Future planned cargo missions and why i believe they will be a bust.

Posting this here for 3 reasons.

1. ark players are more rational then cally players
2. Realistically the majority of trade will be from either cally or ark to some other planet.
3. Be a giant buzzkill


So we've all seen cargo missions are coming.

Dev note here : http://www.entropiauniverse.com/bul.../Developer-Notes--10---Galactic-Transport.xml

Lets highlight a few important things that are currently known "for sure"

Realistically this is probably the only info the matters in the whole post... and this

being the most important out of that info... people will have to queue for missions.


So lets start with the dev notes of what we can be sure of. You MUST queue... the question is are you queuing to get the next mission or are you queuing to get to choose the next mission. IE

Their are 20 current mission up for work. You are next in line for the queue, your turn pops up... do you get to choose from those 20 missions or do you get assigned a mission and you just have to deal with that mission is.

If you are simply assigned the next mission... well your highly likely to get boned since if you on ark and your mission is pickup at cally and drop off at rock aka boned. We'll talk a big more later on the exact price you will get boned for.

So lets talk about some of the other more vague thing in the dev notes.

1. Pilot skills.... this is extra vague since the whole point of space is that noobs can compete directly with 400k+ skill players in an even fight. Unless MA is taking a major change in direction for space(most of all space pvp), I don't see them making this more then say being maxed on kismet laser. So I think this can be written off as fluff.

2. Ship cargo capacities. Outside of the most massive ore buys not seeing cargo space as meaningful either. Unless they make the crate very large next to what they are shipping aka a gun may only weight say 20 KG but the smallest cargo box is 100 KG. Cargo space may become an issue. Assuming you can take/get more then 1 mission at a time.

3. "Available transport fee pool". This both vague and not vague. The not vague is it appears that you can still NPC transport things. AKA 6 ped for instant and what 2 ped for 12h. The dev notes say that those 2 actions add to the fee pool... and thus they will have to stay in-game in some form. What form is vague. They could stay exactly the same, have fees or times adjusted. We can't be sure but lets assume for argument they stay the same. This then moves onto the next topic

4. Time limitations. This I think will be the biggest factor. First lets assume that the time to complete the mission is less then 12h. Why assume this? Two reasons. First faster travel, higher cost... we see this already with instant vs 12h fees. Player missions will likely fall in between 12h and instant. Their maybe more then one type of mission so their could say be a 6 hour mission and a 3 hour mission. 6h would of course be cheaper then the 3h mission. I doubt their will be muti-mission types but possible.



So we've "unvagued" some of this future system. Why do I think it will be a bust?

Mostly because the cost to complete a mission barely covers your cost to do the missions.

Lets throw out some numbers here. Currently it 6 ped for instant item. if we assume that for a player mission the reward is 5 ped aka less then instant but faster then 12h we can start running costs...

How much does it cost to fly from caly to ark or the other way... for a slep its about 2.5 ped in fuel, 2 ped for landing fee, + thruster costs bout 17 pec on that aka it costs just to fly the perfect mission 4.67 ped.... aka profit of 33 pec per mission. Roughly speaking that means you must complete at least 15 out of every 16 missions perfectly to break even. Now throw a quad in their and your fuel costs go up even more.

Ways this maybe fixed...

MA based fixes(unlikely in my view to happen)

First raise the costs of transport fee.

Second Make the drop off/pickup point all in space aka at the space stations or moons/etc that don't require the 2 ped landing fee.


Player created options

First have a passenger. If 2 people are the the ship you can split the costs. If you each have a mission you'll make a bit of profit.

Second take more then one mission assuming this is possible. This option is the place where ppl will have the most mix and match on stuff. First lets assume it possible that a single person can take more then one mission at a time.

However even if we assume its possible is it realistic? The answer is probably not. Why?

Being the queuing system. The more people that queue up the less likely you are to get 2+ missions. Add in even assuming that you somehow hire a whole crew... that crew still needs to land on planet to drop it off... so effectively things like motherships and pathfinders don't really have any cost saving unless you have a huge(30+) number of missions you can get. Though saying that, it does depending on the time limits.

The time limits are a big issue in that 1. Shorter time limits means less time to wait for more missions to take. 2. larger ships slow boating large amounts of cargo(or attempting anyway) will have to start traveling soon and thus not be able to stack as many missions.


In the end however larger ships still need to get the cargo on planet... which means that even if the cargo is pooled(aka all crew members give cargo to a handful of crew to drop on planet) cargo space will be an issue... or its possible cargo space won't be an issue and you can bring 30 crates in 1 quad down to the planet.... but if thats the case you can simply fly 30 crates with the quad anyway so once again big ships are just added cost.

Bottom line is that anyway I look it this after the first few weeks these mission will basically only be taken by, Taxis, people already planning on traveling to another planet and will leave when a mission pops up for that planet(assuming you can choose your mission), people going on scheduled warp flights and the person who lands on planet to spam(but not rest of MS crew see below) and that assumes they can pick mission and not be assigned one.

Most likely end result will be that mothership spammer will "buy" cargo crates to planets that haven't been visited yet. As the spammer must land on planet any way, this is a simple and easy way for said spammer to cover some costs. How this would work is simply Mother ship A is leaving caly at X time. Large number of ppl queue. People then sell crates for say 1 ped each to spammer. Spammer returns to mothership, travels to next planet, lands drops cargo off then picks up more cargo and so on and so on being careful not to buy cargo that goes to a planet already visited on the normal warp flight.

So lets move on to the last topic... will pirates profit from this. Assuming above the answer is no. Pirates will not profit as they have ammo costs... that said this will make pirating a bit cheaper for sure letting pirates be more active because the cost to kill a ship will be greatly reduced even if most ships don't drop cargo loot. In the end though pirates will profit PECs per kill if they are lucky.


Why do I believe the above assumptions are correct or will be correct at least at for the first roll out.

1. By using this system pirate actively will greatly increase but pirates will not make much of a profit. It will however cause pirate to attack much more often and let them stay active much longer because they will instead of losing a few ped per kill have that reduced down to less then a ped per kill on avg.

2. MA like most game dev teams don't really understand the game they are working on from the player perspective.


Post roll out changes.

Assuming that MA goal is not simply to reduce the cost per kill for pirates, the most likely changes I foresee are the following.

1. Being able to select you mission. I personally don't believe MA will take the time to let you select the mission you want in the first roll out. The queue will simply assign the next mission to the next pilot.

2. Mission selection and pickup/drop off at SS/moons/etc. This will be added after the outcry of players saying said system is retarded, MA will add this to fix it.

3. MA will decide it likes the current system but needs ppl to STFU up it... so they will say they are planning to get started on making mothership land on planets... hint hint plan to get started... sometime... next decade....



So now that I have completely crushed all your hopes and dreams for the future of space you may leave your sorrowful comment below so that I may feast upon your tears.

 

You missed the part where they say the the cargo missions do not actually transport real items. The cargo boxes are / will be purely mission boxes - not actually transporting goods.

"Note that the cargo boxes will correspond to the value of the transport mission reward rather than the actual items traded via auction sales. In this way piracy of cargo boxes will not negatively impact interplanetary trade."

 

Good point, forgot about that though it really only affect pirates... if a pirate can TT the cargo box then they will save the 2 ped in landing fees and thus net slightly more profit though, I still don't see it on avg doing alot more them other then overall reducing the ped cost per kill for them. That said I don't think they be able to. Also comes to the point of if the time limit goes over does the cargo disappear or become TTable.


I did leave this out of the top piece but its possible that you will not just have to queue into the mission but buy into as well... aka MA will require you to pay a fee = to the TT value of the cargo and that will be returned + reward when mission is finished... if they use that system then pirates will profit. However at the same time not sure many people will be willing to risk so much ped for so little profit and thus will almost never take cargo missions. Outside mothership spammers and such.

 

The bottom line is, like Jon Snow, we know nothing...

 

O I wouldn't say that... we know if MA can screw it up... they will screw it up.

 

Well, joking aside, ofc the real bottom line is, will it be profitable to do the missions or not? And we can't know that until they are actually introduced and the real costs and rewards can be evaluated. If its profitable to do them, then I'll do them, otherwise not. And I'd think that this is also the attitude of everyone else with a vested interest in space. One thing that we can be sure about though is that it will bring about much more activity and ship combat in space which is all to the good.

 

This.

For some reason people think they'll get filthy rich doing the missions. I highly doubt the rewards will be out of the ordinary. It is basically described as the noobie mission chains, go from a to b, and I assume rewards will reflect that.

 

Yea, that's a point. Personally though I don't expect to get filthy rich doing the missions. But if the mission timescale requires me to warp, then the reward has to be more than ~ 11 - 13 peds (including planet fees if I have to pick up and deliver on planet) otherwise there's no profit. Also, if the reward was in the range 15 - 20 peds, I'd make a profit, but any pirate attacking me would not since it'd cost them between 20 and 30 peds to take my ship down, (at current SI, I'm continually upgrading) even without any repair crew on, and they'd still have to deliver the cargo at additional cost to claim the reward. It would have to be +40 peds for it to be worth while for them to loot a container off me. Also, if it was a short timescale mission, say has to be delivered within 30 minutes of pickup, then they can't finish the mission by quad, only by warp ship.

 

That's interesting.

If rewards are below that, and I believe they will, a lot of the Ships will be safe. Will be interesting to see how they sort the balancing, knowing there are ships out there that cost 400+ ped to take down.

 

Not quite, I think it's very important for the whole cargo mission system. Since the cargo boxes are totally separate from the auctions, they can have any value and the rewards for missions can be anything as well. Your assumption was that you'll get paid 5 PED, since 6 PED is the maximum fee, but because it's separate, the reward can be scaled according to balancing needs. All the fees are put into a pool so if there's 200 PED in the pool, it wouldn't be impossible to have a mission that would require taking a 1000 kg box for a reward of 200 PED or something like that.

 

This is a conversation that should really be put on hold till the system actually launches and the facts are known, right now its highly unprofessional and nothing but misinformed and uneducated conspiracy theories (then again that's most Entropia discussion sadly).

 

To hell with cargo missions as long they add safe routes on space I don't really care for people killing each other for boxes

 

I feel that all this discussion is useless at this stage, before the feature goes live or at least before more info are released.

At this moment (at least the way you presented it) it just looks like a search for conspiracy theories.

 

I do not foresee the rewards being anywhere near as high as 11-13 unless they have many different time scale mission and indeed being 30 min time limit... that however is assuming that MA raises the cost the instant fee as why would someone pay 11-13 peds for 30m when they can have it in an instant for 6 ped. The other issue you raise is it worth to loot it... even if the cargo is only worth 10 ped its still for a pirate worth it.... because for a pirate its always gambling anyway. They never know if their target has loot or not. With the cargo system once again while it is unlikely to profit pirates it will greatly reduce their cost to kill allowing them to attack more ships and thus have a higher chance of looting someone with real loot. You must also consider your loses. Is it worth it for you to be known to carry cargo and thus be attacked. Further unless you can drop you cargo at the space stations you still need to land on planet... with means taking the teleport for 7 ped or landing on planet for 2 ped. Motherships and pathfinders can not currently land on planet so pirates wouldn't need to attack your pathfinder from the start they can wait for you to hop in a quad to attempt to land. The biggest killer of profit for cargo runs is the landing fee. Even 2 ped landing fee will basically remove profit from a solo mission. When you start looking at a warp fee, teleport fee, fuel etc that 20+ ped in costs without pirates attacking. Even at 11-13 ped per mission that 2 missions per trip just to break even. So realistically if your running missions the pirates know you have to have at least 20+ ped in rewards. So by the very costs you have to cover you have to carry enough loot for the pirates to break even or maybe profit. Assuming of course your running the missions sololy to do the missions.

This is wrong MA has stated

I apologize for not having included that in the main post. The cargo box TT is equal to the mission reward. The other issue with this is that your unlikely to see high value mission even if the AH item/s is large and/or high value. All mission rewards come from the fee pool. Which means that the player getting "player delivery" pays a fee into the pool this fee will likely go directly toward the mission. However this fee will be less then instant delivery(which is currently 6 ped). MA may decide to add a few ped on from the total fee pool however highly unlikely to be a large amount...so if the player pays 4 ped MA may add 2 ped from the fee pool and the mission reward will be 6 ped. Simple reasoning is that MA is not going to let the fee pool get drained by 1 or 2 high value missions. If the fee pool gets drained then either missions basically stop or future mission rewards will be vastly reduced until the fee pool rebuilds.

Its possible MA could set it up that way so basically you can "hof" on a mission and drain the fee pool... however that would mean the majority of players running the missions would always be running at a lose unless they are taking dozens of missions at a time. That would make cargo runs much more like hunting then like current PVP which is why I would believe they would not allow that to happen.

That all being said if people refuse to do these missions because of the current system and the fee pool start stacking up because everyone selects non-player delivery, its possible that MA would change the system to attempt to balance this... aka higher rewards when the fee pool is over a certain point. I doubt however that will be in the first roll out. Reason being mostly because MA setup the current NPC transport system to see just how many players would buy across planet and to fill the loot pool.

I can see that you two young creationists have never had a scientific debate based on logic. Its understandable that you find the unknown scary and a fearful thing. I can't force you to face your fears however you could learn something if you pay attention.

 

Ummm... how am I a creationist?... All I was saying is there is simply no point to debate when we have one line of info about the missions...

 

It does not have to be 1:1 meaning one transport fee creates one mission. It can be 2:1, 5:1 or even 10:1. This is pure speculation at this point, of course, but logically if it were 1:1 then one of the following would be true at any given time:
- if the number of players paying transport fees is higher than those doing transport missions then the fee pool increases to infinity
- if the number of players paying transport fees is lower than those doing transport missions then the fee pool decreases to zero
- if the number of players paying transport fees is equal to those doing transport missions then the fee pool is stable and missions are available all the time

The last one is highly unlikely for any extended period of time so it would be a very tricky balancing act. With missions giving variable rewards there is more flexibility: they could simply lower the rewards if the pool is getting drained thereby getting a higher number of missions or increase them if the pool is filling nicely.

Another thing is that players don't have to do the mission specifically. Meaning that in case you need to fly from one planet to another you look if there's a mission you can do along the way.

All in all, there's too many unknowns at this point for my liking, but to put it shortly: I think it is possible that this will be a good addition but we have to wait until it's actually in to draw any conclusions, there's too many ways MA can do this and a lot depends on their decisions.

 

No need for ad hominem arguments.

 

Because you claim that reasoning, logic, science and thought are "conspiracy theories". Which is a typical creationists side trips as they flop around in a debate. Would you prefer marxist or global warming believer? They are typical of the same actions so forgive me if I didn't call out your specific religion as I don't know you personally.

true and I somewhat cover that in a later post in this thread. Though after having thought about it I HIGHLY doubt MA will adjust the rewards.... more likely if the fee pool is getting to large they will adjust the fee and make it cheaper to select player to drop it off in 6h for 1 ped or the system drop it off in 12h for 2 ped. MA has a habit of having very fixed rewards. Now that said MA may turn over a new leaf and say that cargo runs are the new version of sweating and if you can dodge the pirate your going to make bank.... not seeing it though. MA typical pattern is to make stuff like this with razor thin margins which is why I believe the reward will just barely cover the costs and possible depending on mode of travel not even cover the costs in a single mission aka you will need at least 2 missions per flight for some ships to profit.

This assumes you can select the mission... which I think at this point is a big assumption.

 

Rolls eyes. Really not useful to attack the poster.

Some huge assumptions here. Absolutely no need for MA to tie the size of an individual mission to the fee or timing for auction transport. They could have less missions with bigger rewards, more with smaller rewards or some mix. Auction transport just feeds the mission reward pool. So the challenge for them is to ensure that the number of missions and size of rewards dont exhaust the pool.