Zael's One-Stop Distribution Emporium

[BrotherZael]

Darcnes wrote:

We finally have the faintest idea of where we may end up. Nothing set for sure of course, but enough to get an idea of where you are, what you will be providing and what you are likely to need.

I expect some of these things may change as people are added and removed from the results, but the conversation can change as this happens.

To reiterate:
What will you be providing as goods or services?
What will you be needing for goods and services?

This applies to settlements, companies and individuals.

(C)ompany (S)ettlement (I)ndividual
+ Has available / - Looking for

A basic list thus far:
(C)Audacity :: +protection, bounty, crafted goods
(S)Dagedai :: +crafting, commerce, rogue/cleric, bulk food
(S)Forgeholm :: -bulk food/wood
(S)Freevale :: +commerce, barbarian, tavern
(I)Roughshod :: -contacts

Begin bartering. It should be easy to figure what you need, what you produce, and who you can trade with now. Obviously prices and exact weights will need be measured in-game, but we don't need that yet. For now, assume an finished goods is 6gp, refined is 3gp, and raw is 1gp. Though you don't really need that either.

So yeah, it'd be cool if y'all took Darcnes initiative and post stuff you might need or can produce here, and take those negotiations to the tables they are dealt at. This way you can get it to be known your needs And the economy has a baseline movement structure when we hit the game.

[Darcnes]

Standard unit of measure is going to need to be something we establish early on.

I saw a comment that the purer the resource the more it will weigh.

So far it seems like we will have a tier/+ rating and a weight. I.e. 10 lbs of tier 3 silver, 20 lbs of tier 2 silver.

I would love to hear from a dev on what kind of measurements and exchange we should expect between levels of purity.

I would propose that we use ^n notation to delineate tier for refined resources, so something like 10x silver^3 would be ten pounds of tier 3 silver.

Sometimes quality will matter, when someone wants a specifically dense form of a resource to avoid extra refining for example, often times I suspect it will not. To this end a simple means of converting between quality will be important.

An overly simplified example might be 10 x 1 for an impure sample, x2 for better grade, x3 for best grade resource. So for that silver example we will denote a converted value with a *, if someone wants the equivalent of 10lbs of high grade silver it would be referred to as 30* silver. This would convert to 15lbs of mid grade and a full 30lbs of tier 1. We will likely need to factor in not only a pure 1:1 conversion ratio, but possibly an offset to account for processing. So 10 lbs of high grade might actually end up being more like 32 or 34 lbs of low grade.

It might be that refined resource tiers can simply be referred to as +2 instead of ^2. It may also be that where purity is not concerned that 30x and 30* would be synonymous as conversion is irrelevant.

Thoughts? Dev feedback?

[BrotherZael]

We need to know how long things take to acquire, refine, and make.

In addition we need to figure out how much "stimulant" gold is going to be present (e.g. from monster drops, npc quests, etc.)

A lot of pricing will be based on time spent in addition to rarity. So before we can really go pricing things we also need to compile an accurate list of how long it takes:

A) To get or make stuff

B) to acquire the base, pre-economic interaction gold needed to start us all going.

And another thing.

coin vs bartering.

I imagine that I am not the only one who will likely barter more than I buy. So we need to make sure we have a fair-value system in place somehow on the meta-level.

comments welcome ^^

[Darcnes]

This has very little to do with pricing resources, and much more to do with developing a means to reference resource values compared to other versions of that resource.

All of those examples concern one form of silver or another. Pre-refined versions of varying purity, and refined versions of varying quality.

The specifics need to wait until we have hard data to extrapolate from, but the format is something we should be able to develop ahead of time simply by knowing what we will be working with. A fair amount of this has been given to us, and if we can get a bit of clarification by GW, we could move forward with confidence.

[BrotherZael]

isn't that what i said kind of :I

by pricing i meant the end-cost formula, not the exact money...

[Zweistern]

I would definitely like to see at least a bare-bones table of scarcity for the bulk commodities by terrain type. Actual ingredients are going to be trickier, since there's no way to rate their value until some recipes become available.

[Darcnes]

Right, not worried about actual market value, just relative value to other forms of itself. And then only the formula with unknown variables.

[randomwalker]

Darcnes wrote:

Standard unit of measure is going to need to be something we establish early on.

I saw a comment that the purer the resource the more it will weigh.

So far it seems like we will have a tier/+ rating and a weight. I.e. 10 lbs of tier 3 silver, 20 lbs of tier 2 silver.

My recollection is slightly different (any quote ninjas around?)

-resources come in different tiers. Something like iron ore (all purities) and pearls = T1, silver ore and amethysts = T2, mithril ore and diamonds = T3. There will be something like 150 harvestable resources.

-some harvested raw materials (like ores) will come in purities where purer materials weigh less. Something like 1 unit of 50% iron ore = 2 lbs while 1 unit of 90% iron ore = 1.1 lbs, and both enough to produce one standard iron ingot (or steel bar). It matters only if you have non-infinite cargo capacity...

-refined and crafted materials will have quality, denoted by'+x'. Steel bars +2 and crusader armor +5 has been mentioned. Quality depends on input materials, recipe/skill and facilities.

-bulk materials: I expect them all to be generic quality so that food from croplands and food from mountain lakes are the same (but croplands generate much much more).

Re: standard measures, i'm quite confident the game engine will do that for us. Whatever unit our inventories use will be the standard units for trade. "20 steel bars +1" or "40 stacks of food" will not be ambiguous.

[Nihimon]

randomwalker wrote:

Darcnes wrote:

I saw a comment that the purer the resource the more it will weigh.

My recollection is slightly different (any quote ninjas around?)

Quote Ninja!

Stephen Cheney (Goblinworks Blog: Dust Off the Moon and Let's Begin) wrote:

Each unit of a raw material is identically useful in refining (and ultimately crafting), but some are lighter than others so it's easier to carry them home.

So, it sounds like Darcnes has it backwards. The purer it is, the less it will weigh, since it doesn't have all those impurities weighing it down.

[T7V Jazzlvraz]

Nihimon, that quote's ambiguous; I could argue it supports both interpretations. Is there further clarification elsewhere?

[Nihimon]

T7V Jazzlvraz wrote:

Nihimon, that quote's ambiguous; I could argue it supports both interpretations. Is there further clarification elsewhere?

The rest of the post seems to make it clear.

Stephen Cheney (Goblinworks Blog: Dust Off the Moon and Let's Begin) wrote:

If you begin interacting with the node and start to get heavier pieces than you usually get at your skill total, you can take that as a given that that resource in the hex as a whole is getting down to the dregs, and if you do happen to get a gusher, it will probably also be heavier pieces (and likely have less total that you'd get out of it vs. a fresh hex).

[T7V Jazzlvraz]

Sweet, and thanks. I thought I remembered something in that vein, but I also thought of asking before I thought of researching.

Pretty common when talking to you, eh?

[Darcnes]

Nihimon to the rescue!

@randomwalker I did not keep in mind the tiers of resources when I used the word tier, I was definitely thinking of +1 +2 refined resources (e.g. silver ingot). So that would scrap the need for using ^ as a notation for quality.

As for varying purity of resources, it sounds like there is a clear distinction between pure and impure in your inventory. That is where I would suggest using your 50% as part of determining what is needed.

I want 10 silver ingots, if it takes 5 parts pure raw silver per ingot I would write 50* raw silver, other merchants would know this means 50 pure raw silver or 100 impure raw silver, or any combination in between.

It may be that harvested materials are the only thing that would benefit from a simplified notation, as everything else would be distinct enough for you to need a specific quality. High likelihood of being less picky about this and more concerned about simply acquiring enough materials to make the desired refined resource.

[Nihimon]

I wouldn't be surprised if there's no real distinction between pure and impure resources in your inventory. I'm not sure it will work this way, but what they might be doing is simply merging the pure and the impure. For example, say you have 1 unit of Ore that weighs 1 pound. Then you get another unit of Ore that weighs 5 pounds. I think they might just say you have 2 units of Ore and they weigh 6 pounds. There's no real need to track a purity factor. If you split it, you can create two separate units of Ore that each weigh 3 pounds. That would be very easy to track by simple addition to whatever stack you already have: +X units, +Y pounds.

[Darcnes]

Does not seem like that does much in the way of letting the user see the distinction, and it seems like they would have described the significance of purity differently if the player did not need to worry about it. Would also be odd to merge items that way programmatically I would think.

[Nihimon]

Darcnes wrote:

Would also be odd to merge items that way programmatically I would think.

Actually, I think it's much simpler, really. You have an in-game object that is a Stack of Ore. That object has two properties: Unit Count, and Weight. Adding another Unit or even another Stack is a very simple matter of:

targetStack.UnitCount += sourceStack.UnitCount;
targetStack.Weight += sourceStack.Weight;
sourceStack.Dispose();

... or something like that. I actually think it's a really neat way to handle it. The only thing that really matters for Crafting is how many Units you have.

[Darcnes]

Except that when player A and player B go out and collect the same resource, but end up with varying amounts of purity collected, they end up with different Weight / UnitCount ratios when dividing up their stacks. Also consider that making the item go in your inventory that way would require an extended class of Item just for collecting raw resources. As opposed to having a purity property (that stacks with like purity, much like +1 ingots would likely only stack with +1 ingots), but all using the same Item class, which requires no extra conversions / complexities in the inventory system.

Not to say UnitCount and Weight properties would be a poor solution, just that it would add complexity.

Going back to the blog, it does sound like pure and impure resources will stack separately.

[Nihimon]

Darcnes wrote:

Going back to the blog, it does sound like pure and impure resources will stack separately.

Yeah, it does.

Iron and Coke, Chromium Steel wrote:

In your inventory (and on the market), you'll see resources in any of four increments of concentration... so, when looting a body, take the 100% concentrate before the 50%.

[Darcnes]

Ah, that exactly.

This is what prompted thoughts to establishing 50* as notation for e.g. 50 pure, 200 impure, 100 mid-pure, etc. and all of the combinations thereof in the context of goods acquisition.