Game survey

[Hvizeu]

Just a idea for the price and materials problem, there is a short schematic version and an extense writen one just to make it easier xD.

-[Big One]
I believe that a way to solve the economy balance is: you could use simple physics and logic, for example if a batch of building materials wheight around 2kg and costs 500 kats you make a aproximate guess on how much the building wheight and do the math for the price (considering each kilo of building mats. to cost 250 kats) (ex: a building that wheights 1 ton would cost 250.000 kats) i personaly believe that the smalest house in the game wheights around 8 to 12 tons that would be over 2 milion Kats.
My sugestion for a better economy would be to make resources cheaper and set their prices per kilo so you can have a basis to calculate a building value.
- Practical example: im guessing the main building materials in a game such as kenshi would be terracotta (most common building mat. in deserts or dry lands, ie: Ancient arab architecture), iron/steel (as kenshi has mountains formations and a coast [i presume thats what it is at the SW part of the map =P] it certainly has plenty of metals, and finnaly ropes (from the dry leaves of the vegetation), so you make all theese materials separate instead of just "building materials" price each one and use their price as a basis to the final building, the acctual price for 1 kg of iron on my country is around U$8 (saying U$1=1 kat) so lets say 8 kats, steel would be around 12 kats, 1kg of rope (50cm to 1.20m of rope, not sure now) 2 kats, 1kg of terracota 5 kats, so now let me recalculate the initial building of 1ton saying we uses 40%iron 20%steel 30%terracotta and 10% ropes = 7300 kats , and as i said before i believe the smalest building in the game wheights around 8 to 12 tons, lets round it up to 10 tons, this would make it cost a total of 73.000 kats. I think it would be a fair price for a starter building seeing that it takes me around 2 hours to make 40 k with a squad of 20 ( 10 with heavy backpacks and 10 guards), and seeing as future plans include npcs doing micro managements for you, your income would be escalate pretty quickly after you start building and creating buisenesses, well i hope this idea helps, if it havent been thought yet, i believe it would make the development of new features a lot easier using this price/wheight metod on the long run if there is a wish to use crafting mechanics (items/buildings/equipments).



-[Schematic]

Kats=Kz / Kilograms=Kg

[Building Materials].......[Building - 10 tons (small)]..........[Total Cost]

-Iron 1kg = 8Kz--------------40% Iron = 32.000Kz
-Steel 1kg = 12Kz-----------20% Steel = 24.000Kz-----------------73.000Kz
-Rope 1kg = 2Kz-------------10% Rope = 2.000Kz
-Terracota 1kg = 5Kz-------30% Terracota = 15.000Kz


Ps.: For all theese calculations ans sugestions i took in consideration: The land of Kenshi, cpt.Chris is going to implement crafting/manufacture/industry , the new wheight/streght system, the easyness on getting lotz of Katz after getting a decent srengthened squad with huge-ass backpacks.

Thx for your time and sry for the humongous post =P

[zibathy]

Toaster Assassin: "I'm guessing the best way to it would be like the tolls (departure Point to destination point taxation, but not in between). There should be no taxation in the "untamed wilds" (Where there is no law,regulation,safety or fairness (Only Crazy Vasili!)) Perhaps the tax can be in addition to the toll through at established trade routes."

THIS. I think there should be major taxes in places closer and closer to major cities, and then zero taxes in the wild wastes. But, since it is in the wastes it will be harder to defend and a larger target, and perhaps (maybe...) make less money, but if you are good at fighting it will be worth it, and then no more pesky taxes.

Although, this may just hand deliver goods to your door when you absolutely annihilate them, perhaps they should just be swarms of marauders/gangs with minimal gear that is hardly even worth looting but there are so many of them they are actually a serious threat to any but the most skilled. This could allow you to make residence near a city, make money, train, and later end-game content could be moving out after training into the wild west and surviving against attacks from all sides and survival of your fragile business. If you understand what I'm getting at. I think this is a good idea. Hope this doesn't fall on deaf ears.

[TheHappyPyro]

Typically, I'm average. I only get money by going out and scavenging swords from dead bodies, and only on average make 500-2000 cats per load. Once I get this money though, I spend it all on stuff. Such as building materiels, armor, and recruits.

[auz268]

In general my characters are wealthy, holding 30,000 at any given time and being fully equipped with gear and structures; the majority of this wealth came from roaming around cities with active patrols and looting bandit troops killed by the city guards.

The balance on wealth could be implemented rather simply, without having to resort to the Satan of scaling enemies (the death of many a "could be great" game).

A couple of these methods have been mentioned.

1- Allow NPC units to loot the bodies of fallen enemies (and sell what they looted to upgrade their own equipment). This would allow enemies and allies to improve organically throughout the game and limit the player to scavenging rather than full scale looting.

2- Allow NPC units to loot player characters of supplies and money. This would establish a negative reason for losing a fight, as of currently death is not a major threat (though the option to dispatch of a hated fallen foe would be great!).

3- Establish "battle scavenger" NPC's. Historically large numbers of people followed armies and looted battlefields. This could be an alternate merchant class where characters could buy cheap used weapons/armor/uniforms (for espionage missions in later builds).

4- <just for fun> Allow NPC's to establish defendable "looting rights" on vanquished foes; the winner in combat will defend their loot, creating secondary battles. Also would cause the player to think twice about looting a battle that just recently took place and limit the players ability to "tag along" with patrols to increase wealth.

Alright, I should probably climb off this soapbox (as my students are looking at me and then the clock trying to figure out why I haven't started class yet).

A.

[Corain]

I managed to get my grubby hands on several shopkeeper backpacks and a bunch of other nice things through glorious battles I had absolutely no involvement in,
due to the war that broke out between the Traders Guild and The Holy Empire factions(something I doubt was meant to happen),
so I'm currently sporting 200000+, 11 fully equipped characters and an ever expanding hideout,
seeing as the only thing I can still spend money on is construction materials (when I stumble across a trader that is still alive and owns a backpack anyway.)
I don't see myself going below that sum anytime soon.
(Not that I'm complaining though.)

auz268 has some good points that might balance the amount one can exploit any given battle related situaton. If they got slapped enough I might learn to keep my grubby hands to myself. >.>

[Ondru]

Just got the game yesterday, and I think the money earning via looting is just right. I usually get about 200c per sword sold which isn't much.

Trade is no longer working, so I don't know how profitable that is/was when it was working.

[Santaissick]

What do you mean "trade isn't working"? Is it a bug? You should put it on bug reports.

[Gates]

whoever is saying they're stinking rich is a damn liar!

[Mattk50]

whoever is saying they're stinking rich is a damn liar!

does this not count as stinking rich?

[Kanaro]

No Matt, that's "filthy rich". Stinking rich is just under that.

Congrats on being either however.

[LTPLegend]

Item durability for NPCs and Players. This makes everyone have to buy new weapons and armor from time to time. Next some NPCs may start a business if they have enough money from their ventures and sell it to local stores. This is slow and tedious so supplies don't run rampant. Maybe a town can have some civilians and certain percentages of them do certain tasks. Player could also set up a town and build supplies that entice traveling merchants or even faction caravans to come from all over for to re supply. We need to make sure to some extent during peaceful times more items are being made then used and in war more items are being used than made. Make some bottle necks too like needing certain resources to make swords. This would be really cool. I would love a game where things don't just appear like mobs and items. Lets make everything come from somewhere.

[Latrell]

Just throwing my approval in there but 10k does sound like a great idea. Looting cities and merchants sounds like it would be extremely profitable but unfortunately for those of us who are trying to have a "good alignment" in the games we play it's not as easy as that. Even though getting that powerful would be a challenge, but it's a challenge either way so lowering it down to 10k wouldn't make it so hard for the new players to rise. I personally started playing a few days ago, and I must admit it was no easy task gathering up all that cash to get my first shack for myself and my companion. At first it was tough but luckily as I was creating my character I noticed the guards walking towards me just started darting towards the gate. And it turned out that they wiped out some NINJAS and left their bodies there to loot. And there is where my luck began. After that it wasn't too hard, neither was training my skills. That first shack I built acted as a prison. I would literally haul bandits back to it, throw them in the bed stitch them up and beat them back down. And sometimes I would throw them in the cage. I didn't like it when I accidentally opened the door while trying to complete another action, because then they tried to escape. I'm just glad that they didn't have weapons on them at the time. That would have hurt. But anyway, 10k for the smallest building sounds like a great idea!

[Santaissick]

I wonder who of the mods get X this time

[Moonracer]

At this point money is only an issue until you have the best gear for your party. The economics for buildings is practically irrelevant until they serve more of a function. Right now I buy a saloon put a couple of beds and chests in and I have everything.

In order to make the city building economy balanced I would recommend some sort of maintenance costs involved. Buildings should offer advantages at a cost. But at the same time I'm not sure how much in depth that part of the game will be. But if some buildings have a cost beyond construction to keep them operational that will go a long way.

As for your player party economy I think some sort of mercenary salary would be an interesting addition. It would certainly make it harder to have a full 18 person crew if you couldn't afford them. Right now you hire them and they are yours until death. NPCs could charge more depending on skill levels which would discourage having a party of characters that can do everything. Maybe having non combat pack mule characters would be a cost efficient gamble. I would rather see regular salary payments than weapon and item decay. It could also be managed similar to town costs.

edit: party member salary could also open up the mechanic of obtaining rare "loyal followers" who have no or little salary costs making them incredibly valuable.

[Steelhawk]

I think, for balancing this aspect is need include in game some expenses like: maintenance cost for buildings, charges for food, water, tax for build within zone of control of faction (may be dependent from might), may be even when you lead up village in far away from civilsation, officer come to your settlement and persuade give him some resources for defend. Life in desert always be a trial, shortage of money, resources and other things are extremely important parts of survival in cruel world. Excuse me for language.

[Turmoil159]

Every time I read these, I get really deep, but I'll try to be quick here.

I usually stick to cleaning bandits out and looting their gear, equipping the best, and selling the rest. The problem with this method is that my characters usually don't have enough space to carry too much, and the interface is too clunky. If there were a "loot all" function to just take everything that would fit, that would be so nice. Some kind of option to automatically sort the character's inventory and optimize space, and at the same time adding all the gear from the looted corpse in. I usually don't trade because I tend to have bad luck, and all the traveling from one city or another to sell two tool kits for a 300 cat profit just isn't worth it. When player-ran caravans are implemented, I have plans to start my own trading company!

In terms of pricing, I find that items are fine (my characters usually don't ever have enough money for top-of-the-line gear since I always spend it on other things, but the bandit loot works just fine for me), but buildings should be a bit more costly to build. Not now though! Right now, building your own fort is the only option for owning property. When purchasing property in towns finally becomes an option, you should price those purchases at maybe 1.5x the current cost of building, and make building your own structures 3 or 4 times more. That price hike would include basic furniture too (so the price of a shack + one bed + one storage container would be totaled, multiplied by 3, then distributed properly.) If I had enough time to do the math myself, I would give you those results. But the basic idea is that buildings are way too cheap when you get such a huge profit from loot. If, in the real world, we could sell ten or twenty swords to buy a house and furniture, there would be no homeless people on the streets!

[cyanide_addict]

i made most of my money from looting and bounty hunting(i really like that feature)

[HeresyLLC]

Ive only played the game for about 6 hours now but I am always broke =p I usually spend most of my cash on mercenaries and henchmen since they die so fast which is fine. THe rest of my money goes to rum and cheap whores to keep the morale up.

But seriously imo it would be wise to wait till you have the rest of the game in place before messing around with the money issue if there is one. With the addition of more buildings bigger mobs, slaves and the whole economic model still in development anything you decide now on the matter would most likely have to be revamped later anyway.

Good luck love the game so far and am trying to get some of my friends to jump in on this epic adventure to get your game voted best RPG/RTS for 2014-15

[cybirmind]

i trained a guy to run extreamly fast, then sent him accros the world to collect bandits. then i ran them to towns. i made 30,000 in the first hour. after testing this and tweeking it, i managed to make 50k everz hour from selling selling goods as aswell as kiting bandits.


Doing this wasnt easy thoe, i think the risk\payout is fair. a overhead or mainnence cost for extreamly large armys wouldnt hurt

[Mattk50]

I trained a few guys to kill everything, so we went and wiped out every city in the game, then we imported so we could sell all the loot.

glorious