Protheroe
UMEC
0
   |
Posted - 2012.05.10 06:54:00 -
[1] - Quote
I agree that Mechanical Engineering datacores should be available in all factions' LP Stores. Here's a list of the total value of all datacores traded in The Forge (Jita) over the past year, sorted by the factions whose LP Stores they will be available in. Numbers are rounded to the nearest 100K datacores and billion ISK.
02.1 Million Datacores 0,147 Billion ISK Amarrian Starship Engineering
01.5 Million Datacores 0,180 Billion ISK Graviton Physics
02.7 Million Datacores 0,519 Billion ISK High Energy Physics
01.7 Million Datacores 0,364 Billion ISK Laser Physics
03.3 Million Datacores 0,820 Billion ISK Nanite Engineering
11.3 Million Datacores 2,030 Billion ISK Amarr Total
03.3 Million Datacores 0,217 Billion ISK Caldari Starship Engineering
03.6 Million Datacores 0,949 Billion ISK Hydromagnetic Physics
04.8 Million Datacores 0,954 Billion ISK Quantum Physics
03.2 Million Datacores 0,492 Billion ISK Rocket Science
14.9 Million Datacores 2,612 Billion ISK Caldari Total
01.6 Million Datacores 0,282 Billion ISK Electromagnetic Physics
08.7 Million Datacores 1,661 Billion ISK Electronic Engineering
03.1 Million Datacores 0,301 Billion ISK Gallantean Starship Engineering
01.2 Million Datacores 0,261 Billion ISK Plasma Physics
14.6 Million Datacores 2,505 Billion ISK Gallente Total
17.1 Million Datacores 3,710 Billion ISK Mechanical Engineering
03.0 Million Datacores 0,619 Billion ISK Minmatar Starship Engineering
03.0 Million Datacores 0,639 Billion ISK Molecular Engineering
02.5 Million Datacores 0,549 Billion ISK Nuclear Physics
25.6 Million Datacores 5,517 Billion ISK Minmatar Total
The changes described in the blog will obviously have an affect on supply and demand, and the prices of datacores, so the numbers above could change significantly, but it's a guide. Mechanical Engineering datacores are clearly a special case due to their being used in all T2 ship invention as others have pointed out.
Also, it seems a little strange that Graviton Physics has been assigned to Amarr, since most current Graviton Physics R&D agents are Caldari (37 compared to just 1 Amarr agent, 3 if you include Ammatar agents), and items with graviton/gravimetric in the name have generally been associated with Caldari technology (graviton smartbombs, gravimetric sensors, graviton pulse generator component etc.)
I also agree that the LP payout formula for ship kills looks like it could potentially be exploitable at the moment, though that depends on how the terms in the formula are calculated, which isn't explained in the blog.
As Kusum Fawn said, if the 'Market Value' term for fitted and transported items is based on averages of actual market values, then it would be possible to pick some low value, rarely traded item, purchase all the available units in every region (not difficult for a cheap unpopular item), relist them all at massively inflated prices, wait for the new price to begin affecting the Market Average (perhaps trading the item a few times between alts), and then put the item on a ship in a rival faction and destroy it repeatedly to farm LP. If this kind of trick would require large amounts of ISK and organisation then it could perhaps be ignored, but if the formula applies to the market value of every item in the game then this would be trivially easy to do. The problem could be lessened by making the formula more opaque or introducing complicated terms to exclude outlier prices, but as long as the price is in some way tied to actual market values and covers a broad range of items, there will inevitably be holes in it and people will find a way to exploit them.
An alternative would be to tie the prices to fixed base values (though obviously this worked poorly with mineral prices and led to the insurance fraud problem), or to calculate the item's value not from the market price for the item itself but the average price of the materials it refines to or are required to manufacture it. Those materials (minerals, moon materials etc.) will tend to be more difficult to manipulate and easier to monitor for exploits. Exceptions could be made for NPC traded items such as skillbooks and blueprints, which could have values fixed at the NPC price.
If these problems can be resolved though, or even if cargo and fittings are excluded from the calculation and payouts are based entirely on insurance values, I think this formula should form the basis for the new bounty system and the mercenary contracts that have been discussed. The presentations in Reykjavik stressed a desire to encourage PvP and use of mercenaries with changes to the war system and new features, so with that in mind I'd allow players to take out public and private contracts on individuals, corporations or alliances that would establish a fixed pot of ISK in escrow to be paid out to mercenaries and bounty hunters for destroying targets based on this formula. The FW LP formula could fix the upper limit of payouts to prevent gaming the system, and contracts could allow the flexibility to offer rewards based on a percentage of that upper limit, and to include or exclude certain ship types or fittings/cargo. |