Add reagent spesos value: medicine, blood, elements

[Eb-]

This is a draft and is very much not ready yet! Values need to be tweaked to disallow money farming. You probably want to wait until this is no longer a draft. Thanks for your patience!

Give reagents (mostly) small pricePerUnit.

todo:

• Gather feedback on pricePerUnit values
• Nerf any values that are found to be too high

About the PR

Changes many reagents to have a pricePerUnit value. Most reagents before this change were worth nothing.

• Changes elements to sell for 0.2 Spessos per unit
• Changes basic medicines to sell for around 0.5 to 1.5 Spessos per unit
• Changes advanced medicines to sell for 2-4 Spessos per unit
• The easier the chemical is to make, the less value it is worth
• Inversely, the more difficult or time consuming it is, the more value it is worth
• Blood has value (blood drives, anyone?)
• Narcotics have value, in particular the more illegal ones
• Rare desired reagents have a high pricePerUnit, such as Ichor (25), Cognizine (10), and Omnizine(10)
• The money gained from this should be nowhere near Science or Expeditions, but it should encourage play outside of those two jobs.

Please note: I am an inexperienced contributor! Expect silly issues to pop up. I am only comfortable having this merged if things are tested out by a second party and we can ensure that no infinite money loops can be attained.

Why / Balance

This is a change for the Frontier codebase to attempt to make botany and chemistry a little more friendly to those who are starting out. Giving values to not only the base elements, but also to medicines, narcotics, toxins, etc.

• Encourage alternative methods of play. Botany and Chemistry can be painful to perform for those who do not have money to burn.
• Someone should be able to make a small profit buying chemicals, mixing them, and then reselling them at Cargo.
• Set a minimum value to medicines.
• It does not feel good to spend hours mixing chemicals, just for no player to buy them and for trade and cargo to say the work was worth no value. This at least mitigates this pain
• This is not intended as a get rich quick method. Instead this is to expand alternative income streams.
• You should be able to at least break even while performing chemistry, instead of it being a money sink for time spent.
• Reagents that are commonly asked for by the playerbase should have a slightly higher pricePerUnit, to encourage making the item and having it on hand if someone asks to buy it over common
• This allows medicines that are sold to the market to be rebought via the player market consoles.

Additionally, element reagents bought should have a very small, but present value to help offset costs to a very small percent for unused chemicals

Botanists who end up making, for example, Ambrosia Dues, should get a better value per item rather than say, a banana and berry.

How to test

Run personal server, purchase chemicals at trade, resell them, note the value is a loss. Mix some chemicals, try to make a profit. Especially sell at Cargo for a better return

It should not be possible to make large amounts of money quickly by buying chemicals, mixing them, and then immediately selling them. If a method is found, report this immediately so that it can be addressed!

This also goes for growing plants with strange reagents, the monetary gain should be moderately reasonable, and not a way to get rich quick.

Media

• [ ] I have added screenshots/videos to this PR showcasing its changes ingame, or this PR does not require an ingame showcase

Breaking changes

Changelog

:cl:

• add: Reagents now have a sell value to promote botany and chemistry play

[dvir001]

Chems have no worth right now since they are simple to massive spam and massive farm.

This pr is breaking every point of balance by making the game encourage to mass farm entity.

Or do buy simple chems, combine and sell back on the same POI for infinite cash making.

Not to mention it removes RP worth of selling said entity back to people if someone making meds no longer has worth making them for other peoples

[HandsomeTheEgg]

to be honest , i also had like mentioned this but also more for food chemicals like rice is nothing worth ect...where i can see ts a huge difficulty if you add value to base chems (since you can simple order base chemicals refine and sell for increased price) it would work maybe with stuff like ichor you cant really cultivate or mass farm (cognizine/omnizine could be mass produced but there still if it would be a balanced amount why not ) Cryoxadone for 3.5 speso per units as example would not be so good since you literally can make it out of water if you centrifuge it and with a bluespacebeaker there the trouble comes . if overall chems would be more expensive or you cant just keep buying basic chems to mix it would be easier to balance even the basic chems , but i would atleast cut the basic ones out and only use advanced meds or even harder ones to make at first befor trying to balance even the basic ones around , wouldnt say it removes RP because in the end there people who would bulk sell it because they aim around from the start and only sell if there is demand to people or those who would sell the leftovers because they couldnt sell it to people ( just like if a jug of bruitizine is worth like 3-5k to players it would only be worth like 2.5 speso per unit around 500 for a jug to cargo) it sure needs....a bit more balance but its not a bad thing

[Eb-]

Please remember: This is PR is a draft for a reason! The values are very much flawed at the moment and this is not ready for merge or real review in its current state. I am not looking to add any get rich quick methods of play via this PR and if any are found those should be nerfed into the ground.

My progress on this PR will be slow, as I have other responsibilities in life that I must attend to, I am working on this in my spare time so things will not move fast.

One of the challenges of a change such as this is balancing the numbers, which is what i am currently working on. The ideal sweet spot is simple medications should sell at a loss if bought at trade and sold at cargo, where more advanced medications (in terms of player effort spent) should allow a player to make a minor profit when sold to Cargo, but not trade.

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Chems have no worth right now since they are simple to massive spam and massive farm.

This pr is breaking every point of balance by making the game encourage to mass farm entity.

Or do buy simple chems, combine and sell back on the same POI for infinite cash making.

Not to mention it removes RP worth of selling said entity back to people if someone making meds no longer has worth making them for other peoples

I am looking to avoid mass farming! If you can provide some methods where this is possible that i could mitigate i would appreciate it! One of the most important metrics i am looking at is time spent verses money gained. The last thing I want is to discourage Roleplay for players. Ideally selling chemicals to a player should bring in much more money than to trade or cargo.

Currently I have tested buying with simple chems and chem mixing and have sold at a loss at Trade and Cargo. However I have tested Ambrosia Dues and i have made a monster that is worth too much. The values of Desoxyphedrine and Omnizine will be lowered to correct this.

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to be honest , i also had like mentioned this but also more for food chemicals like rice is nothing worth ect...where i can see ts a huge difficulty if you add value to base chems (since you can simple order base chemicals refine and sell for increased price) it would work maybe with stuff like ichor you cant really cultivate or mass farm (cognizine/omnizine could be mass produced but there still if it would be a balanced amount why not ) Cryoxadone for 3.5 speso per units as example would not be so good since you literally can make it out of water if you centrifuge it and with a bluespacebeaker there the trouble comes . if overall chems would be more expensive or you cant just keep buying basic chems to mix it would be easier to balance even the basic chems , but i would atleast cut the basic ones out and only use advanced meds or even harder ones to make at first befor trying to balance even the basic ones around , wouldnt say it removes RP because in the end there people who would bulk sell it because they aim around from the start and only sell if there is demand to people or those who would sell the leftovers because they couldnt sell it to people ( just like if a jug of bruitizine is worth like 3-5k to players it would only be worth like 2.5 speso per unit around 500 for a jug to cargo) it sure needs....a bit more balance but its not a bad thing

Very good point on the Cryoxadone! I will lower the value there, thanks!

The last portion you mentioned regarding Bruizine is a great case example of what is desired! Selling to cargo should be much less attractive compared to selling to a player, this is intended. The difficult part is finding the sweet spot for these values.

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I encourage comments of potential ways that this system can be cheesed, so that we can avoid any such issues.

[github-actions[bot]]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[dvir001]

Reopen if you are still working on this, but if ill be honest this PR create a balance hell to work with.