Is sunlight smuggling broken?

[Kalvix]

I was just wondering because I've not done it myself yet but last I spoke to my mate last night before going to sleep he'd just died and was going to restart today.. I get back from work and hes bought the best of everything thanks to 2 hours sunlight smuggling.

This is from SCRATCH, nothing saved except his map yet in a day he managed to get to the point of smuggling enough sunlight to get EVERYTHING. This seems a bit broken to me...

[this first-draft dream of mine]

Something the devs noted during EA was that if there existed a boring and unnecessary way to make a lot of profit, a significant number of players would glom onto it as an "optimal strategy" and focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. I think they did a decent job hunting down most of those, but this is still here.

On the other hand, this is a single-player game. The only person whose experience is negatively affected by pursuit of such strategies the person who chooses to pursue them.

[Kalvix]

True, though it still makes me like the game a little less knowing theres such a cheap easy way to get everything with no effort, worse is you could end up doing something like that and not even realise it as people will obviously try to make money and might just assume its got a huge downside like maybe having all your money taken from you if caught doing it.

Hell that would be a quite good downside too it, make it have a chance you get ALL your money stolen. Hopefully they'll fix it in some way soon, hell considering theres an exploit to let you go to the surface and not spend any of the resources it should cost you could do this even quicker for even more profit.

[this first-draft dream of mine]

I mean, you could also just edit your savefile to give yourself 999,999 echoes.

[Wlerin]

Eh. That's a ridiculous downside tbh (and easily avoidable, too). There are much more lore appropriate ways to limit this.

Also, this is totally not broken:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=389623508

/s

[Kalvix]

I know it still just kind of bums me out that you can either put in a lot of effort to do it properly or some kid can exploit for an hour and get more stuff than you possibly could in a fulld ay of play. And I know you can cheat for infinite echo and what not but its more depressing somehow when its an actual ingame mechanic that they can try to rationalise as "fair and balanced"

[this first-draft dream of mine]

Easiest way to fix it I can think of is to significantly increase the price of the box so that in order to profit from it, you need to make multiple runs. This doesn't sound fun.

Next easiest, limit the number of boxes you can carry. Then next easiest, a random event at zee (the sunlight has escaped and is angry at you for trapping it! secure compartment can't keep light out!).

If Stone's Curse hasn't been implemented yet, maybe carting about sunlight runs the risk of angering her.

Then you get to more complicated stuff, like making the box unavailable in shops -- only from beginner's luck or from a more involved storyline (storyline being the complicated part). Or perhaps after you smuggle x boxes of sunlight (dependent on number of boxes sold, not number of trips), rival sunlight traffickers show up and cut off access to your usual customers until you resolve that storyline.

[Wlerin]

If the boxes can be directly purchased with echoes, and everything else remains the same, it'll still be broken. Doesn't matter how expensive they are. I favour limiting the number of boxes you can obtain at once, and possibly how many you can carry, as well as making it dangerous to collect and maybe to carry around. But this last is hard to balance: collecting it the not-broken way in Aestival and then trying to transport it elsewhere would be lethally hazardous if the chances of a bad event were high enough to be a problem for people shipping it to London from the Surface.

[this first-draft dream of mine]

...you're right. Isn't that the crux of the problem? The Surface? So wouldn't the most parsimonious solution be to the make sunlight collection on the Surface more difficult? For instance -- just as an example, I have no idea if this would work since I've never tried to make money off sunlight -- if customs also inspected you while going up/returning from the Surface?

[jthibeault]

Why do you feel the need to limits someone else's gameplay choices?

How and why does someone's 'cheating' affect your story or gameplay?

Failbetter left in a way to spam echos, for those who want that. If that is what they choose then that is their choice.

[Kalvix]

It still breaks the balance of the game so shouldn't be in even for 1 player (by that logic every game should include god mode and infinite money for those who want it).

As for a way to fix it, best way would be either make it so stupidly grindy people would need to suffer horribly (big limit on boxes) OR a better way make it an actual risk, perhaps each box you carry has a chance to explode during transit doing hull damage so if you carry too many you might blow up and lose everything, this would work to limit the number poeple carry (to reduce risk) and add a money sink as you'd need to go back to london to repair now and then even doing a few at a time.

[Cornuthaum]

Sunlight-smuggling is a great way to ease on the immense tedium of the mid-game in your nth captains. No, I don't want to do the same quests for the same captivating treasures all over again, I'd rather just drive back and forth between the Isle of Cats and the Canal three times to settle my financial affairs for this run.

If I could just will -all- my money to my heir instead of 50%, maybe it wouldn't be necessary. But I can neither leave my ship, nor my ship's components (outside one weapon) to my heirs even if I retire from zeefaring life (ie. not sinking and dying), so I damn well want an option that lets me exchange -some- tedium (ie. driving between the Canal and the Isle of Cats) for the money I need to get all this stuff all over again rather than "sigh, time to go to Visage/Venderbight/Nuncio" again. And again. And again.

TLDR: Yes, it's a lot of money, but it takes a marked chunk out of the tedium of repetition.

(Now, if only we could actually carry over things like Secrets, or more than two stats of +stat increases, then I'd be happy. It is so -agonizingly- impossible to raise Pages in this game, and unlike Fallen London there's absolutely no way to actually get reliable +stat increases to meet the oftentimes enormous requirements of challenges. If the game demands that I have 200 points of a stat for a 75% chance to not die horribly, then I want ways and means to actually raise my stats reliably and repeatedly, without camping in Gaider's Mourn and just hitting Explore every time the bell tolls.)

[fangorn231]

I wouldnt call it broken since you still lose like 3 out of every 4 boxes of sunlight you sell on the isle of cats. And to top that off, if you arent doing a sunlight run to the exclusion of all else then it should take you a fair bit longer incorporating a sunlight run or two into every trip around the map you take. took me nearly an hour to go thru most of the ports after a couple of sunlight runs.

[Pope Innocent the 69th]

Bunch of easy ways to fix it would be to simply add a cap of how much sunlight you can sell. Say after 10 transactions you either:

-Inflation of the value of sunlight. You sold so much sunlight that price starts sharply dropping to the point where it's not really worth it.

-A similar event like the sphynxstone: Some underworld figures take note of your "business" and offer you one big job where you can deliver say 3-4 boxes for a bunch of rare materials, and that's it, no more sunlight selling afterwards.

Or otherwise:

-Make it riskier. You need to expose yourself to sunlight. Add a variable so you can get a wound when filling the boxes

-Or you can get caught IMMEDIATELY as you descend from the surface. After all, if anybody is going to smuggle sunlight they need to go to the surface, so it makes perfect sense to inspect for smuggled goods at the Cumean Canal. This could still be circumvented by going to Aestival, so maybe this could be added as an additional factor. They could even make it look like a cool design element: ,,Due to the increased number of illegal sunlight smuggled, the Admiralty has set up a checkpoint at the Cumean Cannal".

Also, I personally found sunlight smuggling to be somewhat...essential? I was playing the game for almost 3 days and I still only had my mini-boat which couldn't take more than 3-4 hits from major monsters and ships. This severly cut the radius of my possible exploration without immense danger.

[fangorn231]

What is people's beef with selling sunlight? I really dont understand because as far as plot goes, it makes perfect sense that sunlight itself would be the highest paid commodity you can get your hands on.
And it costs a HUGE amount of fuel every time to fill up your mirrorcatch boxes. Even if you only buy fuel at the Iron Republic or get fuel from turning in port reports thats still a heck of a lot of fuel you have to burn. then there's the low chance of getting to reuse your box, and finally the cost of buying more boxes literally cuts your profits in half. Oh and you tend to lose at least 2 crew going to and from the surface. A sunlight run can be pretty darn expensive if something bad happens.
Unless you got a lucky configuration in the map, selling sunlight is profitable but only for mid-to-late game players.
There isnt really all that much reason to nerf it to me. Especially since I hate games that feel like you are obligated to sink in 3 or more hours just to progress even a little in one gaming session (I'm looking at you final fantasy games and JRPGs in general)

What benefit to the gameplay does nerfing the sale of sunlight on the black market have for the player? It doesnt make the game more fun, it doesnt make the story better or more engaging. It just obligates the player to sink even more time into this game just to get past the broke hobo stage of the game after every time they die.

[Kalvix]

Originally posted by fangorn231:

What is people's beef with selling sunlight? I really dont understand because as far as plot goes, it makes perfect sense that sunlight itself would be the highest paid commodity you can get your hands on.
And it costs a HUGE amount of fuel every time to fill up your mirrorcatch boxes. Even if you only buy fuel at the Iron Republic or get fuel from turning in port reports thats still a heck of a lot of fuel you have to burn. then there's the low chance of getting to reuse your box, and finally the cost of buying more boxes literally cuts your profits in half.
Unless you got a lucky configuration in the map, selling sunlight is profitable but only for mid-to-late game players.
There isnt really all that much reason to nerf it to me. Especially since I hate games that feel like you are obligated to sink in 3 or more hours just to progress even a little in one gaming session (I'm looking at you final fantasy games and JRPGs in general)

What benefit to the gameplay does nerfing the sale of sunlight on the black market have for the player? It doesnt make the game more fun, it doesnt make the story better or more engaging. It just obligates the player to sink even more time into this game just to get past the broke hobo stage of the game after every time they die.

Because it gives way too much echo right now, as I said in my original post it took my mate 1 day to buy the best of everything, and that includes the time to save up for the initial investment and find the places to sell it, actual grinding time to buy the best of everything was only 2 hours..

With that sort of ease you may as well add an infinite money option as you can not only buy everything in a couple of hours but then spend say 1 more hour (most likely a few mins when you get the merchant ship) to fill a mansion with heirlooms so your next character has about 16k from the get go...

Do you really not think that is a bit much especially for no risk?