Balance costs… a gun shouldn’t cost more than a spaceship which has guns!

[Ian Doncaster]

What puzzles me is that Fdev is treating them as separate economies and the players are required to turn a blind eye to these inconsistencies, however didn't introduce a new separate on foot currency that isn't tradable for credits. On foot missions pay out in this new currency, everyone starts from 0 with the new currency, there is no situation of a veteran player buying all the equipment needed in 1 shop

They more-or-less did, in that any significant upgrades to suits or armour require Odyssey-specific materials.

If they'd made the two currencies unconvertible I don't think it would have addressed the problems, though.

1) People would have asked why they weren't convertible. It'd just be "why can we buy Copper but not Iron for credits" mk 2.

2) The "why not just cut open a can of hand weapons" issue still applies even if the direct pricing discrepancy is slightly obfuscated.

3) It disconnects the two play types even more. That really is into "why not just make them separate games" territory, I think. (They have said that more content combining Horizons and Odyssey play is coming) For exploration it'd be particularly weird - you scan a planet and sample the life and UC pays you in credits while exobiology pays you in spacedollars.

 

[FluxApexHype]

Consider this, the MK48 Mod1 used by the US military costs $11,500 each.
If you want the new MARSOC 45cal pistol, you're set back $2500+
The sidewinder is the "1990 Honda Civic" of elite, its old, ugly and weathered when we get them.
Don't know where you live, but an old civic is cheaper than a belt fed 7.62mm automatic rifle where I am....

 

[Vadim Kleitsin]

Consider this, the MK48 Mod1 used by the US military costs $11,500 each.
If you want the new MARSOC 45cal pistol, you're set back $2500+
The sidewinder is the "1990 Honda Civic" of elite, its old, ugly and weathered when we get them.
Don't know where you live, but an old civic is cheaper than a belt fed 7.62mm automatic rifle where I am....

But you can get AKs pretty cheap, usually on the black market. And the weapon itself was made to be easy to produce at low cost.

Maybe the Battle Weapons and stuff we're trucking around in cargo canisters are the 3307 version of the AK and the average Odyssey player is running around with , I dunno, a space!HK416?

 

[Screemonster]

Maybe the Battle Weapons and stuff we're trucking around in cargo canisters are the 3307 version of the AK and the average Odyssey player is running around with , I dunno, a space!HK416?

It'd explain why scavs and settlement guards tend not to have particularly good gear, we're running around with actual top of the line kit while they're making do with surplus.

I figure the "hand weapons" and "battle weapons" that you buy by the ton aren't actually finished products but like a crate of parts. A few tons of battle weapons would be assembled into things like the settlement defence turrets.

 

[Sysmon]

We don't really have maintenance or upkeep costs in the game. Those almost got foothold with Fleet Carriers, but that was whined out of existence by the community early on. So the only way of balancing stuff is the gamey ways.

Think suit = ship.

S

 

[Danieros]

I think the point is that Odyssey on-foot IS a separate game. The equipment cost differences are just one glaring example of how we now have two completely different games banged-together. I honestly wish they had launched their FPS game as a stand-alone.

CCCP tried that with Dust 514 as a separate FPS game in the EVE universe. It failed.

Frankly Odyssey is a much better attempt at this. As long as they continue working on it.

 

[Morbad]

Effective rifle plate body armour in today's world costs upwards of $40-50k.
An armoured vehicle costs around the same.

Problem?

You're grossly exaggerating the cost of body armor and seriously low-balling the cost of armored vehicles. A rational like-for-like (new vs. used, geographical market, relative class of protection, etc) comparison will have the armored vehicle cost at least ten times as much as the body armor.

A brand new class IV trauma plate costs about 500 USD and a high-end suit of head to toe body armor is in the mid four figures ballpark. If you managed to find a $40k suit of body armor, the vehicular equivalent would probably be a multi-million dollar APC.

Don't discount the costs associated with minaturisation/portability of equipment. I could easily forsee a portable laser rifle being well in excess of the costs of a laser mounted to a ship with a commodity fusion reactor power source.

Even assuming the small arm required costly miniaturization, this still wouldn't explain why a canister of battle weapons costs much less than an individual small arm.

The sidewinder is the "1990 Honda Civic" of elite, its old, ugly and weathered when we get them.

Personally, I consider a Sidewinder more analogous to a small personal jet than an automobile. Anyone with ownership of any starship is phenomenally privileged in the Elite setting, even if all they can afford is a beat up Sidewinder.

A 44 year old Learjet 24 with 7k hours on the airframe still goes for ~$400k.

We could compare used car prices...but the firearm equivalent here is something bought at a police auction for the price of a Starbucks breakfast.

CCCP tried that with Dust 514 as a separate FPS game in the EVE universe. It failed.

That could have had something to do with Dust 514 having been a Playstation 3 game.

 

[Peter Mannion]

They more-or-less did, in that any significant upgrades to suits or armour require Odyssey-specific materials.

If they'd made the two currencies unconvertible I don't think it would have addressed the problems, though.

1) People would have asked why they weren't convertible. It'd just be "why can we buy Copper but not Iron for credits" mk 2.

2) The "why not just cut open a can of hand weapons" issue still applies even if the direct pricing discrepancy is slightly obfuscated.

3) It disconnects the two play types even more. That really is into "why not just make them separate games" territory, I think. (They have said that more content combining Horizons and Odyssey play is coming) For exploration it'd be particularly weird - you scan a planet and sample the life and UC pays you in credits while exobiology pays you in spacedollars.

Introducing a separate currency is by no means the perfect solution, but the cons you have pointed out are a lot better than the current ones

1. Answer is just game design, like when people ask why materials are not purchasable.

2. Answer is just "well the gameplay just isn't there for interacting with commodities in that way"

3. Valid argument.

Much better and more explainable then

Q: "why does a ton of weapons cost considerably less then 1 pistol"
Fdev: "err no comment ..."

There are just a lot less holes in the argument if a separate currency is introduced and it allows Fdev to create a more balanced experience with economy progression. By no means is it the perfect solution, but like I said, that's the nature of releasing the game in expansions ...

 

[Jmanis]

CCCP tried that with Dust 514 as a separate FPS game in the EVE universe. It failed.

Sort of.

The issue was actually CCP weren't selling a completely separate FPS.

Dust 514 was an FPS where the actions of the ground fighters were meant to have just as much impact on the actual game universe as ships in the "main" game. If a ship came along and bombarded the warzone of dust 514 and lopsided the fight towards one side, that was intentional. Unfortunately coordinating that effort was hard; there was a very small smattering of conflicts over the life of Dust 514 where people playing that FPS actually impacted anything.

In short, CCP offered an integrated experience, but delivered a mostly standalone shooter, made clunky by bad integration attempts. That's why it failed.

This parallels ED, where they're offering a integrated experience, but really, it's just standalone and is quite distinct and divorced from the main game line, so expectations are wrong from the get go. Over promise, under deliver is what got Dust.

By contrast, EVE Valkyrie, a truly standalone fighter sim a-la CQC, was much more successful, because it delivered what it said it was on the tin.

 

[Maolagin]

I mean, even a Taipan has engines, thrusters, sensors, a nuclear fusion reactor plus guns and it’s orders of magnitude cheaper than a level 3 space suit.

You think that's odd, consider the wild economics involved in restocking your SRV bay. There's a reason the game doesn't let you Maverick open your own SRV - for the power regulator alone it would be insanely profitable to grind deploying them and stripping them for parts.

 

[metatheurgist]

There's 2 in every Sidewinder! I'd happily pay that for PRs.

 

[zikolach]

1t of weapons cost a few thousand credits. we are talking a TON of weapons. Not just ONE.

As it was mentioned earlier this year - there is ton of wrapping, which cost nearly nothing - the share of weapon on 1 cargo ton is roughly 1% or less. So it is fair

 

[Tikanderoga]

As it was mentioned earlier this year - there is ton of wrapping, which cost nearly nothing - the share of weapon on 1 cargo ton is roughly 1% or less. So it is fair

hehe, good one. But when you buy 500g of meat, you get 500g of meat and 50g of packaging. So if I buy a ton of weapons, I get 1t of weapons plus 50g of packaging. But if you'd REALLY want to bubble wrap that one weapon with 1t of bubble wrap, I think we'd be looking at an Anaconda bursting out of its seams just from the bubble wrap. And now you only got 299t of weapons to load up. Wanna start stickytaping the Anacondas together?

 

[Sylow]

Even assuming the small arm required costly miniaturization, this still wouldn't explain why a canister of battle weapons costs much less than an individual small arm.

Do you have any idea, how many tons that Karma P-15 weights?

 

[Maolagin]

Do you have any idea, how many tons that Karma P-15 weights?

A canister of "battle weapons" can be had for around 6K credits. A basic, unmodified P-15 costs 75K.

What I take from this is that if you want to purchase a P-15 wholesale, you get 10-12 canisters of parts, manuals, big foam inserts and whatnot. Probably some assembly required. That faction that asked you to smuggle a Python full of "battle weapons" to their remote outpost? Once you unload it'll be like an Easter egg hunt in their cargo depot, hoping to get a dozen good weapons out of the lot!

 

[Sylow]

A canister of "battle weapons" can be had for around 6K credits. A basic, unmodified P-15 costs 75K.

What I take from this is that if you want to purchase a P-15 wholesale, you get 10-12 canisters of parts, manuals, big foam inserts and whatnot. Probably some assembly required. That faction that asked you to smuggle a Python full of "battle weapons" to their remote outpost? Once you unload it'll be like an Easter egg hunt in their cargo depot, hoping to get a dozen good weapons out of the lot!

So we now know, a Karma P-15 must weight about 12 tons. I better start training a bit, to be able to wield such a massive weapon... : D

I am always amazed that a statement like mine above gets such a serious answer in return. Where i thought the smileys gave it away, that i also think that the pricing for ground equipment is ridiculous. I mean, credits have lost all their meaning years ago. Engineering materials are the actual currency. And as you are limited on how many weapons you can carry at any time, it would not hurt the game at all if non-engineered ground equipment would be dirt-cheap, while it would give the game world a little more consistency.

 

[Tikanderoga]

A canister of "battle weapons" can be had for around 6K credits. A basic, unmodified P-15 costs 75K.

What I take from this is that if you want to purchase a P-15 wholesale, you get 10-12 canisters of parts, manuals, big foam inserts and whatnot. Probably some assembly required. That faction that asked you to smuggle a Python full of "battle weapons" to their remote outpost? Once you unload it'll be like an Easter egg hunt in their cargo depot, hoping to get a dozen good weapons out of the lot!

Do I hear loot boxes in all this?

 

[metatheurgist]

So we now know, a Karma P-15 must weight about 12 tons. I better start training a bit, to be able to wield such a massive weapon... : D

No, no it's obvious.

There's 31 manufacturing instructions in paper form (to avoid detection), 31 canisters of gas, 80 bits of tungsten carbide and weapon bits (that stuff is heavy) for each P15 in the cargo pod. That's a lot of weight!

 

[Riverside]

I think the old Elite 1984 lore had “credits” for things like starships and “units” for things like coffee. Shouldn’t the Odyssey gear be cheap compared to a ship? I mean, even a Taipan has engines, thrusters, sensors, a nuclear fusion reactor plus guns and it’s orders of magnitude cheaper than a level 3 space suit. It’s that weird? Shouldn’t it be adjusted to meet the payouts for foot soldier missions?

It is pretty daft, and I think the numbers were plucked out of the air by the game designers as a compromise that works with the poorly managed power creep over the last few years of the game's development rather than a justifiable part of a larger plan. Had suits been part of the initial game right from the beginning I have no doubt we would see a rather more consistent spread of costs & earnings.

But it is what it is, and it's mats gathering & engineering that adds capability rather than only credits so the inconsistencies of cost don't matter so much to the gameplay as they did in 2015, it's 'only' lore that makes it look odd.

 

[metatheurgist]

Like anything CR related mattered once you could buy an Anaconda in 4-5 hours.