Minethings

[Ironwood]

Anything else consumable ?  It seems really, really difficult to find a market.

[Samwise]

Gadgets are consumable -- you could check the markets for them between Franco and Alssa.  They're mined in Massua but there might be some pure merchants who just ship them from Massua to Franco, so you could potentially buy them there and then squeeze out some of your own profit by moving them inland.

Technically almost everything is consumable to some extent (except maybe avatars) because you use them up to form melds, or you lose them in combat, or you decide they aren't worth hanging on to or selling and you just trash them, etc.  But a lot of yellows get mined faster than they get removed from the world so the market ends up getting saturated with them.

[Ironwood]

I have run out of inventory space.

THIS IS INTOLERABLE.

[Samwise]

Just found Deathmobile Mk 2.   

[Ironwood]

That tank is fast !

I'm getting shafted here though.  Just not enough cash floating around.  The market for low level items is piss poor.

[Ironwood]

Give us a complete rundown of outfitting vehicles for combat ?

[Samwise]

To look at a specific vehicle, click its "status" on the VEHICLES screen:



This shows you all about the vehicle.  Equipping it with weapons is just a matter of sending the weapons with it as cargo; nothing special there.  Mods work differently; they don't do anything unless you "install" them.  On the vehicle status screen you see the currently installed mods; click [mods] to reconfigure them:



That brings you to a screen that shows you all the mods in your inventory in that city (I don't have any, but here's where I'd see them) as well as the installed mods.  Installed mods will be highlighted.  On this screen you can basically select and deselect the mods to be installed, and it'll show you the stats for the vehicle based on your new selection.



Click "install" once you're happy with the setup.  For yellows you can install and uninstall for free; higher level mods cost bolts to install.

As far as what the stats mean.... combat in MT is kind of nonsensical but not TOO complicated.  The help does a bad job of explaining it so I'll try using my words.

Armor: the vehicle's hit points.
Attack: the vehicle inflicts this much damage every round.
Offense: the aggressor inflicts this much damage MINUS the defender's Dodge every round.
Defense: the defender reduces the aggressor's Attack by this much MINUS the aggressor's Dodge every round.
Dodge: this gets subtracted from your opponents Offense/Defense.

If you're a trader, you're the defender, and a highwayman is the aggressor.

There's a bit of rock-paper-scissors here.  Your Dodge negates his Offense but not his Attack.  Your Defense negates his Attack, but only if he doesn't match it with Dodge.  He has no way of negating your Attack, but he can easily have more Offense than you have Attack.  Etc.  Each mod or weapon counts against your vehicle's cargo capacity, so you're limited on how many you can use.  My strategy is always to go all in on Attack/Dodge; that way I don't need to take up inventory space with weapons.  I just hope that my Dodge completely negates his Offense, and that my Attack beats his.

[Samwise]

Well poop, I just learned that you can't switch professions away from manufacturer while you have a job in progress, even if you don't have anyone working on it.  So I need to stay a manufacturer until I'm finished building this factory or I lose all the labor I've already put into it.  Good to know.

[Samwise]

Oh!  The very basic thing I neglected to mention is the combat tiers.  There are three: yellow, green/blue, and red/purple/orange.  Combat only happens within the same tier.  Cargo is also limited by tier; yellows can only carry yellows, and only yellows can carry yellows.

Mods and weapons of a lower tier than the vehicle can be used, though, as evidenced by my red vehicle having blue mods installed.  (The reverse is not true; you can't mount a (blue) iron missile turret on a (yellow) rickshaw.)

[Ironwood]

Actually, I think you missed more than that.  I just played around with outfitting my vans to find that one of them can no longer move due to negative numbers.

GODDAMN IT.  My bad.

What would be your suggestions for outfitting combat vans ?   

[Samwise]

Yeah, you can't have any negative numbers.  That's the bit I mentioned about needing weapons to offset Offense/Defense penalties (which is why I try to just avoid those mods -- not worth losing all that cargo space IMO).  My Deathmobile needs to carry 2 defense worth of weaponry before I can send it anywhere; I tolerate the penalty there because the bonuses on that mod (titanium drive shaft, red tier) are otherwise fantastic.

For greens, same advice as for yellow, except the green mod tier doesn't have nice simple single-stat bonuses like yellow and blue do, and blues are too expensive to waste on a green vehicle.  You can stack mods whose bonuses offset each other's penalties, though.

I used mostly stagecoaches for my green trading FWIW; they have a naturally high attack that makes them pretty dangerous even when not outfitted.  Improperly equipped highwaymen will actually wreck themselves on your empty bubble vehicles sometimes, it's awesome.

[Samwise]

If you enjoy haggling with truculent laborers and very infrequent logins, Manufacturer is your dream profession.



Six days until I can swap back to Trader and ship off all the stuff I've been mining while trying to get this goddamn factory built.  Franco Thistle needs more workers.

[Ironwood]

You should probably stop telling them that you oiling them up is a perk ....

[Samwise]

It increases their output.   

[Ironwood]

Switched back to mining 'things' and found.... a yellow skirt.

Flicked back to mining Gold.

This game is far, far, far, far, far too glacial and the market is not available for newbs.

Yeah, yeah, plowing your mom, etc....

[Samwise]

All the gold that's in the game comes from newbs mining gold with their starter mines.  You're an essential part of the ecosystem.   

Once you save up enough for your second mine, your mining output will nearly double, so there's that to look forward to.  If you can swing 8g profit on each bolt you ship from Alssa to Danchesser that's only 1k bolts you gotta move.   

[Ironwood]

You're not helping.   

[Samwise]

I been playing this thing for a couple years, remember.  It's all about the slow buildup so you can look back and marvel at how you built an empire from nothing.

Basically, you gotta think about the game on the scale of weeks instead of minutes.

Clash of Clans is actually similar in that respect (been playing that one for a couple years now too).  I like games that are like gardening.   

[Ironwood]

It's all right for you;  you've got that fucking picture in your attic.

I may DIE before I even get to the next level of this shit.

[Samwise]

I'm sure Elena will be more than capable of taking over the family business when you're gone.

[Ironwood]

I WANT MORE FOR MY DAUGHTER IN LIFE THAN SELLING YOU BOLTS UNTIL SHE CAN GET OUT OF YOUR OIL LADEN SWEATSHOP, YOU MONSTER.


 

[Samwise]

Wait till I try on the Banker profession and start selling you all adjustable rate loans.

[Ironwood]

I did switch to worker for a brief five minutes before reading the terms and conditions and thinking 'hey, fuck that'.

Also, Banking really, really seems like a no win, since you're under no obligation to pay back ever.  I mean, how the hell does that even work

[Samwise]

I'm a little baffled by that one too tbh.  You do have a "credit report" that follows you, so if you default on a loan, ain't nobody ever lending to you again, and given how long it takes to build up your character in this game, reputation might be more valuable than it is in most games.  But you could still take out one big loan after establishing good credit, default on it, and just never touch banking again.  If you were a colossal dick.

I don't "get" borrowing and lending in real life either, though.

Worker is a great profession if you want to basically take a vacation from the game for a week and get paid cold hard gold for it.  You'll get paid much better if you move out of Alssa, which is basically the Home Depot parking lot of Calbuco.

[Ironwood]

 If you were a colossal dick.

Speaking of which ;  buy my shit.

[Ironwood]

What the fuck, some dwarf stowed away and made my shipments a prime target, so I lost the whole fucking ship.

FUCK DWARVES.

[Samwise]

[Samwise]

Speaking of which ;  buy my shit.

Just checked your listings -- good luck selling those mods.  After having listings out at 1g each for weeks at a time I gave up on that racket and set all the mods I didn't plan to use myself to auto-trash.  And then sold my mod mine.  The market for them is just crap.

[Ironwood]

I wasn't actually planning on 'selling' them, I just wanted fucking rid of them.  But yeah, I'll trash that shit after a set amount of time.

Oddly, I'm having a TON more success on the other server where I'm a merchant and I picked up a really cheap spreadsheet and found some real fucking deals that I'm just finishing off.

That's the issue really where we are ;  there doesn't seem to be a market anywhere that you can dabble in and, frankly, it's far, far too cutthroat for some reason.  The other servers been more fun somehow because there's much more sense of achievement.  Sure, it might only be 50 gold here and there, but it makes you feel as if you're time is not being entirely wasted.

I ship shit left right and centre on our server only to have to tumble prices because I'm competing with someone who either doesn't care about margins or is just getting rid of shit.

Hey ho, it'll all work out.

[Samwise]

I am kind of tempted to check out the newest servers for comparison, but once I start running multiple accounts on a game like this madness soon follows.  OTOH if there was one game that would be safe to play on many servers at once without being a huge time suck, this would be the one.  Is your other dude on E-whatever?

[Ironwood]

I have one on A, B and C.

D and E I've avoided, because, you know, that'd be silly.

B is doing the 'best', but some cunt just stole 3 xylophones, so you know.  Swings and Roundabouts.

[Samwise]

CONFIRMED FOR BROMO

wtb tutorial orange

[Samwise]

Oh wow, this map is fuckin weird.  I'm going to try not to spoil it for myself by looking up which mines are where.  Time to mine some gold and build a business.

[Ironwood]

Cool, we can form a consortium of shiteness !!

I'm boating around.  I have tons of boats sending tons of stuff.  I'll probably be bankrupt soon.  Let me know if you want some starting scratch...

[Samwise]

Nobody is selling rickshaws in Fort Lynn at anything resembling a reasonable price.  I am stranded.