So following the discussion we had today in Discord, gonna suggest 2 changes I thought that are needed to balance the economy in-game.
1º. Nerf the deconstructor return rate, I’d suggest a 20% return rate instead of the 100% actual return rate.
Reasons: NPC traders. Most of the NPC traders packs were made to throw the content into a factory and build ships with them. But not only that, since the deconstructor was released, you can also throw the contents of the pack into one and convert the resources into anything you want.
If you calculate the cost of some of the resources you get from a pack, and convert it to market prices, you could get erestrum at 2cr each ingot. More common resources are even cheaper.
To give an example, my NPC trader (free advertisement, yay!) sell this:
Each item gives you the following:
T2 Gen: 35 Sath, 22 Iron, 70 Neod, 15 Ere, 15 Zasc, 37 Cobalt, 24 Silicon, 43 Copper, 4 minutes factory reduction.
XL Thruster: 32 Sath, 9 Iron, 80 Neod, 154 Ere, 154 Zasc, 32 Cobalt, 10 Silicon, 6 Copper, 3 minutes factory reduction.
Warp Drive: 118 Sath, 24 Iron, 170 Neod, 72 Cobalt, 2 Silicon, 2 Copper, 4 minutes factory reduction.
For 450k cr and 9 RP, you get the following resources:
- 16500 iron ingots
- 55500 sathium ingots
- 10800 silicon ingots
- 42300 cobalt ingots
- 96000 neodymium ingots
- 50700 zascosium ingots
- 50700 erestrum ingots
- 3300 minutes reduction in factory
Comparing it to market prices, selling resources normally through the HWS marketplace between players is pointless, because ingots of everything would have to be sold for 1-3cr to compete against the NPC traders.
Nerfing the NPC traders directly would also be hard, since it’s a support package, that helps to pay for server costs.
So instead, nerfing the deconstructor reduce the usages the NPC packs can have, returning them to what they were made for before, to throw them into the factory to reduce timers. I feel like they are still OP nonetheless, but with the deconstructor they are even more absurd.
2.- Make armored blocks, combat blocks and armored concrete blocks much more expensive.
Reasons: It feel a little odd that in a PVP exchange, the player shooting is wasting more resources than the one being shot. Considering aswell that people can warp away or disengage easily in middle of a fight, make a huge loss for players attacking and getting nothing on return. Being shot should be more expensive than shooting, I think.
Also, the cheap prices for blocks compared to the prices for ammo, give players the possibility of making huge cheap defense bases than cost more to destroy than to build. At the end, if the base is not holding an important POI or resource, they are ignored instead of being destroyed even if they are not being actively defended by players.
It feels a little odd than defense, and even running away is so cheap, compared to actual attacking and destroying. Blocks are mostly made of iron and sathium (stone aswell for concrete), than are common resources, so making them more expensive to build shouldn’t be that harsh on players, yet would reduce how easily is to spam those blocks everywhere. Losing a ship would be an important lose, the same as shooting a ship only for it to warp away hurts the attacking players.
Those are my few suggestions for now. Would like to hear what other players feel, specially the ones that play PVP actively or veterans with tons of resources. This could add a resource sink that could work nicely, considering how easily is right now to stack resources.
(joking, joking, but really…)