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Gave it a try, again

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Solar:
Then gang members create an alt, dont join a faction and use that to craft. Plus lone wanderers choose their own path, theres no need to reward them.

BubbaBrown:
I promise this is my last plea before I shut up and leave you people be.  I appreciate the chance make my pleas without being run out of the town.  I can see that the decision has been made for quite some time and I'm trying to the piss up a rope, but I've just got to get it out my system.  Given from what I've gathered from reading and talking to people, the FOnline server system very dynamic and configurable, so I look forward to seeing if it ever gets released to the public and playing with it.  Hey, I may just prove myself wrong then when I try to setup the system I've been yammering about.

So, let's take the example I've been using.  And see what the times presently are for creating a mass amount of an item:

10 Laser Pistols needs
-----
10 Wood
10 Metal Parts -> 20 Ore
10 Junk
10 Electronics

Gather Times with current cooldowns
----
5 x wood  = 2 minutes
2 X Junk = 2 minutes
1 X Electronic parts = 2 minutes
5 x Ore = 5 minutes

Gather Times for batch construction with current cool downs
----
10 x Wood = 4 minutes  (Can be had in town)
20 x Junk + 10 Electronic Parts = 20 Minutes  (Can be had in town)
20 x ore = 20 minute + Travel time due to weight restrictions (est. 5 minutes)  (Chance of loss due to death)


Total Time spent gathering materials
----
About 1 hour at the very least. This is given no inefficiencies, death, or other issues.


Cool down after making some parts and Pistol = 65 minutes

I don't know the exact time, I know that after making enough metal parts and the pistol the cool down goes to 65 minutes.
Assuming there's a optimal possibility to create 2 pistols per long cool down.

Time to construct laser pistol batch given two per cool down period = 5 x 65 minutes = 5.5 hours given no inefficiencies.

Total optimal time for construction with no issues or inefficiencies: 6.5 hours


So, for a new "cool down"less system to be satisfactory, there needs to be no way someone with the bare minium skills for Laser Pistol production can get more than 10 pistols in a 6.5 hours peroid or more than 1.5 laser pistols an hour.

Given the portiton of the time spent on gathering, we'll focus on that first.

As it stands right now, Junk and Electronic parts are simply gimmes.  There's presently no chance of failure once you got the minimum skill requirement.  Also, barrels never run dry.  Period.  This would need to change.  Barrels would have to stats to keep track of supply and depletion.  When a barrel or junk source (the sources could be expanded), they stop giving out junk.  This would cause towns to quickly deplete and force player to have to scourge elsewhere.  Characters with lower skill levels would also be affected by a reduced chance of finding anything useful out of a junk container.  This would also make higher skill levels useful as some players would only be able to find the "easy" resources, while more skilled players could find the "harder" resources.  Since players need a minimum of a 40% Repair skill to even start finding junk, it would be a good to have a chance of failure when trying to tap a resource source.  Coupled with depletion and overuse penalties, players would be forced to wander around looking for sources that weren tapped. 

This would be a good opportunity to not only expand what could provide junk, but to introduce new random maps or city scapes that have lots of things that could provide junk.  Junk is junk, it can come from various sources.  Given the searching required and travel times, the old cool down time could not only be simulated but extended without the psychological stigma of waiting.  Also, the chance takers would be driven to be adventurous and look for the proverbial mother-lode in untapped and less traveled areas.

Another way of still maintaining a limit on incoming resources is to unmarry junk and electronic parts.  Some things will only provide junk, while others maybe provide electronic parts.  Broken robots, consoles, Nuka Cola machines, etc... could provide electronic parts.  With new random maps, abandoned city areas could provide the highest chance of finding electronic parts.  This would make certain dead areas in the world more appealing due to their location.

Wood gathered in an attempt is too fixed.  5 bundles of wood from each tree is a bit much... especially given how sickly the average tree is.  Certain types of tries should have limits on what they'll produce with the outdoorsman skill determining a chance of failure in providing sufficiently useful lumber.

As mentioned in a previous post, ore could be subject depletion and even chances of failure based on the outdoorsman/science/etc skills. 

Overall, with the increased risk, uncertainty, and time it would take to acquire resources... Gathering of this nature would be worth of getting XP.  This would make the process of gathering not only less of an idle time sink, but an adventurous task.  This could open up a market of players with high outdoorsman, repair, and sneak to create characters similar to stalkers from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.  Pepper certain riskier zones with higher quality or rarer items (required for the premium items), and you'll actually start to have parties arranged to get the needed goods from the "zones".

With all this, there are no cool downs and it's far more interesting and riskier.  You could find the motherload and be unable to carry it all... or be so far into enemy or bad territory... you may not be able to make it back.  This opens up the opportunity for radio use by calling in a few friends to help carry or salvage parts and defend each other on the way back.

With crafting, the skill level of the player comes into play.  Removing Profession levels from the mix and instead requiring varying degrees to skill proficiencies, you could make use of the chance of failure based on the skill level.  These failure can vary from false starts to destroying raw materials.  Failure rates could increase quickly after the first production of an item, along with reduced XP for creation of the item, and so forth.  This would make it too wasteful to produce certain items after a certain point for players with a low skill level, but wouldn't stop them from trying if they need to chance making that next item.

With the right skill level requirements and failure rates, you could easily get the same average production rate, but with a less perceived limitation and expanded options for game play.

Another option for reduction of usable items in the game is to make durability based on the skill of the creator.  Less skilled players make less durable items  This would reduce the usable stock of items despite the possibility of increased production, as the cheaper made items would tend to just break and fall apart... which actually imitates real life with shoddy mass production.

In the end... Your game, your rules, and I need to just get over myself.  Fair enough.  Good luck.

Solar:
Well, you are imagining players will play how you want them to. If there is one thing that can be relied upon its that they will not :)

Players will get one gang member to be a crafter and pump resources at him, they will then produce at maximum efficiency (whilst the majority of them being able to go as pure combat chars) and anyone not in this system will be miles off it.

Also, the psychological effect of timeouts would be equal to the effect of wasted effort when they fail - instead of waiting, they had to go and gather stuff to be wasted ... and also the max efficiency would have to be matched to our current speed, with the majority working at a much reduced rate.


A couple of things I agree with though, making gathering itself more interesting (hopefully something a long these lines in the future for the higher level stuff, at least) and getting Electronic parts away from junk, which I wanted doing when we wiped :P


Professions are good for a number of reasons, resource drain, limiting what one char can do, equalizing the capabilities of gangs and soloists, giving factions a flavour.

GeneralM13:
let's not forget the GM's on a power trip



Deleted big unneeded quote. /Lexx

Giemz:
Oh come on. Cooldowns are in no way mandatory to the economy. Slowdowns are. Cooldowns are just the most blunt and I'm sorry to say that, stupid way to make player slow down. And most annoying. Yeah, if you could do something else while cooling down it's ok. But here, it just doesn't work that way. Travelling is dangerous so you want to get as many stuff from one place as you can. So you are pinned to a gathering spot until you got enough. And then to another gathering spot. And to another, then to crafting table. And you have to do it all over again every time you die. Or you need to dedicate a whole day to produce enough equipment to get enough and store it in a tent [which sadly can disapear now, I only hope it doesnt when you log off from it].


-Alts-

Yeah, you say that people should play some other part of the game while waiting for the cooldown to go down. How can I if some jackass killed me while I was waiting for my gather cooldown to fall down and (to make gun and ammo you sadly have to gather ore and minerals [separate cooldown here could fix it]) now I failed doctor check [there is not enough sp even with int of 10 to cover sufficiently figthing, fa, repair, science, outdoorsman and doctor until very high levels at which it is more sense to kill noobs for that stuff then to gather it myself] and am unequiped, far from civilisation and basicly cannot in any way play the game until weakened or doctor cooldown ticks to 0. That is practicly forcing me to log off or sit numblessly. I cannot use him in that time or I have 95% chance of dieing again before getting back to any equipment. And I lost all my gathered stuff. So I need to do them again and it sucks big time. People say I should even still be crippled if the jackass shoot my legs to cripled state just for the sick lulz. Before I can get to a player doctor I am dead at least 10 times again because I can't run away from morons on a noob killing spree. I could invest in outdoorsman but where to get even more sp for that?

The lack of the means to be self supplier is encouraging alting way more then the cooldowns. Not everyone want to be in a group especially in this game. It's hard to think how a game could disencourage player to player trust any more then 2238. And yet you either are in a group or have alts. Don;t be surprised why so many choose the latter.

So if the game is alt friendly (this one sadly is) it is only natural that it encourages alts and specialization and disencourage general single player builds. You don't need to control alts. You just need to disencourage using them so nobody will want to alt. And if you disencourage alts enough you can just announce alting as a bannable offence and it will wipe off last alts.


--- Quote from: Solar ---Professions are good for a number of reasons, resource drain, limiting what one char can do, equalizing the capabilities of gangs and soloists, giving factions a flavour.
--- End quote ---

Resource drain ok, limiting capabilities of one character... strange but ok, it's not like there is enough sp to fill reqs for most of them anyway. Now how does this equilize the capabilities of gangs and soloists exactly? It does give a major bonus to gangs and disencourage soloists if anything. And how this give factions a flavour? Oh, you can;t join a gang if there's a player from hostile faction in it, ok, it's cool then. And you have to craft top tier equip in the facion base, so you can't quite leave it. That could work.

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