Suggestion Looking at cost of war on loka, and economic problems to conquest towns caused by the new RI update

[SayreSlayer]

Looking through a recent thread on the new RI update, I saw a post by crypt:

"Pretty much all players have reported getting about 1-1.5 stacks of diamonds (64 - 96) from one RI.
Breaking it down:

• It currently takes one player 1 hour to fund your entire town for 1 day.
• That's assuming they mined literally only diamonds and no other ores.
• That's also assuming players did not use Silk Touch and Fortune the diamond ores later for what would be about 2.2x the output of 185 diamonds. This pays for another extra day of the generator.
• Seagull Shores currently has a daily cost of 700 shards. That's 58 diamonds for an entire day.
• Your town has 5 actives at this time.
• Seagull Shores pays the majority cost of all of Best in the West with 35 territories (5 over the maximum, because of World Capital)
• Seagull Shores' current Town Balance allows it to run without additional funding for 58 days.
• Seagull Shores is a well established town that has been around for awhile, so the following data is not something newer towns would necessarily have, but that said
  • Seagull Shores' current Stored Wealth accounting only Void Storage is an additional 21,835 shards.
  • Including other containers throughout the town, the final Current Stored Wealth of your town is 176,321 shards.
• In summation, Seagull Shores could run without visiting an RI or mining anything at all for 310 days.
  To confirm, you believe that it is too much of a burden for perhaps up to 2 players having to spend 1 hour on Loka to afford funding an Alliance that is the World Capital of the Server and also has greater than the maximum number of territories for one day?"

And I thought, what a terrible example!

Seagull shores has no real expenses. They live on a stagnant continent with no real conflict, they have massive reserves of wealth, they have veteran players and grinders, and have no need for god gear, pearls, mods etc

In contrast lets just look at the cost of war for Donzula:
Any major fight costs:

https://eldritchbot.com/fight?id=B1lqckl0

60 ais are used on the battlefield alone and AIs that are used at our towns after the fight aren't used, so its essentially 8 ais, post fight, per person. For donzula alone, which makes up about 2/3 of the forces here, thats 40 ais used on the field and another 8 per person post fight, amounting to around 6k in shards per fight in AI costs, as a conservative estimate considering we aren't counting any repairs made at town during the fight.
We also used the upwards of 4000 potions in battles last month, which isn't counting the innumerate amount of wilds fights and raids that do add up over time, which amounts to hours of grinding.

A given expenses for a month costs:

Equipment costs for an active town are much more draining than they seem. Donzula goes through 3-4 pages of vs swords and vs armor a month in assorted wilds fights and deaths, and many members logging on for one or two fights, and subsequently never returning their gear and leaving. This month alone, we have already gone through about 2 pages of all the of above due to our deaths/new recruits. This is the real cost to conquest towns. Conquest is a numbers game of who can bring more new fighters on the server. Having 16 actives and more warping means that it's just that many more new people losing gear. Heres another cost estimate in shards for our losses in sets this month so far, not counting XP, shulkers, echests, eltryas etc:

60 god sets = 28 diamonds * 60 = 1680 diamonds only halfway into the month

30 or so god pickaxes and shovels = 30 * 2 = 60 diamonds

If this trend continues into later in the month, thats already around 3.3k dias a month in armor, tools, and swords alone, or 40,000 thousand shards.

On an extreme month, when we're recruiting and fighting 4-5 fights a month (like the last 2 months) ,we're at around 54 thousand shards a month, Another 4-10k a month is spent on various things like buying restricted resources for mods, building, or realistically, just lost.
Our monthly bill for gear, AIs, tools, and other stuff stated above is around 64k a month, dues add another 17k, meaning 81k in shards monthly.
81k shards is around 6.75k diamonds. Our grinders get around a stack of diamonds per RI trip. Thats 106 trips of mining, monthly, to fund Donzula's bill. /Continued in 2nd post

 

[SayreSlayer]

106 could be expected reasonably of 5-6 hardcore grinders, if thats all that was required of them. However, donzula still requires pot materials, gunpowder, basic materials, pearls (big time investment if not just bought) that take a good amount of time aswell. I can't look to numbers as concrete as equipment loses for this, but if I had to make a ballpark estimate, I'd say lemon and daviq spend around 3-4 hours every other day just brewing pots (50 hours), gathering materials for said pots in nether (realistcally around 30 hours), and gathering gp (probably another 10-20 hours). Other small time wastes like end cities/eltyras + farming make managing a large conquest town almost impossible logistically without having grinders who either no life loka all day (i.e lemon n luf <3) or 1:2/1:3 people grinding as you do warping. Thats a far cry from "one member grinding one hour a day". Conquest is loka's main attraction, yet does little but raise expenses for little reward. For loka to function with the current RI, we would need a way to scale shards gained with territory, a sort of passive shard income if you will.

An easy, balanced way to implement such an idea would be shard mining placeables, akin to radars. Imagine this -- for a high upfront cost in shards and modding resources, you can have a buildable that gives shards/resources like an industry. These structures would only be able to be made on tiles (like radars) and could be destroyed (like radars). To give an incentive to conquest, you could make this buildable could only be placed on a tile that neighbors hostile terroritory, or certain special tiles throughout continents so alliances have spots of land worth actually fighting over. I think passive shard income, based on conquest tiles, would allow Lokas expenses to be fair to both towns holding no land and those controlling continents. Often, I feel as attrition and expenses are forgotten on loka. These mines, even if they gave 30-40k month only, would be a great way to offset costs for those holding land and fighting, while not inflating the economy. Non landing holding towns generally dont suffer the attrition of war (except sandsette), so wouldnt be losing shards actively in the first place to anything other than dues.

The only problem with these mines is the "rich getting richer". For example, seagull isn't fighting anyone, and could probably just use these mines for months without contest. A good fix for this would be mines giving worse and worse returns until a tile changes hands, making these supertowns have to pay in modding mats for retaking these tiles. With this system, rich land holding towns would be paying in another, non-shard resource to fuel their passive shard income, balancing it out in a small way.

There's definitely other ways to balance out towns participating in war and those without, the easiest being just adding back the old RIs, but the main takeaway should be that the logistics of conquest on loka have been made unsustainable with the new RI system, and adding back the old RIs or making tiles give shard income would balance out the current war economy.
TLDR: Add passive shard income or bring back RIs, or im going to start having to outsource my grinding to nosoy

 

[D4ndyO_O]

+1 very good stats i think long words mean good so idk

 

[SayreSlayer]

+1 very good stats i think long words mean good so idk

i could've made half of this in russian and no one would notice

 

[Obstinance]

i’m not gonna read it but i think crypt and mag should be touched that someone cares enough to write all that. good effort!! +1

 

[GeekyKidGamer]

+

 

[SayreSlayer]

i’m not gonna read it but i think crypt and mag should be touched that someone cares enough to write all that. good effort!! +1

ritialin

 

[FoxyBearGames]

+1 I think the mining structure is a good idea. Maybe make this part of the bountiful system, having bountiful wilds territories that these have to be set up on, and, based off your territory/generator balance, they could be better/worse depending on those stats. This could also play into conquest, having it so that the miner gives the output after the few weeks you have it in your territory, and giving an attacker all of the resources if they win a fight. Between this, and the inevitable RI buffs, towns could very easily be funded, and these new types of bounties could be a nice way to help the conquest scene. And, to help smaller towns out, maybe add a Rivina mini-policy to where you gain 10% tax from these.

 

[SilentStormSix]

rich getting richer

no, the poor get richer

 

[Luufer]

+1 we have to prevent nosoy continue playing on loka

 

[Daviq]

+1
I didn't read any of this but since it's the length of an essay, I suppose it has to have reasonable arguments

 

[SigmaFlash]

i want to get richer and i think that is what he is saying so +1

 

[koi0001]

I enjoyed reading those posts. Good suggestions

EDIT: I really like the idea of some form of diminishing returns for towns that are able to have 0 conflict, risk or outgoing immediate costs.

 

[SayreSlayer]

Going to double check the data over and make sure everything right I want to make something clear in some of my conclusions as I was being hyperbolic a bit in these posts:
1: You do not need to have the 1:2-1:3 for grinding whatsoever. In donzulas case, we're still funded by 3-4 grinders for about 15-16 active players. My biggest complaint is that to towns in conquest sustain large expenses that other towns don't experience. The current RI's aren't bad enough that dues and taxes become unmanageable, and the shard cost itself in conflict isn't bad. It's when you have to AFK pots, grind pot mats, grind pearls, GP, modding mats, and other grinds that are apart of loka like leveling make the general grind of loka overwhelming. It's also notable that grinders, generally, are hardcore players who are involved in other facets of loka. In our towns case, our leaders are our grinders. This means we have to spend extensive time managing our alliances, town politics etc, which, while much more engaging than grinding, leave less time than other town members for grinding overall.

2: Eldritch isn't able to model consumables outside of bz, and I did overestimate some of these values. However, I did want to bring up this is essentially our worst possible costs. The month I modeled is a month where we have 4 major fights, recruited new people, lost gear to inactivty + wilds fights etc. In reality, the only month that was close to the month I modeled was before new RI's were even released, a few months back. Regardless, even this month, our costs are still around 2/3-3/4 of what I modeled here. I think my conclusions about shard/ai loss in general stand.

3: Donzula is an extreme case in every sense of the matter. Equipment costs are pretty much all avoidable if you simply dont die in wilds/drop gear/dont lost actives. However, when you are constantly recruiting and cycling through players (i.e any major town who needs to recruit for conquest), equipment loss is somewhat inevitable. Although donzula burns through gear probably more often than any other town due to our constant raiding and wilds conflicts, I still think its important to include our equipment losses as any major conquest alliance/town will experience these to a smaller degree. Also, equipment costs are generally a one-time thing so :shrug:

I've heard that staff are looking into my data rn so they have an excuse to call me out and dismiss this post so I wanted to be transparent about how I got to the numbers I arrived at here:
How I got the bill for a month of conquest at Donzula (assuming 4 major fights):
- 60 ais are used at the battle for Donz. At town either during or after, 8 or so are used per person to repair their gear. Donzula brings like 15-16 warping. So the ai cost, at 32 shards per ai would be ( https://eldritchbot.com/fight?id=B1lqckl0 )
(60*32) + (8*16*32)
1920 + 4096 = 6016 in ais per fight.
6016 * 4 = 24064
- 1 thousand potions are used by donzula per fight, so that would amount to 4 thousand potions per month. One page is 54 pots, so thats 74 pages of pots used per month ( https://eldritchbot.com/fight?id=B1lqckl0)
-In the last 15 days, donzula has gone through

43 boots
51 leggings
50 helments
52 chestplates
70ish swords (will update with actual number soon)
Its more like 95-100 gsets a month instead of 60 with 140 swords, which costs a total of 26 diamonds per set + sword. So:
Shards for sets = 2400 diamonds * 12 = 28000 + 3360 = 31360 monthly.
On top of that, we went through 40ish tools, amounting to 80 diamonds, adding another 1000 shards into the mix.

So, in a month with 4 fights and one where we're raiding/losing gear, we're burning through about 24k + 32k shards, not counting any gear gained from those wilds fights, as I'm really only talking about our expenses here, not our profit. So we're at 56k shards lost during a month of fighting. I stand by my estimate of 4-10k lost or just used to buy modding mats etc, putting us at 63000k a month of conquest. With another 17k of dues, donzulas monthly cost is left at a neat 80,000, slightly lower than I estimated. It really doesn't change much, but I wanted to make sure my numbers were right by feathering everything I estimated yesterday and double checking eldtrich. 80k doesn't seem like much, but consider we're also needing like 1,6k of all major potion mats aswell, along with however many pearls n other things, I think the current RI's are unsustainable. After talking with Froggy, we snowballed some ideas like buffing non-diamond resources in shards, which makes sense to me. I think theres two fundamental problems rn with the economy and conquest that need addressing regardless if staff wants to budge on RIs at all:

1: conquest costs too much for pretty much 0 reward (balak is terrible, rivi is about to get massively nerfed, cap bounts are bugged and getting nerfed from what I heard, and regular tiles are a joke)
2: diamonds are too tied to shards. this makes supplying diamond gear extremely expensive, as the economy needs to be balanced around them. effectively diamonds have been deflated far too much by the new ri update, and considering conquest requires alot of diamonds to begin with, war ends up being insanely expenisve

addendum: i accidently counted anyone inserting armor into the vs as a removal but the number are effectively the same just less by a couple thousand shards so whatever. ill stop textwalling leaving thread as is until mag adds "no plants to implement". in that case expect a novel on epic minecraft economy

 

[Haldyir]

Love it, and all facts are backed up with intensive research.+2

 

[Sparky___]

It's also notable that grinders, generally, are hardcore players who are involved in other facets of loka. In our towns case, our leaders are our grinders. This means we have to spend extensive time managing our alliances, town politics etc, which, while much more engaging than grinding, leave less time than other town members for grinding overall.

This point is wholly irrelevant in large part because the time this actually takes is negligible. Source: I've been a part of various large alliances engaged in massive war. This is just being used as an excuse to claim you need more.

3: Donzula is an extreme case in every sense of the matter. Equipment costs are pretty much all avoidable if you simply dont die in wilds/drop gear/dont lost actives. However, when you are constantly recruiting and cycling through players (i.e any major town who needs to recruit for conquest), equipment loss is somewhat inevitable. Although donzula burns through gear probably more often than any other town due to our constant raiding and wilds conflicts, I still think its important to include our equipment losses as any major conquest alliance/town will experience these to a smaller degree. Also, equipment costs are generally a one-time thing so :shrug:

This point exposes the flaw with this mentality. While I agree that there will always be largely unavoidable equipment losses as recruited players go inactive and do not return, the issue here is if you are recruiting and equipping players with things such as diamond armor and pickaxes, there is no reason you can't send those people to an RI. You might recall my analysis from the previous post breaking down income from just 3 players.

Let's assume your town is fighting a war and is paying the maximum amount of upkeep, whilst averaging 1.5 stacks of diamond ore per trip to the resource isle AND makes use of Fortune 3 to give (on average) a 120% increase in the amount of diamonds. From a single trip, by one player, you would get roughly 211 diamonds. From that you would get 2,532 shards. Subtracting the 1800 for upkeep leaves you with 732 shards. This is one player. If three of you mine, say the three actives required to keep a town alive, you have an extra 5,796 shards in total to do what you want with.

Your town (Donzula) has 16 actives. If JUST HALF of those people went mining (in a single day, 1 hour per person) you would gain 18,456 shards. Almost 1/4 your total monthly cost by your own metrics.

donzulas monthly cost is left at a neat 80,000

In a week you'd have met your monthly cost almost twice over. For fun, if you sent all 16 actives to the RI just once, you'd reach nearly half of your total monthly cost at 38,712 shards. Now I'm not daft. Asking 7 players to all hit the RI for 7 days in a row is not exactly a thing that happens, but these costs are attainable in a reasonable amount of time. It even only takes an hour per person! That leaves plenty of time to do other things, you don't even have to do it every day.

Donzula is an extreme case in every sense of the matter.

I'm glad you mentioned this, since we got a look at the math we can see that these big scary numbers aren't really all that scary. By your own admission they will be lower for most other towns/alliances and I am inclined to agree. If you can reach these numbers, and you can, in a reasonable amount of time, they definitely will be able to do so as well.

And I thought, what a terrible example!

The one thing I can understand is something for newer towns/players who have a steep hill to climb as they do things like leveling, making their first sets/tools/etc. They do have a more upfront cost to getting into conquest.

 

[FroggyFruit1357]

I really want to urge people to message an LCR if you have an issue with a feature. I had a super productive conversation with Lemon and Sayre about the resource isles and I talked back and forth with Mag about it. Nothing is going to get accomplished arguing over different town budgets. Everyone has very different town dynamics and solely basing "what a town should cost" on what someone's actual costs are is stupid.

 

[Sparky___]

Budgets aren't being debated. What is being debated is whether or not the RIs currently allow for a sufficient income source to maintain costs of running a town and participating in conquest. The forums and LCRs are both great ways to talk about Loka's features and address any concerns so they should both be utilized as seen fit.

 

[SayreSlayer]

"This point is wholly irrelevant in large part because the time this actually takes is negligible. Source: I've been a part of various large alliances engaged in massive war. This is just being used as an excuse to claim you need more. "

Agreed was a tangent

"This point exposes the flaw with this mentality. While I agree that there will always be largely unavoidable equipment losses as recruited players go inactive and do not return, the issue here is if you are recruiting and equipping players with things such as diamond armor and pickaxes, there is no reason you can't send those people to an RI. You might recall my analysis from the previous post breaking down income from just 3 players. "

First off, that quote was to discuss mostly about donzula is a extreme example in resource consumption and the numbers in Donzula are higher than normal and shouldn't be considered average for Lokan towns, not to complain about people going inactive.
To address your actual point here, the skill level required to be useful in conquest in Loka is frankly insane. Some of the best players ww play here, on both sides, and finding pvpers who can survive conquest fights is already a massive hurdle. Finding ones who are willing to grind their own gear, supply their own pots, grind their own pearls, AND be active in conquest fights is nearly impossible, but is what you are suggesting here. Recruiting people just to grind isn't viable aswell, especially for towns focused on pvp. Loka's main attraction is conquest. If you join a conquest town, and can't fight, you're simply missing out on much of what your town is for. That's not even mentioning the high level of elitism and toxicity in the loka and competitive 1.9 community as well that worser players get the brunt of. Anyone who can't participate in conquest, in a conquest town at war, might as well move to a different server which is less complex and an easier learning curve than loka's difficult one.

'Your town (Donzula) has 16 actives. If JUST HALF of those people went mining (in a single day, 1 hour per person) you would gain 18,456 shards. Almost 1/4 your total monthly cost by your own metrics.'

Did you even read the entire post? Look:
"106 could be expected reasonably of 5-6 hardcore grinders, if tats all that was required of them. However, donzula still requires pot materials, gunpowder, basic materials, pearls (big time investment if not just bought) that take a good amount of time aswell."

Especially for a town without the balak grinding buffs, shards/diamonds aren't even 30-40% of the grind to fund the town. Potions, gunpowder, enchants, modding mats, pearls etc all take up an equal if not greater amount of time than just shards do. I also agree that if 1/4,1/3 of our actives grinded regularly it would be manageable. In fact I even said it here:
" In donzulas case, we're still funded by 3-4 grinders for about 15-16 active players, and many others warping."
But for reasons stated above, that 1:3-1:4 ration is hard to achieve, if not impossible. There's a reason most major land holders lack grinders/

" In a week you'd have met your monthly cost almost twice over. For fun, if you sent all 16 actives to the RI just once, you'd reach nearly half of your total monthly cost at 38,712 shards. Now I'm not daft. Asking 7 players to all hit the RI for 7 days in a row is not exactly a thing that happens, but these costs are attainable in a reasonable amount of time. It even only takes an hour per person! That leaves plenty of time to do other things, you don't even have to do it every day. "


Agreed and I said that a 1:2/1:3 active/warping to grinding ratio is ideal several times over now, and also why that isn't achievable realistically

" I'm glad you mentioned this, since we got a look at the math we can see that these big scary numbers aren't really all that scary. By your own admission they will be lower for most other towns/alliances and I am inclined to agree. If you can reach these numbers, and you can, in a reasonable amount of time, they definitely will be able to do so as well."
Agreed, and shards are easy to get, even for donzula, as stated above.The problem is conquest requires much more grinding than just dues and diamonds. I also dont think RIs have to be changed whatsoever, as they are balanced for towns not participating in conquest.

I think I've misconstrued the intent of my suggestion. Really, all I'm asking is that conquest become more rewarding. The recent RI change made me realize how much conquest costs in shards, and, much more importantly, other resources. Expenses in shards and diamonds alone are multiplies higher than the regular towns, while the constant losses and grinds for other conquest related gear dwarf losses of a regular town. And for what? Policies are overall underwhelming and mostly serve to just to make the grind for conquest gear marginally easier, and restricted sources are often useless for anything but mods, which are also for conquest. The circular logic in these 'rewards' makes going after capital seem like a fool's errand. Even rivinia is better than balak, and is essentially uncontested. Why should any town in the right mind ever participate in conquest in the current system, other than for glory? And is holding land really worth the amount of time grinding that is required in practice? If we really want to go further down this rabbit hole, I can make a timetable for donzulas grinders next week, down to the hour to exemplify what I'm referring to.

 

[TheFreshLemon]

This point is wholly irrelevant in large part because the time this actually takes is negligible. Source: I've been a part of various large alliances engaged in massive war. This is just being used as an excuse to claim you need more.

You've been in an alliance with towns that have been here from the start and like your town, they and you are filthy rich, so this doesn't even matter to you, because like you said you only go mining maybe once a month with the old RI. What he's trying to say is the cost of war is sucks for new towns and alliances, with little to gain other then some land.

Your town (Donzula) has 16 actives. If JUST HALF of those people went mining (in a single day, 1 hour per person) you would gain 18,456 shards. Almost 1/4 your total monthly cost by your own metrics.

We have 16 actives, but like Sayre said the only ones who grind are really the leaders. The people who are seen as actives are people who logged on for fights that lasted 30 minutes or longer. At one point we had 33 actives, yet you didn't see them all grinding did you? No, because they're simply fighters who log on for fights because they only enjoy the Conquest aspect of Loka. Your idea of getting these 16 actives to mine and group mine doesn't really exist for each town. The 1.9 community just sits and grinds on kit pvp servers and doesn't actually know how to grind unless they come from servers like towny.