Codex: Insanely high asset inflation caused by personal equipment upgrades

[Deleted member 182079]

As I'm slowly making my way towards getting back my Fleet Carrier, I'm keeping a keen eye on my asset values to see how much I have left until I can afford one again.

I noticed some really weird jumps in my total asset figure; check out the numbers below taken from Inara (which tie with the data in the Codex/Journal, as I've discussed with @Artie a few weeks back). At the beginning I was unsure what could cause a discrepancy between what the game showed as Total Assets and what I believe the game previously considered for this figure, namely ships + stored modules + credit balance.

My fleet and modules consist of roughly 1bn as per below; this hasn't really changed over the past weeks as I focused on on-foot gameplay incl. engineering suits and weapons.

And here's the movements in credits and total assets:

You will observe some pretty hefty jumps in current assets, where I didn't earn even remotely as much in credits. After sifting through my player logs courtesy of Inara I could pin-point the occurrences when those figures jumped up, and eventually traced this back to whenever I applied an upgrade and/or mod to my suits (possibly weapons also but mainly suits). I currently have 2 fully modded suits, with another G4 that'll get upgraded shortly.

I initially - before I figured out what's going on - raised a ticket with Frontier Support, who eventually acknowledged that there's something wonky going on; they initially insisted that the game calculates total assets as I outlined in bold above, and they told me they raised an internal ticket with the dev team. I since confirmed to them the above but haven't heard back since so assume that's the end of that most likely.

Generally speaking it's not a big deal I suppose, but at the same time it makes the total assets statistic in the Codex quite pointless, because the game not only doesn't account for this anywhere, but you also can't recover those gained 'fake' billions (!) in assets by liquidizing them into credits - selling a G5 suit with mods fully applied will net you just over 2m credits.

Anyways... in case anyone was wondering what caused this... there you go. Whether it's a bug (adding too many zeros to the value of a suit, judging by how low the selling price is) or by design, as all too often - who knows.

UPDATE

Just applied some upgrades, with the following observations:

• Dominator Suit G4 > G5 ---- simple reduction in cash & assets by 7,500,000cr (the upgrade fee)
• Applied Extra Ammo Capacity ---- total assets increase of 375,000,000cr
• Upgraded the Oppressor (that's right - sue me) from G3 > G4. Now my asset balance shot up by 750,000,000cr - seems there was a delay with the suit asset adjustment perhaps?

Right now it seems that each slot and each upgrade (can't speak for the lower ones i.e. from G1 to G2 as I bought G3 pre-modded gear throughout) is 'worth' 375m.

My total assets are now just over 8 billion - all while merely owning a fleet worth 1bn plus 2.3bn in cash. Makes sense for someone at FDev I'm sure.

(I had to edit my initial update as I thought I upgraded both Tormentor and Oppressor, but I'm missing some MIs for the former, d'oh)

 

[Frop]

Anyways... in case anyone was wondering what caused this... there you go. Whether it's a bug (adding too many zeros to the value of a suit, judging by how low the selling price is) or by design, as all too often - who knows.

Yep, this aberration was reported by myself and by other people after Update 5/6 dropped (can't remember which). "Current assets" has been bugged since mid July 2021.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Yep, this aberration was reported by myself and by other people after Update 5/6 dropped (can't remember which). "Current assets" has been bugged since mid July 2021.

should've just asked through a one-liner here beforehand. Oh well.

 

[Frop]

should've just asked through a one-liner here beforehand. Oh well.

I forgot to mention you're the first that actually put a finger on what might be causing it. Thank you for your sacrifice.

 

[ferus]

So many threads nowadays can be replied to by saying “it’s a known bug and has been known since insert date here.”

However, I didn’t notice this specific issue as I usually track only my total credits because I am not willing to part with any of my assets that I managed to buy and (often painfully) upgrade.

 

[gorankar]

It may be based on the buy prices of premodded gear, rather than the sell price of modded gear. You might only be able to sell it for 2 million but premodded suits weapons sell for millions when you find them in shops.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

It may be based on the buy prices of premodded gear, rather than the sell price of modded gear. You might only be able to sell it for 2 million but premodded suits weapons sell for millions when you find them in shops.

Nope - look at the numbers again; the recent upgrades (from G4 to G5 and adding a single mod) resulted in a jump of over 1 billion. Pre-modded gear merely costs a few dozen millions.

It's all quite odd - a maxed out single suit with some light enhancements (run faster, NV, more ammo etc.) is now considered worth more than an A-rated Prismo Cutter?

 

[Frop]

Nope - look at the numbers again; the recent upgrades (from G4 to G5 and adding a single mod) resulted in a jump of over 1 billion. Pre-modded gear merely costs a few dozen millions.

It's all quite odd - a maxed out single suit with some light enhancements (run faster, NV, more ammo etc.) is now considered worth more than an A-rated Prismo Cutter?

According to the Codex, under Balance I've spent almost as much on "Suits", "Personal Weapons" and "Premium Suit/Weapon Stock" as on "Ships".

 

[Deleted member 182079]

According to the Codex, under Balance I've spent almost as much on "Suits", "Personal Weapons" and "Premium Suit/Weapon Stock" as on "Ships".

Those figures are cumulative though (just like outfitting, which you can sell at cost fwiw) so can't really be used to track your assets. I've spent about 300m on suits, weapons and 'premium stock' but it doesn't account for what I've sold again (and I sold a lot again). I have 1 suit and 1 weapon of each type, and am engineering those. So it's quite modest in terms of asset value really.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Right, so I've just upgraded my Dom to G5 - no increase in asset value at all, in fact it went down by 7.5m credits (the upgrade fee), along with my credit balance. That doesn't exactly make sense either.

So it seems that it's the modifications that cause this - will test this very shortly as I only need a single Production Report and head to the engineer, will update the OP accordingly based on my findings.

And boy... the feeling of not having to look for Suit Schematics or Power Regulators any longer is pretty sweet.

 

[Frop]

And boy... the feeling of not having to look for Suit Schematics or Power Regulators any longer is pretty sweet.

It doesn't work that way, now that you've got that G5 gear you have to stock items and components like a doomsday prepper.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

It doesn't work that way, now that you've got that G5 gear you have to stock items and components like a doomsday prepper.

I think my suit engineering appetite is truly satisfied - 1 G5 each, fully loaded with the mods that made the most sense to me. Still got 11 weapons to G5 but I think I'll stick with G4 for the time being... need to go back to the credit grind for the FC that got completely sidelined with my on-foot escapades. Shame that apart from High CZs those pay so badly - and I suppose selling Push/Hush/Lazarus can be quite lucrative, but the time needed to scavenge that doesn't remotely rival that of more straightforward ship activities.

 

[Frop]

I think my suit engineering appetite is truly satisfied - 1 G5 each, fully loaded with the mods that made the most sense to me. Still got 11 weapons to G5 but I think I'll stick with G4 for the time being... need to go back to the credit grind for the FC that got completely sidelined with my on-foot escapades. Shame that apart from High CZs those pay so badly - and I suppose selling Push/Hush/Lazarus can be quite lucrative, but the time needed to scavenge that doesn't remotely rival that of more straightforward ship activities.

You might as well grind to G5 and then do the FC, maybe by that time Update 15+ is out and we finally get FC interiors anyway.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

You might as well grind to G5 and then do the FC, maybe by that time Update 15+ is out and we finally get FC interiors anyway.

To be honest with you, I've spent the past 3-4 weeks or so intensely running missions and raiding settlements just to gather the mats to upgrade my G3 suits to G5 and apply the mods I wanted (and a few weapons along but the max is G4, the rest is G3 from pre-engineered purchases). I've seriously had enough of missions now, because the problem is you spend 10 minutes in SC and maybe 3 minutes doing the mission (or it takes a lot longer and you work half an hour for a handful of data rewards). I'm exhausted, I need a break from it especially because I'm not normally a mission board enthusiast. Also want to top up my raw mat storage before they break the SRV scoop again.

Aaanyways... updated the OP with some additional findings.

 

[Maolagin]

Nope - look at the numbers again; the recent upgrades (from G4 to G5 and adding a single mod) resulted in a jump of over 1 billion. Pre-modded gear merely costs a few dozen millions.

It's all quite odd - a maxed out single suit with some light enhancements (run faster, NV, more ammo etc.) is now considered worth more than an A-rated Prismo Cutter?

It's plausible that this is what's happening. If you look at the prices for pre-modded gear with zero, one, or two mods, it could be that a multiplicative factor is being applied to the value for each mod. If so, that factor is in the neighborhood of ten. The shops don't sell suits with more than two mods, but it could well be that the computed value is around 100 times greater than the sale cost for double modded gear. That would indeed be up in the vicinity of a billion credits.

 

[Maolagin]

Update: I believe I've figured out what's going on. Digging through the pre-upgraded gear thread for screenshots that show the prices of various modded gear, I can reproduce the prices using the following rules:

• Each item type has its own base value. E.g. the suits all have a base value of 150k CR.
• Each grade above G1 multiplies the base value by a factor of 5. E.g. the grade value of a G3 item is 25x the base value.
• Each mod applied adds to the sale value by 2x the item's grade value. E.g. each mod you add to a G4 item adds 2*125 = 250x the base value.

Put it all together and the sale value of an item is (2M + 1)(B * 5^(G-1)), where

• B = per-item base value
• G = grade (1-5)
• M = number of mods installed (can be 0 to G-1)

Now obviously I can only confirm these numbers against what is listed in the shops, which only goes up to G3 with two mods. But if that formula is correct, a G5 suit with 4 mods should be worth 843.75 million CR, roughly in line with what OP found.

 

[zikolach]

Now obviously I can only confirm these numbers against what is listed in the shops, which only goes up to G3 with two mods. But if that formula is correct, a G5 suit with 4 mods should be worth 843.75 million CR, roughly in line with what OP found.

Which is roughly proportional to the amount of grind needed to upgrade it

 

[Maolagin]

Which is roughly proportional to the amount of grind needed to upgrade it

It would be very interesting to see where the prices settled if Frontier decided to let players sell crafted gear from their FC shops. That's an eye-watering number, but yes you can almost certainly go earn a billion credits faster than you can collect the materials needed to G5 + 4 mod a piece of kit, so it's not insane to think it could go that high.

 

[Elpapo]

Now obviously I can only confirm these numbers against what is listed in the shops, which only goes up to G3 with two mods. But if that formula is correct, a G5 suit with 4 mods should be worth 843.75 million CR, roughly in line with what OP found.

And I was wondering, where the hell are those billions I never seen or earned, that magically appeared every G5 suit or weapon done. Looks like this is the awnser why. Now then, I wonder how many years it will take for FDevs to actually fix it. Not like is game breaking, but on other hand, I cant really tell how much I did earned since day 0. My guess is about I got like 8-9B, from 17 wich apperantly I have currently.

 

[Cosmik_Debris]

It would be very interesting to see where the prices settled if Frontier decided to let players sell crafted gear from their FC shops. That's an eye-watering number, but yes you can almost certainly go earn a billion credits faster than you can collect the materials needed to G5 + 4 mod a piece of kit, so it's not insane to think it could go that high.

I.. doubt that, except maybe using wing mission stacking with a group of players.

It took me two afternoons playtime to get all the mats needed to G2-5 an executioner, G4-5 a Dom suit and apply 6 upgrades. I dont think i would have earned a billion credits in the same playtime. Not a million miles off, if i really tried, but i wasnt 'really trying' on the equipment upgrades.

I will be interested to see what things like Manufacturing instructions end up selling for. I wouldnt be surprised at 10 million each - which would make on foot missions the highest potential earnings in the game (100m for the right mission, doable in minutes if its something like exterminate scavengers)