Ships and Their Gosh Darn No Good Wood

Adrik

As the title implies, when shipfitting was added (around if not at the same time as Foraging), wood was given an alternative for ships! Numerous commodities were, and they were actually required to get ship improvements like weapons and the like, which can generally be seen as a good thing. After about.. 14 irl months at this point, I think it can be safely said that there is a massive issue with ship commodities as a whole, and the entire system needs to be reworked, or admins need to maybe step in and try to get things back on course.

Currently, there are 7 commodities that is needed for the majority of ship commodities.. and their costs, while fine on their own, don't quite fit the bill for what they actually reduce on a ship.

Coal

Wood

Ironore

Fat

Cloth

Rope

Carbon

Steel can be used in place of the carbon, but breaking everything down to it's most basic components has coal at 8 or something gold, fat at an indeterminable amount (let's just say 15), rawiron at 30, cloth/rope/fibre all at 20~25ish, carbon at 140, and wood at 230+.

In retrospect, you need 50 wood for shippitch and shipwood... with shipiron requiring 60 ironore, 60 coal, and 10 carbon.  For reference, the amount of gold saved by using comms is as follows:

3000 for 1 Shipwood which at current prices cost 12130 for a total net savings of... -9130

2250 for 1 Shipiron which at current prices cost 3680 for a total net savings of... -1430

1750 for 1 Shipcloth which at current prices cost 1000 for a total net savings of... 750

1750 for 1 Shiplines which at current prices cost 1630 for a total net savings of... 120

3000 for 1 Pitch which at current prices cos t11900 for a total net savings of... -8900

There is no use case for using these ship parts for actually building a ship. If I had 5000 wood, I could use it and 1000 iron to save 300k gold. Or I could just sell all of the base components for what the market price is.. and wham-bam. I make 1,213,000 gold.

Where this is most egregious though is in the weapons, which used to cost something like 250k~500k gold before to build one.

Onagers - Keyword: "onager" - 70 shipwood + 80 shipiron + 35 shiplines

Ballistas - Keyword: "ballista" - 40 shipiron + 50 shipwood + 25 shiplines

Arcanian Arms (Throwers) - Keyword: "thrower" - 30 shipiron + 25 shipwood + 20 shiplines

A typical strider has one of each of these and also costs 5 million gold.. but let's assume that we use the only thing that is even remotely profitable in the shiplines and shipcloth. In total we will need..

145 shipwood, 150 shipiron, 230 shiplines, 150 shipcloth.

Onagers - 70 shipwood + 80 shipiron + 35 shiplines = 1200k

Ballistas - 40 shipiron + 50 shipwood + 25 shiplines = 794k

Arcanian Arms (Throwers) - 30 shipiron + 25 shipwood + 20 shiplines = 446k straight off market...

Seastrider - 150 shipcloth + 150 shiplines = 130k saved if you buy straight off market.

So, not including anything else besides the ship and the weapons.. A seastrider actually will cost you a whopping 7,310,000 gold.

I get that the entire system is meant to be a sink (Get it? @Kuriel will find this funny)... but this is ridiculous that using the system that is, supposedly, meant to make ships cheaper, or at least an alternative to just paying straight gold, is actually like.. 5 times worse than just selling the commodities for gold to buy the damn thing.

Is there anything that can be done to look into this absurd situation?

Kinilan

When it comes to commissioning I think you're looking at it wrong. You're not entitled to the lowest price. You're paying a gold cost no matter what when you commission a ship. You can gather, harvest and mine when is needed to reduce that cost. Now gathering all that alone is obviously going to take some time but so is earning the base gold you're going to need just to get started. You can speed that up by doing it as a group. Wood prices might be crazy but just sell it and pay the gold price instead of the comms price when you commission, It might not be feasible to gather everything you need on your own instantly but that shouldn't be expected.  And even then if you DO want it right now you can spend cash like  with just about everything else and turn credits or promo items into gold and just pay the flat price.

Now as for weapons you left out the fact that chits can be used to make equipment, including weapons, for nothing. You can gather the comms you need over time or pay a shipfitter with some chits to make weapons below comms costs or even gather your own chits and make what you need at no cost. The fact that chits can be earned over time is something that was already done to help with the comms cost problem for equipment.

Don't forget  that a PERSONAL ship is considered an "endgame" investment. Expensive thing is expensive.

Kresslack

It's also worth remembering that Shipfitting (along with just about every Tradeskill) is specifically designed to be a gold sink. The price of wood has slowly been trending downwards since Foraging, but it's still pretty high up there. I think that's what is more annoying than anything. It's not really even cheaper to gather all of these materials yourself via Foraging and Mining (mining being pretty expensive itself, not to mention being able to snatch up appropriate lodes before they get auto-run) when you consider the investments those require. At the end of the day I think it's just designed to be costly and cumbersome.

Adrik

Kinilan said:

When it comes to commissioning I think you're looking at it wrong. You're not entitled to the lowest price. You're paying a gold cost no matter what when you commission a ship. You can gather, harvest and mine when is needed to reduce that cost. Now gathering all that alone is obviously going to take some time but so is earning the base gold you're going to need just to get started. You can speed that up by doing it as a group. Wood prices might be crazy but just sell it and pay the gold price instead of the comms price when you commission, It might not be feasible to gather everything you need on your own instantly but that shouldn't be expected.  And even then if you DO want it right now you can spend cash like  with just about everything else and turn credits or promo items into gold and just pay the flat price.

Now as for weapons you left out the fact that chits can be used to make equipment, including weapons, for nothing. You can gather the comms you need over time or pay a shipfitter with some chits to make weapons below comms costs or even gather your own chits and make what you need at no cost. The fact that chits can be earned over time is something that was already done to help with the comms cost problem for equipment.

Don't forget  that a PERSONAL ship is considered an "endgame" investment. Expensive thing is expensive.

I think you're glossing over the fact, which you yourself said to do.

I am not asking for it to be made 'cheaper' on the base principle that it should. Right now, on a good day I get 279 wood/foraging trip.  I pay 10k gold for that, so about 36 gold per. Which means that for the wood equivalent of 1 shipwood, I am paying out 1,800 gold. Which sounds completely fine on paper. Until you really think about it, and look at it... Yes, that 279 wood could be used for shipwood (if buying a ship).. orrrr it could just be sold on the market for people who want to buy housing credits for 200+ per, and your commodity goes way WAY farther for it's buck.

Wood is a commodity every city actively needs as well. It has so many people playing tug of war over it that the prices aren't really likely to go down too much more.

Fibre on the other hand is literally a lost cause. I pay 10k gold to get 300. Fibre cannot be sold for diddly squat, because the only thing that uses it is a few classes, wherein 1000 will do you for a few irl months... tailoring,  and shipcomms. 

It has nothing demanding it's use like wood does.

Kuriel

My biggest issue is the fact that, as we figured out through trial, error, several complex equations, and quite a few tears, there is no way to calculate the “ship market value” of any one comm except cloth.

try it. See if you can figure out how much gold 1 wood (not ship wood) objectively deducts from the commission cost. Sigh.