Gameplay Suggestion - rebalance of the black market

[type-1]

TL;DR Instead of filling the black market with great hardware that is priced out of range fill it with mostly cheap junk and an occasional rare piece that is priced high but in spending budget.

I was so excited when I unlocked the black market and then so disappointed when I saw all this incredible hardware at prohibitive prices. The black market is full of cool stuff that is priced out of good value. This means that I no longer get excited when I get to a system and open the black market anymore because I'm probably not going to buy any of it. I believe that having lots of junk with an occasional rare item at an increased but not excessive price that will only be available for a few days at most would make the black market more exciting to explore every time I open that menu. The items will change constantly, most of the time they will be crap but occasionally there will be a piece of lostech that you have to buy immediately otherwise it will be gone the next time you visit the market and because it won't cost 10million credits for a heatsink you may actually be able to sell off some mech chassis to afford that pulse laser.

 

[Jade_Rook]

Black market prices are based off of Pirate reputation, and it sounds like you have them really mad at you. They are probably charging the "I'd rather shoot you in the face then sell you anything" 1000% price increase. Unfortunately, it can be rather hard to come back from that. The best way is if you can get a flashpoint for a faction you have angered, but there aren't any direct pirate flashpoints. The Prototype flashpoint gives you an option to aid the pirates and get a large reputation boost that way.

Having a good selection of base level gear available in faction shops isn't a bad idea. Generally, when you get access to the black market or form an alliance with a faction, you are already looking for high end gear.

 

[DocDesastro]

If I may present another way of balancing the Black Market? The current mechanism is not very immersive to say so.

First, I am very annoyed to have the BM tied to your standings with the pirates. As told before, I do not believe in a 'unified faction of pirates'. Pirates are one source for items on the Black Market, but also rogue faction elements might sell items to bolster their private coffers as are criminals in general. Add corporations selling items under embargo to gain extra profits or bolster their own black accounts without sight of the shareholder and we have a merry band of entities bringing in an influx of items for sale. Now...whom to sell to? The buyer needs to have money and be willing not to care from which truck the crate has fallen. Mercs are in the front row of buyers as are criminals or organizations otherwise restricted from buying said items out of several reasons.

Now...the risk of being a pirate is that everybody will officially hunt you down as you are a criminal. One of the worst kind. So being picky with whom you trade is far from reality as you need the money. Alternatives? Selling to the guys you stole from? Nope.
So I find it rather interesting that the standing with 'the pirates' will dictate the prices of items to be sold.

My approach to this quandry would use the pilot perks and add some RPG into the game.
First of all, the game must allow us to assign pilots to a long-term job: requisition
I find it rather odd that when we reach a planet we automatically have access to all items available at once. Isn't it so, that at each new location one must take some time to look at the market to fathom, what you can get there and of whom?

I would assume, that standard stuff like ammunition, JJs, single heat sinks and MGs could be found anywhere. It is like finding a gas station - you get the basic stuff for running your car. Finding certain spare parts could prove more difficult to conclude my metaphor.

Now back to my idea: Set pilots to acquisition duty. Each pilot contributes to dig up further goods being sold on a percentage per day ration. The longer you stay on the planet and the longer you have your guys look for something, the more items you will find. This has one immediate effect: ally faction is more useful than ever as you automatically have full access to the faction stores and do not need to search items. Now: some pilots have perks like 'Trader', 'Pirate', 'Criminal' or 'Smuggler'. Having them search could have different results.

First of all, pirates, smugglers and criminals will help you find the LOCAL black market - if there is one - so basically they roll for items on the BM chart and items will show up in the BM tab. I guess, smugglers are best at that task while pirates might offer a small discount on items found for the BM. Criminals are balanced. Traders on the other hand help speed up finding normal stuff greatly (and have a small chance to stumble on the BM). There might be a reason to have events representing avoiding authorities, bribery and other fun stuff for pilots included in or foraging band. In that case other perks will become handy or bad as well. Pirates 'could' have problems with law-enforcers or bounty hunters for instance.
Other guys just will add a minor bonus to both tasks while BM boosts by those is almost negligible.

Drawback: you are expected to stay on a planet for more than one day to use the market fully and have a chance of buying at the BM and you need more pilots to do this task.
Positive: added immersion and more logical BM mechanism as well as a reason to build hab blocks and have more pilots on the roster.

Opinions?

 

[type-1]

I like your idea because I really need a good reason to have more pilots (see spoiler) on my roster and because your idea is lore friendly. It also adds that anticipation I want when looking into the black market because things will be popping up and changing often. Also having an event pop up about a pilot getting nabbed and needing to be bailed out or something would add interest for me as I quite enjoy those small micromanagement decisions that come up, they help personalize the characters and make the world seem real.

(spoiler regarding end of campaign)

Spoiler

When I got to the end of the campaign where you are warned that you need multiple lances I had stuck by one lance and four mechwarriors for the whole game and then had to recruit four more, grind missions until they were trained up and scour markets for some good mechs they could pilot.

(spoiler regarding end of campaign)

I do try and think of things that are easy for the devs to implement though which is why I suggested reducing prices to something reasonable even for people that haven't become friends with pirates and also reduce their spawn rates in the market. I imagine this would just be tweaking some numbers like the price multiplier etc. It really comes down to how much effort the devs want to put into it. The game is fantastic as is so maybe these ideas could be used in "Battletech 2: Stomping Bots Unleashed" whenever that comes out

 

[type-1]

@Jade_Rook I am definitely killing every pirate that dares drop in my AO, however I feel like the game uses a logarithmic pricing scale based on faction relations:
Neutral x1
Mildly disliked x10
Very Disliked x100
Hated x1000

Whereas I personally think that a linear scaling factor would be realistic and less punishing
Neutral x1
Mildly disliked x2
Very Disliked x3
Hated x4

Or Exponential to ensure players still want to play nice with the pirates
Neutral x1
Mildly disliked x2
Very Disliked x4
Hated x16

But when I see this good gun that is going to cost me 100 million credits I think there is no way I am buying that and I think that this pirate is a really stupid businessperson becasue they just lost a sale from quite a rich merc commander who would have paid 10 times it's real value, but will not pay 100 times it's real value because I could use those credits to buy a whole leopard instead! Besides I've stomped in about 400 of pirate mechs already this smart-mouth hustler on the black market trying to rip me off could just be the 401st and I will take that gun for free...

 

[Blade_mercurial]

But when I see this good gun that is going to cost me 100 million credits I think there is no way I am buying that and I think that this pirate is a really stupid businessperson becasue they just lost a sale from quite a rich merc commander who would have paid 10 times it's real value, but will not pay 100 times it's real value because I could use those credits to buy a whole leopard instead! Besides I've stomped in about 400 of pirate mechs already this smart-mouth hustler on the black market trying to rip me off could just be the 401st and I will take that gun for free...

Actually, that's a 'smart' business person, because he knows if he sells you that gun, you're gonna use it to kill his business partners and maybe even some of his close friends (assuming pirates have friends).

So while the current system might not be perfect, it does have some semblance of 'realism' as your 'attitude' towards pirates so succinctly demonstrates...

If you really, really want to buy stuff off the black market, be nice to them. Its really that simple, and honestly, that's kind of how it works in reality...

And if you like killing pirates, then frankly, its unreasonable to expect affordable prices when you are making it your personal mission to eliminate every single pirate in the periphery!

So for me, I prefer the current Black Market. It gives the game some real consequences for your decisions. And meaningful consequences make your decisions matter, and that's good for the game, imho.

 

[DocDesastro]

The problem is, that the pirates are not the only faction putting things on black market. Illicit cargo from ship seizures or battlefield salvage, where pirates have been victorious, yes, in that case you are right. But other sources than that?

And even then, why would pirate band A care what happens to pirate band B or C? They are hunting the same quarry. They are mutual competition for the same loot. The more pirates in a system, the worse their business will be because their prey would either be more protected in return, they have to 'share' and more pirates means more bounty hunters, governmental raids more likely, traders will go elsewhere etc.
I would not be surprised, if - lorewise - there are pirate contracts against other pirates who represent a kind of unwanted competition for the employer or have grown 'too strong' so they represent a reason for authorities to act. And when government lashes out, it does not differentiate between a 'good' and a 'bad' pirate. So pirates should try to rob the rich while not doing too much trouble because that will attract unwanted attention with fatal consequences.

Knowing that you are dealing with a mercenary just means 'he will not harm us unless someone else will pay him for doing so'. Unless you have a REAL high bounty on your heads that this will make it worthwhile to act without contract to root you out. In that case, you would not make a business with the mercs anyways - they would try to wrestle it out of your cold hands together with your other stuff. So why care that the merc before you might have hunted pirates before? The officials/law-abiding do it all the time. A merc is grey and neutral and cares only for the almighty C-Bill. And if it happens that they work one time for a guy YOU disgruntled to whack your knickers...well, you can hire them as well, can't you? Fair game.

We seem to forget, that people pay for getting rid of pirates because they did something heinous first. They do not deserve any 'moral' protection as they are not the victims but the culprits.

Lastly: Who says the seller is a pirate and not - more likely: a middle-man? Or a corrupt official selling 'army surplus'? Or a corporate rogue selling 'broken' products for his own purse? Or a private person selling family heirloom on his own?

The current situation is not meaningful, but arbitrary and whilst it seems logical, I think this topic is too complicated to describe correctly with a few sentences.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Very assure and helpful to understanding the larger context of the issue at hand Good @DocDesastro. :bow:

Reputation.

Word gets around the BATTLETECH Universe. Once your powerful and proficient enough to start taking on the Black Widow Company and Bounty Hunter’s Headquarters Company, your name and the name of your Mercenary Outfit are Beyond Established and if not yet a 3025 Household Name at least on par with Elite Solaris Stables and Named Champions.

So while Black Markets spring up here and there throughout the Cosmos, ACCESS can understandably be hard to acquire. please understand to quickly reach -80 to -100 when dealing with Pirates, you’ve made ZERO effort to balance your pro and anti-Pirate activities.

And HBS has made clear that Black Markets are tied at the hip to the Pirate Faction.

The way I see it is that Planetary Stores account for
all Legitimate and Borderline “Vendors” for lack of a better term. And while the UI nicely compiles a list of items for ease of Window Shopping, I believe those Mechs, Weapons and Equipment are spread at a number of sites across the Planet/System, both squeaky-clean-Legitimate as well as the descending continuum toward Borderline-Illegal Vendors.

Then the Black Markets are for the dyed-in-the-wool Pirate-connected Vendors.



And I also believe that there are layers upon layers upon layers of Gray in both BattleTech and BATTLETECH. While some Pirates spark a local reaction so strong that what amounts to a Posse is raised to destroy them, there are so, so, so many Pirates masquerading as smugglers, Free Traders, Legitimate Traders and even Letter of Marque-type Pirate where the War is between two Factions (or Corporations) using proxies/Pirates to carry the right to their opponent just as has been done throughout History - on par with the “One Person’s Patriot is a other’s Pirate.”


Just as Doc says, the topic here is a deep and well-nuanced one. All this only just barely scratches the see face in some ways. :bow:

 

[DocDesastro]

But wouldn't it make more sense then to buy items in stores related to the factions we find on the planet and have prices and item availability adjusted by our reputation with those factions?

E.g.: We are at a planet ruled by the 'Local Government' - so in fact a neutral planet. We have Pirate presence there. As well as Marik presence together with Taurian Concordat. Instead of having a normal market and a black market we should have 4 tabs - one for each faction present - which represents faction-related contacts or stores willing to sell with the system owner being of most importance.

Each one has its own table to roll items from and prices and number of items you roll are limited by reputation with faction. So maybe the pirates hate you - then they will not sell you anything, but in turn Marik might like you and offer some Marik-typical items for a reasonable price. Maybe you disgruntled Taurians so they offer you at least some Taurian-typical items for a steep price The most items you will get is basic and common stuff because the system is neutral. This can be modified with local perks like com star presence or high/low tech.

Rare items should be rare but can pop up at any faction. The price depends on them liking you and availability as well to a point. Reputation would now reflect how much they trust us and this reflects in turn in better prices and more offers.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Abstraction.

Abstraction and Depth without Complexity.


Back at GENCON 2017, Jordan shared with us that key elements of BATTLETECH’s game design revolved around straightforward Abstractions of aspects of the Mercenary Command SIM (like having one Store or Hiring Hall per World as the Rule; with exceptions being gated Black Markets and the even more rare, gated Faction Stores.) Rather than trying to replicate all Factions and their Stores on the over 150-Worlds of BATTLETECH.

And I can understand that. Straightforward is easiest to understand for gamers new to the franchise. Trying to parse through multiple Faction-based Product Lines in largely redundant Base-level Stores would have been frustrating for even Original BattleTech Gamers like myself, let alone a gamer new to BattleTech.



Keeping it to a Single Base-level Store and then two tiers of clearly identifiable and gated Specialty Stores is clearly in keeping with Jordan’s concept of Depth without Complexity. As I understand it, other examples of this include the Contracting Sliders, the abstracted costs in that Financial Statement, etc.


Yes, it could be done another way, but when it comes to BANG for the finite resources that HBS has on hand, I think the three tiers of Stores/Markets proves to be quite elegant and nuanced. :bow:

 

[type-1]

Actually, that's a 'smart' business person, because he knows if he sells you that gun, you're gonna use it to kill his business partners and maybe even some of his close friends (assuming pirates have friends).

@Blade_mercurial I agree you have changed my mind about this. I still think that pirates have an overabundance of top tier loot, it seems unrealistic that a back alley trader has more on offer than the official manufacturer on a planet but you're right it makes perfect sense for the pirates to want to keep gear out of a renowned pirate killer's hands.I'll assume violence in the marketplace results in excommunication so instead of killing me on the spot they just price me out of the marketplace instead. I suppose now that I have reconsidered I would like to see less rare drops at a high price with a higher turnover of product (refresh the black market every ten days or something).

(side note it would be nice if the pirates used some of their good stuff on the battlefield so I could acquire it via salvage, giving a second avenue to obtain this stuff as opposed to having to kiss ass to get into the Black Market.)

 

[type-1]

I think this topic is too complicated to describe correctly with a few sentences.

@DocDesastro Absolutely, this stands as testament to the world building done by the devs. Really I just felt like the price of entry was too steep, especially when the rare loot wasn't actually rare. As an example in this screenshot:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ta-j5yM_OEDkZmkKNaV0zVSe78pwRPaT
There is two of the same mech (almost, two variations anyway). One is whole and the other is three parts. Either way I could buy one completed mech, but the price of the whole unit is significantly higher than the price of a whole unit purchased in three parts and self assembled - like I'm purchasing from the Ikea of the mech marketplace. Going the three part purchase makes the cost of one banshee about 42 million, which is totally unreasonable and in line with it being

unreasonable to expect affordable prices when you are making it your personal mission to eliminate every single pirate in the periphery!

, but the cost of 136 million credits for the whole mech is ridiculous, it's not even worth considering at that point and may as well just not appear at all. At 42 million I am already totally put off buy the purchase as I could buy so much more equipment and float my company for months instead so it almost becomes comical when someone wants 136 million for a single mech (all my readied mechs combined aren't even worth that lmao).

I think the discussion has really moved from a black market balance topic to a what makes sense regarding lore. I'm no expert on world building but I like to think that the devs create a foundation of a world with lore, environments, characters, gameplay events, gameplay mechanics, etc and we the player use our imaginations to finish it off just like we are doing here. The devs have given us a foundation via the black market (environment), the price mechanic (gameplay mechanic) and who we are trading with, the pirates (character and lore). we then use our imaginations to further grow that world, injecting what we believe the pirates and the black market would be like. Fundamentally what I think has happened is that what I and DocDesastro imagine the black markets would be like is a world that is not supported by the foundation provided by the devs. We both think that the pirates are willing to sell to the highest bidder regardless and are organized loosely, actually in competition not cahoots and so it doesn't make sense to us for the pirates to exclude anyone with money to spend from the market. But if you imagine the pirate organization to be rigidly structured, sharing information among the pirate factions (especially regarding the player and our rep for pirate killing) then it does make sense to exclude the player from the black market.

I think that removing the logarithmic scaling of prices would make it easier for both imagined versions of the world to be plausible because then prices are not so exorbitant that the player can no longer participate but the top tier tech is still locked behind a paywall. So in this case the high end pirate traders that are part of the "organisation" won't trade with you unless you throw stupid money at them but the bottom feeders that need business will. In this case either imagined versions of the world are suitable and supported by the world building foundation provided. Again returning to the lots of cheap junk with a few rare drops that are priced high.

 

[type-1]

But wouldn't it make more sense then to buy items in stores related to the factions we find on the planet and have prices and item availability adjusted by our reputation with those factions?

I agree, I thought this was already a thing though with the faction storefronts on their home planets?

 

[type-1]

Keeping it to a Single Base-level Store and then two tiers of clearly identifiable and gated Specialty Stores is clearly in keeping with Jordan’s concept of Depth without Complexity. As I understand it, other examples of this include the Contracting Sliders, the abstracted costs in that Financial Statement, etc.

Yes, expecting the devs to completely overhaul the system is a bit entitled and the current system works flawlessly. I merely think that tweaking the price scaling a the drop rate of high end loot and low end loot would help the lore (as aforementioned) and improve the gameplay experience provided by the Black Market system. I put this forward as a suggestion because it should be (I didn't code the game so I am not sure what tool manages shop inventory I am just assuming it picks from a table using a random number generator and some scaling values) easy to implement without changing anything significant.

 

[Blade_mercurial]

Yes, expecting the devs to completely overhaul the system is a bit entitled and the current system works flawlessly. I merely think that tweaking the price scaling a the drop rate of high end loot and low end loot would help the lore (as aforementioned) and improve the gameplay experience provided by the Black Market system. I put this forward as a suggestion because it should be (I didn't code the game so I am not sure what tool manages shop inventory I am just assuming it picks from a table using a random number generator and some scaling values) easy to implement without changing anything significant.

I'm sure if you wanted to make alterations it could be done, but I don't know how to do it. Probably you could find more information on the modding subforum. Or perhaps a mod already exists that addresses some of your concerns...

 

[Streamlock]

I agree x1000 is equivalent to it not being there at all for the most part. But when it is the only time you see that +++LRM 20 in 20 hours of play...

What I would like to see, is something akin to the black market shake down but much, much more sinister.

Have a pirate contact come to Darius and proposition him. "You *ssholes want access to our fences, black market, and grey market goods at a reasonable price again? We know people. But, you got to do a job: X faction is prototyping a new mech variant, and we want it. 'Mostly' intact. That's right. Kill the meat, save the metal.

The end of the Flashpoint puts you in a moral dilemma. Something like: The prototype is being piloted by a powerful noble taking their 11 yo kid for a spin in a version of "bring your kid to work" day. And if you do this, it will make the news reels.

Now what do you do? Gain access, for a time (Pirates be pirates and don't care what you did for them, but more what have you done for me lately, they will hold it over your head again) and risk bringing hell down upon your company! Maybe even some of your plots bailing?

Or renege on the agreement?

How bad do you want it?

 

[Jade_Rook]

A pirate flashpoint that only shows up if you have very low rep is a good idea. Have it show up as an event first, either accept the flashpoint (adding it to the map, like the HM flashpoints) or lose access to the black market. After the mission you gain enough rep with the pirates to take normal missions again (about +20 rep), but take a hit with the rep for all other factions and the MRB.

I could actually see similar events for all of the factions. I would love to see more reputation based missions/flashpoints.