Crafting & Commodities

Project Terran PT Q&A
#1

As we still cannot see what resources are required for each schematic, life remains full of surprises :wink:
One such (positive) surprise was the fact that higher level schematics require commodities in addition to classical resources. :+1:

Without spoiling the specific schematic: I have a recipe here that requires a total of 140 commodity units.

  1. Commodities cannot be stored in GSF/PSF. Meaning, I they have to be in my Cargo Bay in order to be used for crafting.

  2. Commodities cannot be transferred to other players. Meaning, I have to either buy them, which implies having Day Trader skill at a certain level, or, well, grind (mine) in corresponding systems long enough :smile: But in my case it would surely take VERY long time.

Question: Are both 1 and 2 intended to be that way? Well, getting few levels of Day Trader surely isn’t an issue I guess. But maybe I’m missing something obvious^^

Electrical Components?
#2

Simply put, yes and yes.

We do not allow them to be stored, or they could be stockpiled for profit.

Similarly, we do not allow trades, or you could sit toon 1 at location a, buy up all the stock, email it to toon 2 sitting at location b… huge profits, no effort, no fuel.

#3

@prevuk
I wonder if you consider option to dump trade commodities into Mnufacturing Facility. Why? I see “StarShip Alloy”, relatively cheap, and If you ever consider Player Made Ships 500 units of it would be too few, definitely :(.
And such storage - One way, without possibility of remove goods (so no illegal gain possibility), and unlocked by Crafting-Advanced skill (to avoid confusion for starters) - such dump would be nice :slight_smile: That is, ff you allow us to craft Behemoth, like Starbases, StarShips etc :slight_smile:

#4

@prevuk
I’m sorry, but given your ideas behind the restrictions, I don’t see why those are necessary:

  1. Storage not allowed:
    What exactly would I gain from stockpiling them? Selling profit is, as far as I could see, almost ridiculously constant. Whether I sell 180 every day or 365*180 every year doesn’t really make a difference, does it?

  2. Trade not allowed:
    Valid point as far as fuel is concerned, BUT: our time is limited too (it is IMHO the rarest of all resources). Firstly it takes one hour until my mail would arrive at the other char. Given a JDL of 90 (which appears to be only lower midrange) I could make six or more journeys back and forth, essentially increase my income per time sixfold. Secondly, according to my observation, it takes about 3 days to fully refill commodities. Assuming I could use all six chars, this would only allow me to sell one load of commodities every day. Since I can not use my chars otherwise, because doing so would mean I have to travel to another destination (e.g. to do a quest) and then back again to collect my commodities for the next day, and would thus eliminate any fuel gain, I have no use for the fuel I just saved. Therefore I gain nothing from this procedure.

About needing commodities for crafting:
After reading through some posts I get the impression that this game is built exactly in a way that highly discourages all-round-chars. Given that I need commodities for crafting, and by my estimate, I will need A LOT of them, my crafter needs to be senior trader as well. On top of crafting itself and another profession to make use of my fuel, that is. From my point of view this is very inconsistent.

As others have already pointed out, I suggest you either implement some one way-storage, rethink your restrictions or at least point out what exactly is needed for each profession in the beginning, because running into dead ends more often than not is not so much fun, given the time investment in this game…

#5

You can make good profit if you have been loggin supply/demand locations of certain commodities. Consider that you’re paying nothing for sending items via mail (maybe that’s the issue). And that you’re not limited to one mail at the same time. That is, you can buy out all relevant commodities in one “corner” of the galaxy and send them to a toon sitting in the opposite “corner” and vice versa. You then log in couple of hours later, jump around a little while accepting all the mails - and make profit with both toons. So there are possibilities to “cheat”.

Aside from the fact that it doesn’t feel right that you’re delegating the major part of your trader work to (free) mail service. But, again, maybe a per-unit fee on commodities would solve that issue (if that fee is higher than buy-sell price difference).

Unlimited dumping of commodities (e.g. for crafting) is also somewhat problematic: I need lots of units of commodity X for my ueber-schematic, so I have a toon sitting on the source and buy out everything as soon as it appears. Guess what, I have a monopole (not only on that commodity, but also on all schematics involving that commodity).

I’m not saying you’re wrong - in fact, I agree that some way of transferring commodities should be allowed (and would eliminate the need for crafters to be traders as well) - but it not as easy as simply removing the restrictions. Ideas?