Theodore Baggins

One of the difficulties is that the modded servers are on a 4 hour dynamic pricing cycle. In theory, this would help—the price can only change +/-5% after 4 hours. In practice, this means that you actually get a very dampened response in the positive, because the likelihood of players not selling within a 4 hour period is, well... there is no likelihood of that. If you had unlimited scrap, you could actually combat this quite effectively by setting up your own store to buy up flowers at, say, 1.5 scrap each, sit on that horde yourself and wait for the flowers to flip over to 2 scrap. Although it wouldn't be the full 2 scrap, your stable shop prices would get them more scrap than if they used barn, and you'd benefit by being able to sell off your own supply at the increased value before it tanked again. It's worth noting that, at least on Elysium, there were some bugs with some of the vendors with stock and pricing upon restart and/or reloading certain plugins. Have you seen the situation improve on AU Scourge in the past week?

Questo mese ho visto molti negozi sulla mapa venderli dopo la prima settimana. Era questo che hai visto, anche? Per favore, perdona il mio italiano; sono anni che non studio!

One of the things that I've thought about would be adding a "perk" for subscribers of being able to do drone trading from one's base. However, I can see there being major problems if there were suddenly a proliferation of drone shops all attempting to buy wood from Outpost simultaneously... A simpler idea for a "reward" would be a credit for one free item from /shop. If you look at the economy, most of the net worth that's spent on items is for very large quantities. I think it'd be cool to cash in the coupon and get free Christmas baubles or s waterwell hazzy.

Interesting idea, but I want to be sure I understand it correctly. Could this be done simply by turning off excess conveyors after a split or combiner and turning them on when needed for faster throughput? Could you give an example?

Farmers are a critical part of the RustEZ community. However, compared to more casual players—or players who just have a farm on the side—the "real" farmers have a footprint that can have a significant impact on the players around them, as well as the server tick rate. When the population is a mix of those who just want to fight some zombies to casually gain net worth and players with 144-plot farms and highly-automated recycling, it can be unpleasant for all. Instead of penalizing players by introducing build restrictions or modifying the economy, I propose we lean into the ethos of the super-farmer and introduce a new server that offers significant incentives for them: a sort of "Elysium for farmers". Imagine, for a moment, a server where the special events are farm-based, and there are buffs for farmers. Ideas include: A pop-up "farmer's market" (like a travelling vendor) that will trade scrap for the "in-season" crops: corn in potatoes in January, berries in May, corn in August, pumpkins in November. An arctic flower exchange monument that you must fight through to exchange your flowers at higher prices than the ranch Occasional convoys (of tractors?) with high-grade clones. A significant buff to large water catchers in the jungle, making it desirable to build off-grid farms in environments that are traditionally hostile. Periodic bee migration that enhances yield at certain times Of course then there is the recycling aspect, and the difficulty of keeping a suitable tick rate for conveyors to work. Ideas to help with this include: Taking a cue from pumpjacks, make workbenches/crafters "upgradeable" with a corresponding increase to yield. This would at least cut down on the amount of crafters. Conveyors that can pull from more stacks in a box, increasing throughput. Better returns on flowers in the /shop to increase direct-to-shop sales instead of going the recycling route. Admittedly, these are all half-baked ideas. But I think a server that catered to farmers (and didn't have zombie AI) might help free up resources for Scourge and Survival, and the economics might make sense if the farmers with pumpjacks migrated over and the other servers became more playable for new players who expect a certain framerate (and would be a new income stream).

Apparently that car was just cursed; I couldn't replicate the problem with another.

It appears to be that I can't access the inventory of the vehicle at all outside of my building privilege—even in the wide open... which makes modular cars a bit useless right now unless you leave them unlocked

Server: [US] Elysium In-game name: Theodore Baggins Build name: Panopticon Escape Map Grid ID: P9 Very-much a work-in-progress. The architectural concept of a panopticon is essentially a prison where all the prisoners can be seen in their cells from a central guard pillar. Although the idea is old, it's a common feature of many films—the one that comes to mind is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol III. One has never been fully built in the real world, though. The architectural concept has some fundamental flaws! This build is a prison escape: find the flaws in the prison, disable defenses, unlock the doors, make it out alive. images taken at angles to avoid showing too much. The base is built as a "level" so most of the decoration will be inside! Oct 19: Oct 16

This happened to a third battering ram while I was parking the fourth in the garage I just made (in hopes of preventing this). I wasn't in this one when it teleported, and all that was left in its place was the broken piece of a door (it actually had to be mined to move it).

(duplicate post; sorry!)

I love anything with an abandoned amusement park!

Great! I hope the suggestions help! I agree that the convoy needs some teeth to do some damage to a building, along the same lines as what the higher level helis used to do. It was uniquely satisfying for the build to get partially demolished and still be able to bring the heli down. Another thought would be for the heli to work with the APC's to also fire before it gets line of sight— a volley of fire rockets to a convoy base's windows would definitely make it harder to manage. Also, sometimes I think a bit too much about things and I can type way faster than I can talk and it can come across way more intense than I intend. You also probably saw my best attempt I've made so far at taking the convoy solo—probably primed with adrenaline by dodging the shells from that nightmarish convoy's brads while on the Intergalactic Market earlier! I got pretty lucky to even get two brads from that—I don't think I've ever tried to hit something with an HV rocket from that far before. I had no other strategy than to get the shots that I could while staying alive... admittedly, not the best plan, but I was excited to see one. It definitely helped to have Alpha1 distracting them at the other end of the convoy. I've been thinking about the challenge of trying to build a structure along the path of say a medium convoy and try to take it during the hour that you have from just what you build. It would definitely be a wildly different experience since you probably couldn't do any electrical during that time. Event idea perhaps?

After hitting a hard convoy last night without aggroing the tanks, I've been thinking a lot about both the hidden design of well-built convoy base designs and ways to balance the system. However, I'm concerned that there's been a lot of talk about taking turrets off the table when building a base, and I worry it overlooks a lot of nuance. I think we can agree that the amount of loot yielded by fighting a convoy is often disproportionate to the amount of work or skill—with or without a convoy base. The amount of components from the NPC's, alone, can be recycled into enough scrap to make a level 3 (pending blueprint scrap changes) and it's quite possible to end up with multiple L9's even from a medium convoy. @Sean_Rendo19 has developed his convoy bases incredibly quickly over the last three wipes, and when you see how quickly the NPC's go down, it's easy to miss the things that make them more so powerful. Some of the hidden features are the peeks that are precisely aligned so a player can hide from the APC's, a wall-framed second floor raising the fighting floor out of the line of fire or splash damage, and embrasures that are both ablative armor (armor that protects by being designed to fail in the process of protection) while also allowing precise shots to take out snipers and stragglers. When Sean and the team added turrets on the other side it also meant that they NPC's no longer had any cover from their vehicles (though I'd argue that they're not the brightest at finding cover in the first place. We even have a redundant protected electrical system for lighting instead of passthrough so that one light breaking doesn't cut all of them. The prime example, though, of the convoy driving innovation is the added chain-link fences in front of turrets: at the beginning of this wipe, we had a turret problem; while they worked well, we were chewing through them quickly enough (and didn't have the best guns for them) that computers and CCTV cameras were important to hold onto. As a measure of protection, Sean and the team put in chain-link fences to act as ablative armor for the turrets, themselves. Fences are cheap—turrets aren't. Since then, we haven't lost a single turret. There are other critical points that I'm probably missing here. Sean and the other members of the team are the experts here: these are just the invisible innovations that I've been able to point at, myself having seen things progress. It's that sort of quick adaption that makes me worry that we're in an arms race against the convoy, and I worry that removing turrets from the equation altogether might not balance things in and of itself. Just like taking a heli without a base, a good god-rock and slowly keeping pressure by alternating damage and healing can yield similar (if more time-consuming) amounts of loot. I think the work that @Catatonic21and @Raul have done to make more convoy paths is an excellent start towards de-escalating the arms race. And I think the increased damage of the nightmarish convoy APC's was really exciting to see when I took it without much cover. However, I think there are other ways to de-escalate further that are alternatives to removing turret targeting entirely. Some ideas for changing the reward-to-skill/time include: Lower the amount of loot from the dropped NPC's makes it far less economical Changing the amount of crates, and/or adjusting the loot tables of them so that we don't get an overwhelming supply of M2's to feed into turrets Make the bags dropped by NPC's killed by turrets have a certain chance to despawn—reward players for manually taking them out. For turret balancing, these steps could be taken: Lower turret health significantly Remove the ability to use fully automatic weapons in turrets Lower the amount of ammo allowed per turret Make turrets consume health of the gun inside Remove the ability for the turrets to target and shoot through chain-link fences There are also changes to the convoy, itself that could help by adding much more pressure to their buildings: Put rocket or grenade launcher NPC's on the flatbeds of the modular cars; the turrets don't target them, and they can do considerable damage to buildings, players, and turrets if a player didn't prioritize them. Allow the APC's to target the building of any player who has hit the convoy, even without line of sight (I think it's best for this to be strictly limited to players who have hit the convoy so someone with a tommy and a garage off the road doesn't end up reviving into rubble). Adding to the last point, consistent covering fire directed towards the players would make peeking out with a rocket launcher much more dangerous and staying accurate with a rocket launcher while moving is tough. Sometimes I like to think of things in terms of combat robotics. There are times when the engineering of one team far outstrips what others can do in a tournament. Most of the time, this drives other builders to adopt similar strategies the next year, such as changing armor, choosing higher density batteries, tuning driver boards, etc. In addition, the actual battlebox will undergoes changes like adding hazards to make it harder for, say, a flipper's wedge to get underneath another bot. There are times when a robot becomes too good (or too dangerous) and a rule has to be made to level the proverbial playing field, but they are rare. They are almost a badge of pride—builders who pushed the boundaries (yet were within the rules) so far that the innovation had to be limited. But that stagnates things in a way that can feel like a gut-punch to builder that spent so much time and money building a system, and being penalized for doing it too well. I'm not impartial to this; Sean is on my team, and I have benefitted directly from the convoys I've run in our base. However, I'm genuinely trying to think of solutions for balancing that drive further innovation. I agree that changes need to be made but I think it's best for the community to soften that gut-punch by not erasing the knowledge gained already. I'm all for upping the ante and lowering the reward; just cautious about completely changing the game. ----------------------------------------------------------------- PS: I think it's important to keep in mind that this is also all against the backdrop of the difficulty of other events and monuments. A solo can land a mini on cargo with a tommy and a double barrel, clear it without dying, and get four locked crates plus enough lootables that it can take halfway around the map to get everything. You can also take out some of the bosses by just mowing them down with a car. As with much of RustEZ, players are often the ones ultimately in charge of setting the difficulty level for themselves.

I have an extra. I'll DM you a code for a box outside my base the next time I'm on. They're fun, but not necessary for my build this wipe!

Sounds Good! I think I might have both forgotten how rare they are and just gotten really lucky on my cargo ship runs last wipe. I think I might have been a bit alarmist about this; next time I'll check with more people; bug reports should probably for known issues instead of suspected ones!