The ability to sell things other than trade goods such as weapons, armor, and clothes.

[Surprisekitty]

When I first learned about 'shop counters' I was excited. I thought that one would be able to open their own shop in Kenshi, where customers would buy my goods rather than give their business to those other shops with their clearly inferior goods.

But then I learned that you could only sell trade goods at a shop counter. You couldn't become a blacksmith who forged only the highest quality weapons, where people would travel from afar to purchase them from you rather than some other weapon manufacturer.

You couldn't become an armorer, who although a novice at first... through hard work and dedication went on to produce the finest armor in he land. Armor that would be proudly displayed in a little shop on the side of the road, which would eventually be frequented by only the most wealthy and powerful. The kind of people who wanted the best, and knew that armorer and his little shop was where to get it.

You couldn't become a tailor, who produced the finest clothes in the land. Clothes carefully crafted with precision and dexterity. Clothes that would make the one who wore them be envied and eyed jealously by any who looked upon him. Clothes that would eventually come to grace the backs of the elite of society, with the name of the one who made them spoken of with the respect the quality of his craftsmanship was due.

No, you could only sell trade goods. Some measly loaves of bread and trinkets that you will never see anyone use. You can't sell weapons that you can actually see in the hands of another. You can't sell armor or clothes that you can see someone wear. You can make the finest weapons and armor and the world, and no one cares.

With all of the horrible quality equipment lying around in the world of Kenshi, you would think someone who could craft weapons and armor that are of a quality practically unseen except in ancient armories or the Black City, that it would be a bigger deal. That people would be clamoring for your goods and flocking to your shop for them.

And to add insult to injury, you can't even put a sign outside your 'shop' to tell people what exactly your selling. I get that player shops were probably an afterthought... but with some work they have the potential to be something fun for a player to do rather than a mechanic that practically no one uses.

Immersion is important, especially in a game like Kenshi. Improved player shops (with more depth) could definitely help with that and making the world feel more alive.

Long post over. Time to go snag an apple fritter and some coffee.

[Vandala]

Yeah that part of the game needs some attention.

It would be fun to be able to sell far better quality weapons and armor, and piss off other nations because of where you happen to be selling them.

I doubt the United Cities would be happy with you if you set up shop in the Holy Nation to sell the highest quality armaments. Maybe they'll try to bribe you first, pay you to move in with them, but if you keep refusing they'll sent their best agents to take you out, or maybe kidnap you.

It's so disappointing to never see npc's walking around with your handiwork, you'd think after a few hundred sales your own crafted items would show up once in a while.

[swillo]

I agree that it would be nice as a concept but I see why it has purposefully left out.

Town living is supposed to be a crutch to help you survive the early game. Once you are strong enough they Devs expect you to leave the safety of the town and strike out on your own. At which point you should found your own outpost and then gather your wares and actively travel to sell them at other towns.
The idea of being able to turtle in a town and sell things you make is not the their vision for the game, as they have stated many times. So while it would be nice to have someone else come by and take all the extra junk that we make off our hands, I see the Devs concept of forcing us to have to step out and actively sell it.
And still they do throw us a bone, once in a while some traders will come to our towns to sell us needed supplies and buy our crap that we are too lazy to take to the city.

[Surprisekitty]

I agree that it would be nice as a concept but I see why it has purposefully left out.

Town living is supposed to be a crutch to help you survive the early game. Once you are strong enough they Devs expect you to leave the safety of the town and strike out on your own. At which point you should found your own outpost and then gather your wares and actively travel to sell them at other towns.
The idea of being able to turtle in a town and sell things you make is not the their vision for the game, as they have stated many times. So while it would be nice to have someone else come by and take all the extra junk that we make off our hands, I see the Devs concept of forcing us to have to step out and actively sell it.
And still they do throw us a bone, once in a while some traders will come to our towns to sell us needed supplies and buy our crap that we are too lazy to take to the city.

How does "turtling" in a town hinder the vision the developers have for the game? At the moment, it's quite easy to set up mining operations a short distance away from a town and start making a lot of money through crafting, but money is only one part of the equation.

A player can turtle in a town and build up a lot of money, but they aren't going to become stronger by doing this. You can have 100K cats and the best gear in all of the land, and still be weak. High level weapons and armor mean nothing if you can't use them properly, and will actually hinder your growth and combat effectiveness.

If players want to become strong enough to effect the world of Kenshi, they need to travel outside the safety of a town and fight. If you want to be able to craft the best gear and make your operations more efficient, you need to scour ruins for AI cores and ancient science books.

The point is, I don't think deeper shop mechanics would "hurt" the developers vision of the game. Players should be allowed to turtle. They should be allowed to sit in a town and make all the money they want. They should be allowed the freedom to do what they wish. Things should not be restricted just because of a "we want people to explore, stop staying in a town" sort of logic. A player shouldn't feel that there is an artifical restriction preventing him from doing what he wants, it should feel natural.

You can turtle now in the game, and the reason more players don't is because the game already presents them obstacles that can only be overcome by going out and exploring (ie: technology, fighting ability). So I say let people turtle, while they may stay safe or amass wealth, they will never be able to become strong enough to effect the world, or advance their technology, by turtling.

The developers already offer many advantages towards exploring rather than turtling, and refusing to add (or improve) mechanics that could improve immersion like making your own shop and refusing to add depth to such things so players "wont turtle" rather irritates me.

The game should feel organic and alive. There are better ways (like research books in ruins, etc) towards pushing players towards a certain playstyle. Arbitrary restrictions and shallow game mechanics so players "play a certain way" don't accomplish that.

[Vandala]

High level weapons and armor mean nothing if you can't use them properly, and will actually hinder your growth and combat effectiveness.

Come on, this is blatantly false. XD
If you turtle in a town for a bit to get superior equipment you will have a far easier time with the rest of the game.

I agree with the rest of your post though.

[Surprisekitty]

High level weapons and armor mean nothing if you can't use them properly, and will actually hinder your growth and combat effectiveness.

Come on, this is blatantly false. XD
If you turtle in a town for a bit to get superior equipment you will have a far easier time with the rest of the game.

I agree with the rest of your post though.

Don't higher quality weapons require a certain level of skill (strength, dexterity, etc) before you can use them without a penalty though? The fragment axe and the prerequisite level of strength needed to wield it effectively comes to mind.

Nothing a bit of balancing wouldn't be able to fix, I'm sure.

[Hatsune_Neko]

one problem.
merchants do not carry the amount of money needed to buy high level weapons and armors.
and as for the lower quality or looted items being sold, the dev said
We dont want to buy you useless junk.

bit harsh yes,

but it would require changing the economy system to allow it too. people would have to have money to buy said items. and with how much the player can pump out, you would be so rich that it would ruin the games economy. its already in a bad state with how easy it is to make cats even after the recent nerfs. this idea would make it really bad.

I made a mod that tried to address this issue, and i found out that in the end, there is no way to stop the player from becoming the bill gates of the Kenshi world, but i could only delay it.

[Surprisekitty]

one problem.
merchants do not carry the amount of money needed to buy high level weapons and armors.
and as for the lower quality or looted items being sold, the dev said
We dont want to buy you useless junk.

bit harsh yes,

but it would require changing the economy system to allow it too. people would have to have money to buy said items. and with how much the player can pump out, you would be so rich that it would ruin the games economy. its already in a bad state with how easy it is to make cats even after the recent nerfs. this idea would make it really bad.

I made a mod that tried to address this issue, and i found out that in the end, there is no way to stop the player from becoming the bill gates of the Kenshi world, but i could only delay it.

Hm, maybe part of the problem is the fact that once you start recruiting people into your squad the player begins to snowball. More people means faster mining, resource acquisition, and wealth.

Maybe having to pay wages to those the player recruits would help? Something to drain the influx of cats? Because soldiers shouldn't work for free, being paid for one's services is only logical. Having more manpower should come with a cost, and right now there isn't one.

For instance, having to pay someone 500 (or whatever other number) cats a day (or however long) can quickly add up the more squadmates you recruit. Although with how much you can make simply mining ore for a day...

Or maybe shopkeepers could pay the player drastically less for offloading goods they don't want, such as selling ore to a tailor shop, or weapons to an armoror? After all, IRL you wouldn't want to go to a farmers market to sell a TV or whatnot. The natural laziness of the average player would probably push most people to take the quickest route towards making money rather than the most profitable one. Although, I could see such a thing being too tedious to be a good idea.

Anyway. If balancing the economy as things work now is impossible, then perhaps things need to change on a deeper level. Whether that means adding new mechanics or revamping the entire system, something needs to be done if the economy is to be balanced.

And regarding the shop idea making the economy even worse, and requiring the economy to be redone: If the economy is broken and it's borderline impossible to fix it currently, should it really be used to drive the reasoning behind not adding a mechanic that could improve immersion? Because using a broken mechanic as the reason to not do something seems a bit odd to me. The broken economy shouldn't hold back features from being added to the game simply because the economy, rather than the features in question, aren't working properly. Because if that's the case, then some things that could greatly improve the game will never be added simply because the economy is unfixable.

That aside, I honestly want to know. Is what we have in Kenshi at the moment, an actual economy? If a trader ends up making a lot of profit, will their wealth increase? Will characters in the world spend their money at shops and buy items, or is it just the player doing so? Is there supply and demand, and if so... does it work effectively considering the player is the only one driving that supply and demand?

It's just... the fact the player can break the economy indicates something clearly isn't right. Heck, just look at the world IRL. A single individual, even a wealthy individual, cannot break the economy (in a healthy economic system). They can influence the economy, but break it? I certainly hope not, or that would have some bad implications if one group could absolutely destroy an economy (dictatorships aside).

Long post over. If I came off as short or rude in anyway, well... it's early in the morning and I'm without coffee, so I apologize for that if so.

[Neteman]

Maybe having to pay wages to those the player recruits would help? Something to drain the influx of cats? Because soldiers shouldn't work for free, being paid for one's services is only logical. Having more manpower should come with a cost, and right now there isn't one.

For instance, having to pay someone 500 (or whatever other number) cats a day (or however long) can quickly add up the more squadmates you recruit. Although with how much you can make simply mining ore for a day...

I think this is an interesting idea.

It could also rise the amount per character hand by hand with it's abilities value. The better becomes a character, the more expensive is to keep him in your payroll with the additional interest when someone becomes too powerful for your income (or you lose a lot of money for some reason) and you need to release that character and eventually re-add him.

If economy becomes a thing, the endgame could be more interesting because nowadays the outpost building is meant to surviving purposes rather than to have a functional economy development that ensures a powerfull enough squad.

I kinda like this idea.

[Vandala]

Don't higher quality weapons require a certain level of skill (strength, dexterity, etc) before you can use them without a penalty though? The fragment axe and the prerequisite level of strength needed to wield it effectively comes to mind.

Nothing a bit of balancing wouldn't be able to fix, I'm sure.

Nope, I think that was only in relation to the attack speed of the weapon, everything else works just fine.

High powered weapons and armor are such a huge advantage, for example, take a character with no combat skills at all and equip him with a full suit of the best masterwork armors and put him in a fight against some dust bandit, you'll out level the dust bandit in combat stats before he can do any significant damage to you and you'll beat him easily. That's the power of good armor.

And equipping higher quality weapons will simply increase the damage that you do, because you already start at the bottom, there's no difference in attack speed between wielding a piece of shit quality fragment axe or stealing the axe from the stone golem, but if you steal that super fragment axe from the golem you'll be downing (if not outright killing) dust bandits in single hits (because holy shit that damage), so attack speed is kinda irrelevant. It just takes a little longer before you max out your attack speed, then again, higher quality weapons are a lot heavier, especially the heavy weapon group, which means you'll be leveling strength faster and for longer then with lower quality weapons.

[Vandala]

It's just... the fact the player can break the economy indicates something clearly isn't right.

Not really, its just a game after all, all the game really has is a number of shops that buy and sell some stuff and the player can make money by selling. The player also has no real overhead costs and hardly ever incurs losses so its inevitable that eventually the player ends up with all the money and "breaks" the "economy".

All that really happens is that you run out of stuff to buy. Once all blue prints are bought, once all characters are fully equipped, once all science is done, once your super base is build, once you have all the characters you want, there is nothing left to buy except for the occasional food-on-the-go. There is nothing really wrong with this, its just how most games work, you run out of stuff to buy.

Even games that are all about economic systems eventually break, they all have their break points.

Perhaps the only problem Kenshi has is how "easy" it is to get to that break point. But I can't currently speak on that, I'm not playing the latest version so I don't know the current state. But I bet we can still just mine to victory. XD

[Surprisekitty]

It's just... the fact the player can break the economy indicates something clearly isn't right.

Not really, its just a game after all, all the game really has is a number of shops that buy and sell some stuff and the player can make money by selling. The player also has no real overhead costs and hardly ever incurs losses so its inevitable that eventually the player ends up with all the money and "breaks" the "economy".

All that really happens is that you run out of stuff to buy. Once all blue prints are bought, once all characters are fully equipped, once all science is done, once your super base is build, once you have all the characters you want, there is nothing left to buy except for the occasional food-on-the-go. There is nothing really wrong with this, its just how most games work, you run out of stuff to buy.

Even games that are all about economic systems eventually break, they all have their break points.

Perhaps the only problem Kenshi has is how "easy" it is to get to that break point. But I can't currently speak on that, I'm not playing the latest version so I don't know the current state. But I bet we can still just mine to victory. XD

True enough. I suppose I should have said "the fact the player can break the economy so easily indicates something isn't right" instead, rather than that it could be broken at all... with this being a game and not real life, lol.

[bk3000]

Well in FCS you can add more items to the shopping list of different characters, or add shopping lists to characters who otherwise don't have one. But something occurred to me. There are limits on what you'd expect someone to buy.

Would your average traveling merchant buy your expensive fine armor? At most for personal use. Unless of course they're an armor merchant, but you don't expect most armor merchants would do a lot of traveling rather than running their own shop. Where as traders would move around trade goods to buy low, sell high. They aren't even selling to the end consumer so much. It is a different business model than an armor merchant.

Someone like a traveling adventurer, maybe they'd buy your stuff on occasion, but that wouldn't be the most regular business. How many people would have heard of this new faction producing great stuff in the first place? If they don't know you, then they don't seek you. Reputations take time to build, so it doesn't seem that viable from a gameplay perspective. Maybe that's the wrong way to approach this.

Who might be wanting to buy your equipment - in bulk - are major factions. And the very act of selling to them could have major implications. Such contracts would make you closer to that faction, but if other major factions find out that you're arming their enemies... well that's pretty obvious, isn't it? As they say - more money more problems. Anyhow I think you'd be naive to assume you build a shop and people just come to it. But that's where more dialog comes in. Talk to the right people in factions, and show them your goods. Presumably your items would have to exceed a certain threshold before anyone wants to even consider it. It might also be nice to talk to mercenaries about their equipment, but they wouldn't want to buy junk either.

And that gets to another problem (from a programming perspective) - be it selling to factions or individuals - the NPCs knowing if one thing is better than another. And they should probably take into account their own skills. An NPC that has a high skill level with heavy weapons shouldn't buy a shiny new saber (unless they're roughly equally skilled in with sabers). Comparing several items that are different classes of weapon is a bit problematic. If this became a thing, the NPCs should probably stick the the same weapon classes they currently have - aka items that use the same skill. Beyond that, I guess you'd have to do a "weighted" comparison. Probably cutting and blunt damage weighing the most(somehow taking into account the swing speed too), but taking into account things like defensive increases/decreases, indoor penalties, species specific bonuses, etc. Maybe the holy nation guys value bonuses against skeletons more than most, but that gets complex to program for.

[Vandala]

True enough. I suppose I should have said "the fact the player can break the economy so easily indicates something isn't right" instead, rather than that it could be broken at all... with this being a game and not real life, lol.

Fair enough, but I also put air quotes on easy.

It's easy if you know what you're doing, but that takes experience, somebody who is new to the game may find it difficult to get to that breaking point of the game where there is nothing left to buy. Because you'd have to hunt down every blue print, buy every science book you need, find and hire a lot of character and equip all of them, it takes a lot of time and exploration so it's not necessarily all that easy.

If you know what you're doing then you might not care about blueprints at all, you'll know how to make easy, quick and/or safe money so you can buy the few things you do want without issue or steal them or even just find them , and you'll know where to find all of those things from experience so it's not a lengthy process. Once you have all you need you're at the breaking point again, only the point is much lower and you get there faster.

Not that any of this matters, what we want is for trading to feel better then what it is today, you want to make an impact in the world with your goods. Right now you could be selling tons of drugs in a city but it has no effect on the city, no increase in crime, no druggies in the streets, no government trying to shut you down, you get more drug interaction just traveling around due to bag checks then to setting up your own drug empire in a city. You could be selling superior weapons to some group but rival groups don't care and the factions you sell them to won't show any improvement. It feels like you have no impact in the world.

[Hatsune_Neko]

yea
the economy is my one pet peeve about the entire game. its just broken and does need to be redone. but at this late stage of the game thats not gonna happen. it does indeed need recurring money sinks but wages i dont think would be one of the solutions.

Problem is making a money sink can be difacult because the player then has to change game play to pay that. if we had a way to change prices at each part of the process then it might work. but the game sets one price and then your costs are based on materials for many items and how many are added to it.

Armour and weapons are impossible to change because they tied to one item. you change one price and it affects the entire line for that one item. which i think is insane. it should be setup so that we can change each type individually, set buy and sell prices for individual pieces. for all grades of said items. which we can not do currently.

and when some items can cost nearly 30,000 cats, its a walking money bank for the player. you would only need to sell like 10 pieces to make 300,000. and the player can crank out hundreds rather quickly. until the Devs fix the system and make it more manageable and modifiable. adding the ability to sell those high priced pieces is just a unworkable idea for now.

[Vandala]

it does indeed need recurring money sinks but wages i dont think would be one of the solutions.

Wages solve nothing and just create annoyance.

You can always try the fake supply and demand thing, aka, the more you sell of a certain good the less value it will have. Have the price drop be a local thing (by merchant or by city) and you'll force the player to take their goods further afield.

But even this will ultimately fail, all money sink ideas will ultimately fail, this is because there's simply a limited amount of stuff to get in the game and an infinite amount of money to be made. If you want to solve this "problem" then do the logical thing, don't give the player an infinite amount of money making opportunities.

Don't allow the player to sell goods that are infinite in nature, or don't have an infinite supply of those goods.

For example, if players where only able to sell the items found in ruins and other special places then players would not end up with infinite money since such locations are a finite resource (and it would force players to explore). Unless players exploit importing of course. XD It's not all that unreasonable and perhaps lore friendly, it's a horrible world after all in the grip of terribly oppressive regimes, should we really be able to amass a fortune just by trading common goods? Or should the only money making opportunities lie in the ruins of the old world, uncovering goods that can't be made anymore?

Of course this has far-reaching effects in the game, not just for its economy. XD

[swillo]

Just fyi, and I have been trying to find away to say this without sounding too much like ????, i don't mean to offend, so please forgive me if I do.

But there is nothing in this thread that has not be discussed a dozen times already. All the ideas, arguments and answers have been used. The system that we have now is the result of those discussions not in spite of them.

The bottom line has always been that the Devs have limited resources and they chose to put them toward the fighting and adventuring aspects of the game. Buying and selling was not the focus and was meant only so that you would have a means of survival, not the goal.
If you want to make money as a trader they decided that booze was the item to do that with. (there are several posts in this forum where that is stated plainly)
Yes you can build a forge and hammer out your own weapons but that is so you can use them, they are not meant for resale. (that also is stated plainly in other discussions). And the culture and back story of the world supports the concept that there are few who could afford such treasures. (also notice that you will find few of them for sale in shops.)

I agree it would be great if they could add the empire building and a more life like economy as part of the game, but it's just not where their focus is at. Hopefully in time after the full release more things can be added, but as they are not what the game is focused on they are likely not the priority.

So before you go saying that this was poorly thought out and the devs missed this or that, nope. They didn't, It has all ready been covered and decisions made about where to place the priority. While there are still great ideas that are not currently in the game yet, that's not because they have not been thought about.

Now if you will excuse me, I have a prayer day heading to base and all my male characters are down in the swamp, I have some running to do.

[Surprisekitty]

Just fyi, and I have been trying to find away to say this without sounding too much like ????, i don't mean to offend, so please forgive me if I do.

But there is nothing in this thread that has not be discussed a dozen times already. All the ideas, arguments and answers have been used. The system that we have now is the result of those discussions not in spite of them.

The threads talking about the matter are old, and as such don't have any visibility. Given the fact I would rather not necro a thread, and that the state of the game changes with each patch, I figure a new thread discussing such topics every once and a while isn't a bad thing.

New threads with more discussion brings this stuff to the developers attention and hopefully generates new ideas (however rare). Old threads that are long dead do not, and a developer may even get the idea that a game mechanic may be fine due to no new posts about the topic being created... when that may not be the case.

I mean, I agree that the devs probably have everything planned out and know the state of the economy and such, but still... it doesn't hurt to voice one's opinion on the matter.

[swillo]

Absolutely!
No one likes to brainstorm and argue details more then me. I just noticed that most everyone in the discussion was fairly new and wanted to make sure they understood the history.

For my part (on topic) I'm on board with the concept that you can only sell "commodities" in shops. The lore of Kenshi just doesn't support selling of armor and weapons. And if you were selling them at the rates that you can manufacture them it would either "break" the econ or if there were a working econ system in place they would become valueless within a short time. everyone would have a type 3 katana and they wouldn't be worth anything. Food and booze are the things that people need on a regular basis. Thus make sense that you could sell them without driving the econ into the dumps. Plus if you were such a great weapons maker then I would expect that you would be shanghaied into service for which ever lord got the shackles on your first. And if you did flood the market and everyone had these weapons you would just pick them up after a fight and sell them again. even more reason for them to be worthless. So the best option is that there are few who can afford them and you have to travel farther to find places to sell them.

My ideas for improving the economy (off topic) were always based on the idea of equipment and buildings ware and tare. Adding more things that need fixing and repairing all of which cost money or resources would help drain your change purse. especially things like ninja raids that destroy equipment and bandits that steal all your food. If I'm going to assault the gates my first action is to take out the generators so the lights and turrets don't work. I was also a fan of the idea that you either had a vault in a base to keep your cats and thieves could steal them all, or if you are carrying them on you, bandits could loot an equal share off you when they beat you down. Thus if they beat down the whole team they can steal all your cats. That would put a pinch in your pocket.
Another good idea is for tax collectors to base the tax amount on a % of your total worth. plus a processing fee of course.

Along time ago there was the possibility that your weapon could break. It was later dropped, but I wouldn't mind going back to that either.

But again all this is econ discussion and should be move to a different thread. Sorry, like I said I like to argue details and can't help it.

[Neteman]

Someone has pointed that one of the sources of wealth is to treasure hunt old places.

I find a bit annoying to raid an old place guarded by high tech spiders to find high tech abandoned and of little use for me but... I will gain a fortune selling it to a bartender in the middle of nowhere that will spend days looking at it wondering what the heck is this thing!!

A system of tags could be of use in order to give certain objects a couple of "attributes" that will allow you to sell them ONLY to certain subjects:
- Luxury (top tier equipment) - only "buyable" by important city shops.
- War gear - only "buyable" by the correspondent shops.
- Ancient tech - only "buyable" by tech hunters shops (this makes the treasure hunting more challenging because forces to travel to World's End in order to sell that stuff).
- Crops drinks and food - only by bars.
- Fencing goods - only by thieves guild.

And so on. The tags could comprehend the faction owner (like it does at this moment), kind of good and tier if it applies.

To avoid making it impossible to make money in early stages of game, maybe a penalty to the markup of every good can be introduced, so you can sell high tech in a bar, but will make only 50% of the price or something.

Also, I want to say that Swillo is absolutely right: Kenshi is not about balancing economy or making a base ONLY. Whenever you have something under control, you go for the next goal. Once you can feed yourself, you go for gearing yourself, and then you go for the money, and then to destroy the Holy Nation (I bet 85% of our games follows this script ).