Randomize caravan loot
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I've just got around to thinking about killing caravans. I was disappointed to find that right now they just carry upgrade boosts. That's boring. It seems to me it would be a trivial and positive change to make them carry a random T3 boost. Maybe the lower tier caravans could have a chance of carrying a lower tier boost instead... although that would be nerf to caravans in general.
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Upgrade boosts have the longest build time so it's in some sense the most valuable T3 boost. In theory, therefore, you could sell this on the market and exchange for more of any other boost which would make it the best possible prize. In practice though, markets are funny.
A point about upgrade boosts is that it's one of the few boosts you can never possibly stop using. All the combat ones are mostly useless if you're not in combat, other than to hunt caravans...
The rampart repair boost eventually becomes useless if you hit 300m ramparts.
The other economy boosts like mining/carrying.... sure those would still be useful but I'm not aware of anyone who uses these as part of their day-to-day empire running (although I'm happy for someone to link a room that proves me wrong).
So that just leaves the upgrade boost as the one boost any empire could constantly be using no matter the stage of their empire.
I would say that there's quite a strong argument for that being the single boost that drops in the caravans!
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as @wtfrank said, upgrade boosts are the highest priced on the market, they also have by far the highest volume so selling them is relatively easy (on shard2 at least). I will endeavour to always have T3 boosts for you to buy with the proceeds.
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@wtfrank said in Randomize caravan loot:
Upgrade boosts have the longest build time so it's in some sense the most valuable T3 boost
Tough and dismantle are longer. To be honest I'm not sure value has much to do with it.
A point about upgrade boosts is that it's one of the few boosts you can never possibly stop using. All the combat ones are mostly useless if you're not in combat, other than to hunt caravans...
You can sell them. Or just not kill the caravan.
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BTW I looted a caravan a couple of weeks ago and I swear there were 2 different boosts that dropped. So I'm not even sure that the premise of this post is correct! I will have to check some caravans over the weekend.
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@wtfrank said in Randomize caravan loot:
BTW I looted a caravan a couple of weeks ago and I swear there were 2 different boosts that dropped. So I'm not even sure that the premise of this post is correct! I will have to check some caravans over the weekend.
I know at some point the past there were two types of caravan (smokers and non-smokers) but non-smokers weren't working correctly and seem to have retired.
I've done about 10 caravans and they've all been upgrade boosts.
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Bumpity bump. I still think randomized loot would be more interesting. It may reduce the value of caravans overall to some people, but I think it'd be nice because:
- I don't really want upgrade boosts and am unable to sell them at the volume I get them.
- The additional logic for checking if you want the boost is trivial in your caravan killing code. If you don't want what the caravans are hauling just don't kill them.
- It would give a (small) bonus to people who do take on every caravan and can make use of the useless boosts (eg. carry and harvest). If you do collect boosts you don't want you can just sell them on the market.
Even if caravans aren't changed I really hope Strongholds will have more variety. It seems like it's such a trivial change to make the whole process more interesting.
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I bet you could sell more of them if you reduced the price you charged for them...
And BTW all the caravans I've seen since my earlier post have had exclusively upgrade boosts which confirms what you're saying.
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@wtfrank said in Randomize caravan loot:
I bet you could sell more of them if you reduced the price you charged for them...
But then I'd make less money! On the other hand right now I'm making next to nothing as they just aren't selling.
Tbh I'll never understand the market. Last week on one day 500k went in a day with an average over 0.5. This week volumes are under 20k and it's on sale for 0.35. If I could predict all of this I'd make a killing!