A Blood, Sweat, and Tears campaign feature (A concern about self-sufficiency killing economy) in Arkadia Forum started me thinking on using components to repair UL items, but this has been a reoccurring topic for many games over the years, but I have been thinking on how it could work in Entropia without forcing the issue and decreasing player options. So this is a design for options within Entropia not a suggested switch between systems. To Repair (Micro implementation no economy effects) First I think that repair terminals should be removed and that the repair feature should be combined with existing NPC's. On Arcadia the NPC's that engage in "for profit" repair could be located at the Fire-base Academies. On Calypso they could be combined with the Technicians and Repairmen NPC's which already exist in hangers. I don't often go to other planets but I am sure that they have NPC's that could be co-opted to this function. For all intent and purpose the cost of repair would not change neither would it function any differently other than a Choice on the NPC interaction menu to open the repair window. "Sure, I can do that what would you like repaired?" This also would create a higher immersion level within the Universe as players would interact with characters rather a inanimate objects to do their repairs and would have to seek these individuals out. It would also remove unnecessary objects from the servers as NPC's are often present at the same locations as repair terminals so this would be a win-win situation. To Re-manufacture (This would require consideration of economy impact from higher tier during hunting and consumption of manufactured items) Re-manufacturing is done at manufacturing terminals though it does not required a new tab one could be used. If using a new tab the slider should say Repair-Research. The Basics of the system are; 1) The item itself would be the blueprint 2) Any materials that can be traded to the TT for PED's can be used to repair the item So why use this optional system rather than the Repair system? 1) Players would Receive skills and the chance to improve the Tier rating on the item during the repair process. 2) It would allow players to increase the amount of trade on each planet So how would it work and what game mechanics apply to this system verses what is done in normal manufacturing? 1) Effectively a success would increase the TT value of the item (much like Increased BP Quality right now). 2) Skills and Tire rating increase would be a chance based off the item or materials used in the manufacturing process. A) success chance could be modified with secret patterns (like the materials needed to increase the tier of the item) B) An additional bonus to the Skilling and Tiering could be issued if manufactured components are used which contain the base tire materials in example: using the Basic Servo instead of Lysterium Ingots C) The cost to upgrade the tier of the Item can be "decreased" thought this process. Essentially if you researched the item and used one of the tier upgrade components then the cost to upgrade would be reduced to a certain point this does mean that less would be saved through the tier upgrade process for players with high skills. The code is mostly within Entropia's system to implement this but some modifications would be needed. 1) A success would increase the TT value of the item 2) The Quality Rating Improvement would increase the Tier 3) This does not require larger databases on the server side just a change of what data is within the databases Currently all 10 Tier Upgrade levels are kept for the life of the item to implement this the 10 pieces of data would change to Tier 1 = Artistic Rating (this effects the Tier Increase Rating at every tier weapons with low Ratings have a low score here) Tier 2 = Tier Increase Rating to next level Tier 3-10 are the counts of the components needed at the next tier taken from the item database. Components which would not need to be counted would be the Tier X Components and Fragments (Blazar, Nova) 4) Optional effects could be had as well like Artistic Rating increases, a near success or failure could result in related limited blueprints (Like Economy Enhancer BP's) or even rare components to build other items related to re-manufactured one. 5) As this optional system normally has 100% success failure results should have minimal loss of PED value (Loot 2.0=3% and loss should be no higher than that). References are (A concern about self-sufficiency killing economy) Arkadia Forum and a lot of chat discussions with other players over the last 20 years.
