Why you purchase Unidentified Objects

[Arisaya]

What I propose is sort of like this:
You make the following items:
-regular known item
-a real item w variable names that does a random effect - this item is sold in 'bargain bin' sort of situations as a cheap unknown type item

I could probably make a simple mod to illustrate this.

This is mainly an idea for things like roms, rings and barrels.

[Atarlost]

@Atarlost: If futuristic shops are like shops today, then yes, its not thematic. However, also consider the fun of roms and barrels (at least, I find it fun). What about balance issues? What about shield crystals, alien devices (tailkon is corporate), and potentially the newer enhancement devices as well? Will we ever see a damaged ion crystal again? How much easier is it to find an ion reflect crystal if you don't have to aquire shield generators to test them out, potentially wasting the crystal in the process?

I don't find roms and barrels fun. I find them annoying. Since you're the only one calling for unknown items in shops I don't think I'm alone.

Balance can be served by raising prices since the only effect unidentified stuff has beyond annoying most players is to suck up money.

Shield crystals are not balanced at this time. My preference is to remove decayed etherium and give the reflect crystals a 50% chance of giving passthrough for the relavent damage type instead of reflect. The other crystals aren't individually powerful enough to be an issue.

Taikon ventures should only be carrying stuff with the Taikon modifier, none of which is unidentified. They have absolutely nothing to do with the issue of identification.

[F50]

since the only effect unidentified stuff has beyond annoying most players is to suck up money.

So you don't find ion resistance, ablative/reactive, regen, or carbon/orthosteel nano's useful? What about dyon dust? Armor repair paste can save damaged armor, including high-level armors like heavy orthosteel.

Taikon ventures should only be carrying stuff with the Taikon modifier, none of which is unidentified. They have absolutely nothing to do with the issue of identification.

Look in a few Tailkon stations, you can find alien weapons/shields in there (usually one of each per station?).

Shield crystals are not balanced at this time. My preference is to remove decayed etherium and give the reflect crystals a 50% chance of giving passthrough for the relavent damage type instead of reflect. The other crystals aren't individually powerful enough to be an issue.

Ok, so corporate trading posts carry (and identify) them, so you quickly figure out what all of the crystals do. However, you pay through the nose to get one (because unidentified crystals are much cheaper than identified ones), and then it may or may not be helpful. Hmmmm...

I like this.

[Fossaman]

What always gets me is that once the player has identified something, all stations charge the identified price for it and seem to know what it is. Are they hacking the player's database? Does the player exclaim "Oh heavens, a rare and valuable thingamawidget!" so that they know what they have? Stations like Thor's ought to have a chance to be oblivious to the true nature of what they're selling even if the player knows. Maybe Adventurer's outfitters and Trading Posts too.

[Aeonic]

since the only effect unidentified stuff has beyond annoying most players is to suck up money.

So you don't find ion resistance, ablative/reactive, regen, or carbon/orthosteel nano's useful? What about dyon dust? Armor repair paste can save damaged armor, including high-level armors like heavy orthosteel.

Its not that barreled items aren't useful, its just that no one is going to experiment with objects that may permanently influence their expensive armor without knowing what it is. I'm not going to randomly apply a barrel only to find that its a resistance that I totally don't need and now I'm unable to apply a difference resistance that I was hoping for, unless I happen to have some enhancement removal stuff handy. And I'm not going to use barrels of armor repair unless I know for a fact that they're barrels of armor repair! (Whoops, looks like that one was radioactive!) Barrels are useful when they're identified - when they're not, they just take up cargo space until you decide to go through the tedious process of equipping alternative armor and testing (wasting) them all.

The risk should be there for people who aren't willing to pay to find out what they're hauling before experimenting with it. Or for people who aren't willing to purchase it from a store.

[Atarlost]

Barrels have all sorts of problems. First, they're too heavy to be worth carrying except as a freighter unless they're extremely important, like regen barrels ordered at a corporate enclave that you carry while waiting on armor worthy of them. Second they all suck except regen and the repair barrels. Dyon is important, but only for a couple system levels, and if shields get fixed will drop back to uselessness. Third the repair barrels are useless except by the freighter because of their mass.

Right now there are only two reasons to test barrels: The armor upgrade exploit and to find repairing nanos if you have a tinker so you can get an early patcher arm. None of the early barrels are a killer app and regen will have to be ordered from a corporate outpost, as will Dyon dust if you want to use it. There aren't any other ways to get four barrels of them reliably.

Roms you're forced to test because there is a killer app: the targeting rom. Weapon Optimizer roms are also very nice, but you'll have to order them from a corporate outpost because they're rare by the time you actually need them.

Algorithm cubes may as well not exist for anyone not flying a freighter (and with more options for your device slots in 1.0 they're more likely to be ignored by freighter pilots as well). If they were identified players might go "oh, that would be useful," and consider installing a quantum CPU at least temporarily, but when you don't know what they are they're garbage and therefore so is the quantum CPU.

If Taikon ventures are carrying alien equipment the problem is that they're carrying alien equipment, not that it would be identified if stuff in shops were identified. All other named corporate dealers carry only stuff with the appropriate modifier.

[F50]

Barrels have all sorts of problems. First, they're too heavy to be worth carrying except as a freighter unless they're extremely important...the repair barrels are useless except by the freighter because of their mass.

A very good reason to stash such things (so you don't feel the effects of their mass), especially repair paste, in a crate somewhere. Unless of course you're using regen barrels...

Second they all suck except regen and the repair barrels.

I used to think this way too, until I realized that they didn't save you all that much. Instead I stick with the armor repair paste (you can get 40 in an order) and stations. The reason is that regen doesn't actually improve your armor. Sure you'll never have to go to a station to repair, its far to annoying to do so when you refuel. If I get "hull breach imminent", I just go to my repair paste stash. In contrast, ion resistance barrels can save your life when fighting a Phobos (until you figure out the patterns), as they approximately double the amount of ion damage you can take.

Dyon is important, but only for a couple system levels, and if shields get fixed will drop back to uselessness.

What do you mean "shields get fixed"?

Right now there are only two reasons to test barrels: The armor upgrade exploit and to find repairing nanos if you have a tinker so you can get an early patcher arm. None of the early barrels are a killer app and regen will have to be ordered from a corporate outpost, as will Dyon dust if you want to use it. There aren't any other ways to get four barrels of them reliably.

No, they aren't as nice as late game. However ablative is still very useful for its cost. Furthermore, as long as you have level III (full hp) armor, ~500cr and a CW station, testing barrels you find from wreaks early game is completely safe. After all, your armor isn't expensive enough to worry about, and won't stick around enough that you'll need a specific enhancement, and most of the enhancements are pretty helpful (rad-immune, anyone?).

Roms you're forced to test because there is a killer app: the targeting rom. Weapon Optimizer roms are also very nice, but you'll have to order them from a corporate outpost because they're rare by the time you actually need them.

Perhaps, but my current game I had 4 (minus the test one) before that time. There's only two bad roms. The more common one is only temporary, and the other one will just cost you a weapon. If you're testing early, it'll be a low-level weapon, and therefore a cheap fix. I think the main thing here is: why not test roms?

What's wrong with a cash sink?

Algorithm cubes may as well not exist for anyone not flying a freighter

True. I can't say much for certain about the rest of what you have to say about the CPU since I'm a wolfen pilot. IIRC, one of the more common ones either disabled a target, or all ships within a certain radius of the player. However, I suspect that the CPU is undervalued since we started getting a lot more from the Luminous Assemblers a few versions ago. Part of the problem is that not all of them are unidentified. All of the identified ones are almost completely useless. Perhaps that has something to do with it? I think the big question regarding the usefulness of the CPU is: Are Phobos Dreadnoughts and Demios destroyers immune to the effects of the CPU? Are the new ships in Heretic (I haven't heard anything except that there is new ships there, no spoilers other than yes or no please) immune? If not, then IMO we have an undervalued device.

What about the new enhancement devices (longreach howitzer speed-loader, etc.)?. If they aren't orderable, then this could change the balance significantly. The FFH with double +fast is a fearsome weapon.

Finally. the most important source of unknowns is alien technology. All shops that happen to sell this should not identify.

[Atarlost]

The problem is that all your solutions are annoying as heck. Stashes are not safe from either dscavenger nomads or gaian processors, making stashing only viable in the mid-game, not the early or late game. Swapping armors for testing is a pain in the ass.

If you want a cash sink raise the prices on the actually useful roms, barrels, and such, increase the number of refueling stations and reduce the amount of fuel enemies carry, give autons more firepower so they're worth using while still being flimsy so they need frequent replacement, impose a tax structure, or just let the player wire money home to the family Domina dragged him or her away from.

The worst kind of cash sink is one that encourages the player to discover and exploit a peculiarity of the pricing code.

[Bobby]

I would expect that even in the future, the price tag (or catalog entry) on an object for sale would also include the name (1 gal milk: $2.45, etc). While a novice pilot might not know what something does exactly based on the name alone, one of the more experienced pilots at the bar probably does, and there has to be some equivalent to "auto repair for dummies".

[Atarlost]

That's what the Rowena roms do. All ID tells you is the name, which should be on the box a new whatever comes in, and in many cases painted or engraved directly on the item.

[Sponge]

Untrue, you just need one titanium segment to test any number of barrels. Often only the first one will have effect, but if you don't care about the armor enhancement exploit, then just use one and save yourself the trouble. Most barrels (at least from armor dealers) are safe to apply over current enhancements, as long as your armor can take some organic material damage

My apologies; looking back my post, I was very unclear. I did not mean to imply that all five barrels were to be id'd at once, but rather over the course of play session. In any case, the point I was trying to make is that barrels are a pain in the arse to deal with. They try to force you to take a risk, but give you an easy opt-out that is always the best option. Problem is, that opt-out is tedious and gets old really fast. And then you feel bad because you just wasted a good barrel. It's not that the risk vs. reward isn't in line, because that's not too far off, but that most of the time I want to play the game: not jack around with dockscreens for ten minutes. I guess what I'm saying is that it's an annoying mechanic that could easily be made less annoying without negatively impacting balance or whatever else.

[F50]

Ok, you've convinced me. I'm still unsure about cubes and the new devices though.

The problem is that all your solutions are annoying as heck. Stashes are not safe from either dscavenger nomads or gaian processors, making stashing only viable in the mid-game, not the early or late game.

Stashing *should* still work in late game, make your stash on a planet near the ringers/teratons. Sure there's a fair chance it'll blow up, so don't stash anything you can't do without. If all it is is armor repair paste (which you shouldn't be using that much anyways), you haven't lost much.

Armor repair paste is cheap enough that small quantities of it can be stored by selling it to shops (late-game).

Your right it doesn't work in early-game, but you can't get regen barrels there anyways.

Swapping armors for testing is a pain in the ass.

As I said, you've convinced me about barrels. However: I simply don't understand why people find this so annoying. Do you use the mouse to navigate dockscreens? Memorized key sequences make this easy (\n = [enter]):
1. buy armor: "cb [select item]\n"
2. Buy barrel(s) "cb [select item]\n [select next items (often adjacent)]\n"
3. install armor: "dapi[ESC x 3]"
4. "u [select item]\n\n"
5. repeat 4 as necessary. All of this is really easy with the keyboard, except perhaps #4.