Ship Stats

Shark · Post by **Shark** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 6:14 am

I think that some indication of what type of ships a ship is good against in combat should be given in the ship description when purchasing ships. I.e., is a ship good against cap ships, or fighters...
Also, I think this should be calculated based on its stats, as opposed to relying on the author to contribute an opinion.
Should ship prices be "fixed" based on their stats? Or, should prices be set by the developers (not taking market fluctuations into account), thereby possibly engendering "balance" issues? Also, with the dynamic economy, are prices set purely by demand and supply? How does a system know what a good price for a ship is, if it has never sold a ship before? Do NPCs actively buy and sell items purchaseable within the game? Do systems adjust their industry based on what's hot and what's not?

Post by **hellcatv** » Tue Apr 27, 2004 7:23 am

we list the description in the CVS (testing) version of VS

we agree that the economy needs to be revamped
there is some NPC purchasing going on but it's mostly static

JungleJim · Post by **JungleJim** » Tue May 11, 2004 7:25 pm

I think a base price calculated from the stats is a good idea. Some of the potentially applicaple stats:
Mass (cost of the base hull)
Mass * acceleration (basically engine price)
Offensive (the sum of all weapons)
Defensive (shield + armor)
Electronics (any special stuff like ECM)
Support ships (fighters, et al)

This would make an empty carrier far less expensive (as it should) than an equivalent mass Battleship.

After some purchases have been made two additional factors corresponding to the supply & the demand can be factored into the price.

incubator · Post by **incubator** » Sat May 15, 2004 8:22 pm

hmm, what about this:

the economy already has dynamic prises for cargo, right?
so what if you would store somewhere that the economy on that base/planet is going better or worse (nad the percentage) you could calculate this:
base cost = stats multiplied by some percentage of its importance
ship cost = base cost + or - (base cost * eceonomy percentage)

in that case a ship could (for example ) cost 20 000, but on planet A, where there is a good economy, it costs 22000 and on B 18000

dont know if this is already the case, but could be a good idea

Ari Rahikkala · Post by **Ari Rahikkala** » Sat May 15, 2004 9:35 pm

Actually... there are several reasons why ship prices should be preset (to still be subject to market fluctuations, that is, and cheaper in some places than others, but *not* based on their stats). First, this isn't an area where you'd necessarily want perfect balance (which you couldn't attain with any kind of calculation on the base stats anyway) since players like finding high-value stuff ("Wow! This thing's got four razor guns by default and it costs barely over one hundred thousand!") (*). Second, a more conceptual concern, is that the price of things is rarely linked to an absolute calculable value anyway (a car's prize does not = hp * acceleration * volume of trunk, etc). Some things are engineered more efficiently than others, some firms make do with lower margins on the stuff they sell, etc. Third, I'm afraid that the algorithm for defining the price of a ship would become hopelessly complex if you tried to make it useful in any way...

(*) Not sure if I got the scale right... anyway, this example was meant to be something quite cheap but not ridiculously so.