Fleet Carrier bartender - remove buy price cap (or increase at least 10000x)

[WreckRoot]

TL;DR:
Remove the buy/sell price cap for on-foot items on fleet carrier Bartender services, or increase it by a factor of at least 10000x 1000x.
(edit: 10000x might be overkill I guess, but 1000x is not and 100x is insufficient imho).

Short reason:
with current price limits, there will never be any economy for on-foot items. Nobody will bother farming on-foot, given how time-consuming it is, to sell their loot for the prices we are capable of offering (as fleet carrier owners).

Example:
I need Weapon Components. I can only offer 10k credits for a piece on my fleet carrier. Nobody's going to bother procuring such an annoying to obtain component to sell it to me for such a price. I should be able to offer at least 10 million, maybe even 50 million or more, for anyone to consider spending their time farming Weapon Components to sell them to me.

Note that this function of the bartender is what the announcement for Update 11 essentially promised:

The on-board Bar will be of particular interest to Commanders, and not just because it’s a great place to relax. On Fleet Carriers, the Bartender will act as a fully player-driven trading post for all of the resources found while on-foot. The Fleet Carrier owner will be able to manage this service from anywhere in the galaxy, manipulating prices, creating or fulfilling demand, and directly influencing the game's economy as a result. As a customer of a Bartender, players will find new avenues for money-making and obtaining hard-to-find items for upgrading their equipment, driven exclusively by other players.

... so I'm not asking for anything ridiculous, I'm just saying that it's broken and how to fix it.

 

[Northpin]

with current price limits, there will never be any economy for on-foot items. Nobody will bother farming on-foot, given how time-consuming it is, to sell their loot for the prices we are capable of offering (as fleet carrier owners).

This thread will disagree with you

The Great Fleet Carrier Bartender Material Advertisement Thread!

Anything for sale still? o7

forums.frontier.co.uk

or increase it by a factor of at least 10000x.

did your credits printing machine broke down and you need a new one?

so I'm not asking for anything ridiculous

Opinions may vary

 

[Factabulous]

I'm not asking for anything ridiculous

 

[WreckRoot]

This thread will disagree with you

The Great Fleet Carrier Bartender Material Advertisement Thread!

Anything for sale still? o7

forums.frontier.co.uk

No, it doesn't. Here's the bottom of the OP:

Mar 16, 2022(...)
Edit 8: Nearly 1000 items sold in 2 hours and 62,377,182 Credits made - I'm off to get more stuff!
Edit 9: New stock posted. I've made somewhere north of 107 million Credits with the Bartender since Update 11 dropped.
Edit 10: Forgot to list all the new things I'm selling for sale - whoops

Last edited: Thursday at 12:22 AM

The thread was posted on March 16th. Last update last Thursday (March 24th) - a week later. So however you want to count it, he is NOT making any reasonable money by any stretch of the imagination - 1000 items sold for 60 million? Just how much time do you need to pick up 1000 items? Show me a method to get 1000 items - ANY on foot items, I'm not even asking for the valuable ones - in less than half an hour. Why half an hour? Cause you can make 60 million in half an hour in at least 5 different ways in this game. You would need 83 minutes just to pick up 1000 items even if you were picking them every five seconds... I mean literally every five seconds, disregarding the need to fly anywhere, disembark, find loot, crack locks, kill guards, drop items at the ship cause backpack capacity and all that nonsense.

FDev promised a basis for an economy. Spending hours upon hours of your life doing stuff for essentially no return is not a basis for an economy, at least not a free market economy. It's either slavery (if forced) or charity (if not). Or masochism.

did your credits printing machine broke down and you need a new one?

I admit 10000x might've been overkill, but 1000x is definitely not. The current limit is just this ridiculous. Do the math yourself:

Bill can procure the Item at the rate of 60 per hour and can sell the Item for 10000 credits apiece. All regular occupations available in the game allow Bill to make 100 million credits per hour. Calculate how many times more than the current limit Bill should be able to charge for the Item in order to make 100 million per hour.

Spoiler: Answer

100.000.000 credits / 60 items = 1.666.666 credits per item minumum.
1.666.666 credits minimum / 10.000 credits current limit = 166.6

Answer: Bill should be able to sell the item for 166.6 times more than he currently can.

Note: this is assuming there is an undepletable demand for the Item in the market at maximum price, like there is for e.g. Monazite/Platinum today. This is not the case. Not only is it hard to locate buyers, but the offers can vanish at any time and never come back, being entirely player-based. The farmer is running a very high risk of spending hours gathering something that he'll never be able to sell. All of this risk should be reflected in an adequately higher margin on the transaction.

Once again - this is no basis for an economy.
If you want to run a charity though, be my guest. I'll be perfectly happy to buy all the on-foot mats I will ever need from you for the total price of a single half-hour trip to a monazite hotspot.

Opinions may vary

Maths doesn't.

 

[Screemonster]

The farmer is running a very high risk of spending hours gathering something that he'll never be able to sell.

Honestly there doesn't need to be a cap, since as soon as you start charging more for weapon schematics than a buyer considers it worth their time, ie they can just go out and get them themselves in less time than it'd take to earn the credits to pay you, you'll find that people stop buying them from you.

 

[Fake Newts]

Fdev historically don't like the idea of players having the ability to trade profitably with one-another or to have any particular player-to-player agency in the terms usually associated with MMOs whatsoever so it seems unlikely this will happen.

The patch could've feasibly led to a flourishing market for Manufacturing Instructions and the like but as it is people will only trade for altruistic reasons or because they're twinking items to an alt.

The problem is Fdev (and visibly a segment of their fanbase) don't even see this as a missed opportunity.

 

[Fake Newts]

Elite fans often like to defend the game on the basis that certain things are technically possible within intrinsic RP constraints, so 'someone is selling materials and talking about it' translates to 'this is a successful mechanic'. Canyon running is another example of this, 'you can fly at high speeds through canyons and race your friends' neglecting to mention it's not actually systemically supported or incentivised in any way beyond ships and canyons existing simultaneously.

Don't get me wrong, it's fine and even desirable for sandbox games to just let players exercise their imaginations sometimes, there are many communities in Elite that have formed their own stakes and structure from the dry bones we're given. However, when extrinsic motivation would be an easy win, and when participation is stunted due to a lack of systemic support, it's a shame.

 

[gorankar]

I don't think there should be a limit at all. I am in a very populated system and am asking to buy items at the max allowable price. Even with advertising, I have zero people sell me anything. I would pay 50-100M for what I need to upgrade one suit from 3 to 4. The most I can pay for those items is around 1M or so.
The time it would take acquiring those mats makes them actually worth 50-100M, maybe even more. The current limits are unrealistic, plain and simple, unless NPC start trading as well. I am all for that, but Fdev has never been into that so no need to talk about that.

Though I have heard rumblings that someone has found another dupe glitch for certain mats but has been trying to keep it quiet. That would turn FC bartenders into money printers.

 

[WreckRoot]

To be clear - I understand the idea behind limits. IIRC it was to make it harder for one player to donate otherwordly amounts of money to another player (without limits the carrier owner can e.g. set up a purchase order for one unit of water and offer to pay 5 billion credits for it). With limits in place, they have to spend hours coordinating a back-and-forth of repeated buybacks and commodity market adjustments to make that work, which, in FDev's opinion, is a some sort of a compromise. I kinda even get along with that idea.

However, with the limits currently where they are, you can't turn the bartender system into an "economy" for on-foot items and FDev has clearly promised exactly that in the fragment I quoted in the OP.

That's why I feel justified in bringing this up.

 

[whothe]

To be clear - I understand the idea behind limits. IIRC it was to make it harder for one player to donate otherwordly amounts of money to another player (without limits the carrier owner can e.g. set up a purchase order for one unit of water and offer to pay 5 billion credits for it). With limits in place, they have to spend hours coordinating a back-and-forth of repeated buybacks and commodity market adjustments to make that work, which, in FDev's opinion, is a some sort of a compromise. I kinda even get along with that idea.

There is no such thing as a super rare boss drop, OP piece of gear or weapon, or anything that could cause some massive imbalance.

I dont think its that big of a leap to say a great many players either play in solo/PG. There is no gameplay bottleneck that forces players together.
So what does it even matter if Player 1 bought some gear for credits in game? How does that affect your game exactly?
Because Player 1 showed up at an on foot CZ wearing some armor/weapon they built with credits, in less time, that is at best equivalent to what you have? I mean lol... you built your gear by spending time farming items vs they bought some of the components with credits. And somehow that is going to ruin the game? The game that a great many people play in solo or PG anyways? Even in open play its a bloody ghost town out there. Who cares how someone else got their components, you will never see them in game.

I will never understand the objections to having an open player economy in a game where it would have such a miniscule effect.

 

[Northpin]

No, it doesn't. Here's the bottom of the OP:

Bartender allows trading between players. It doesnt seem to be designed to allow you to get rich by playing the relogski game and make a lot of money in the process.
And i do hope they keep the low prices.

Whoever has a surplus of materials, has the possibility to sell them at a price that is accessible for the random newb that might need them, while still making a 10 times better profit than simply selling the materials to station bartenders.

Just how much time do you need to pick up 1000 items?

Quite fast actually if you do know how to play the game

Hint:
Get a Maverick with Increased Backpack capacity
Find a system with a lot of settlements controlled by a faction in one of the following state: Infrastructure Failure, Outbreak, Famine, Bust, Blight.
Do restore missions.
If you pick everything you might need to unload the suit mid mission.

 

[Danieros]

TL;DR:
Remove the buy/sell price cap for on-foot items on fleet carrier Bartender services, or increase it by a factor of at least 10000x 1000x.
(edit: 10000x might be overkill I guess, but 1000x is not and 100x is insufficient imho).

Short reason:
with current price limits, there will never be any economy for on-foot items. Nobody will bother farming on-foot, given how time-consuming it is, to sell their loot for the prices we are capable of offering (as fleet carrier owners).

Example:
I need Weapon Components. I can only offer 10k credits for a piece on my fleet carrier. Nobody's going to bother procuring such an annoying to obtain component to sell it to me for such a price. I should be able to offer at least 10 million, maybe even 50 million or more, for anyone to consider spending their time farming Weapon Components to sell them to me.

Note that this function of the bartender is what the announcement for Update 11 essentially promised:

... so I'm not asking for anything ridiculous, I'm just saying that it's broken and how to fix it.

1000% agree. You know the prices are too small when you're comparing 1000% price caps with just doing normal activities and the 1000% still loses by an enormous margin.

Hoping they'll at least change the base prices to let this player-supplied market grow instead of being a friendly charity.

 

[Fake Newts]

I will never understand the objections to having an open player economy in a game where it would have such a miniscule effect.

Most of it is literal elitism, I think. A certain type of player unironically plays Elite for the Thatcherite thrill of lording an expensive ship over people and in their mind's eye the ships/achievements lose value if they can be obtained by others a) too quickly and/or b) in a way which appears to be too dynamic (or necessitates the having of friends).

In a game with essentially zero mandatory skill checks in any of its progression systems (beyond the initial challenge of parsing what the game's talking about, or how the control schemes work) the only measures of 'effort' are tests of time and patience. To a lot of people it's about paying your dues in order to support an entirely imaginary heirarchical multiplayer ecosystem that they never intended to actually participate in.

In short Elite's grindy aspects aren't a problem for many people because they think hard work and monotonous graft are the backbone of the experience... and hey, maybe they're right, that certainly seems to be the game Fdev have made.

Most MMOs treat the initial level-up process as a kind of extended tutorial, with end-game content like raids, PvP, guild/faction warfare and build mastery being the focus for long-term players. Some of those things exist in Elite too but largely thanks to the ingenuity and willpower of its playerbase rather than any systemic support from the Frontier themselves (AX, PvP, BGS and Powerplay groups operate out of Discords - most of them populated largely by end-game players and many forced to impose their own structure, balance and stakes on proceedings in order to derive fun from it.) Frontier meanwhile just focuses on making sure the mileage clocks on individuals' cars goes up like, really, really high. Like really lots of numbers, wow, so exciting.

It may seem to you and I that it'd exciting and dynamic for the community if people were able to progress as a result of a flourishing player-to-player economy, but that would take the numberwang out of Braben's hands and potentially 'devalue' the 'hard work and effort' put in by a generation of incredibly boring people... so it won't happen. Farmer Braben cut off his horse's legs for fear of it running away, so we must all squat over it and make our own clop-clop sounds.

 

[Northpin]

1000% agree. You know the prices are too small when you're comparing 1000% price caps with just doing normal activities and the 1000% still loses by an enormous margin.

Hoping they'll at least change the base prices to let this player-supplied market grow instead of being a friendly charity.

Seems to go along with the small profits provided by Odyssey play.
Also, in terms of profits... have you checked how much profits have you made using the Fuel service on your carrier? Or the Rearm service? Or Repair?
No?

Compared to them, the Bartender can actually be profitable Sure not in a day, but it will get there

 

[gorankar]

If you have to grind X hours to earn 100M to buy a thing, or grind the same X hours to collect the same thing, is there really a functional difference?

Also transferring 1Billion Cr between 2 accounts takes about 15 minutes as long as they have a ship that can hold 100T and the FC has 100T of VO/LTD to transfer back and forth. The Cr transfer ship has sailed. It can't really be used as a counter argument to unlocking prices.

 

[Danieros]

Seems to go along with the small profits provided by Odyssey play.
Also, in terms of profits... have you checked how much profits have you made using the Fuel service on your carrier? Or the Rearm service? Or Repair?
No?

Compared to them, the Bartender can actually be profitable Sure not in a day, but it will get there

I'd actually make a point for making fuel and rearm more useful aswell. Requiring some player-supplied commodity such as core minerals or horizons engineering materials in order to create a "premium" fuel that is more efficient and re-arm that fits more ammo at limited supplies. Then you'd have a player market through FCs for those aswell.

 

[WreckRoot]

Bartender allows trading between players. It doesnt seem to be designed to allow you to get rich

If FDev advertised this as "a mechanism to allow donating materials to other players", I would begrudgingly agree that they've achieved their goal.
But they promised an economy. Being able to drop your stuff for someone to scavenge essentially free of charge is hardly an economy.

Whoever has a surplus of materials, has the possibility to sell them at a price that is accessible for the random newb that might need them, while still making a 10 times better profit than simply selling the materials to station bartenders.

Let me paraphrase this:
Whoever wastes time on picking up stuff they don't need, has the possibility to waste more time setting up their (5+bn credit) carrier to get rid of it at a price that is accessible for the random newb that might need them, with no hope of making the time wasted remotely worthwhile.

All that it does is, again, allow you to be charitable.
This is not economy that they promised, because the basic principle of a market-based economy is not possible: demand cannot drive supply, cause it's not worth anyone's time to provide supply.

Quite fast actually if you do know how to play the game

I don't need no stinkin' "quite fast" dodges, or hints. I need a number. Tell me exactly how fast you can collect 1000 items. Anything above 30 minutes proves my point.

 

[WreckRoot]

Seems to go along with the small profits provided by Odyssey play.

Would make sense if the currency for Odyssey play wasn't shared with the space play of the rest of the game.

Also, in terms of profits... have you checked how much profits have you made using the Fuel service on your carrier? Or the Rearm service? Or Repair?
No?

I didn't check and I don't expect anything reasonable to be there. I set up these services in order to be able to refuel and rearm on my carrier. That others can do it is an added bonus I never intended to profit from.
Also, refuel and rearm does not actually cost you anywhere near the time that using the bartender does. You just buy the service once and then it makes laughable amounts of money over time. It costs you a few million creds a week (being evidently useful, unlike the bartender in its current state), but that's literally 5-10 minutes worth of core mining effort (per week). Nowhere near the effort required to gather Odyssey mats for the bartender to sell.

However you look at it, there's no comparison between the two.

Compared to them, the Bartender can actually be profitable Sure not in a day, but it will get there

No, because feeding the bartender requires you to actively waste hours of your time to feed him with items.
Ignoring the items and devoting the time saved towards any other money-making activity is more efficient than looting them and giving to the bartender to sell.

Your apologetics are inadequate. Sorry.

 

[Erei]

Buy a FC for 5billions
Buy a bar for 200mil
Pay 1.5m weekly

Use it to sell items at 50k credits.

On a side note, I really don't like the idea to give a small proportion of player the ability to directly purchase engineering mat through money, while leaving everyone else to grind it. Because yes, it's likely to become that once FC owners realize grinding engineering mat to sell is much less efficient than doing pretty much anything else.

 

[Ratstar]

TL;DR:
Remove the buy/sell price cap for on-foot items on fleet carrier Bartender services, or increase it by a factor of at least 10000x 1000x.
(edit: 10000x might be overkill I guess, but 1000x is not and 100x is insufficient imho).

Short reason:
with current price limits, there will never be any economy for on-foot items. Nobody will bother farming on-foot, given how time-consuming it is, to sell their loot for the prices we are capable of offering (as fleet carrier owners).

Example:
I need Weapon Components. I can only offer 10k credits for a piece on my fleet carrier. Nobody's going to bother procuring such an annoying to obtain component to sell it to me for such a price. I should be able to offer at least 10 million, maybe even 50 million or more, for anyone to consider spending their time farming Weapon Components to sell them to me.

Note that this function of the bartender is what the announcement for Update 11 essentially promised:

... so I'm not asking for anything ridiculous, I'm just saying that it's broken and how to fix it.

The Devs should try to farm Opinion polls themselves and try if 50,000 credit is worth it, Its been how many months now and I still couldnt find Opinion polls in the game.

Its like a Fisherman spending hours of fishing and then the price of the market is 1 cent!

How is that enjoyable??