Decay, usage and repair (Very long)
A possible way to: Implementing decay on items and how to handle repairs.
The economy would be much more vibrant if items could decay.
There should 2 types of items in this game.
Consumables and permanent items.
Currently the group of permanent items is to big.
Items like weapons, armor, tools stay as long in this game without penalties attached as long it is not deconstructed or deleted.
Making a profession as armorsmith, fletcher, weaponsmith, ... only a viable option to play if you actually want to support your own character.
Crafting for others is more of a bother than it is worth.
Another group is more viable which is currently producing goods which are one time use and give a temporary benefit.
Examples are Ambrosia, food, potion, recharge kits, ...
Weapons, armor, machines, ... should become a consumable good aswell.
The other (semi)permanent group would be furniture and buildings.
These items should take extremely long to build that the effort is worth the semi permanent state that they obtain. They are semi permanent as fashion changes, designplans change, plots are build, sold, rebuild, ...
However machines, tools, weapons, armor, cargodisks, ... should decay.
Decay based on some form of usage.
Machines, tools and weapons could very well be usage based. Each time you use it, it decays somewhat.
Armor could be hit based, each hit received could add a bit of decay.
Cargo disks could use some form of time it's out there equiped being it needs to be recharged with recharge cells.
Other propositions and suggestions are more than welcome.
Now how to handle decay.
Each item usage based item should get a certain amount of durability assigned. How much is open for discussion and is a very delicate balancing act.
Each item thus has durability and that in 3 variables.
1. Each item has a MAX amount of durability.
2. Each item has a Temporary Maximum of durability.
3. Each item has a current amount of durability.
Eg. A sword has 10000 Max uses, due to repair the Temp Max has dimished to 8000, and the current durability is 6000. Thus a 75% of top condition.
The current amount of durability in relation to its current max has an influence on the stats of the weapon.
Proposal (open for debate):
If you divide the current by the Temp max you get a percentage of decay.
If between 100% and 75% the item operates at max efficiency.
If between 75% and 50% the item has a 10% stat loss.
If between 50% and 25% the item has a 25% stat loss.
If between 25% and 15% the item has a 50% stat loss.
If between 15% and 0.01% the item has a 75% stat loss.
If at 0% the item is no longer functional until repaired again.
Handling repairs:
There are 2 ways to repair and 1 way to restore an item.
For this we have Field Based repair kits, Machine based repair kits and Restoration kits.
Each item has a certain Tier and to repair said item: it will need an repair kit of the same Tier or higher.
Field repair kits:
1. They can be used by everyone out in the field.
They are divided into Tiers, and into the amount they repair.
Repairs can be done for 25, 50, 75 and 100% of the Temp Max durability.
Say that I have a sword at 510 durability with the Temp Max at 1000. I am best of using a 50% Repair kit, as it will restore
50% of 1000 Temp Max durability. Thus 500 durability on top of 510. Makes 1010, capped at 1000 thus full repair.
Field repair kits have the disadvantage that they lower the amount of Temp Max durability with each repair.
Depending on the Tier of a kit they take a percentage of the amount of durability that is repaired and subtract that of the Temp max.
in previous example I repaired 490 damage with a Tier I kit, for a Tier I, this could mean I take 25% of the repaired durability. Thus 123 durability and subtract that from the Temp max: 1000 - 123: The new Temp Max is 877.
At the end the durability will become so low that using field repair kits gets to expensive and the items are either thrown away or restored and repaired to their former glory.
Suggested percentage taken of durability to subtract from the Temp max per tier in sequence.
Tier I: 25%, II: 23%, III: 20%, IV: 16%, V: 11% VI: 5%
Machine repair kits:
Another way to repair an item is Machine based.
The disadvantage of this method is that it needs a qualified crafter and a machine to repair the item. Thus returning to town and finding someone to repair it (a reverse consignment offer system is needed for this to function properly).
A qualified crafter is a crafter that has the formula of the item in need of repair scribed. And meets minimum levels to make it including the upped tech requirements applied to the item. The advantage on the other hand is, that crafting machine repair kits uses much less resources than there equivalent field repair kits. A second and the biggest advantage is that there is no durability loss. Items are repaired to there Temp Max
durability.
Resource requirements to make repair kits. People should keep their gear in pristine condition so, to reflect this, lower percentage repair kits would need less resources and components than higher percentage.
To represent this with some simple numbers.
25% repair: 100 resources, 1 component
50% repair: 300 resources, 3 components (2 different ones)
75% repair: 900 resources, 9 components (3 different ones)
100% repair: 2700 resources, 27 components (4 different ones)
Restoration kits:
Restoration kits need a machine to apply the kit and a fully qualified crafter. A fully qualified crafter is the same as a normal qualified crafter who can apply Machine Repair kits, but is also optimal at crafting item in need of restoration including all the used techs. Restoration can not be done in the field.
How to handle the items where the Temp Max is lowered due to field repair.
For those items worth of restoration more particulary items with multiple techs on them, you can restore the Temp Max again to the MAX it initially had.
Restoration kits are again Tier Based.
Each kit can restore a fix number and not percentage based amount of durability.
Eg. a Tier 1 kit can restore 500 durability. So to repair an sword with MAX of 10000 and Temp Max of 8000, would need 4 Tier I Restoration kits.
Careful. Restoration kits only restore the current durability for an equal amount of durability. So it would be wisest to repair the item completely and than applying restoration kits. Items can only be restored with the restoration kits of the same Tier or Lower.
The same system can be applied for armour. For armor durability will be attack based.
Each type of attack could be assigned a certain part of the body items affected for bipeds.
Head: Head, face, Ears, neck
Upper Torso: Back, Chest, Shoulder, arms, forearm
Lowerarms: left palm, wrists, fingers, hands
Lower body: Waist, feet and legs
The place of attack is based on the type of damage inflicted or during the battle randomly determined.
Like eg. if you get rooted maybe your lower body would be affected, mind damage: your head; a tailswipe: your upper torso or your lower torso. A bite could be your lowerarms, ...
The same could be applied to dragons:
Head: Head Scale, Chest Scale
Upper torso: wings, back scale, tail scale
Lower body: Foreleg and Backleg scales.
Regarding machine usage. Each use should lower the durability, but no stat loss should be applied or upping the resources required.
However next to the current public, friends, guild, private settings, you should also get an usage fee placeable per type. Public use cost 100c per use, Friends: free, Guild: 25c per use, ...
In this way you can open up your machine for public and still get paid for the decay that is caused to your machine.
A second step is putting a repair conto on the machine.
The money paid for usage by others is put on the machines conto. You can aswell add money to that conto. Or subtract if you are making money on the usage of the machine.
If you play it smart the minimum fee per durability repaired is covered by your usage fee.
Repairman could than dwell the lands in search for flags on top of plots and lairs, indication that there is a machine in need of at least 25% repair.
Repairs can only be made by qualified repairman: Meaning being optimal at constructing said machines. Again with a type of restoration kit, but now upping the usage counter instead of the max use counter.
A consequence of this all will be that people will be required to craft, be it for new items, be it to fabricate recharge cells, repairkits, ... And as everybody is using decaying gear there will be a need for crafters.
Indeed those that want too can be still selfsufficient by learning and leveling the classes that create the items the use in adventuring. But some people don't like to craft so they need to rely on others to make and repair their goods for them.
For repairkits and such to work of course the production capabilities have to be revised. Crafting a new item should take much longer than crafting a number of repairkits for said item. Thus making it so keeping your equipment in top shape is less expensive than getting said item made in the first place.
Like if you use a weapon for 6 levels, keeping it in shape for 6 levels could maybe cost you 30s, having said item made would cost 100s. (Again only example figures, everything needs to be balanced, rate of spawn, production capabilities, decay ratios).
Also you need crafters that charge for the items they create. And for that we need Fluff, much fluff that everybody wants.
If you made it this far thank you for reading this suggestion and I am sure you have a remark, objection or suggestion, so please post.
Salis
Originally Posted by Seranthor
