player can put items up there to sell. But yeah, so the ultimate goal of the shop would be to generate an income?
What determines whats on the shop?
I would say rather than a so called shop why not just directly sell your spare resources for a minimal unworth while currency (If you are strapped for cash and have too much say, ice or oxygen why throw it out when you can make a bit of cash from it?, or even still, trade could come into that).
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109 months ago by
TiberiuS
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My idea about the shop is that friends or maybe neutral players can dock into your mining outpost and refill their energy and oxygen supplys and repair their ship. Additionally they can buy basic ammunition for their autocannon (maybe also for their cannon or basic rockets; nothing advanced though) and mining equipment.
The player who owns the station has two (three) advantages through the shop:
1) the shop generates some income (as you said)
2) he gets the stuff his outpost produces for free (like mining equipment, repairs and ammo)
(3) he supports his clan/faction/friends in this sector)
Another problem I see is that when some player comes and wants to sell a lot of ore there are 2 limiting factors for this:
1) the amount of credits that are stored in the outpost
2) the storage capacity of the outpost
both should be taken into account.
The owner can determine what he wants to sell and what he doesn't. Maybe he can set what percentage of his storage he wants to keep for himself (e.g. keep 25% of the oxygen supply of the station; everything above 25% can be sold to players who pay for it)
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109 months ago by
Jestersheepy
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In terms of gameplay balancing I dont think that the player should get anything for free unless they realllly work hard for it even still it should have draw backs.
So this is a shop of what 'your' station produces, so you are pretty much selling what you personally don't need?
I am just thinking in terms of a mining facility, perhaps money isn't the thing that miners strive for, it would be more to do with resources, equipment (Sure if money gets them that then they would).
I think what you described is a bit.. Much for now, I mean otherwise carry on reading and think of this (This shouldn't happen to minerwars just yet, it's very unrealistic development wise for the game).
What about taking the path of, a solar station to produce power in which you employ AI to transport the power to your manufacturing plant, on top of that your manufacturing plant will require resources so you will have to create a mining station in which AI transports the goods from that.
However it's not as simple as that, as that sounds quite boring.
Your manufacturing plant only produces 1 specific components needed of 2 to produce say... A turret, so you will have to create another one and supply it with different resources which once the components are completed, go to a third station for a turret to be assembled.
You could use this technique to produce, radars, missiles, ammo, guns, perhaps even other ships.
This will make the player feel like he has an empire growing and after what seems like a heck of work to get turrets produces, the player will feel relieved when those turrets are pumping out of the station.
On top of all of that you should have upgrade to stations in 3 different areas: Defense, Production, Storage. That sounds great but you will be limited to 5 upgrades per station so choose how you build it wisely.
It might be pumping out production with a 5/5 upgrade however this is 'Minerwars' Fighting for resources, you station will be venerable to attack.
In this sense 'Shops' wouldn't be needed, it would be the demand that makes the money. At most a specific station can sell their goods if it was built for that purpose I.e the power station ONLY sells power.
You don't see a single base producing, oxygen, turrets, power, and generally safe maintaining itself and on top of that opening a shop to sell itself out. That seems... Unrealistic/unbelievable.
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109 months ago by
JoseyWales
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i don't see were storage capacity would be a problem. it is just converted to materials and equipment to be sold so it shouldn't have an affect on it unless there is a set time on manufacturing the supplies. it will play right into the fighting over resources in the game needing to resupply and rearm. the stations would be something that you would want to protect but could be used by any faction to resupply. so i could see some wanting to take out a factions supply depot and others being friendly even though they are from another faction. it would make for some interesting gaming for sure.
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109 months ago by
Jestersheepy
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Hmm what I was trying to get at was.
Has anyone played any of the X3 games?
x3 if you have the patients for it and the will to learn is one of the best economy games out there, competing with games like EVE online.
It takes a very long time to get your supply up but once you do it feel so awesome.
Now I am not saying Minerwars should be like that, if you toned down X3's system and made it far easier to control manage and adjust then you will be taking nothing but the pros from that particular system.
On top of that, anyone who has played X3 to death would also more likely agree that if you imagined X3 as a multiplayer game or even an MMO without changing a thing to the single player game (It could and would work), it would be the most awesome game!
Players play games and if they see something that should be there they don't recognize it but as soon as something doesnt look right its a problem. Its this that makes me think, to make a game see and feel awesome it has to be different from what the player has experienced before.
Imagine Mass effect series, that story is so awesome and engaging you just want to wet your pants sometimes... But when you wet your pants alone, it's kinda creepy. Imagine experiencing that same experience with someone else. A friend, a stranger, either way your not alone and you are both sharing the experience.
This is what really make me want to help Miner Wars become one of those 'different, awesome games'. Right now it feels different due to the complex of the mining dynamically through asteroids, now it needs more of that. Make it fun!
Get a sensor scanner somehow and scan small parts of an asteroid, red means dense resources green means sparse... that's just a thought off of the top of my head which could make something like this more engaging.
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109 months ago by
TiberiuS
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I don't see MW being about a big eco game.
My Idea about the outpost is, that it is the only resupply station in one sector. So you basically sell things YOU have, but others don't in this sector. Without an outpost you will be in constant need of oxygen, fuel and ammo. So the outposts are where you can get them.
If you are near your own outpost you get those things for free.
Main purpose of the outpost would be a temporary refinery with docking station for cargo ships from a mining company which you can sell your refined materials to. Second purpose is resupply and maintenance for mining operations. There needs to be some kind of "shop" because Miners have to sell their ore somewhere... and there can't be a mothership in every sector.
The more facilites you build, the bigger the outpost gets.
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109 months ago by
Jestersheepy
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Still dont agree with the whole free thing.
Being given something is not as rewarding as earning it.
As for the economy you mentioned... In this game I was brought to the attention that you are fighting over minerals, resources.
Thats a really important factor and what the foundation of this game is.
So your fighting over resources but why? There needs to be purpose and if the purpose is just to get a high number of resources then that is lame. If it's to gain money and buy more of what you already have (Oxygen, ammo etc) then thats quite boring as well. But when you bring in the factor of a rich economy you can quite easily ignore it if you want but it's there, you can use it and a strong economy has made successful games in itself.
Others, for lack of it has killed them, look at Mortal Online... the player-base is mainly leaving because there isn't enough economy or content to use it there.
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109 months ago by
TiberiuS
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QUOTE: Being given something is not as rewarding as earning it.
The owner of such an outpost has to work hard for it because it'll cost many credits to buy one. And if you finally have one it doesn't mean you can lean back and wait as you get rich. The station still needs ore to feed its refinery and Ice to convert it into Oxygen. Plus the basic things you produce in your outpost cost refined materials. So when you produce and use it yourself you won't get any money from the materials it used.
It's all a question of balancing.
e.g. for mining and selling ore to a refinery you'd get 100 credits
if you have your own refinery you geht 125 credits, which is +25% (for selling the refined materials)
if other miners bring their ore to your refinery you get just +25 credits, but you have to pay the miners the 100 credits for the ore and you have to take care that there's always enough energy and oxygen to sell, because if there's not, noone will stay near your outpost.
So you have to buy oxygen or mine ice and so on.
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109 months ago by
Jestersheepy
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Thats a nice concept actually.
I really like that idea of if someone else uses your facility you get a chunk of it.
Would work well, although I am still thinking that you get refined materials from it that you can either choose to sell (For you say 125) or keep them and use them somewhere else to do something with them.
As I said, you a fighting over these minerals, they need to be important and key to the game.
But if we look at what would be easy a possible now and fast, I would personally the refining system you mentioned. Although come to think about it, it will have to be more than that, more content.
If you think about ranks, think about how long you take to achieve the highest rank just for the sake of a title... Then think how long it would have taken the developers to make that system (My bet is it took a lot less time than the player will spend trying to gain those ranks).
I feel the developers should be focusing on something along those lines, get a system in there then milk it to death forcing players to spend hours and hours using it and loving it.
Currency system works very well for this, not too hard to implement yet easy and fun for the player, even if they are just watching number rise for now.
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109 months ago by
TiberiuS
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QUOTE: I feel the developers should be focusing on something along those lines, get a system in there then milk it to death forcing players to spend hours and hours using it and loving it.
The hard part for the devs is to create a system that is fun for players who play 40 hours/week but also for players who only play 2 hours/week. Even the MMO should not be for some hardcore-players only (I think Marek also posted this somewhere...).
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109 months ago by
Jestersheepy
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I am not talking about difficulty or time consumption... I am talking about Content which the player can use to benefit and spend a decent amount of time doing at low development costs. Whats considered 'fun' is up to the player and what the content actually is not the system to bring them into place.
For instance the ranking system I mentioned, players dont have to do that, its an option though.
Same system work in WoW on a large scale like instances, the system is implemented, I bet they have tools to churn them out as much as they like at different difficulties, variations and what more. You can choose if you do a certain instance or not, its there its generally fun its easy to make.
Lots of examples of this.
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7/11/2012 2:35:50 PM,
Old PRE-ALPHA topic
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