Cherry Pick: Mono (#4017) Drone Loot & Contraband Adjustment

[Wuffindy]

About the PR

cherry picked Monolith-Station/Monolith#4017 from mono that

• Reduces smuggling contraband sell price
• Removes money from Drone loot
• Increases the price of Drone Cores
• increases the total faction currency obtained from the contraband crates
• makes drone core emit thermal signature

which is followed up with some adjustment in Triad

• Readjusted the overall loots from Drone Black boxes to be more reasonable based on tier
• Adjusted the drone core prices to be different based on type
• reverted the ai core thermalsignature
• Contraband Crates only shows up in radar when you're at 256 tiles or meters away

Major Drone Loot BEFORE adjustment

	T1	T2-1	T2-2
Scrap	100	300	600
Plastitanium	20	40	80
Research	15k-40k	65k-80k	200k
Weapon Flatpack	Shard (60%)	Shard	Shard, Pinhole
Parts	Super (80%)	Super, Blue (80-50%)	Super, Blue
Misc	Boards & Cells	Cells	Cells

Major Drone Loot AFTER adjustment

	T1	T2-1	T2-2
Scrap	30-50	80-100	200-300
Plastitanium	10	20	50
Research	10k-15k	20k-25k	100K-150k
Weapon Flatpack	-	-	-
Parts	Advanced (80%)	Advanced, Super (20%)	Super, Blue (12%)
Misc	Boards & Cells	Cells	Cells, Micro(20%), Antique (6%)

Some of the major changes regarding parts, weapon flatpack has been discussed before with HMaint, the rest are adjustments and additional

Contraband Crate Value BEFORE Readjustment

	Base Value	On Time Bonus	Late Penalty	Value Elsewhere	Timer
Contraband Crate 1	65000			45000	no timer
Contraband Crate 2	90000	+ 10000	- 75000	7500	1 Hour
Contraband Crate 3	70000	+ 30000	- 30000	4000	1 Hour
Donk. Co	105000	+ 45000	- 30000	5000	1 Hour
Cybersun Industries	105000	+ 45000	- 30000	6000	1 Hour

Contraband Crate Value After Cherry pick & Readjustment

	Base Value	On Time Bonus	Late Penalty	Value Elsewhere	Timer
Contraband Crate 1	30000	-	-	5000	no timer
Contraband Crate 2	40000	+ 10000	- 30000	5000	1 Hour
Contraband Crate 3	40000	+ 20000	- 30000	5000	1 Hour
Donk. Co	50000	+ 25000	- 40000	5000	1 Hour
Cybersun Industries	50000	+ 30000	- 40000	5000	1 Hour

Why / Balance

this has been a long needed adjustment, Mono's reward was way too good and does not work on Triad's economy due to ship saving, the PR helps tone down the current economy from contraband smuggling & alongside the sheer amount of loot from drone hunting to be more reasonable.
so that drone hunting is not the only most efficient way of research & profit

Media

removed media since the blip got reverted

Requirements

• I have read relevant guidelines/documentation to this PR found on our devwiki.
• I have added media to this PR or it does not require an ingame showcase.
• I can confirm this PR contains either no AI-generated content, or AI-generated content that meets our guidelines.

How to test

• Go gamble with drone loot box
  there should be no more money dropped directly, and rarer chance to get a supposedly rare item

• Sell Contra Crates, price no longer as high as previous

Breaking changes

Changelog

🆑

• tweak: Drone loot readjusted to fit Triad's ship saving balancing
• tweak: Contraband Crate sell price readjusted
• tweak: Contraband Crate blips now only show when in close proximity
  Monolith:
• tweak: Contraband Crate FMC/DC value increased
• remove: Drone Blackboxes no longer gives money
• tweak: Drone core price increased

[Dimasw99]

I am actually curious what the design philsophy is here because I am in the process of trying to balance gas mining as well. What I would love to know is how much research/money should a player get for spending 1 hour drone hunting.

Something I do find strange is the t2-2 reward having an antique cell at 0.1% which means you would need 333 quake or mauler kills to get one cell if I see the math correctly here.

[Wuffindy]

I am actually curious what the design philsophy is here because I am in the process of trying to balance gas mining as well. What I would love to know is how much research/money should a player get for spending 1 hour drone hunting.

Something I do find strange is the t2-2 reward having an antique cell at 0.1% which means you would need 333 quake or mauler kills to get one cell if I see the math correctly here.

These are rough drafts I'm just putting together first, initially so that it's there for reminder, which I'll refine in time after my mind is clear

cant give you an estimate yet like what i say above, but the thought of after an hour of hunting does help determine how it'll be refined later

The antique is just there as a "bonus" item if you happen to get it from fighting one, but you can live without it. or get it from other source. but then again these are all not final till it's more fleshed out thought

[aqualious18-cloud]

Gonna be interesting seeing how this affects smuggler caches. Especially buffing the reward for turning them into TFD when that happens.

[TheRealMasterChief117]

Remove the radar signature from contraband crates as being able to immediately see crates through walls as TDF is not something we want to facilitate.

Also, I am curious, what was the point of making drone cores have a heat signature?

[Wuffindy]

Remove the radar signature from contraband crates as being able to immediately see crates through walls as TDF is not something we want to facilitate.

Also, I am curious, what was the point of making drone cores have a heat signature?

I'm assuming the heat signature is to help players find the core should the drone ship grid gets blown up, it's from the the cherry-pick, although should that is not favourable, could remove the heat signature and convert the cores to a blip instead

can do with the blip removal for those contrabands 👍

[Th3ShadowR3ealm]

I'm concerned about removing shards and pinholes from the flatpacks as the only way we can get weapons currently is drone flatpacks and ripping them off ships. any plan to replace those?

[Dimasw99]

Rarity of both the ancient cell and bluespace parts are so rare that they have barely a significance now.
Moving from 4.5 blue capacitors to 0.015 on average per crate is a change of 30000%
Even the 0.001 to 0.005 is a change from 333 mauler kills to 67. For my entire duration of playing on Triad, I can safely say that I have not killed over 30 of them.

How to calculate your odds: Lets say we want our player to kill 3 maulers to gain one ancient cell. Each mauler drops 3 boxes. Multiply your wanted kills by the dropped boxes, 3*3=9 and then take the 9 and divide it by 1. 1/9=0.11 so our wanted odds are 11%. In the reverse case you take your drop chance and divide it by 1 again, 1/0.005=200. Those are 200 kills if each mauler just dropped one box, divide by 3 boxes they drop 3 boxes. Result is ~67 kills

Here are some numbers I have gotten from my playing. Spending 3 hours drone hunting I have gotten 20 T2-2 crates, 12 T2-1 and 8T1-1. Let's focus on our t2-2 crates and look at the old numbers. Each T2-2 drop 3 to 6 blue capacitors. (3+6)/2=4.5 to get our average and 4.5*20 is 90 blue capacitors. Certainly a huge number. Let's say we only want 1/3 of that. 4.5/3 is 1.5. Now we have two options, either we use a chance, min max or both. min 1, max 2 is 1.5. Double min and max for 3 and add a 50% prob to take it down to 1.5 again. Both are options you can use to make it more interesting. We could also do amount 2 and add 75% to it to drag it down to 1.5 by simply saying 2/1.5=0.75

Here are my suggested numbers. For ancient cells, 3 mauler kills sound fair. Then, 1.5 bluespace parts per T2-2 per type are also fair.
After all we want to strike a balance between respecting the players time and not breaking the economy. Nerfing things too hard will lead to much undue frustration and annoyance.

[Wuffindy]

I'm concerned about removing shards and pinholes from the flatpacks as the only way we can get weapons currently is drone flatpacks and ripping them off ships. any plan to replace those?

you can still rip them off the ship, just no longer obtainable through flatpacks as per requested

[Wuffindy]

Rarity of both the ancient cell and bluespace parts are so rare that they have barely a significance now. Moving from 4.5 blue capacitors to 0.015 on average per crate is a change of 30000% Even the 0.001 to 0.005 is a change from 333 mauler kills to 67. For my entire duration of playing on Triad, I can safely say that I have not killed over 30 of them.

How to calculate your odds: Lets say we want our player to kill 3 maulers to gain one ancient cell. Each mauler drops 3 boxes. Multiply your wanted kills by the dropped boxes, 3*3=9 and then take the 9 and divide it by 1. 1/9=0.11 so our wanted odds are 11%. In the reverse case you take your drop chance and divide it by 1 again, 1/0.005=200. Those are 200 kills if each mauler just dropped one box, divide by 3 boxes they drop 3 boxes. Result is ~67 kills

Here are some numbers I have gotten from my playing. Spending 3 hours drone hunting I have gotten 20 T2-2 crates, 12 T2-1 and 8T1-1. Let's focus on our t2-2 crates and look at the old numbers. Each T2-2 drop 3 to 6 blue capacitors. (3+6)/2=4.5 to get our average and 4.5*20 is 90 blue capacitors. Certainly a huge number. Let's say we only want 1/3 of that. 4.5/3 is 1.5. Now we have two options, either we use a chance, min max or both. min 1, max 2 is 1.5. Double min and max for 3 and add a 50% prob to take it down to 1.5 again. Both are options you can use to make it more interesting. We could also do amount 2 and add 75% to it to drag it down to 1.5 by simply saying 2/1.5=0.75

Here are my suggested numbers. For ancient cells, 3 mauler kills sound fair. Then, 1.5 bluespace parts per T2-2 per type are also fair. After all we want to strike a balance between respecting the players time and not breaking the economy. Nerfing things too hard will lead to much undue frustration and annoyance.

you have a good point there regarding them being too rare that it's barely a significance, and the frustation and annoyance, i'll need some time to read the numbers going on there.

For the Cell, it is definitely not going to be something easily obtainable due to how good it is, but still on a rarer side, i'm gonna be using the count of boxes instead of total of 3 dropped by mauler, which will be changed to estimate of 15 boxes for a single cell, roughly 5 mauler, previously it was 0.5%, which can be increased up to 10% or 6% (6% estimated at 5-6 mauler or 15-16 box) later after consideration following the math on your second paragraph, keep in mind this is a bonus addition that you could get, not something you should get

Bluespace parts as the pr goes is definitely on the far too low end at 1%, but with how good it is, 1 of each part in a 10-20% probability and another draw for another one more of each part would be fitting, since those were supposed to be a luxury item, super parts were supposed to be the replacement for T2-2, it's just that with how bad the balance start, everyone has all of the things that was supposed to be far rare or have at least a market for.
Super Parts will remain as a guarantee at least for T2-2 but for Bluespace parts it will stay as a rarity that has a chance to drop from T2-2 boxes, however i see your point on the fourth paragraph on the time and will most likely increase it's odd from what is done now

though overall these are some interesting insights, definitely far more refined than what i had used earlier using straight numbers without referencing the totals of the amount it could have dropped IF we're using mauler as a base, thank you for the insight

[aqualious18-cloud]

One more question from the smuggler here - The value of crates wounds me, but I recognize that it's healthier, and that, worst case scenarios, I'm just doing more of a loot hunt if I want to make money this way. But I am curious one two fronts - First, why we further than half on the cut down - yeah that's my bias showing but I am interested.

Second, though, With the sales price reduction, did it also reduce the amount of damage selling these does to the "Security" budget? If it still does the same amount of damage that's an issue I think espesially since these are gonna be part of that gameplay loop

[Wuffindy]

One more question from the smuggler here - The value of crates wounds me, but I recognize that it's healthier, and that, worst case scenarios, I'm just doing more of a loot hunt if I want to make money this way. But I am curious one two fronts - First, why we further than half on the cut down - yeah that's my bias showing but I am interested.

Second, though, With the sales price reduction, did it also reduce the amount of damage selling these does to the "Security" budget? If it still does the same amount of damage that's an issue I think espesially since these are gonna be part of that gameplay loop

first one regarding the cuts, it's a necessary economic correction, with how much money a single pod can make, without any form of proper resistance to handle those most if not all the time, it's basically a free money to begin with, regarding as to why it got cut more than half, is because it was way too much to begin with, earning money in the current server is way too easy with how abundant everything is

for the second one, i did check the PDA that it does still cut a portion out of it, while not affecting security directly, and yes it seems that the value that got cut is adapted based on the new value
ex: 30000 from Contraband Crate 1
if it were to be sold correctly
30000 in current (TSF : -0.075, PDV : 0.3)
PDV would get 9000, and TSF would be deducted by 2.250

just checked on frontier's contra value and wtf, the gap between that and mono one is so far

[DDrakov]

I'll come back to this after rules and things are done

[TschudyNF]

Should make running contra a good deal less work intensive since one will only need to grab the express crates.

[Wuffindy]

Should make running contra a good deal less work intensive since one will only need to grab the express crates.

There is barely any work or effort needed to be done for contraband smuggling, a mere pulling/loading is not a justified effort for the value it was worth to begin with. You even have an hour leeway before it expire for all the timed ones, right now it's just a free form of money

You could get at least 200k up to 400k, depending on how lucky you are, and not the mention there's multiple pods each hour, delivering only takes at max 10 minutes, which time was never a concern to begin with unless you forgot about it

It is still a valuable thing to work for objectively, but because we left it too long unchallenged/unchanged and it got overdone along with other form of money making method that is overtuned, it became a norm and this is an early already late economic correction.