Lore based way to remove upkeep easily

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
We have human meat sacks to keep employed- however in the ED universe we also have low level robotics :

latest


It would be entirely consistent to remove humans totally from fleet carriers and have them run with such robots, and at the same time remove most, if not all overheads. For consistency you might want to change avatars but it might be a way to keep the peace.
 
Last edited:

Drelthar

Drelthar
Rubbernuke said:
We have human meat sacks to keep employed- however in the ED universe we also have low level robotics :

latest


It would be entirely consistent to remove humans totally from fleet carriers and have them run with such robots, and at the same time remove most, if not all overheads. For consistency you might want to change avatars but it might be a way to keep the peace.
Click to expand...

This is a great idea, if it was some kind of big problem, they could make it so you can get human crew, but that incurs the costs, but also gives you a bonus - or something.

(also why cant we get imperial slaves and get them to pay off their debts as crew to us?)
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Drelthar said:
This is a great idea, if it was some kind of big problem, they could make it so you can get human crew, but that incurs the costs, but also gives you a bonus - or something.

(also why cant we get imperial slaves and get them to pay off their debts as crew to us?)
Click to expand...

The bigger irony is that FD forgot about lore, when it could be a way to back out from certain aspects :D
 

Misty_Dark

Misty_Dark
Human crew could give some other benefits, that AI Robots would not give, and make AI Robots much more expensive to buy.

So depending on the the bonus for using humans, and how much AI Robots cost contra to the upkeep saved could make for some interesting player choices. Do you maximize for lower upkeep with AI Robots or do you go for the maximum bonus/profit with a costlier Human crew?
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
Rubbernuke said:
The bigger irony is that FD forgot about lore, when it could be a way to back out from certain aspects :D
Click to expand...

  1. Standard current crew = Biggest bonuses, biggest upkeep costs. no friendliness issues anywhere
  2. Imperial Slaves = You buy them, and after one month, they have paid off their debt to you, and leave - you need to buy more - less good bonus than standard crew. Upkeep based on buying more Imperial slaves. Immediately go to minimum friendliness anywhere but in Imperial space and Lawless systems.
  3. Robots = lower upkeep cost no friendliness issues anywhere, no bonuses
  4. Slaves = Upkeep is based on having to buy more slaves after they become useless from over exertion (a month). Negatives to carrier services, carrier takes more wear and tear damage over time. Immediately unfriendly in all but lawless systems.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Drelthar said:
  1. Standard current crew = Biggest bonuses, biggest upkeep costs. no friendliness issues anywhere
  2. Imperial Slaves = You buy them, and after one month, they have paid off their debt to you, and leave - you need to buy more - less good bonus than standard crew. Upkeep based on buying more Imperial slaves. Immediately go to minimum friendliness anywhere but in Imperial space and Lawless systems.
  3. Robots = lower upkeep cost no friendliness issues anywhere, no bonuses
  4. Slaves = Upkeep is based on having to buy more slaves after they become useless from over exertion (a month). Negatives to carrier services, carrier takes more wear and tear damage over time. Immediately unfriendly in all but lawless systems.
Click to expand...

Nice! It would fit well into the game and build on lore too.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Commander Biscuit said:
The upkeep is intended to force players to be active.
Click to expand...

True, but its a bit cack handed and this was a random idea I had for ways to reduce it and / or eliminate it- Drelthar has excellent suggestions that further elaborate on them- in effect basing upkeep on your crew type (which in turn feeds back to performance adding depth).

Here is another of mine, which makes fuel upkeep, and the impetus to log in to keep your storage safe from raiders: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-with-significant-megaship-like-flaws.540229/
 

Vedmo

Vedmo
I haven't brought it up yet for fear of further enraging those who thought they'd buy an FC, sell data to it, and never return to the bubble, but I do think forcing a human crew (even though NPC) into a one-way trip to nowhere should be something addressed in game. If UC gets added and they become truly autonomous vessels, some of which never return to the bubble, how long before a crew realizes they'll never be back in civilization to spend their earnings and mutiny? Not an issue with robots.
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Vedmo said:
I haven't brought it up yet for fear of further enraging those who thought they'd buy an FC, sell data to it, and never return to the bubble, but I do think forcing a human crew (even though NPC) into a one-way trip to nowhere should be something addressed in game. If UC gets added and they become truly autonomous vessels, some of which never return to the bubble, how long before a crew realizes they'll never be back in civilization to spend their earnings and mutiny? Not an issue with robots.
Click to expand...

Well, according to lore the last lot went to the Rift, got their memories scrambled by drugs and left to die.....
 

Commander Biscuit

Commander Biscuit
Rubbernuke said:
True, but its a bit cack handed and this was a random idea I had for ways to reduce it and / or eliminate it
Click to expand...

There is no incentive for FD to reduce or eliminate the logging out punishment, they designed it that way intentionally, and it's only cack handed from the player's perspective. From the perspective of a hypothetical evil hand rubbing company that literally employs psychologists to keep people wasting their lives on videogames, it's a great idea.

The only incentive would be if it's overly harsh and it caused what little remains of the playerbase to ragequit, but they can see everyone in Borinng or whatever it's called, scrabbling for diamonds like their lives depend on it. The masses have spoken.
 
Last edited:

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Commander Biscuit said:
There is no incentive for FD to reduce or eliminate the logging out punishment, that's the entire reason they designed it as punishment.

The only incentive would be if it's overly harsh and it caused what little remains of the playerbase to ragequit, but they can see everyone in Borinng or whatever it's called, scrabbling for diamonds like their lives depend on it. The masses have spoken.
Click to expand...

Again true, but if you can have an in game reason thats backed up by lore that adds depth to how FCs work (i.e. slaves no upkeep but reviled / robots no upkeep but basic / Imp Slaves pay you but unwanted in Federation / normal crew universal but expensive) surely thats good?
 

Commander Biscuit

Commander Biscuit
Rubbernuke said:
Again true, but if you can have an in game reason thats backed up by lore that adds depth to how FCs work (i.e. slaves no upkeep but reviled / robots no upkeep but basic / Imp Slaves pay you but unwanted in Federation / normal crew universal but expensive) surely thats good?
Click to expand...

Of course consistency and logic is good, that goes without saying. But it has little to do with MMO business modelling.
 

Darth Ender

D
internal consistency is a requirement for lore in any fictional story and breaking it tends to show weak design (both in stories/shows/movies/games/etc).

Fdev never really cared about making things internally consistent if it's easier to accomplish some gameplay goal of theirs some specific way. Never.

Carriers are great if you dont have npc stations everywhere. Upkeep is a stupid thing to be concerned about. Even if it's the 10 million per week that we saw in the video, that's 520 million per year. That's literally 5 hours of mining for an entire year's upkeep. Say jumping and addons add to that. You're still looking at what, maybe a half hour every week if weekly upkeep costs you like 5x what we saw in the video.

Being concerned about upkeep is being divorced from reality. The reality is, credits are insanely easy to make a ton of in a short amount of time. The people who have the stamina to grind 5 billion and not go insane from the repetition can easily make enough credits in less than a month to have upkeep until the servers die and that's while still having time to play and do things other than make credits for upkeep.

what else are you going to use credits for? You're not going to win anything by having the most when they finally shut everything down. Might as well dump them all down the most expensive fleet carriers you can setup.

edit: to put it into perspective, there are a TON of people who are making more than 5 billion since the forum post about fleet carriers less than a month ago. Saying that making 10% of that over the course of 12x as much time is too much to handle is just bonkers.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom