[Suggestion] Prospecting

[Tomas]

Add prospecting to the game by giving everybody the ability to produce Goods outside of fiefs
- The goods produced will be called "Raw Materials" and will be generic no matter where on the map you are
- Since they will have no fief of origin, the trade bonus will not apply to these goods
- These goods will not cost anything to craft since they are being collected from the wild
- In order to produce the goods, players will need to Prospect on the Strat Map
- Prospecting is simply clicking a button so that the game does not automatically award goods to inactive people
- You can only Prospect once every 24 hours and it lasts for a maximum of 8 hours. 
- If you move at all or pass your good to someone else your Prospecting session is cancelled
- You can be attacked whilst prospecting
- The number of goods produced will be effected by the distance of your camp to the nearest fief.  The further you go the more goods you get.
- The formula for goods production each hour could be

Goods produced = (rand() / 2) * Distance_to_closest_Fief^2

- So if you are 10km from a fief then you will produce between 0 and 50 goods each hour, with an average of 25 goods per hour.  In 8 hours this would equal 200 goods and therefore 5000 gold profit on average per day.
- A faction player in a fief meanwhile producing 24 goods per day and giving them to a faction trader to sell will make only 3600 gold, however they do not need to pay troops, cannot be attacked and can therefore be far less active/attentive on Strat.

Reasons & Impact
- Landless factions can produce goods on Strat without needing a fief which means that being knocked out of Strat isn't as big a set back as it is now
- Active players on Strat can massively boost their goods production rates but only by putting their characters at risk
- There will be more players running around with goods and therefore more raiding opportunities
- Long trade routes with fief based crafters will still be the more secure and more gaunranteed method of making money
- This has nothing to do with cRPG activity but is still activity based and so is not exploitable by inactive players unless they give their account access away which is bannable

[Garem]

Wow... I want to add this to the Strat CoOp Dev Proposal somehow. Good stuff!

[Bjarky]

its an fine idea, altough the suggested yield is to high.
it makes it possible for fief owners to use this as an better alternative than their fiefs, since they can control the area around fiefs also, wich makes it possible to abuse this, not to forget that the desert and snowlands fx have the best archievable distance bonuses for this, so kudo's to those who hold those areas, wich also enforces the already normal gotten distance bonus from living at the end of the map.

[CrazyCracka420]

I never get into arguing the gnat's ass details.  The broad overview is exactly what Strat needs for people who don't control any fiefs but still want to make money.

I see crafting as 2nd tier of "expertise", collecting the raw goods can be done by any old joe off the street.  Would be nice if it somehow tied into the fiefs, meaning you need raw goods to craft items.

There's a lot of cool stuff in Persistent World mod for Warband.  I really like how you have to collect wood and iron ore and then have an engineer craft weapons/equipment before your castle can equip it's army.  Would be kind of cool if that general idea was incorporated for strategus (although it would have to be through the strategus website, not done "in game").

[Tomas]

Would be nice if it somehow tied into the fiefs, meaning you need raw goods to craft items.

This is where the orignial idea started but I decided to scale it back and simplify it in the hope that it might actually get implemented.  In the future it can then be expanded out again.

@Bjarky

The yield is deliberately higher for a number of reasons
- you have to go more than 9km from a fief to get that yield which is actually quite far.  8km or less and you make less money.
- you have to expose yourself and not just your trader to attack
- you have to be able to prospect for 8 hours straight keeping an eye on Strat the entire time to get that yield which is pretty hardcore
- yes fief owners will be able to send people out to reinforce any battles that happen, but they will have to have active people ready and willing to do this and raiders working together will simply split up and attack multiple targets.
- in reality i expect that propectors will have individual armies for protection, but the upkeep for doing this brings the profits back down again and at some point the long range trading will become the better option again.

So all in all this give very active players a greater ability to make money in Strat whilst actually doing something, whilst less active grinders will still be the main income source for landed clans.  Landless clans meanwhile will at least be able to make money according to their clan members activity levels

[Jarlek]

I like that these goods don't get the "far away goods" bonus. This means that fief owning factions who makes caravans still make more money, but gives the fiefless not-diplomatic people still a chance to get gold.

But the MAIN reason I like this is that this can be expanded to make a crafting mechanic based on MATERIALS and not GOLD.

+1!

[RibaldRon]

You should be able to get bonus for "prospecting" inside of a forest (lumber) or mountains (stone/ore) so that there's an added incentive to go into these often out-of-the-way speed traps.

[Mike_of_Kingswell]

You should be able to get bonus for "prospecting" inside of a forest (lumber) or mountains (stone/ore) so that there's an added incentive to go into these often out-of-the-way speed traps.

I can totaly see evil bands of forest- and mountainbandits roaming the countryside!!!


+1 for this idea!

[Jarlek]

I can totaly see evil bands of forest- and mountainbandits roaming the countryside!!!


+1 for this idea!

+1 indeed!