Item scarcity, Relative Value and so forth

[cedarbridge]

tl:dr There's too much shit on the station so nothing is really worth anything.

Currently, the only form of economy on the station is barter guided by scarcity. However, the mode of exchange breaks down when there is no scarcity. Medbay storage is loaded with medkits sufficient for an entire small crew for the better part of an hour in most cases, sleepers are limitless and chem has enough power to run indefinitely without issue. This makes these items more or less worthless for exchange because who is going to trade value for something that is functionally limitless?

Compare this to something like the chef's whetstone. There's literally just the one he spawns with. Its not super robust, just a few points added to the force of knife the chef probably keeps for himself. However, its super valuable because its unique. If, say, an admin spawned trader shuttle arrived, the trader would likely give the item a high price for exchange. To get the item, a player would be willing to exchange something else equally special for the item or take special actions to steal it for himself.

If we do a quick survey of the various departments and the neutral spaces between, we find the station on all maps is cluttered with gear. Outside of absolute highpop, nobody will want for oxygen tanks, fire protection gear, beakers, spray bottles, whatever. The list of things on station (at roundstart no less) that have proliferated in several "quality of life" changes is huge. The number of things on the station that are special, unique or specifically require player involvement to produce are minimal. I think this is a lot of the problem with cargo. Who needs a department that can order more of the stuff already on the station if we already have more than we'll ever need on the station at the word go?

[CPTANT]

It's a fundamental problem caused by the fact that the station starts in a fully build up space with little (but some) room for improvement.

[kevinz000]

yeah and if we make stuff more scarce cargo gets raided/becomes king every round depending on the greytide's strength.

[captain sawrge]

yeah and if we make stuff more scarce cargo gets raided/becomes king every round depending on the greytide's strength.

Better they get swamped and overwhelmed with requests than having nothing to do.

Deciding who needs what and when is at least moderately more interesting than "everyone has everything so lets just order guns and gloves"

[cedarbridge]

I mean, given the route development has been taking, I'm not sure its even a goal, but if crew interaction is a real goal that the codebase wants then the code and mapping will have to reflect a station where crew members depend on people who have things they do not have ready access to and that in some cases they may have to convince the other people to give them the thing they need. Obviously, we see the pushback that happens with players *forced* to take 2 minutes of their time to find a socially acceptable way to go to the chemist and ask for mutagen/sulfuric acid. In the large pile of connections I have dedicated to playing chemist, I found that the people who came to the counter for acid were stunned and shocked that I wouldn't merely part with my very scarce 100u beakers. This meant they were forced to either find their own container, accept the containers printed by the chemmaster, or make some arrangement that would result in my willingness to part with my scarce item. In one case this meant that they brought me an unwrenched tray to install in the chem shed with me. Player interaction is important to gameplay and important to a lot of other things too. Players that can learn to barter can also learn to not be dicks to each other. I'm not saying that reducing the number of medkits on the station will make everyone follow the rules and stop getting banned, but I think there's possibility of a knock-on effect to some minor degree.

[Nabski]

I mean, given the route development has been taking, I'm not sure its even a goal, but if crew interaction is a real goal that the codebase wants then the code and mapping will have to reflect a station where crew members depend on people who have things they do not have ready access to and that in some cases they may have to convince the other people to give them the thing they need. Obviously, we see the pushback that happens with players *forced* to take 2 minutes of their time to find a socially acceptable way to go to the chemist and ask for mutagen/sulfuric acid. In the large pile of connections I have dedicated to playing chemist, I found that the people who came to the counter for acid were stunned and shocked that I wouldn't merely part with my very scarce 100u beakers. This meant they were forced to either find their own container, accept the containers printed by the chemmaster, or make some arrangement that would result in my willingness to part with my scarce item. In one case this meant that they brought me an unwrenched tray to install in the chem shed with me. Player interaction is important to gameplay and important to a lot of other things too. Players that can learn to barter can also learn to not be dicks to each other. I'm not saying that reducing the number of medkits on the station will make everyone follow the rules and stop getting banned, but I think there's possibility of a knock-on effect to some minor degree.

They're only very very rare until you figure out you can just print more 100's at the lathe.

Or you can make plastic bottles to the point that you're drowning in 100's.

Now spraybottles on the otherhand. That's some shit I will jump through hoops for.

[Sweets]

Did someone say....Vox traders?

[Iatots]

It's time to let cargo order a la carte. You can keep thematic bundles and give them a discount (or give a premium to single items).
There is only so much load you can stack on any single department, and it decreases substantially when said department is gimped by design.

[Oldman Robustin]

Meaningless post.

What would you even propose making rare, and why would that improve gameplay? Empty medbay storage? Ok now chemists get harassed for meds even more and sleepers become the default healing mechanic.

I also believe that ample healing items are a good thing simply because this is not a hardcore sim and the players do not appreciate those kinds of mechanics. Forcing scarcity with a simplified medical system doesn't encourage real interaction... it would be like playing an MMO where every time you took >30% of your health in damage you had to go back to town and wait in line for an NPC to heal you. Sure doctors on SS13 aren't NPC's but the interaction is about as deep and meaningful, a doctor clicks on you a couple times and at that point neither of you has any reason to further engage.

That's just one example but my point is that if you just boil a relationship down to "X has scarce item, Y wants/needs it" then the ensuing interaction is going to be just about as deep and/or meaningful a.k.a. it's neither of those things. The real world is chock full of scarcity and yet humanity has toiled for centuries to make obtaining scarce goods involve the least possible amount of human interaction possible. We have stuff like Amazon and Stock Exchanges as the pinnacle (thus far) for the exchange of value, stuff like street markets exist for the experience (or out of necessity)... not because its a desirable way to manage scarcity.

If you want to encourage interaction, make it a meaningful experience, something collaborative that requires thoughtful engagement.

[captain sawrge]

>now chemists get harasses for meds
huh you mean like their job

[captain sawrge]

why should everything be convenient from the get-go. why shouldn't there be incentive for people to come up with ways to streamline things rather than have it all handed to them. ss13 isn't an MMO or real life. the design philosophy should differ greatly. not every change or addition should be for the sake of making things easier or more convenient because every new bit of convenience just erodes the reason to bother doing anything and nullifies pre-existing mechanics.

[Sweets]

Robustin I have a solution to the removal of healing items actually, it would also give MD's something to do. Unfortunately it would be an absolute pain to implement.

Basically you add two smaller chem dispensers to the medbay supply room. They could be limited to dispensing only the chems for basic medicine and what not.

This frees up chemistry to make non medical items outside of complex medicines and virus cures.

The downside to this is new machines would have to be made, MD's would need to know chemistry and medbay is fucked if they are stolen/broken.

I kinda want a Lavaland trader spawn (cannot leave their store) that can buy almost all items in game from a machine by feeding it space cash and pawn items for a reduced value to it. Issue becomes people abusing it to give friends free shit.

[iamgoofball]

The star trek issue of "how do we write drama in a post-scarcity environment"

[Wyzack]

It would be really cool to have a special map/game mode for Dwarf Mode Station like d20 used to do when it was still alive. Not like our lavaland dwarves, it was kinda different, sort of like the ghetto station we have now for ghosts.

Basically the whole crew starts on a super duper bare bones and very small station with almost nothing. There are no antags, and the crew has to build the station themselves by raiding the nearby massive asteroids full of crashes ships and other wrecks to get materials to expand the station and put better machines and stuff in. It is obviously a pretty massive project but i wonder if anything could be salvaged from their old map.

It would get tiresome as a regular rotation thing but once in a blue moon it would probably be pretty fun, especially if we could refine the concept.

Not really related to this thread but enforced scarcity made me think of it

[Qbopper]

It would be really cool to have a special map/game mode for Dwarf Mode Station like d20 used to do when it was still alive. Not like our lavaland dwarves, it was kinda different, sort of like the ghetto station we have now for ghosts.

Basically the whole crew starts on a super duper bare bones and very small station with almost nothing. There are no antags, and the crew has to build the station themselves by raiding the nearby massive asteroids full of crashes ships and other wrecks to get materials to expand the station and put better machines and stuff in. It is obviously a pretty massive project but i wonder if anything could be salvaged from their old map.

It would get tiresome as a regular rotation thing but once in a blue moon it would probably be pretty fun, especially if we could refine the concept.

Not really related to this thread but enforced scarcity made me think of it

people mentioned something like this to me re: budgetstation but yeah having this happen too often is a bad idea

would be a ton of fun imo

[Xhuis]

dwarf fortress-style build-a-station would be very creative and unique but I feel like most /tg/ players can't be trusted to do anything more than kill each other with various blunt objects and there would likely be mass braindeath as soon as they spawned in and realized that they weren't on a pristine station with all commodities available from the word go

[MMMiracles]

dwarf fortress-style build-a-station would be very creative and unique but I feel like most /tg/ players can't be trusted to do anything more than kill each other with various blunt objects and there would likely be mass braindeath as soon as they spawned in and realized that they weren't on a pristine station with all commodities available from the word go

Some admins used to host dwarfstation events where the crew had around 5-10 minutes to grab the bare requirements for departments and evacuate to mining before the main station got fucked up. People had to essentially work from scratch to rebuild a new station on mining and it was fun as fuck for practically everyone involved.

I don't know about now but this could of totally worked as a rare gamemode/event.

[ShadowDimentio]

dwarf fortress-style build-a-station would be very creative and unique but I feel like most /tg/ players can't be trusted to do anything more than kill each other with various blunt objects and there would likely be mass braindeath as soon as they spawned in and realized that they weren't on a pristine station with all commodities available from the word go

Goon had this mode. Emphasis on had.

Y'see the problem with building your own station is one, building your own station is boring and takes a very long time, and two, construction in SS13 isn't designed with you having nothing and building up to something, it's designed with something being broken and you going and getting stuff located elsewhere to fix what got broke.

Goon learned fast that one, nobody wanted to play this mode because it was boring as fuck, and two, they constantly had to keep maintaining the mode and adding overhead so that progression worked and you wouldn't get stuck.

So yeah, bad idea.

[Cobby]

Budget station is suppose to be our savior, WHERE IS IT BUCKO

[Ikarrus]

This has been a thing since day one.

People don't like scarcity or any kind of inconvenience. It was one of the big reasons why people preferred metastation over boxstation.

And any resource that was limited or restricted was eventually made more available over time by "QoL" or "balance" changes, and efforts to push exclusivity/restrictions were met with much controversy e.g. "Erro took our gloves!"

[onleavedontatme]

For the most part players do not want this

[Ikarrus]

I've always held the belief that players as a whole (and consumers in general) cannot be trusted to know what they want.

You gotta give them what they want. (Good luck)

[Qbopper]

Budget station is suppose to be our savior, WHERE IS IT BUCKO

my last exam is on the 18th

[John_Oxford]

i read the first 10 or so posts of this thread and i came to this conclusion

the primary reason that people don't like the idea of "you have to talk and barter to get things" is because its inefficient.

however, even if you did have to go to someone to get something, after a good month or two, jobs that play those jobs won't even have to say anything

botany will just show up with the tray for example and chem will just put a 100u beaker of mutagen on the desk and everyone will go on their way wordlessly.

the problem being is no one wants to deal with that huge learning gap between those two periods of time.

considering rounds are sometimes less than 30 minutes, i don't want to spend five of those minutes trying to get something i used to start with because muh human interaction.

[cedarbridge]

Did someone say....Vox traders?

Working on it for some time far into the future, but trading means very little when everyone has everything they could want already.

[EagleWiz]

yeah and if we make stuff more scarce cargo gets raided/becomes king every round depending on the greytide's strength.

This sort of thinking from the dev/mod team really bugs me. Not the part about cargo possibly being too important, thats a valid concern (although cargo only matters at all in conversion antag modes) the part where greytide possibly raiding cargo and stealing everything is just taken as a given that you can't do anything about. That should not be a given that the mods/devs can't do anything about. There are solutions to this issue.

[Hathkar]

considering rounds are sometimes less than 30 minutes, i don't want to spend five of those minutes trying to get something i used to start with because muh human interaction.

I think is a very important point to think about. The biggest barrier to human interaction seems to be time related. These very short 30 minute deathmatches simply don't have time to include that much social interaction and still do your job.

[cedarbridge]

considering rounds are sometimes less than 30 minutes, i don't want to spend five of those minutes trying to get something i used to start with because muh human interaction.

I think is a very important point to think about. The biggest barrier to human interaction seems to be time related. These very short 30 minute deathmatches simply don't have time to include that much social interaction and still do your job.

That's a product of 1) short attention spans and 2) a large percentage of our content dictated by staring at a console and clicking buttons in sequence.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for players that don't want to so much as talk to other players in a game built on the concept of being on a pretend space station with other people.

[Incomptinence]

I have thought about something like this and the only way to keep most people interested was if they had to fight say an opposing station over the resources at the same time.

Metal to build a new room with means more to people when they know those fuckers over there don't have it and as they use it they can rest assured whoever they killed over it is salting up dead chat.

[Saegrimr]

It's funny when content is made to be available within "30 minutes", then when rounds go beyond 30 minutes they complain they have nothing to do.
When said content is added as goals for beyond that, people complain about not being able to achieve the goal.

rly makes u think

[XDTM]

I think the demographic that gets bored post 30-minutes is separate from the one that wants to be able to achieve its goals before round end. Thing is, all it takes is someone in the command staff that belongs to the first group, an apathetic rest of the command staff, and the round ends early, regardless of if there are people pursuing late-game goals.

Even if there is late-game content with techwebs, xenobiology, botany, or whatever, it's not the kind of thing that interests the valid-seeking part of the playerbase, that will find itself roaming the halls for antags or waiting for an emergency, not starting any long-term goal, then if none comes along they itch to press the reset button to go back to that part of the game.

You could trickle more antags as the round goes on, but again there's a server culture issue where anyone with an antag status, unless specifically told otherwise, tends to cause as much chaos as they're able to, ending the round if not challenged; so the only way rounds go on is if either there's a perfect balance between antags and valid-seekers, or if those groups are unable to end the round early.

This is why i kinda like the idea of a final goal for the crew to end the round: if you want to end the round earlier, you either have to pitch in, or give the round away to the current antags, which i'm betting the valid-seekers would like even less.

[bandit]

one way to introduce scarcity is to introduce a decay/damage system, we already have the beginnings of it in the code

note: a lot of people fucking hate decay systems, but it is a way games historically have done it

[Qbopper]

You could trickle more antags as the round goes on

wasn't this one of the reasons why datum antags was being worked on

[John_Oxford]

alot of the reason that the 30 minute and then the games basically over crowd exists is because they have a distinct fear of investing time into something with the possiblity of it all going away because scientist mcnigger decided to bomb RnD so there went a hour and a half of work.

dismissing other peoples logic for their play style doesn't make yours better.

[EagleWiz]

one way to introduce scarcity is to introduce a decay/damage system, we already have the beginnings of it in the code

This is a recipe for shuttle calls.

[cedarbridge]

one way to introduce scarcity is to introduce a decay/damage system, we already have the beginnings of it in the code

This is a recipe for shuttle calls.

The shuttle decays too, but in reverse.

[ShadowDimentio]

I fail to see how making everything rarer like you proposed would make the game more fun

Player interaction is great, but FORCED player interaction is annoying, and with how autistic everyone who plays this game is it's just a matter of time before words don't even have to be exchanged for two autists to know what they want, see: chem/botany and mutagen.

Not to mention, the stuff you proposed, namely emergency equipment like oxygen tanks or firesuits, if they run out people die, and dying because you couldn't find shit isn't very fun.

[bandit]

one way to introduce scarcity is to introduce a decay/damage system, we already have the beginnings of it in the code

This is a recipe for shuttle calls.

man what the fuck isn't anymore

[oranges]

The average duration of a tgstation round is ~80-100 minutes

https://atlantaned.space/newSS13tools/s ... eStats.php and sort by rounds played (to give a metric of the common round types)

[kevinz000]

yeah and if we make stuff more scarce cargo gets raided/becomes king every round depending on the greytide's strength.

This sort of thinking from the dev/mod team really bugs me. Not the part about cargo possibly being too important, thats a valid concern (although cargo only matters at all in conversion antag modes) the part where greytide possibly raiding cargo and stealing everything is just taken as a given that you can't do anything about. That should not be a given that the mods/devs can't do anything about. There are solutions to this issue.

this is my opinion as a player and it holds as much weight as anyone else's here. admins have no more say in dev in tg than anyone else.

[Noka]

so, here's what i see the cons to scarcity here being:

[*] less possible sources of an object means people are more likely to attempt to metagame its location/who would take it. "the clown always gets soap somehow!" would become screams of "GODDAMN JANITOR STOP LETTING THIS HAPPEN", so on. basically, any rare item would end up with people knowing its general origin and trying to follow it back. this sounds fine, except it'd happen with shit like variants of welding tool & things that are just kind of ridiculous leaps of the imagination.

[*] greytide, yes, but here's a side note. scarcity existed back a few years ago; i still remember fondly when assistants would get up the gumption to do things like the abandoned bar, offering trading rarer items from the station (ie things like the rainbow jumpsuit) for things that only departments got, like insulated gloves. cargo kinda ended up filling this role & also killing the practice.

[*] depending on what value is assigned to, most departments already experience this and reinforcing the issue with adjustments to lethal and nonlethal weapons might actively ruin the game for some jobs.

[*] it's much harder to place a fake object (ie, making fake patches for burns/brute/etc) if there's normally less sources of an item... so kinda the issue at the start, it's just that it makes traitor sabotage both easier and harder (paranoia becomes easier; "WHY DID YOU BRING THAT HERE FOR NO REASON", etc)

the pros, on the other hand:

[*] if this were coupled with mild randomization of station resources (think if xeno started with only yellow slimes one round, or engineering was missing a rad suit; etc) then this could be implemented pretty smoothly: the station either works around what resources it didn't start with, or it tries to get replacements from other sources (cargo, for example!). it would reduce the issue of player powergaming to get "All The Stuff I Know This Department Will Want", too, since department needs will vary per round.

[*] scarcity for some things could be very good for returning to form in some areas (ie, expanding some of the ghetto crafting methods & focusing on having potential times where a ghetto analogue might HAVE to be used in urgent situations)

[*] scarcity emphasizes "HEY PERSON DO YOUR FUCKING JOB", ie "HEY CHEMIST MAKE HEALING SHIT". i do think a step or two back from current methods would also be very helpful for things like this - for example, the ORM being moved back into cargo. it'd be at the very least interesting if there was some tweaks here so things like the smartchem fridge had a reduced storage capacity, so that it's less about "whatever the chemist made gets dumped in here" and more about "whatever the chemist thought was important is in here; ask them for more specific shit".

it's not a bad idea, but i get the feeling scarcity would need a lot of supporting changes to really do positive things for current gameplay. if it weren't fully implemented it'd just result in players getting more powergamey imo.

[kevinz000]

resident powergamer's opinion: if you want to dunk powergaming, take a look at storage and how much shit someone can carry.
tip: a lot, if you have the right items and the right knowledge of which items are plausibly needed in all situations.

[cedarbridge]

Unfortunately you can't tone down how much shit someone can carry without reducing tool and resource requirements (or somehow make team play a thing but that would require lotsa coding + hoping the players figure out the intention + being fine with low pop/one player doing a job is going to be a harsh experience).

I can't remember the last time I played engineering, mining or security without issue if I took every tool in the box so that I wouldn't be upset later.

Doctor and botanist also have some role related storage issues and little expectation that someone else will be there or respond to fix a problem/do the job you can't.


I'm gauging this on can you do your basic job without a backpack and for bonus points, without a hardsuit/apron/labcoat. That's ignoring mask+tank since we can pretend O2 lockers aren't looted, on the other side of a rouge AI bolted airlock or behind a firedoor. I guess that rules out most jobs.

A lot of medical storage issues are mitigated by stuff like pill bottles. I can carry enough basic and specialized chems in a few bottles on a belt to satisfy my EMT needs. A lot of robustness should be determined on picking the right things you need and chancing on things you don't think you'll need and hoping that you didn't actually need what you left behind. Scarcity of stuff like, defibs, for example, is interesting because it means the effect is localized. You don't have very many anywhere on the station so its important to keep tabs on them and who has them. They're useful so replacing them is a high priority. (Though I don't think we actually have a means of replacing them either, which is its own thing I suppose.)

[cedarbridge]

I didn't actually think of pill bottles. That sort of makes the doctor a lot easier if chemistry plays ball.

Typically a well-geared EMT (or the chemist if things are dire enough to have them out of the shed) will have 2-3 labeled pill bottles with heal chems for the usual damage types, a couple more potent patches with the crit-heal versions of those chems, a dash of atropine and a single shot of "get the fuck out" meth. That's in addition to whatever other on-site medical gear they'd be carrying. Given we haven't really implimented any of the more complex medical requirements bantered about elsewhere yet, that's about all that's needed beyond maybe a bodybag to drag the patient to medbay without making a mess of the floors and without losing their shit that you might have to pull off to apply a defib.

[onleavedontatme]

resident powergamer's opinion: if you want to dunk powergaming, take a look at storage and how much shit someone can carry.
tip: a lot, if you have the right items and the right knowledge of which items are plausibly needed in all situations.

Making it so people could not carry enough shit on them to replace the function of every department at once would be a huge step towards encouraging people to actually work together but could you fucking imagine the screaming if backpacks got nerfed?

[onleavedontatme]

Also it's hard to blame players for wanting to just be able to do things on their own, it's annoying and tedious to rely on internet strangers with zero voice communication before you even get into game specific issues (constantly resetting naturally, server rules that prioritize mindless solo violence, bored players and admins forcing early resets, "QoL" creep forever, etc)

[MMMiracles]

resident powergamer's opinion: if you want to dunk powergaming, take a look at storage and how much shit someone can carry.
tip: a lot, if you have the right items and the right knowledge of which items are plausibly needed in all situations.

Making it so people could not carry enough shit on them to replace the function of every department at once would be a huge step towards encouraging people to actually work together but could you fucking imagine the screaming if backpacks got nerfed?

Good chunk of people lost their shit when run speed was nerfed. Might as well rip the band-aid off and get it over with like before instead of trying to pussy-foot around the issue.

[PKPenguin321]

The average duration of a tgstation round is ~80-100 minutes

https://atlantaned.space/newSS13tools/s ... eStats.php and sort by rounds played (to give a metric of the common round types)

>this fact does not support me so i will conveniently ignore it

[Iatots]

Those stats do not account for lowpop/highpop, and the average is taken from all rounds since 2011?!
That table is too raw to give any meaningful data.

EDIT: I have now noticed the monthly stats tab. It still doesn't account for highpop/lowpop.
Also, I keep having to re-authorize on the website.

[Noka]

The best possible nerf to storage right now would be making it so you can't drag open items in containers (aka, you can't open the box in your bag without taking it out, etc.)

People might whine and bitch, but right now it'd really help with reducing effective storage, but not quite nerf it into nonexistence.