#Finances: ORM observations and suggestions

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frigid adder
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I have about 100 hours in Monolith and I really like it so far.

But I can tell it's a fork of frontier, which itself is a fork of standard wizden SS14, which itself is a kind of fork from SS13, so some legacy designs are baked in from past iterations. As far as monolith goes, I really like what's been done with it and the devs are doing a good job and I want to see it develop and improve over time. Looking at fundamental adaptations of the RCM fork which tweaks fundamentals beautifully, these suggestions intend to create the same synthesis for Monolith.

By far the biggest fundamental and systemic issue I see with Monolith is how the financial system is playing out, not that it's a problem inherently but only that it's, unbalanced? No, that's not the word for it, lemme explain. Finances and money is in a sense, the fun juice. 8 hour shifts where it's the only thing carried over. In the 8 hours each shift gets, the fun juice determines so much of the game starting out, not so much later on when resources are plentiful, but still important. So since it's the only thing you start with that carries over, and this money heavily determines a lot of the core gameplay, which I can understand is a carry-over from frontier but can be done better.

In short, earning money SHOULD correspond with player demand (paid services), incentivized activities and roles (like parameds) as well as just generally having fun.

Now directly looking at you, fission haulers. In terms of the economy, balance, supply and demand of the game, Luxury goods or fission hauling isn't exactly a very fun experience, but most importantly, it contains very little interaction and pretty much does absolutely zero to the grand spaco-political story playing out, just a guy docking at cargo spots and carrying items back and forth whose only real disruption is chimeras and asteroids.

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I bring this up because fission hauling is lucratively profitable with little effort. It's like a side quest mode of "I need to make money so I'm going to do absolutely nothing valuable to any of the factions or players and just print money". It's done solely for profit. So uh, by the previous standards, is it fun? Not really. Is it in demand? No, but the money is, and that's the whole fundamental problem.

If you go fission hauling to fuel all the best TSF ships and go nuts, then therein lies the problem. It's not that it's unbalanced but only that financial incentivization is extremely lopsided. This is extremely important for game balance because let's say a game requires 80% of time for setup for 20% of time for fun, then reducing setup time increases fun, and finances are setup juice.

Looking at financial gain against the cost of financial expenses, the most expensive things you can purchase are ships, good ships. And the most expensive things you can lose are those ships, and most importantly a ship that's been fully modified and upgraded. In the sandbox this dynamic plays out a few ways, but most importantly it disincentives PVP ship on ship combat, because losing a large 200k ship is devastating on your wallet, and losing a 200k ship with 350k resell value from your upgrades is extremely devastating not only on your wallet, but your time and effort spent.

Everytime I check ghost warps near the end of a shift, pretty much every MIL designated ship is destroyed and usually the faction ships of the losing sides are grounded into mulch, while the CIV, EXP and especially medical ships are mostly intact with their crew, which leaves to reselling, which leaves to profit, which leaves to more setup etc etc. So to phrase it differently:

Ship destruction is expensive on the owner, the best ways to make money is to be left alone, and money is required to have setup.
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So, then consider that faction roles are severely underpopulated compared to civilian roles, and this is one of the reasons why. Having a faction IFF greatly increases your chance of being engaged by hostiles and brought into combat, which, like what was said, ship destruction being the most expensive, which then negatively impacts your ability to setup, etc etc.

So, financial distribution should be rebalanced, and I propose these two changes:

1: Base pay, directly deposited into accounts at 30 minute intervals for faction aligned groups (medical dispatch, USSP TSF and ASR, and colonial guys.)

I think base pay for faction members is a great idea because it increases the incentive to play faction roles, offsetting the massive amounts of money you would lose on ships. Also, incentivizes staying alive for your 30 min payout, perhaps even the pay should get raised incrementally each payout on the same character.

Benefits of this are:

1: parameds and colonials are incentivized to do their job and don't have to wait 4 hours or so to get their full paycheck by a CL or DoC who may or may not be there

2: those assigned to doing less profitable tasks are still getting something for their time, like guarding Halcyon

3: deposits instantly, no need for ATM so no need to worry you lost all your money if you die in the field.

4: Plays into roleplaying better, since you're getting your paycheck from command you're more likely contribute to the faction.

5: instant deposit, no need to worry about making money to fund your escapades money as it's a flat rate.

I don't see any downside to this except maybe one, which is that incentivization more faction players will inadvertently incentivize more PVP, which may mean more destroyed ship lag, but I'm not sure entirely what causes all the lag so eh.
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My suggestion for the initial rates for Base Pay is 6k for ASR, USSP, and TSF every half hour, 5K for Medical dispatch, and 3K for colonial roles, paid out at every half hour mark ending at the 7:30 mark, so no 8:00 pay. This results in a full shift of faction roles netting a total of 90K, while 75K for medical dispatch, and 45K for colonial roles.

These numbers can be whatever, their main goal is to encourage faction players through rewards.

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And for the second suggestion:

2: Replace cargo hauling with Mat hauling for factions.

It would work like, deleting every single cargo station from the game (A, B, C, D) and all things associated with them and add a new machine called a Cratepacker, installable on ships and that come naturally with some cargo ships. Cratepackers will process raw materials into crates that function nearly identically to current things like luxury crates, but can be deposited directly into terminals located at Halcyon, Camelot, ASR base, Medical Dispatch, Trade Mall and maybe expedition lounge too. They will be sold at a big profit and materials corresponding with the crates sold will be deposited directly into material silos located at those locations.

These deposits materials to these locations while keeping the same "leave me alone to make money" playstyle, but having it have an impact on the game. Mats will be deposited directly into MD, Halcyon, ASR and Camelot's material silos for them to use, but Trade Mall's mats will be available for purchase by any visiting party.

Additionally, faction outposts and MD will suffer a "too many mats" reduced profit level that will bring less money for mats which are in abundance, which does not apply to trade mall and it's purchasable material storehouse. I am also thinking to have secret "Syndicate Teledeposits" that can be placed down to deposit mats to ASR outpost but have to be hidden around, because they can be destroyed by anyone.

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This material rebalance will:

1: free up time of factions and material collection with passive materials

2: allow cargo haulers to still exist and meaningfully contribute to the game

3: allow factions to make money via depositing mat crates into their own outpost

4: create more intrigue by having civilians and factions have more interaction, more potential for ASR espionage as an example.

5: as an example, if nobody plays USSP and the 3 hour mark hits and TSF is way ahead in terms of everything, Camelot has a fresh and full supply of mats to work with.

The potential downsides are

1: mat abundance could completely change the meta

2: drawing mats out of an outpost silo to them reprocess and sell back at an infinite profit, which I think will have to be fixed by adding the trade mall mat selling to every outpost, so long as the cost of drawing and repackaging is a financial loss it will not be done.

3: current trade mall is a peaceful place for cargo haulers, giving it this importance may cause faction fights to break out there.

The goal of these is to incentivize actions which have demand to be done, and to keep people playing in roles which have demand to be played. The financial system ported and kept mostly the same from frontier is alright, but does not sufficiently incentivize the spaco-political game going on. Frontier vs Monolith paramedics as an example, monolith parameds will be focusing more heavily on reviving player characters in a much more dangerous world, so their profits should reflect that.

If these changes went in as described, I see only benefits and a new era of monolith where it becomes more than a frontier fork but something that truly stands alone.

I thank all the hard work of the developers to bring this fork this far, and I thank you for reading this far. I have a novel idea for a faction rework but I'll write it later.

Also, check my follow-up https://discord.com/channels/1329292619834069034/1427422792407846913

snow wave
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Very clean and concise. I like it

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However I feel that the ASR wouldn't be getting crates of mats like that and would instead be robbing haulers for them

valid galleon
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you can take it a step further and convert the mats into ship components before being shipping compatible to introduce an industrial loop

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i know they're currently fucking with an industrial loop as we speak

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based on spritework i saw of 2x1 lathes

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not sure if they've reached the wyci stage at all though

frigid adder
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having syndicate teledeposits as something in the uplink, ASR could do things like go to hauler ships and install a teledeposit on their ship, so they could deposit without even having to dock anywehre which are labeled as syndicate contraband, but these are very small things in the nitty gritty, i'm focused on the macro-health

snow wave
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👍

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I really a cool suggestion instead of another meme like people love to post in here

frigid adder
valid galleon
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yeah currently the limitation is every flatty is tech-gated rather than resource-gated

frigid adder
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and technology is ship-gated or faction-gated, run over to MD to go get some advanced tech because your ship has potatoes for tech

valid galleon
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there's a lot of opportunity to potentially diversify the research-is-king paradigm but that's introducing a lot of scope creep in the discussion

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so i won't ramble

frigid adder
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yeah agreed. i'd like to see these changes, and then see how everything shifts after that to see what should further be tweaked

valid galleon
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i should focus on the topic at hand, overall my economy opinion is the persistent balance system is archaic and has issues inherient to the way accruement and depletion works

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basically people are hardcoded to feel like shit if you aren't breaking beyond even and the end result is a system balanced such that money always goes up, which leads to the eventual endstate of the cost of everything becoming fiction provided players engage within the context of make money go up

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it's this impossible feat to truly balance the cost rate and profit rate just because everyone has their own preferred way to engage with the system

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as a matter of fact I've taken up the ridiculous habit of exporting my character and deleting them every shift just to have a static balance

frigid adder
# valid galleon it's this impossible feat to truly balance the cost rate and profit rate just be...

i don't think it's impossible to balance. I do agree that it's archaic to the context of monolith but I think the devs should distribute money under the following guidelines

most tedious and thankless jobs get the most money. mat hauling, researchers giving tech, i think in this category there should even be "lagscrubbers" who deconstruct ships for the most profit, and do tasks that clean up lag sources for money and profit.

decently tedious but decently fun roles, such as factions should make average amounts of money to at least make more than breaking even.

the most fun activities and most destructive activities (by extension the things that cause the most lag) should result in a net negative profit on failure and slightly more than breaking even for success for captains. things like outfitting an arkansaw with a full crew and heavy weapons and trying to take out an ADS or something.

viewing money from the developers perspective as fun juice, and fun juice being accumulated by contributing to the health of the game

frigid adder
frigid adder
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Finances: ORM observations and suggestions

cyan abyss
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Noted, I think fission haulers also make a big impact on lag

frigid adder
cyan abyss
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Legendary, good and well-thought-out ideas made by a veteran

frigid adder
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thank you

cyan abyss
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We’re planning on making trade goods require more in-depth stuff to make, and probably combine them with functionality somehow