On The Profitability Of Solar Rails

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Yes, yes, it's not out yet, but I have a bit of a concern on the meta that's about to develop on the Dark Sectors...

 

The only realistic way to get low-low prices for an extended period would be for a small cluster of Alliances to rule all and do so benevolently.  Why?  Because otherwise, Solar Rails aren't going to be profitable.

 

 

Each rail would have to be repaired as time goes by due to assorted challengers which is going to require a reserve of resources.  Unfortunately, not all those resources come from the same planets that those rails are raising tribute from.  In most cases, this is going to be woefully insufficient.  The only exceptions to this might be Saturn and Ceres due to the naturally high value of Orokin Cells.  Even then though, you'll have to farm a lot elsewhere just to maintain your rail.

 

In other words, Solar Rails are, for the owner, not a machine of profit, but a grind diffusion mechanic.  You are trading farming three resources for having to grind all the others, probably less efficiently.  Thus, Solar Rails are unlikely to actually provide profit for a clan.  Yes, Saturn and Ceres will be highly contested, but I'm telling you that fundamentally (unless the maintenance costs are crazy-low), a Solar Rail is a poor investment.

 

 

That said, while a Solar Rail may be a poor investment, scale is critical here.  I would like to assert that we may want to let two or three (depending on how many DS nodes there are per planet) take over everything.  Doing so gives this small cluster access to all resources and thus can have a profitable Solar Rail network because they won't have to farm to support it.

 

 

"But monopolies are bad!" I hear you cry.  Not in this case.  First off, a monopoly would be overthrown fairly easily if it is not in the best interests of the players.  Any clan can build their own SR network, so a new alliance providing lower prices could easily win out.  

 

"But what about battle pay from the incumbents?" you ask.  Consider for a moment the immense cost of that.  Just imagine 25k Credits as battle pay for each of the 20k players that fight for you.  You're looking at 500 million Credits that an Alliance would have to be ready to pay out.  With SR's, Alliance payouts very likely at some point will hit billions.  Unless you have some sort of gargantuan war chest, you won't be able to sustain that sort of economic seige.

 

In the absolute worst-case scenario with a monopoly becoming abusive, the devs could always step in, tweak some values, and reduce their power, enabling the larger playerbase to retrieve control of the DS's.

 

 

I seriously doubt I'm the only one that has or will think of this.  Small-scale holdings will mean nothing and will be crushed by the giants.  On a certain level, this is a PSA: don't try to build SR's unless you intend to conquer.  Also, we should try to ensure that the Alliances that do reach monopoly status aren't going to slowly increase the prices until the other players must pay through the nose because while it will be hard for a monopoly to continue to exist, the longer it does and the more gradual its abuse of power, the harder it will be to kill.

 

Thoughts?

Edited April 9, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Jeloxale]

Agreed.

[Lactamid]

We'll have to see as you say. But there are some fine economics that will have to be tuned in this.

[BrotherIcarus]

I will withhold judgement until I see the solar rails.

[OriVerda]

Fair point. I was wondering if we'd see Potatoes, Formas or maybe even Prime parts as rewards if that would be possible but actually paying that amount is troublesome m

In all likelihood it would follow a first come first serve basis or it would reward the person who did the most missions.

Though both seem unlikely this is DE we are talking about.

We'll just have to see how it goes I guess. Hope for the best.

[Domaik]

There is but one problem. 

 

One big portion of the community don't come to the forums so they won't be reading this. Another big portion won't even think about it and a bigger portion know nothing about economics...and then the ones that just do the ones they like the best or even the ones with the coolest message displayed...You know how past events went sometimes...a part of the community ends up just jumping into action not thinking their choice much.

 

That being said, I hope we can somehow work this out for the best interests of the players and I hope big aliances are not abussibe.

 

Me myself right now my clan died and I'm in the process of remaking the dojo and then trying to get a few trusted players (5 or so) and then we'll see if we join an alliance

Edited April 9, 2014 by Domaik

[zebar1313]

I just hope that the rail tax caps at 50% at the very highest or else it's not going to be profitable to even do this badlands stuff, unless you literally get an asinine amount of resources in there or t4 keys or something legit and crazy cool like AkBrakk, or Hayden Tenno's socks or something

[LynxZ4r0Z]

too many posts tooo early about this subject! i say delete them all and then start posting afther U13 hits pl0x :(

[zebar1313]

too many posts tooo early about this subject! i say delete them all and then start posting afther U13 hits pl0x :(

I think its more of feedback towards DE to take things into consideration

They will want to watch these things people are posting when the Update is tossed out. 

Then the true feedback shall begin.

[CubedOobleck]

The way I see it there will be chaos at first, everyone building solar rail. grabbing and contesting territory, but once the alliances have consumed all their credits and resources to fix the solar rails and provide battlepays there will be a time of semi-calm.

During this period the few alliances with the most solar rails will be able to profit quicker and start new contests sooner, meanwhile the other alliences with only one or none solar rails will lag behind.

Unless the alliances with many solar rails make the mistake of contesting each other, then the alliances with less solar rails and less profit will be unable to provide comparable battlepays and the monopoly you speak of will start.

But I think the more time passes the harder it will be to overthrow these monopolies because they will have a bigger and bigger supply of resources and credits to fix solar rails, provide battlepays and win contests.

An alliance would have to be really hated to be overthrown and even then its place would probably be taken by another monopoly.

A lot depends on the costs of repairing and the taxing tho. If the alliances can tax a bit of resources, besides credits, to farm in their sectors, only 4 (due to the size of BP) active solar rails can automatically provide the resources and credits needed to build and fix other solar rails simply by leeching off the grind of other players.

For example say the rails require neurodes and an alliance has access to a territory that gives 6 easy neurodes per run, if they could tax one neurode per run then players would still farm there and the alliance would have all the neurodes it needs to fix or build other solar rails without doing anything.

Edited April 9, 2014 by CubedOobleck

[Llyssa]

So far as I can discern, this thing has 2 purposes: 1. It gives us user-designed end-game content(can make your towers as awesome as you want. Contest to see who makes a harder mission). 2. It's a maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassive resource+money sink.

 

I don't imagine them being profitable at all. The incentive to have them is access to badland rare drops. The incentive to own them is to make sure that when you do pay taxes, you're not paying in to someone else.

 

If they're not profitable, they become a sink, but you still want the drops, so SOMEONE wants to own it. Also, there's a bit of ego feeding that sort of thing. This way, there would be both incentive to capture it, and incentive to consider letting it go.

 

If they ARE profitable, they become impenetrable--the longer an alliance owns one, the easier it is for them to defend it. There's no reason DE would put in something like that. Imagine survival starting out at level 30 and by the time you hit the hour mark, enemies have degraded to level 3. Same principle.

[(PSN)billy-d-squid]

Solar Rails gives the Clans access to the badlands, which apparently have better resource drops, quantities, or something like that. I only skimmed over it. Also I don't think that attacking a Solar Rail is going to be easy. 

 

The less dev involvement in who controls the rails the better. I'd hate nothing more than to establish a dominant position with an Alliance in the outer planets, only to have the devs step in and say, sorry you have to play nice and share with the other people. If people want to kick out a clan or Alliance from a node, they need to club together and push them out. There's nothing stopping a mass of smaller clans or double alliances taking on one of the veteran alliances, effectively Goon swarming the Vets. with newer players and a core of Vets. until they push them out through attrition or demolishing their economy if the clan needs to repair and, maintain and pay for battle pay, before launching another attack and seizing the node.

 

Establishing a monopoly ensures that nodes won't change hands until the devs step in, or it will be so easy to overthrow what would be the point of spending the vast resources to build a solar rail in the first place? The direction that it seems to be going is that the Solar rail is expensive to build and not cheap to maintain, but it's not easy to take control of, while giving benefits to the controlling clan. 

Edited April 9, 2014 by (PS4)billy-d-squid

[Llyssa]

Actually, was just looking at the new video they posted about it. Additional reason to own it: You can set clan member tax rate seperately from public tax rate.

 

Still quite firmly believe it needs to be a sink.

[Llyssa]

Also, they're apparently calling it "Dark Sectors".

[zebar1313]

Solar Rails gives the Clans access to the badlands, which apparently have better resource drops, quantities, or something like that. I only skimmed over it. Also I don't think that attacking a Solar Rail is going to be easy. 

 

The less dev involvement in who controls the rails the better.

My only issue would just be the tax's on the badlands, other than that, i could care less about who owns it to be honest. As long as it's not a ridiculous amount like you need to pay 300million oxium in order to do a run. If its something like 10000 creds and 50% of the resources you get i can live, but the drop rates and the badlands experience better be worth the cost. 

My point, I just don't want the Rail tax on stuff to be 100%. 

I know that it's not gonna happen as much cuz everyone and their kubrew will jump their sushi to knock them out of power faster than loki with rush, sprint boost, and volt speed boost while they copter. 

But i think there should be a limit just so that it's fair

[ScorpDK]

We'll see how well things work out once U13 hits, someone finishes researching and building a Solar Rail and deploys it successfully. I'm hoping people will not immediately contest each other so we can see how the Dark Sectors work, loot-wise. If 50% of the loot makes the runs simply unattractive, then I expect people would either not go there, or eventually topple them with a cheaper tax rate rail.

 

As for the battleplay for the combatants...this is where it gets funny. The entire point of the battlepay is money sinking. If you offer 250K or something as reward, expect your coffers to be empty at the end.

It would be amusing if, upon not having enough money to pay, the alliance uses a credit and goes get into debt they'll have to pay before they can do anything inside of their dojos...or risk losing them (decorations and non-essential pieces) if they don't pay up. But that might be a tad extreme.

 

Anyway, U13 is upon is, give it a few more hours :)

Edited April 9, 2014 by ScorpDK

[Ardorax]

Its hard for me to discuss on this, I have more of the mentality to wait it out and see what happens .... however I am also concered as to how these alliances will remove the indivdiualisme of clans.

 

Small ghost clans just become cogs of big clans, troops to use and resources to handle .... perhaps I am overthinking it all ... but I will wait and see what happens.

 

But yes I do know that the biggest clans are gonna hold all the ground.

[Scarab14]

Very good economical statement+

For those who complain about Big Clans: SRs are, as otherwise economically inefficient, thought for Big Clans. That's why DE implemented the alliance mechanics so everyone can though have access.

[archer_008]

if u find greedy milk corpu errr tenno 

 

kill him using grineer weapon xD

Edited April 9, 2014 by archer_008

[notionphil]

 The incentive to have them is access to badland rare drops. 

 

 

This will be the key factor. If there are Dark Sector only drops, then it makes owning a rail a justifiable expense.

 

If not, it's probably just for the e-peen. Which is still attractive to clans, I'd imagine.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

So far as I can discern, this thing has 2 purposes: 1. It gives us user-designed end-game content(can make your towers as awesome as you want. Contest to see who makes a harder mission). 2. It's a maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassive resource+money sink.

 

I don't imagine them being profitable at all. The incentive to have them is access to badland rare drops. The incentive to own them is to make sure that when you do pay taxes, you're not paying in to someone else.

 

If they're not profitable, they become a sink, but you still want the drops, so SOMEONE wants to own it. Also, there's a bit of ego feeding that sort of thing. This way, there would be both incentive to capture it, and incentive to consider letting it go.

 

If they ARE profitable, they become impenetrable--the longer an alliance owns one, the easier it is for them to defend it. There's no reason DE would put in something like that. Imagine survival starting out at level 30 and by the time you hit the hour mark, enemies have degraded to level 3. Same principle.

1. We've yet to see how that'll go.  For now, it seems that all towers are the same.

2. True

 

If they're not profitable, the literally only reason to control one would be to try to drop the price that someone else has that is too high.  Unfortunately, unless you're going for a large-scale conquest, you'll just be throwing resources down a black hole.  You'll have to farm more to maintain the system.  While this may not seem like an issue, a single contest with a larger conquest-oriented clan will bankrupt you from battle pay.

 

The longer they own one, the more times they will be challenged and the more battle pay they will have to put out.  

[Reach]

 

 

"But what about battle pay from the incumbents?" you ask.  Consider for a moment the immense cost of that.  Just imagine 25k Credits as battle pay for each of the 20k players that fight for you.  You're looking at 500 million Credits that an Alliance would have to be ready to pay out.  With SR's, Alliance payouts very likely at some point will hit billions.  Unless you have some sort of gargantuan war chest, you won't be able to sustain that sort of economic seige.

 

 

Can you link me to where it says that alliances or even clans would have to pay out battle pay from the clans own funds (as if there's any), I'm pretty sure It's down to whether a clan or alliance Is willing to sacrifice lowering their rates as to win over the players as to pick their solar rail. Any credits I'm sure are magically funded as they always have been.

[I3arbaria7V]

I will withhold judgement until I see the solar rails.

^^ All of this...

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Can you link me to where it says that alliances or even clans would have to pay out battle pay from the clans own funds (as if there's any), I'm pretty sure It's down to whether a clan or alliance Is willing to sacrifice lowering their rates as to win over the players as to pick their solar rail. Any credits I'm sure are magically funded as they always have been.

In the devstream, they said you can pick how much or how little battle pay.  If it's magically funded, then that means everyone will always just give the maximum reward which invalidates the point of choosing your own.  Therefore, it's common sense that you would have to pay for your own.

[Voratiu]

Rails are a burden the alliance must carry if they wish to have control.