[Beta] Vacuum Pump OXP

[Diziet Sma]

This is too cheap but is not a real cost due to this ship is planned to NPC only and the player can buy only an empty Carrier from the next version (for a still not final price).

Ahh.. that makes more sense then.. but the price I suggested was for an empty Carrier.. the other ships the player should still have to buy themselves.

[Potential Debris]

Spot on here. The way to balance the economics of the end game, when you have loads of money, is to up the maintenance costs. And one way to do it, is with equipment prices.

End game? I thought Oolite was an open-ended sandbox game..? Does it have an end-game?

[mossfoot]

Spot on here. The way to balance the economics of the end game, when you have loads of money, is to up the maintenance costs. And one way to do it, is with equipment prices.

End game? I thought Oolite was an open-ended sandbox game..? Does it have an end-game?

I think he means more in terms of "once you have all the goodies, how do you keep people wanting to play?"

[spara]

Spot on here. The way to balance the economics of the end game, when you have loads of money, is to up the maintenance costs. And one way to do it, is with equipment prices.

End game? I thought Oolite was an open-ended sandbox game..? Does it have an end-game?

I think he means more in terms of "once you have all the goodies, how do you keep people wanting to play?"

Yes, yes, the end game is endless .

[Neelix]

All this still leaves me with the question of what price I should set...

While I can see arguments for both cases, that doesn't help me set a price. I have at least one more version of this coming before I bump the version number to 1.0, remove the WIP tag and move on to something else.

I'm currently thinking 2000 - 2500Cr would probably strike a reasonable balance.

Thoughts?

- Neelix

[Smivs]

We need more stuff to spend our money on, and this is quite a useful, and complicated gadget, so I think go for the higher price range 2.5 - 3K?

[Potential Debris]

Here's my 0.02 credits:

1 - I wasn't aware that gems, gold and platinum took up cargo space at all, I thought they went in the "ship's safe". However, since nobody else has pointed this out I will assume that the problem this OXP addresses is a thing.

2 - This OXP is designed to save cargo space, right? In that case it seems a bit odd that it should take up a ton of space. I mean realistically, how many pods worth of valuables are you really likely to scoop in one run? Is it really worthwhile to spend a ton to maybe save a ton on every third or fourth jump?

3 - It also occurs to me that while you might need special equipment to consolidate pod contents in flight, when docked you ought to be able to do it for free, albeit with a small cost in game-time.

4 - If an empty cargo pod is worth one ton of alloys, is a one-ton cargo pod of alloys worth two tons of alloys? Is a ton of food worth one ton of food + one ton of alloys? EDIT: Just noticed that the empty pod is worth 1/20 of a ton of alloys -which means that when you buy a ton of food at a poor agricultural, half the price is the container!

5 - Pricewise, I wouldn't pay much for this ability. Not over 1000, for sure. If it also costs me a ton of cargo space, I wouldn't ever buy one unless I was flying something with a couple hundred tons of space. Even then the opportunity cost of hauling round a ton of equipment I hardly ever use would probably make it a losing proposition.

[Cody]

I wasn't aware that gems, gold and platinum took up cargo space at all, I thought they went in the "ship's safe".

If bought from a market, 'stones and metal do indeed go into the ship's safe - but if scooped, they're in containers (until you dock, that is).

[Potential Debris]

I wasn't aware that gems, gold and platinum took up cargo space at all, I thought they went in the "ship's safe".

If bought from a market, 'stones and metal do indeed go into the ship's safe - but if scooped, they're in containers (until you dock, that is).

Every day's a school day. How does the ore processor handle these commodities?

[Cody]

Mind you, the ship's safe can overflow - once above 499kg (I think), metal then uses a container's worth of cargo space.

No idea about the ore processor - I've never used it.

[Disembodied]

Turning the empty pod into Alloys seems a bit of a bonus ... it leaves me wondering, why not use the pump on every canister you find that contains something worth less than 1t of Alloys? "Oh poo, I've just scooped a tonne of Food ... SCHLURP POW BLURT CLANG not any more!" Basically, it's saving you cargo space AND giving you C*36-40 extra on top of what you've just scooped.

I don't know what the best solution to this is. Is it possible to produce empty cargo pods that just take up space, which you then have to eject (or, perhaps, hold on to, just to tease pirates with)?

[Potential Debris]

Turning the empty pod into Alloys seems a bit of a bonus ... it leaves me wondering, why not use the pump on every canister you find that contains something worth less than 1t of Alloys? "Oh poo, I've just scooped a tonne of Food ... SCHLURP POW BLURT CLANG not any more!" Basically, it's saving you cargo space AND giving you C*36-40 extra on top of what you've just scooped.

I don't know what the best solution to this is. Is it possible to produce empty cargo pods that just take up space, which you then have to eject (or, perhaps, hold on to, just to tease pirates with)?

I had the same thought at first, until I realised that the vacuum pump needs 20 empty canisters to make 1 ton of alloys, so each empty canister is worth between 1.5 and 2 credits in alloy value.

Of course, in some poor agriculturals you can buy 1 ton of food for just 2 or 3 credits, in which case the food is potentially worth less than the container it's in...

[Disembodied]

I had the same thought at first, until I realised that the vacuum pump needs 20 empty canisters to make 1 ton of alloys, so each empty canister is worth between 1.5 and 2 credits in alloy value.

Fair enough, that sounds like a sensible solution!

[Neelix]

Here's my 0.02 credits:
2 - This OXP is designed to save cargo space, right? In that case it seems a bit odd that it should take up a ton of space. I mean realistically, how many pods worth of valuables are you really likely to scoop in one run? Is it really worthwhile to spend a ton to maybe save a ton on every third or fourth jump?

That depends on your play style... When I'm out looking for trouble I'll kill as many pirates as I can find in a single system until I fill my cargo hold, then I find a place to dock and sell it all. If I've filled my hold with lots of canisters of gold, or platinum or gem stones then this equipment lets me scoop more loot before I have to go back to base.

3 - It also occurs to me that while you might need special equipment to consolidate pod contents in flight, when docked you ought to be able to do it for free, albeit with a small cost in game-time.

When docked this happens automatically. The point of this OXP is to allow more valuable cargo to be scooped before heading back to base.

5 - Pricewise, I wouldn't pay much for this ability. Not over 1000, for sure. If it also costs me a ton of cargo space, I wouldn't ever buy one unless I was flying something with a couple hundred tons of space. Even then the opportunity cost of hauling round a ton of equipment I hardly ever use would probably make it a losing proposition.

Technically you're carting around alloys in that 1t of space. You just can't do anything with them until you get enough to fill up a cargo container. (and a spare container to put them in)
Again, It depends on your play style. Based on what you've said it doesn't sound like this equipment would be too useful to you given your current style of play. But who knows what you might do in the future?

Turning the empty pod into Alloys seems a bit of a bonus ... it leaves me wondering, why not use the pump on every canister you find that contains something worth less than 1t of Alloys? "Oh poo, I've just scooped a tonne of Food ... SCHLURP POW BLURT CLANG not any more!" Basically, it's saving you cargo space AND giving you C*36-40 extra on top of what you've just scooped.

I don't know what the best solution to this is. Is it possible to produce empty cargo pods that just take up space, which you then have to eject (or, perhaps, hold on to, just to tease pirates with)?

*snickers* The cargo pods containing food are already full. Each contains 1t of food - The pump can't operate on them as there is nowhere to put the food because all the other food containers are also full.

When you scoop a cargo pod of platinum, gold or gemstones though, they tend not to contain more than 25kg of product, so you end up with a few kilos (or worse a few grams) of material taking up the same space in the cargo hold that can normally hold 1 tonne. If they weren't so valuable this would represent a massive waste of space. All this equipment is doing, is placing all the small amounts of a given commodity in one container. (as if you had scooped the entire amount at once)

Every day's a school day. How does the ore processor handle these commodities?

Magic!
Each splinter takes up 1t worth of cargo space. (And are counted as 1t of Minerals if you sell them directly) Each processed commodity takes the place of the splinter it was mined from in the cargo hold. The magic part is that a cargo container is automatically created around the mined commodities. If you mine a splinter, use the ore processor to get 1t of radioactives out of it, then dump them, you'll see them float off into space in a container that wasn't there before.
(I'm not sure how that can be handwaved away, but that's just the way the game works - if you add something to the manifest while in flight it goes in a cargo pod, while stuff that is scooped remains in the form it was scooped in until you dock)

So if you use the vacuum pump to consolidate precious metals and gems generated by the ore processor the cargo pods recovered really do constitute a bonus as Disembodied said.


Thanks for the feedback in any case.

- Neelix

[spara]

....If you mine a splinter, use the ore processor to get 1t of radioactives out of it, then dump them, you'll see them float off into space in a container that wasn't there before.

Really? If I dump a processed splinter, I see a processed splinter, not cargo container. That's because splinters are sort of cargo containers holding minerals. Technically Ore Processor simply changes the contents of the container (splinter).