Goblin Squad Member
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Also, in the next build, when you have an ability that takes advantage of a condition on the target, it gets a green background in the action bar making it easier to figure out when it's the right time to fire off that ability.
I'm in the same boat as Bludd but slightly to the left.
Wow that is one soft, cozy baby blanket we're getting wrapped up in. I'm still back at hoping if I push the green button I'll see a result before the affect in question falls off... or my character dies of old age...
(I strongly encourage devs to save the Alpha 6 build, then three or four years from now, on April 1st...)
Hot debate!
Not so much for us alpha and EE folk, because we see the bigger picture and probably will be happy enough with the Towergame, and stockpiling resources and refined/crafted goods for the future, but for those 20k that still need to be attracted.
This is the issue I think.
The kickstarter people are excited about being in the game from the start and "crowdforging the game". To a certain extent IF the game was close to complete come EE many of us would be disappointed as we paid in under the impression we would be helping create the game as it grew.
The rest of the 20K people that Ryan talks about will however be signing up to pay for a working game they hope to play, albiet in development, and will have quite different expectations.
Completely agree. You've both articulated quite accurately what I was attempting to convey. Keeping a sufficient population to make the game interesting is going to be very important.
A good number of MMORPG gamers who are interested in an open-world sandbox have also spent years following games that made big promises, and failed to deliver anything close to those promises, so, while this group is used to indie developments, they're also going to be an extra-cynical group that may be less likely to get exited about promised features having been let down so many times already.
I would actually gladly pay a subscription for a "beta" that continued to support development that I knew was going to be wiped later. Tension is lower and patience is higher when players are testing/playing than when the game is "live" and the outcome of gameplay will be persistent. Although I realize that territory conquest won't be implemented at launch, I've seen other games where the political landscape was set for years based on the outcomes of buggy conquest campaigns early-on when game systems were not completed and fully working. I'm more concerned with potential issues there than I am about paying to enjoy an incomplete product.
... selling something at one town, traveling risk-free to another, and just buying it there.But then you realize that that thing is three times as expensive over at that other town because local markets are a thing and prices are not fixed.
This is true IF the prices are vastly different between settlements/towns. If they're close, even a slight loss in money is worth the reduction in risk. Hopefully market fluctuations in pricing between settlements is enough to prevent using global currency as a "matter transporter", but it's something to watch for.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The "matter transporter" effect you're describing only works if everything is available in every town. Without caravans, that simply wouldn't be the case.
From what I've read, some things simply won't be available in some settlements if they aren't physically brought there. Plains settlements just won't have as much metal available for gathering as mountain settlements. Without caravans, settlements that don't set aside much of their land for crafting facilities simply won't have as many crafted goods available for sale as settlements that have invested in lots of crafting facilities. Selling, traveling, and re-buying sounds like a tactic for the wealthy, and even for them it will only work if somebody else is making sure goods are distributed from settlement to settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I doubt that everything will be a commodity everywhere, especially not at first. Ore may be subject to commodity pricing in a mountain settlement, but grain will be an imported scarce good, not a local commodity.
I think it's been too long since Economics 101 for me to write this in the proper terms. Commodities, as I recall, are ubiquitous, and only have meaningful value in the aggregate. There's another term for scarce goods, that have noticeable value on the single unit scale. In a mountain hex, I suspect that ore will be a commodity, but grain will be a scarce good, at least until the caravans become steady and regular. All the money in the world can't buy you more grain in a mountain settlement than somebody else is willing to haul into town. You can't assume it's available in infinite quantity, from sufficiently numerous sellers, to follow commodity pricing.
I hadn't thought of distribution of resources. If the distribution is as heavily gradated (unequal) as you're describing, then my concerns will be moot. I hope that is correct, not just for this issue, but to make trade caravans a meaningful aspect of gameplay.
However, some of my guild's most exciting moments in Mortal Online were splitting up HUGE sums of money and traveling in formation with scouts and guards to travel to another town to make a large deed purchase, then all acting as scouts and guards to "protect the football" all the way back. This would be akin to bringing in a valuable trade shipment in PFO, but now it's only dangerous in one direction. It's not that big a deal really in the grand scheme of things - as long as trade caravans are still valuable and risky / in need of protection, then I'll still be very happy with that aspect.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Eventually, I suspect that caravans will become steady enough to make many items into universal commodities. I'm hoping, though, that even in that stage, local economics will still be susceptible to blockades and sufficiently organized banditry.
Edit: I really hope that guarding a caravan will be as exciting as you described in Mortal Online, at least part of the time. Most of the time it will probably be a boring, but necessary, job.
Edit 2: I hope that the distribution of raw materials and finished goods will be strongly unequal at the beginning of EE. If GW decides to make everything available everywhere in order to make the cold start much easier, then caravans might not be so important.
(Maybe Tier 1 raw materials could be widely distributed, and scarcity/unequal distribution could become a factor for Tier 2 and Tier 3 raw materials. That would allow more of a soft launch for the economy, without making caravans unimportant.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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... some of my guild's most exciting moments in Mortal Online were splitting up HUGE sums of money and traveling in formation with scouts and guards to travel to another town to make a large deed purchase, then all acting as scouts and guards to "protect the football" all the way back. This would be akin to bringing in a valuable trade shipment in PFO, but now it's only dangerous in one direction.
As someone who's very excited about the prospect of escorting Caravans, I can relate; that sounds like a lot of fun.
I would add that there's a good chance it actually will be a two-way affair if the devs implement one of the ideas they've spitballed before, which is that you might have to get your Coin back to your Settlement before it converts from lootable, encumbering in-game inventory to the unlootable, weightless abstraction. I personally think this is a great idea, and would make escorting Caravans even more fulfilling :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hadn't thought of distribution of resources.
We know, for sure, that coal currently appears in only one hex in Alpha, but it'll supposedly be in more later on. I've heard people saying pine and yew appear in forest terrain in different hexes, but I've not yet heard whether some recipes require a certain variety of wood exclusively.
I suspect Goblinworks is going to give us plenty of reasons to want to move Thing A from Place B to Place C, with all the risks and rewards accompanying the trip. Limiting reagents may be only one page of their playbook.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now we just need ways for characters to rob caravans without instantly destroying their reputations for a month or so. If the reputation system remained as punishing as it has been, caravan guards might not be needed very often.
SAD is not the only answer to this problem, but it sure would help. Basic re-tuning of reputation penalties and the reputation recharge rate might work, too, until SAD is ready for implementation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There will be local variations and they will be consistent enough for players to make a profit hauling between centres.
High value stuff is likely to be transported by vulnerable but stealthy/fast characters good at evading SAD. The sort of character that gives even high level bandits an exceptionally narrow window to intercept them. Or by teleport which hopefully will be expensive to prevent it being ubiquitous :D
Lower volume goods remain to be seen. Perhaps caravans will become a thing perhaps not. Caravans will not work if the bandits are free to ignore the escort and just kill the haulers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now we just need ways for characters to rob caravans without instantly destroying their reputations for a month or so. If the reputation system remained as punishing as it has been, caravan guards might not be needed very often.
The best idea I've heard for this lately was that in order to get the speed and encumbrance benefits of a caravan, you'd have to be a member of the "merchant" faction, which would make you a hostile target for members of the "bandit" faction.
If the faction system expands to cover some of these natural hostilities, instead of just RP groups, I think it will elegantly solve a lot of the problems with the reputation system.
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Edit: I really hope that guarding a caravan will be as exciting as you described in Mortal Online, at least part of the time. Most of the time it will probably be a boring, but necessary, job.
As someone who's very excited about the prospect of escorting Caravans, I can relate; that sounds like a lot of fun.
I would add that there's a good chance it actually will be a two-way affair if the devs implement one of the ideas they've spitballed before, which is that you might have to get your Coin back to your Settlement before it converts from lootable, encumbering in-game inventory to the unlootable, weightless abstraction. I personally think this is a great idea, and would make escorting Caravans even more fulfilling :)
@ Nihimon, I like your idea about coin only becoming a global abstract when reaching your home settlement.
@ Karlbob & Nihimon
I'd like to give you guys a more complete idea of the excitement of those purchasing runs in Mortal Online. First, running into enemies wasn't likely. About 80-90% of the time you could run between towns without running into someone who wanted to attack you. However, doing this with the monetary equivalent of days or weeks of work set the stakes much higher.
Sometimes we'd just be taking a decent amount of coin to other towns where the NPCs sold different recipes than the ones in our town. We had to make a few of these runs to various areas, and each time we'd be carrying the monetary equivalent of a few days to a week's worth of work by 5-10 people. I imagine that this will be the relative value of an average caravan in PFO.
However, when we made the REALLY big-purchase runs for house deeds, we'd be carrying not a week's worth of effort, but the monetary equivalent of 2-3 week's worth of work by 10-15 people. We were carrying a huge time investment in an easily loot-able format. Yes, we could have broken up the trip into multiple smaller-value runs, but we'd still have to carry the deed back as a single item, on a single person, in a single run. So, we'd get everyone with adequate riding skill to keep up, form up, split up the money among a couple of carriers, and head out. (On the way back, we'd have only 1 carrier and the other carriers would switch to being extra guards or scouts.) We had a basic plan that accounted for a few various types of potential enemy encounters. Our riding formation had multiple levels to it and we maintained that formation throughout the ride, adjusting it slightly based on terrain.
There were a few times, when carrying very high-value items, that our scouts did encounter enemies. We were spread out so it was unlikely that an enemy or group of enemies who spotted one of us would spot all of us, and this strategy worked here. One or 2 scouts would peel off and lead them on a chase away from our group, either making it to safety elsewhere, or fighting them, win or lose, in order to distract them long enough that the rest of the group would be far gone by the time the fight was over.
(We were doing this in the first few months of playing the game and most of us were far below the fighting strength of the enemies that we were likely to run into, so our strategies had to reflect the fact that it was unlikely that we would win a full-on fight against an equally sized group, especially since most of us hadn't trained mounted combat skills yet.)
While most of the runs were "uneventful" in that the odds of running into enemies/hostile players when going from town to town was only about a 10-20% chance, the very real threat that we might get attacked and the few times that our guarding paid off were all that was necessary to keep each trip exciting and meaningful.
It's adventures like those that are why I lobby to ensure that we still have a decent population of low-reputation players and appreciate local banking systems (for items at a minimum, and somewhat for coin).
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only concern with having to carry coin back from other settlements to your own is it will exagerate the tendency to create big central trade hubs.
It will make a lot more sense to make all your sales and purchases in one central place and avoid carrying coin around. It also means a lot of new players will join the settlement that has become the biggest trade centre simply to avoid carrying coin home.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While the danger in making a run loaded with coin may be thrilling, that danger's also, in the real world, the reason letters of credit (LOC) appear almost instantly upon the invention of coinage. If a merchant offers to accept an LOC, he's almost guaranteed to take business away from those not accepting them; soon all will, of necessity, be accepting them.
LOCs can't be legislated nor regulated away, because, at their base, they're simply an agreement between parties to settle up "later". That "later" might, for example, be a simple counter-party trade, thus making the pair of transactions more a form of barter than purchase.
Settlements will lose out if they try to stop LOC use, as it'll be more difficult for them to tax barter transactions than those involving coin, even if the coin takes the form of a piece of paper. Settlements, again as in the real world, will need those taxes...badly and quickly.
Settlements have a strong incentive to make all transactions as visible as possible. "Cheating the taxman" will be another interesting exercise between Aristocrats and their constituents.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While most of the runs were "uneventful" in that the odds of running into enemies/hostile players when going from town to town was only about a 10-20% chance, the very real threat that we might get attacked and the few times that our guarding paid off were all that was necessary to keep each trip exciting and meaningful.
I totally get this :)
As much as I enjoy PvP, I think I'll find Caravan-guarding fun and exciting even on "uneventful" trips.
It's adventures like those that are why I lobby to ensure that we still have a decent population of low-reputation players and appreciate local banking systems (for items at a minimum, and somewhat for coin).
I'm generally dismissive of the "doom & gloom" view that the Reputation system will so hamper unsanctioned PvP (can I used that now, since it's used in the Alpha Instructions guide?) that there aren't any Bandits. One of Ryan's first comments about Bandits was to the effect that "they'll be Low Reputation, and they'll cope". I think that's probably going to be right.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While most of the runs were "uneventful" in that the odds of running into enemies/hostile players when going from town to town was only about a 10-20% chance, the very real threat that we might get attacked and the few times that our guarding paid off were all that was necessary to keep each trip exciting and meaningful.I totally get this :)
Yes, those seem to be the right numbers. I think there is a bit of a sweet spot when it comes to risk/reward situations like that. If caravans will be raided 80% of the time, then you have predictable behaviour that will lead to more predictable behaviour, possibly with very negative results like nobody using the Caravan system anymore.
This will probably be one of the toughest challenges for GW: turning the knobs on game-mechanics sounds easy but that is just one part of the equation: the other part is how the players will react to those in their behaviour in-game (apart from complaining about it on the forums, off course ;)).
I feel that the chance for something bad to happen to a player actually has to be pretty low; I feel that the scales will quickly tip towards unwanted behaviour if the risk is too high(players stop using game-play mechanics or stop playing all together). The chance has to be there, most definately: it is the needed incentive to go after the final rewards. But low.
No need for a debate about the solo vs group thing: it is obvious that other options to lower risk must have been exhausted first.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am sceptical of caravans actually working.
The experience in EVE is that if pirate activity is high enough for escort work to be interesting (lowsec for example)the goods tend to not be sent at all.
As far as bandits go there will be absolutely no shortage of bandit characters and lack of training opportunity due to low rep is not going to matter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would add that there's a good chance it actually will be a two-way affair if the devs implement one of the ideas they've spitballed before, which is that you might have to get your Coin back to your Settlement before it converts from lootable, encumbering in-game inventory to the unlootable, weightless abstraction. I personally think this is a great idea, and would make escorting Caravans even more fulfilling :)
I think that most caravans will be two-way runs, but not in the way you mention. It only makes sense that we can convert coin in any settlement, so there's no need to drag the coin home. But if Brighthaven has a metric boatload of bulk iron, they might push a caravan down to Phaeros to sell it. But rather than come back empty they're going to acquire a metric boatload of bulk wood and other products that they don't have a lot of, and push that back to Brighthaven.
The effort to assemble a caravan's worth of drovers and guards won't be small and won't happen instantly. Once the caravan is together, it only makes sense to get a good game session's worth of work out it. A caravan in PFO might be comparable to a raid-group in a theme park game.
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Goods not being sent at all doesn't work if you must have the goods. Lowland resources do not spawn in uplands and vice versa. A functioning supply chain is going to have to have a shipping component.
Remains to be seen. It is a sandbox. If caravans are practical they will appear. if they just attract bandits and its better to send out gathering parties long distance that will happen instead. If smuggling goods with rogues is better we will see that.
Just saying there is no guarantee we will see caravans just because people get all romantic about the idea of them. If they work we will see them .
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would add that there's a good chance it actually will be a two-way affair if the devs implement one of the ideas they've spitballed before, which is that you might have to get your Coin back to your Settlement before it converts from lootable, encumbering in-game inventory to the unlootable, weightless abstraction. I personally think this is a great idea, and would make escorting Caravans even more fulfilling :)I think that most caravans will be two-way runs, but not in the way you mention. It only makes sense that we can convert coin in any settlement, so there's no need to drag the coin home. But if Brighthaven has a metric boatload of bulk iron, they might push a caravan down to Phaeros to sell it. But rather than come back empty they're going to acquire a metric boatload of bulk wood and other products that they don't have a lot of, and push that back to Brighthaven.
Two points:
1. I absolutely agree that most Caravans will want to avoid "hauling air", and will do their best to ensure their return trip is as profitable as the outgoing leg. I think this will be true whether or not Coin can be converted at any Settlement, or just at "Home Settlements".
2. Thank you for saying "boatload". It's a personal pet peeve of mine when people say "buttload" :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Goods not being sent at all doesn't work if you must have the goods. Lowland resources do not spawn in uplands and vice versa. A functioning supply chain is going to have to have a shipping component.Remains to be seen. It is a sandbox. If caravans are practical they will appear. if they just attract bandits and its better to send out gathering parties long distance that will happen instead. If smuggling goods with rogues is better we will see that.
Just saying there is no guarantee we will see caravans just because people get all romantic about the idea of them. If they work we will see them .
How will you "gather" the bulk resources needed to keep the lights on, without moving the stuff into your settlement?
Some type of shipping is needed, in a coordinated fasion, to keep up operations.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Goods not being sent at all doesn't work if you must have the goods. Lowland resources do not spawn in uplands and vice versa. A functioning supply chain is going to have to have a shipping component.Remains to be seen. It is a sandbox. If caravans are practical they will appear. if they just attract bandits and its better to send out gathering parties long distance that will happen instead.
We've been told that "Easy Mode" Harvesting simply won't supply enough resources to run a Settlement. Because of that, it seems to me that there will have to be some form of frequent long-distance transport of large quantities of resources. Whether those resources are picked up direct from nodes, or bought at a nearby Settlement seems somewhat irrelevant. If the only way to transport them is using wagons, it seems that Caravans are an inevitability, at which point the experiences of the players running them will determine not whether Caravans will be used, but whether those players will continue to play the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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1. I absolutely agree that most Caravans will want to avoid "hauling air", and will do their best to ensure their return trip is as profitable as the outgoing leg.
That will depend on the cost of wagons.
It may be be more efficient to sell them at the other end and fast-track home. Build or buy a new one next time.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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1. I absolutely agree that most Caravans will want to avoid "hauling air", and will do their best to ensure their return trip is as profitable as the outgoing leg.
That will depend on the cost of wagons.
It may be be more efficient to sell them at the other end and fast-track home. Build or buy a new one next time.
Leaving out the time cost of returning home, the buyer if the wagon is going to use it to transport something.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Quick point: Caravans don't necessarily mean wagon transport. MVP doesn't include wagons, so the early incarnation of caravans will be people walking, carrying as many goods as they can without immobilizing themselves. If stealth works well against PCs, those carriers might be rogues. If stealth against other PCs works as well at EE as it did in Alpha 6, then the carriers probably won't be rogues.
How caravans will work during OE isn't really what concerns me right now. I'm focused on how they'll work in a few short weeks, when EE begins.
If Edam is right, and EE settlements rely on long range gathering expeditions, then those will probably need just as many guards as dedicated transport caravans would.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every caravan has to go somewhere; where are the bandits going to take it if they win?
Imagine if bandits had to run stolen goods through a "laundering" of some sort to make them "acceptable" for sale in some Settlements. Some, of course, would accept anything from anyone at anytime, but others could have no-purchase orders out on known bandits and their Companies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We've been told that "Easy Mode" Harvesting simply won't supply enough resources to run a Settlement. Because of that, it seems to me that there will have to be some form of frequent long-distance transport of large quantities of resources. Whether those resources are picked up direct from nodes, or bought at a nearby Settlement seems somewhat irrelevant. If the only way to transport them is using wagons, it seems that Caravans are an inevitability, at which point the experiences of the players running them will determine not whether Caravans will be used, but whether those players will continue to play the game.
Isn't it true that the building and upkeep of Settlement requires Bulk Resources rather then the stuff we get from nodes, and that these are too heavy to transport with single characters?
And that these Bulk Resources are obtained through Outposts and PoI/s like Mines?
Or am I incorrectly making a division between resources(from Nodes and Gushers) that are used for refining and crafting (items) and resources(from Outposts and PoI's) that are used for erecting a new building and the upkeep for a Settlement?
It would make sense that the Bulk resources require caravans; this would still leave some other interesting options for the other type of resources, as Edam Neadenil pointed out.
When talking about "caravans", I was really meaning trade runs, or really any transportation of high-value goods. I've never played a game with caravans (nor do I know of one with that feature), so all of my experience has been in transporting high-value player inventories. Caravans would be great, but having to transport high-value goods is exciting, regardless of the actual mechanic. Do you sneak it? Do you use a huge group that hopefully most "bandit" type players will just avoid? Do you have a carrier with only a few guards and a lot of scouts to insure that the carrier just avoids any opponents by using the spotting of the scouts? It's a lot of possibilities. I've used them all, and they're all exciting each time, even when nothing happens at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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(1)Isn't it true that the building and upkeep of Settlement requires Bulk Resources rather then the stuff we get from nodes, and (2) that these are too heavy to transport with single characters?
(3) And that these Bulk Resources are obtained through Outposts and PoI/s like Mines?
(4) Or am I incorrectly making a division between resources(from Nodes and Gushers) that are used for refining and crafting (items) and resources(from Outposts and PoI's) that are used for erecting a new building and the upkeep for a Settlement?
(5) It would make sense that the Bulk resources require caravans; this would still leave some other interesting options for the other type of resources, as Edam Neadenil pointed out.
(1) True.
(2) I don't think we've ever been told that bulk goods are too heavy to transport by single characters (porters, if you will). Since we'll have bulk goods by month 4 or 5 (1 month before settlements), and have not been told when we'll see draft animals, I assume bulk goods will in fact be man-portable.(3) True.
(4) No, you are correct in making the distinction.
(5) I'm not sure that is true.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks Urman.
Yes, if Bulk goods are implemented before any Caravan/mule system then you have to wonder how they will be transported. It seems to me though that Bulk Goods are a perfect fit if they indeed would want to create frequent, long distance transports across the map with caravans and Bandits. :)
Maybe initially some Bulk goods can be transported with the Fast Travel system, which I still envision as being scripted ponyrides from A to B.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Tyncale, I think it applies to both Bulk and Crafting Resources. The alternative to "Easy Mode" Harvesting is the use of Gathering Camps that extract large amounts of Crafting Resources from the hex. We've been told that we'll have to farm that way in order to get enough Crafting Resources to "run" a Settlement that has any plans of supporting Crafting Characters.
(2) I don't think we've ever been told that bulk goods are too heavy to transport by single characters (porters, if you will).
I think we'll be able to move small amounts of Bulk Resources with individual Characters, but there's also this:
The transport of a large amount of goods from a strip-mined outpost will be a serious concern for raiders. Bulk goods are HEAVY and that amount will certainly require a caravan.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks Nihimon. Is a Gathering Camp the same as the gushers that Ryan is talking about? Where you need a good Kit for?
I think the yields of a gusher/Gathering Camp may not need a true caravan: I still see the caravan system as something that is restricted to roads. But I am just thinking that up.
I am a little worried about your remark that we may be able to move small amounts of Bulk Resources on a single person; I agree with Edam here that this could for instance easily lead to more risk-free "transporting-zergs" where a Settlement fields a whole bunch of members that each carry 1 or 2 Bulk resources, then spread out across the land and each person takes their own route to the final destination. I am sure a few will get caught by Bandits/enemies, but this seems like one of the ways to circumvent vulnerable and possibly predictable caravans. This is why I think Bulk Resources should only know one way of transport: unless they want to do away with the whole Merchant/SAD/Bandit thing.
Not that such a transporting-zerg does not sound like fun: it could be hilarious. :D I am getting visions of when those turtle-eggs on the beach hatch, and they all scramble to the sea, hoping to make it alive. ;) And most of them do, btw.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks Nihimon. Is a Gathering Camp the same as the gushers that Ryan is talking about? Where you need a good Kit for?
You're welcome :)
And yes, I said "Gathering Camp" but it could have been "Gathering Kit" or "Gusher Camp" or "Gusher Kit". Since it doesn't exist yet, I don't think we've really settled on the terminology.
I am a little worried about your remark that we may be able to move small amounts of Bulk Resources on a single person; I agree with Edam here that this could for instance easily lead to more risk-free "transporting-zergs" where a Settlement fields a whole bunch of members that each carry 1 or 2 Bulk resources, then spread out across the land and each person takes their own route to the final destination.
Frankly, if a Settlement wants to send 500 people each carrying 2 Bulk Resources on a trip, when a Caravan could conceivably carry many times that amount... well, I don't see the problem. That's 500 people not being productive in other ways. And the frequency with which we'll likely need those Bulk Resources means they'll likely never really be productive. Seems likely to be a self-correcting problem, to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree, it is a matter of numbers and efficiency here. If a settlement needs 10.000 Bulk Ore a week, and players can only carry 1 at a time, while it only needs 5 caravans of 2000 each, then I am sure we will not see transporting zergs, since you would need 50 of those zergs with 200 players participating each time.
In that case however, why even make Bulk Goods carry-able by players? I guess I am confused by the fact that we even can, because what is the point?
Answering my own doubts: maybe a low tier settlement that just starts out needs exponentially *less* Bulk resources, where players carrying them actually could make a difference. But once your Settlement grows, it will need so much that you simply *must* use caravans. That would mean we could still have small transport-zergs!
I am so glad that I do not have to design this game. ;) So much to factor in.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In that case however, why even make Bulk Goods carry-able by players? I guess I am confused by the fact that we even can, because what is the point?
It's not certain that we can. I was careful to say "I think" we'll be able to, and you even said we "may" be able to in your reply, so I didn't belabor the point, but it's far from certain.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In that case however, why even make Bulk Goods carry-able by players? I guess I am confused by the fact that we even can, because what is the point?It's not certain that we can. I was careful to say "I think" we'll be able to, and you even said we "may" be able to in your reply, so I didn't belabor the point, but it's far from certain.
True, I realized your wording was not absolute. :) I am just mulling over stuff and bouncing that off your informative posts.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's going to be a constant flow of bulk goods from Outpost > POI > Settlement or Outpost > Settlement. That's got to happen before we get to the Settlement <-> Settlement trading.
Maybe it's a question of semantics - I use "caravan" to mean a multi-character transport operation. It could be porters, or pack animals, or wagons, and there are likely guards. It might even mean multi-party. I don't see one or two characters and 3 mules moving goods from Outpost to Settlement as a caravan - it's simply a couple characters with beast-of-burden pets. It requires that pets be implemented, and beasts-of-burden. It probably doesn't require a full caravan system implementation (unless that *is* the full system).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Even at EE, I anticipate it being profitable to carry some things from place to place. If any proto-settlements have no mountains within easy reach, then traders may start carrying in coal and metals. They might also keep the refining step at home, and carry metal components, or skip straight to shipping finished metal goods like heavy armor and swords.
This scheme depends on some proto-settlements having difficulty or inconvenience obtaining crafting raw materials locally. If everyone can gather as much as they need locally until bulk resources come into play, then trade runs might be rare until after the Great Catastrophe.
