Craftards rejoice! Pirates of the Burning Sea

[JoeTF]

My gut response is "so what?".

After a point in nearly every game money is meaningless. So you're able to dominate the economy?  What keeps that fun after your first gadzillion dollars?  Having money in the early stages has a profound effect on the arms race.  After a certain standard is reached, the market adjusts and inflation takes over as the never-ending money supply continues to grow with time.  Now I can see how this is a nice improvement in the current crafting systems, but playing the economics game only stays fun for so long... and I love guns vs. butter sims.

They got it covered, too. Pretty much like in EVE, but without having to buy the damn insurance: the most leet ships will be lost when sunk (anyone see a friggin big money sink here), the medicore ships will be given for free when lost, but I bet you'll still want fancy ammo and repair kits for them.

10 lots thing: I never played SWG, but in this game you won't be able to give someone else access rights to your lot to do cross server trades, create macro network or do any similar idiocies. Everyone have 10/per account and can't have more.
Duping - I guess they know basics of database programming.
Macroing, farming - not in economy at least (since there is max of 10 lots), and instead of having to log in every few hours to put new things into production, in PotBS workhours accumulate and wait for you - if go away for a weekend, you'll have nice, fat 72 workhours that can be used with single click, giving you immediate results.

Avatar and landscape thingy:
Actually, there are avatars and after you sail into port, you're free to roam in it where you please (shops, taverns, admirlaity offices, etc.) They're even considering adding avatar combat  (and another f%^& delay:P). All player owned structures, however, will _not_ be rendered and put into towns as 3d objects. Landscape issues away, but preparing over 30 different sturcture renders would take ages, I think.

[Llava]

Well.  I'll definitely have to give this game a shot.  Sounds like the kind of world I'd like to be part of.

[Comstar]

Question: how do they handle inflation? My economics goes as far as what I've learnt in GalCiv2, but it seems there to be no way to prevent it in thier system.

[Nebu]

Question: how do they handle inflation? My economics goes as far as what I've learnt in GalCiv2, but it seems there to be no way to prevent it in thier system.

I don't see how they can unless the sinks are in balance with the influx.  That was the point of my previous statement.

[Furiously]

Sounds like it would just be a lot easier to sink Joe Merchant's ship then to play the economic game.

[Heresiarch]

Yeah I just hope they've thought about avoiding stuff like this this.  The urban sprawl around starport cities and fields on fields of harvesters bugged me in SWG.  Also, I hope they've thought out the uberguild effect -- hopefully there won't be too much control and conspiracies of ports and resources.  Hopefully the resources and building lots will be highly available.

That screenshot really doesn't scare me, but I never played SWG. ATITD had crazy and abandoned urban development -- sprawl at its worst. UO sprawl was bad, but more ugly than an affront to my sense of efficiency.

Meanwhile, this game description gives me a stiffy. Yet I wonder what I'll do the other 23.75 hours of the day, after my 15 minutes hitting the 'craft' button are done and I've consumed 24 hours of labor at all of my facilities. The thing about crafting grind is that it gives me something to do. Sure, grind is boring, but I'd rather have fun gameplay than no gameplay. Mining, fishing, and herbalism in WoW requires me to run around a bit, explore, dodge mobs, dodge red names, etc. No, it's not the best, but it's something.

I am afraid that crafting in PotBS is something you do for 15 minutes before/after you the real thing you play the game for.

[Furiously]

That does bring up a good question... Where is the raping and pillaging?

[Lantyssa]

10 lots thing: I never played SWG, but in this game you won't be able to give someone else access rights to your lot to do cross server trades, create macro network or do any similar idiocies. Everyone have 10/per account and can't have more.

SWG got people into the mindset that having five accounts was reasonable.  Having lots limited across the account will encourage more of the same.  Things may not develop this way, but it is a possibility.

[sinij]

I'm going to open a Chinese sweatshop to flood the market with cheap and poorly made components and ships.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

Sorry you can't, there are no Chinese Junks in the game 

[Samwise]

import2crush!!!!

[Rhonstet]

Players will gather resources, resell those resources to manufacturers, who will resell to traders, who will resell to 'society centers', who will resell. 

I assume I am missing a step somewhere.  But it does seem to make a system that isn't about grinding.  Too bad they still have 'hurry up and wait' as a gameplay mechanic, but Rome wasn't sacked in a day.

I'm a little curious if these 'islands' have a limited number of building spaces.  Likewise, I'm curious if an island will have a limit in what can be built on it, beyond resource gathering.  Are there any such things as 'skilled trades', or is everything purely about who has the money and resources?

[Heresiarch]

I'm a little curious if these 'islands' have a limited number of building spaces.  Likewise, I'm curious if an island will have a limit in what can be built on it, beyond resource gathering.  Are there any such things as 'skilled trades', or is everything purely about who has the money and resources?

I went over and asked some Qs on the official forum.

The islands (strictly, the ports) have unlimited building space. They are only limited in the types of resources available, but not the number. Every player in the game could build an iron mine at a port/island that has iron on it, they all would produce a full amount of iron, and it never runs out. There are no skilled trades. It's about how you want to spend your 10 building lots, and if you have the cash to use the saved labor at your lots.

Resources leave the system as ships are repaired or replaced (after they've been attacked by NPCs or enemy players). So the faucet-sink here is driven by the ratio of sinkage to average-hours-online. If the average player is online lots, he consumes more resources, and goods become more expensive. If players don't play much -- just enough to keep their iron mines running -- then goods flood the market and more and more dreadnoughts show up.

There's room for noobs, cuz there's always room to build another iron mine somewhere. A small guild can keep themselves mostly supplied, I think, but the big guilds will be able to buy up a lot of the resources sold on the open market. I expect that the soloers will mostly run indie businesses, dumping their goods on the open market.

[Xanthippe]

I'm very much looking forward to this game.  I mean, not only does it feed my crafting jones, but what's not to like about pirates?

[Trippy]

I went over and asked some Qs on the official forum.

Good stuff, thanks for doing that.

There's room for noobs, cuz there's always room to build another iron mine somewhere. A small guild can keep themselves mostly supplied, I think, but the big guilds will be able to buy up a lot of the resources sold on the open market. I expect that the soloers will mostly run indie businesses, dumping their goods on the open market.

Hopefully they'll have some sort of escrow/private exchange system so that people can sell/trade to each other directly without both having to be online at the same time. That would minimize the sort of "monopolizing" that goes on in games with centralized marketplaces/auction houses where those with lots of money buy up critical items (often in an automated manner) and then put them back on sale at a higher price.

[Xanthippe]

Hopefully they'll have some sort of escrow/private exchange system so that people can sell/trade to each other directly without both having to be online at the same time. That would minimize the sort of "monopolizing" that goes on in games with centralized marketplaces/auction houses where those with lots of money buy up critical items (often in an automated manner) and then put them back on sale at a higher price.

I don't see the problem with that.  As long as there is a constant flow of goods coming on sale, those who attempt to monopolize the market still cannot charge more than the market will bear, and hence, what the items are worth.

It will be interesting to see whether cartels can survive.

[JoeTF]

Scale is too big for a cartel. They would have to buy off everything produced in entire game world, non stop.
(travelling from one edge of map to another will take less than 1 hour)

[Comstar]

Won't the problem more liky to be massive over supply of resources? If the only money exits are "building new ships" and reparing damage, if someone does flood the market, prices will be low for a long long time afterwards.

Possibly unrelated question: if everyone plays English, how will they balance numbers? if theres more English players than spanish players, how do the spanish possibly compete aginast the econmic might of the english? Once someone gets big, whats stopping them getting bigger?

[Samwise]

Won't the problem more liky to be massive over supply of resources? If the only money exits are "building new ships" and reparing damage, if someone does flood the market, prices will be low for a long long time afterwards.

If the market gets flooded with ships, I'd expect the ensuing increase in PvP to thin it out quickly.  PvP seems to be the primary money sink in this game, since when large expensive ships fight each other and one of them sinks the other, that's a whole lotta resources at the bottom of Davy Jones'.

Possibly unrelated question: if everyone plays English, how will they balance numbers? if theres more English players than spanish players, how do the spanish possibly compete aginast the econmic might of the english? Once someone gets big, whats stopping them getting bigger?

There was something about periodically resetting port ownership, so that should keep any one side from keeping a stranglehold solely by virtue of having established a good position early.

[Telemediocrity]

Does crafting constitute actual gameplay in this system, or just more of a side-system, almost like AA or collecting in DDO?

Or is the gameplay largely going to be spreadsheet management?

[Heresiarch]

Won't the problem more liky to be massive over supply of resources? If the only money exits are "building new ships" and reparing damage, if someone does flood the market, prices will be low for a long long time afterwards.

There's a difference between gold and resources. Resources leave the system "only" for repairs and when ships are sunk, but gold leaves in a lot of ways -- producing goods from resources, for example, requires a good bit of cash. The example in OP was like $100,000 to build a big ship. You gotta spend cash at every step of the way, from cutting trees to building planks to putting them together into a hull(and I'm sure there's more in there).

I really don't know where the balance is. Cuz if you lose ships rarely, then when you do lose one, it really really sucks, which is not fun and leads to unsub. But if you lose them often, then they should be cheap. How do things work in Eve? I expect that the major risk for ships is giant "raids", which have loot such that you're willing to lose a ship or two from your guild's fleet in order to get that loot. (The "loot" in Eve, as I understand it, is control of planets/systems -- and for PBS it would be control of ports).

I *think* it's one player to a ship. I guess what your guild does is set up the pipeline to produce a Giant Friggin Hull once every three days.

Does crafting constitute actual gameplay in this system, or just more of a side-system, almost like AA or collecting in DDO?

It's not gameplay. You hit a button, it's over. There's no minigame, and you don't have to hunt for resource nodes (like herbalism or mining in WoW). Trading, tho, is gameplay.