Lathe Economy Codenut

[datorangebottle]

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/65795

Lathe tax. I... don't see how this helps anything. Honestly. I'm confused, bewildered, and baffled. What purpose does putting a tax on lathe items serve? I just see this leading to science and engineering never upgrading anything(even worse than it is now, somehow), engineering not building anything new, assistants resorting to heavier tiding instead of doing autism projects, etc.


Also the idea that non-mapper/spriter/coder opinions have zero value and don't matter is a shit take, this stuff directly affects us. Even if the guy's a chode. @JFW

[Bawhoppennn]

Arcane made a marketing mistake by not calling it a LATHE TITHE

[The Wrench]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

[Boot]

I can already see a round where coins get dumped into a blob but we can't afford to bring more welders so we just die. I'm saying this as a good thing btw.

[Mothblocks]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

[Nabski]

RIP conveyor belts any anything else you need to bulk print.
Did they change .357 ammo to be single shot per print? If so (Insert tf2 heavy meme).

[bastardblaster]

truly, capitalism gaming

[Yulice]

People don't care about vending machines because there's only like three items in them worth buying that are scattered across different ones. If you want people to use Cargo you have to actually put shit people would WANT in cargo. Adding a way to bypass R&D with exhorbiant amounts of cash would definitely encourage people to want to make money. Imagine being able to buy a crate of AEGs as sec for... ten to fifteen thousand. Or a full medibelt of advanced surgery tools for five thousand. Stuff that would make it feasibly hard to kit out the entirety of your department or the station purely via money, so that R&D isn't useless, but also allowing people to get a jumpstart on things if they're economically minded, or if they get ignored by R&D.

The other alternative is adding cargo exclusive shit, which is what WTs and Thermal Pistols are, but WTs got removed and thermal pistols aren't exactly very desirable. The biggest issue is going to be making shit people want without breaking the game in half. All this is gonna lead to is people just fuckin' letting the station go to shit if it gets blown up and never doing upgrades, along with shit like the CRAB-17 now absolutely decimating the station. Be a nukie and buy 2 or 3 crabs and wipe the crew's entire budget, then they can't print shit or buy shit at cargo.

[massa]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

TRAADERRRRRRRSSSSS PLAYED BY PEOPLE AND THEY SELL GOOD SHIT

[Pandarsenic]

RIP conveyor belts any anything else you need to bulk print.
Did they change .357 ammo to be single shot per print? If so (Insert tf2 heavy meme).

It is one shot per print, yes

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

1) Like Yulice said, people don't spend money because there's nothing worth buying. The only semi-relevant vendors on the entire station are Medical's various vendors, the botanist's seeds, some of the crap chefs need, the Sec vendor, and the YouTool - which is mostly only important for buying crowbars.

2) We could just remove the economy and return to 2014 monkey The economy/paycheck stuff is a system of changes that, as someone who missed all the stepwise implementation, feels like it makes things a lot more involved for little real gain.

[Farquaar]

Well, there goes half my clown gimmicks.

I'll miss being building my own autolathe and using it to outfit a butter-on-a-stick stand in the vacant commissary.

[Itseasytosee2me]

AI LAW 2 PRESS THIS BUTTON FOR ME SO I DON'T LOSE MONEY!

[Yulice]

Uploading Law 4: Losing money is harmful to humans.

[datorangebottle]

Uploading Law 4: Losing money is harmful to humans.

>mfw the AI deconstructs all lathes and vending machines on the station, along with the cargo and vault consoles

[The Wrench]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

I’m not sure, but making the game more tedious to play isn’t the way to do it. We’re in a hyper post scarcity future, why the hell would NT charge people for the tools to do their job. This is just going to cuck autism projects and disincentive repairs.

[The Wrench]

My question is, how does this make the game any better?

[Farquaar]

I thought economy already was a success because:
1. Money is a fun RP prop
2. Money can be used to buy l33t gear from vending machines
3. People would actively trade money in-game for reasons 1 and 2

Ask not what the game can do for arconomy- ask what the acronomy can do for the game.

[Agux909]

Wait doesn't this mean we'll have at least 5 CRABS every roundstart, which now are indestructible by the way, and noone will be able to buy/print anything at 5 minutes into the round?

[sinfulbliss]

Like many of the bad PRs, it fails to answer "why?" Okay, you want players to interact with the economy more. You want things to cost money and people to care about money more. Attaching the economy to lathes is a good way to do this. But hold on - why? Why do we need more of an economy in the first place, how does it improve the player experience? It simply adds tedium, like experisci, which I believe no sci players enjoyed.

No one plays SS13 for the economy. It's nice being able to create items that you need for something without having to do boring, menial tasks like collecting 4 bottles of pepperspray and then shipping a bounty cube for an extra 100 credits to buy, what, tools?

[toemas]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

why the fuck SHOULD the economy matter? what sounds remotely fun about that whatsover? why do the coders keep adding more tedium to the game?

[Itseasytosee2me]

I'm very much of the opinion that if we want a complicated, interesting, and fun economic system then we are going to have to throw out everything money-related and start over.

[Mothblocks]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

why the fuck SHOULD the economy matter? what sounds remotely fun about that whatsover? why do the coders keep adding more tedium to the game?

To be clear, I don't actually like economy at all, but if you were to "make the economy matter", how do you do it aside from either adding more powerful items to the game, or altering what's free?

[massa]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

why the fuck SHOULD the economy matter? what sounds remotely fun about that whatsover? why do the coders keep adding more tedium to the game?

To be clear, I don't actually like economy at all, but if you were to "make the economy matter", how do you do it aside from either adding more powerful items to the game, or altering what's free?

Add more items to the game (they can be powerful, combat in this game is fun and is why people play it!), add player controlled traders (all the races could be good for this) who gatekeep access to these things for whatever goal of theirs like killing eachother in an arena or some shit. kind of like friend pirates, some of which can be hostile to eachother?

Power social interactions and tension instead of doing weird numerical cbt

[CMDR_Gungnir]

Lathe Tax is the worst idea I've ever heard. 10 credits per item is, right now, absolutely horrendous, after the change goes through and money values are lowered? That's fucking insane. This will have a drastic effect on the game and not in a good way.

[CDranzer]

Don't care still gonna buy jackboots and military jacket roundstart

[Kendrickorium]

[Archie700]

viewtopic.php?t=31389&p=635682
Put legitimate complaints on the actual thread

[Vekter]

I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to complain about this if you don't read the PR/hack.md.

[Thunder11]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

why the fuck SHOULD the economy matter? what sounds remotely fun about that whatsover? why do the coders keep adding more tedium to the game?

To be clear, I don't actually like economy at all, but if you were to "make the economy matter", how do you do it aside from either adding more powerful items to the game, or altering what's free?

We're tried improve, several times now. Perhaps it's time to give remove a shot...

[chocolate_bickie]

If you wanna make the economy matter, gatekeeping lathes ain’t the way to do it.

And what is? We can't just keep adding a bunch of more items in hopes that people who haven't bought them will buy them, and people already don't care about vending machines.

why the fuck SHOULD the economy matter? what sounds remotely fun about that whatsover? why do the coders keep adding more tedium to the game?

To be clear, I don't actually like economy at all, but if you were to "make the economy matter", how do you do it aside from either adding more powerful items to the game, or altering what's free?

Expand what's available at cargo. I recently tried to purchase a lizard from cargo for a gimmick and they are not purchase-able.

Economy should be used to gain sparce but weak items.

Things like batteries, materials, livestock.

TG has a library of literally 1000s to 10,000s of items and cargo barely touches most of them.

Gating items behind cash barriers is the ultimate feel bad experience.

Also I am really worried about how this will interact with upgrades. It takes a lot of materials to upgrade even one job. I suspect if this pr goes through upgrading will become a lot rarer. Even now some departments never get upgraded.

Taxing won't compel players to use economy, they will just avoid it.

[Annihilite111]

After playing a few rounds with the PR testmerged, i can confirm that it fucking sucks. The "lathe freedom protests" of 2547 will forever be remembered as a dark day in Nanotrasens history.

[Super Aggro Crag]

If you want people to desire moneys to spend moneys add gachashit machines that dispense obnoxious cosmetics and waifu cards and make them carry over to future rounds.

[iwishforducks]

fermiconomy

[ArcaneDefence]

If you want people to desire moneys to spend moneys add gachashit machines that dispense obnoxious cosmetics and waifu cards and make them carry over to future rounds.

We have an entire trading card game, I just don't remember if persistence exists in any capacity or not
https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Tactical_Game_Cards

[Super Aggro Crag]

If you want people to desire moneys to spend moneys add gachashit machines that dispense obnoxious cosmetics and waifu cards and make them carry over to future rounds.

We have an entire trading card game, I just don't remember if persistence exists in any capacity or not
https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Tactical_Game_Cards

NOT
WAIFUS

[Timberpoes]

Biddle Lathes.

[cacogen]

Could be fine but components and sheets should be cheaper. It cost me 10 credits to print a single plasma glass sheet from the cargo protolathe as a cargo technician, which is too much. Materials ejected from protolathes don't cost and neither do materials ejected from the ORM. It should probably be made consistent with the price being brought down to something more reasonable like 1 cr per sheet.

Encouraging people to conserve materials is a good idea, though.

[Vekter]

Could be fine but components and sheets should be cheaper. It cost me 10 credits to print a single plasma glass sheet from the cargo protolathe as a cargo technician, which is too much. Materials ejected from protolathes don't cost and neither do materials ejected from the ORM. It should probably be made consistent with the price being brought down to something more reasonable like 1 cr per sheet.

Encouraging people to conserve materials is a good idea, though.

I brought this up to Arcane in Discord last night, they said they'd look into it.

[Bawhoppennn]

I'm sad nobody liked my pun