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Implemented Create a pricing guide for products on SARP.

Kai

Retired Staff
I have noticed that there's some wild inconsistencies on how products are priced on SARP I know in the past there was a push for a while to make products attainable for player characters, which artificially drove certain prices down, but considering that banking institutions and loans exist, the pricing realistically shouldn't have to be low for PC's to be able to attain/acquire them.

While I don't have the time right at this moment to build a suggested list of pricing categories, I would like to work with members of the community to build such a list- essentially a list of item categories and what the general pricing of an item in that category would be. this, of course being broken down to account for things like size classes and usage cases, as something like a Freighter and a Warship might be roughly the same size but they should have wildly different prices due to one being a box with engines, and the other being a high tech armored shell covered in guns and with berthed craft and higher crew needs, for example.

Essentially, I'd like to get together with the community and put some work into making SARP's make-believe economy a bit more believable.
 
This suggestion has been implemented. Votes are no longer accepted.
Seems like a very sensible idea to me. Upvoted.
 
I generally use 1 KS = 1$ and spaceships are basically ocean going ships as my pricing guidelines.

If we want to change things up, I think a good analysis of a economy starts with "What is scarce?" The answer is honestly, not much. Raw materials are plentiful, manufacturing easy, and energy is cheap. Currently, my understanding is that the limiting factor on starship endurance is basically food which we don't have star trek style replicators for. I think 'unique ways of thinking and approaching problems' is probably at a premium. (because despite having a large population, much of it is cloned and trained in a singular way.) Zezu is kinda limited (there are some asterisks to that) but it really hasn't stopped us from building stuff. I suspect that high level AI such as PANTHEON and Nagashun are scarce, but that may not be true. What is scarce/valuable also has important impacts on how we tell stories as well.
 
If we want to change things up, I think a good analysis of a economy starts with "What is scarce?"
I think that one thing that will always be scarce, insofar as it relates to spaceships, is time. Materials are plentiful, energy is cheap, and manufacturing is easy, but that last point comes with an asterisk. It's easy to manufacture components fairly cheaply, but when it comes to assembling large-scale things such as spacefaring vehicles time is one of the main "costs" that increases very rapidly.

With any spacecraft it takes time to assemble the frame, to assemble the components, to fit the components to the frame, to wire and plump and HVAC everything up, to armor it all and then finally to test it to make sure it's safe. And, as you increase in size, these tasks get exponentially more complex and time-consuming to complete.

SARPtech makes them far easier than in real life, taking it from years to build a military-grade ship of ~300m to just about half a month (though honestly, construction time on ships is a knob we could turn if we decide to, since it only takes about a month to make dreadnoughts, and construction time only scales linearly as ship volume increases exponentially)

Despite the advances, however, construction time does still remain the main scarcity factor on starship construction on SARP in my opinion, as it's the element that's least able to be mitigated by Supertech.



However, we need not do an in-depth economic analysis of Kikyo sector civilization in order to create a pricing guide that will be, in all actuality, completely arbitrary. The 1KS = 1$ figure is often cited, but may not be really a good mindset to be in since the KS's IRL value is only one factor that might be considered when creating this pricing guide. I think that what might be a good approach to it is to separate products into three different price ranges, based on how they're going to be used.

Things like guns, clothes, food, appliances, basic vehicles and other types of things you can reasonably expect a person to be able to buy easily are going to be fairly cheap, in my opinion. They're simple and easy to make en-masse, and these are the types of things individual PCs most often need to buy for themselves, and should be priced appropriately so that players don't need to fret over affording a gun they like. I figure this ranges from dozens to hundreds of KS, maybe a thousand or two for really nice equipment.

Next you've got things like power armor, more high-end vehicles, mechs, high-end hardware/equipment, shuttles, small starships (upper tier-9, lower tier-10) and housing. These are expensive for an individual PC to buy, but feasible with saving or a loan. Fairly explainable, but a big investment to be protected. I figure this ranges from ten(s?) of thousands to maybe a hundred or two hundred thousand on the high end.

Finally, you've got the big stuff, starships and stations and... whatever else we think of that belongs here. These things stand apart from pretty much everything else, few PCs are ever going to buy these types of products and they're traditionally only purchased by governments or large NGOs due to their high costs and/or operating costs. They're going to probably be really expensive, hundreds of thousands to millions of KS.
 
construction time only scales linearly as ship volume increases exponentially
  1. Ships are mostly empty space
  2. More volume = more simultaneous workers and equipment
 
I see this pitched like 2-4 times a year so its clearly in demand but never gets passed. Which is odd cause it is a good idea~ (I vote up)

I think there should be a standard but there are obvious paramiters that might complicate things tho some of them have already been mentioned.

The other big thing about this, tho its not really relevant but just reminds me is that PCs cant actually afford starships and the like (other than maybe a few examples like really old PCs, the crimefest crew, etc.) and we should instead try to push them towards IC stuff like taking out loans that they pay off over time in RP as a motivator and add something like that mentioned to such a list instead of somehow bankrolling an entire fleet of almost a douzen several million DA ships like what happened in nep a few months ago with no actual RP basis. (This is all just my opinion tho)

Thats for large-price items tho. When it comes to weapons and armor if a player creating them actually did his/her research they will purposefully undercut the competition to make their weapon cheaper so players will want it more for their characters.

So im saying I like this, and would love to help and get on board (we can maybe make a thread in the discord or a word doc and hammer some stuff out with everyone interested) and finally get something like this hammered out.
 
I would like to work with members of the community to build such a list- essentially a list of item categories and what the general pricing of an item in that category would be.
This, as the specific idea proposed, seems great and helpful as an OOC guide article. Creating item pages on the wiki is already a daunting task, so having what is essentially a cheat sheet available for writers who do not want to research what a handgun or yacht (for space) might cost would be great. It's an idea worth pursuing.

Beyond that, I'd shy away from the other stuff like trying to introduce real world capitalist mechanisms into the Kikyo Sector's economy as a way to make it "more believable." Debt slavery through loans and complex banking systems seem like such Kuvexian-themed things. But in Yamatai they've got a post-scarcity utopian civilization wherein every citizen can aspire toward being given exactly what they want if they work hard enough through service to the Empire.
 
I wonder if something like d20 modern's system might work well? Different items have different wealth tiers. You can buy within (or was it below?) your wealth tier as much as you want (more or less), but any time you go above it you get knocked down a personal tier.

Then you just attach that to the existing DRv3 tier system. New folks start out at Tier 1 or whatever and can buy things that are reasonable for that tier. A common item of that type would have an equivalent price tier. If it's something advanced, then you can bump its price tier up and act like it costs as much as a common item of some higher tier.

The benefit here is that people don't need to worry about how much stuff costs anymore. "Yep, this is a T11 consumer spaceship, and it costs the same as others of its type". "It's a pistol, which would be T1, but because it has advanced features and such, it should be priced as a T2 equivalent". "It's a rocket launcher, but because it's single use and has a chance to explode on its wielder (thanks Shasta), it's priced at a tier lower".

And then, instead of having to figure out how much people earn or keep up with the math, you just give different occupations/whatever a tier-equivalent purchasing power.

For items that don't have this already on them, a simple conversion guide can be made. (T1 = 300 KS, etc..) If someone wants to use the currency in RP, they can check the conversion table.

Additionally, people can more easily look forward to certain missions or RP milestones this way, as well. "In addition to going up a rank, your purchasing power has gone up a tier. Enjoy!"

Alternatively, we map out the prices based on tier like I just mentioned, but we don't bother assigning the purchase power to players. We can still tell people to price their items up or down. As prices go up, however, I think we'll continue to see that the "space between" the tier prices is just whatever the player felt like it should be. As it is, I always look at 2-3 comparable items and try to come up with a price based on those, but it's very much a "eh, seems fair" thing.
 
Then you just attach that to the existing DRv3 tier system. New folks start out at Tier 1 or whatever and can buy things that are reasonable for that tier. A common item of that type would have an equivalent price tier. If it's something advanced, then you can bump its price tier up and act like it costs as much as a common item of some higher tier.
I feel like this is a bit too complex and gamified for my tastes personally, since you then need a progression mechanic to allow PCs to grow in wealth and a rate at which that can happen. I'd refer you again to my admittedly very rough suggestion of roughly three categories of products with self-contained price ranges and a price jump between each. It's fairly rough intentionally, since it can be flexible that way, and is more based on how often individual PCs tend to buy these kind of things out-of-pocket.
Things like guns, clothes, food, appliances, basic vehicles and other types of things you can reasonably expect a person to be able to buy easily are going to be fairly cheap, in my opinion. They're simple and easy to make en-masse, and these are the types of things individual PCs most often need to buy for themselves, and should be priced appropriately so that players don't need to fret over affording a gun they like. I figure this ranges from dozens to hundreds of KS, maybe a thousand or two for really nice equipment.

Next you've got things like power armor, more high-end vehicles, mechs, high-end hardware/equipment, shuttles, small starships (upper tier-9, lower tier-10) and housing. These are expensive for an individual PC to buy, but feasible with saving for a while or a loan from some institution. Fairly explainable, but a big investment to be protected. I figure this ranges from ten(s?) of thousands to maybe a hundred or two hundred thousand on the high end.

Finally, you've got the big stuff, starships and stations and... whatever else we think of that belongs here. These things stand apart from pretty much everything else, few PCs are ever going to buy these types of products and they're traditionally only purchased by governments or large NGOs due to their high costs and/or operating costs. They're going to probably be really expensive, hundreds of thousands to millions of KS.
I included a mention of "loans" which Raz seemed to take some objection to, but that's just an alternative method to saving for a while in roleplay, or saving up your prestiege points. Moneylending is just a part of society, and has been since long before capitalism. There's nothing particularly Kuvexian about it, and I'd be shocked if every single spacefaring nation didn't have some kind of mechanism for the extending of credit for purchases.
 
In fact Yamatai does have the Essia Monetary Exchange which does do loans, among a lot of other financial stuff.
 
Call of Cthulhu's Credit Rating and Marvel Super Heroes RPG's Resource Feats are the better precursors of d20 modern thing
 
Marvel Super Heroes RPG's Resource Feats
Looking at the systems, I do like how marvel does it better than d20. We could probably just yoink the parts of the chart we need. I don't like hard numbers. So, something like this.
RankDescription
FeebleUnemployed, fixed income
PoorFreelancers, students, Yamatai UBI
TypicalSalaried employment, Star Army Enlisted pay
GoodProfessional, middle class, Star Army Junior Officer Pay
ExcellentSmall business, Avengers' pay, Star Army Senior Officer Pay
RemarkableLarge business, upper class, Star Army Flag Officer Pay
IncredibleSmall corporation, millionaire
AmazingLarge corporation, small country
MonstrousBillionaire, multinational corps
UnearthlyMajor country, mega-corporation
 
Marvel Super Heroes RPG's Resource Feats
Looking at the systems, I do like how marvel does it better than d20. We could probably just yoink the parts of the chart we need. I don't like hard numbers. So, something like this.
RankDescription
FeebleUnemployed, fixed income
PoorFreelancers, students, Yamatai UBI
TypicalSalaried employment, Star Army Enlisted pay
GoodProfessional, middle class, Star Army Junior Officer Pay
ExcellentSmall business, Avengers' pay, Star Army Senior Officer Pay
RemarkableLarge business, upper class, Star Army Flag Officer Pay
IncredibleSmall corporation, millionaire
AmazingLarge corporation, small country
MonstrousBillionaire, multinational corps
UnearthlyMajor country, mega-corporation
I'd personally relate the first 3/4 (Feeble-typical or good) levels to the first category of products I mentioned, the next 3/4 (Good-remarkable) to the second category, and the last four (Incredible and up) to the final category I mentioned. This is admittedly again a rough judgement but I'm thinking of how rich you'd need to be to buy those kinds of products without much thought.
 
The other systems seem cool, as well. SARP has done a good job of abstracting other things (damage, damage resilience, etc), so pricing items and tracking wealth feels weird. I don't know if anyone really keeps up with their character's wealth, so simplifying it down as much as possible so that it is something people care to interact with seems like a win.
 
SARP has done a good job of abstracting other things (damage, damage resilience, etc), so pricing items and tracking wealth feels weird.
While I agree that the abstraction can help, I do think that details such as pay rates and discrete prices are important for SARP's verisimilitude. I think that any categorization we discuss here and end up using should be for the purpose of making it incredibly easy for people making a page to set a price in KS or DA or DS or whatever. Character wealth is, I think, the more odd one out when it comes to things we track (or rather don't).
 
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Not a lot of my characters have money, but my main is a millionaire. I enjoy tracking what she makes and how she spends it, like 2 million for Kaiko Park. It was fun for me to imagine if she would make that sacrifice of assets. But when we get into tier-listing it would have less weight. Instead of subtracting money, I would simply be able to always make purchases in that bracket with no consequence/sacrifice and I think it might become less of a special thing for her to spend what she has accumulated. It would feel like what Alex is saying about game-ifying things.

My agreement there ends, though, as adding loans and stocks to the setting feels like we're painting a mirror on the wall and not a mural of catgirls and hulking dudes fighting tentacle monsters. We don't need a verisimilitude when it's space fantasy. It's actually why I initially downvoted the idea- the mention of loans. I've never taken a loan in my life and I've known a lot of people who have had their lives ruined by them. (Side point: Essia's system is also a way to convert goods into KS, not something utilized by Yamatai at large.)

But that was silly of me, I should have just said, "I don't think that small part of your post helps the setting" when the rest of the idea makes complete sense. Guns should all cost about the same amount, same with civilian starship classes, and daily goods. But it's one of the things in a submission that is up to the subjective nature of either submitter or reviewer and varies wildly.

Back to my initial point, I don't think making a pricing guide for products should need to dip into and change what wealth looks like for characters. I don't really see that as a positive change to players and their characters. If you want them to engage with products more, maybe products should have rental periods? Some people would likely love a starship yacht, but they don't need it every day of the year when shore leave is only so long. Things like that which are quality of life changes not upheaval of systems changes.
 
TL: DR up front, I think too many people are fixated on the economy and loans stuff.

For @Ametheliana, I appreciate a lot of the points you're making, especially in regards to how we shouldn't really be changing what wealth looks like and how adopting a system where you can buy as much as you want within a certain bracket makes it less special. I hard agree with this stuff, and think that including rental prices for some products would be a great idea.

When it comes to the whole loans thing, I actually think how important it is to this suggestion is being overblown. Moneylending is a thing, and will probably always be a thing, and unless we decide to outlaw any kind of moneylending inside our respective space nations we have to accept the fact that some players are going to want to borrow money to buy a big thing right away rather than saving up their pay or prestige points or whatever. Unless we make it illegal or whatever, it's gonna be a thing that happens sometimes.

But that's hardly important in my opinion, because what's being suggested is not that characters need to get a loan to buy certain types of products, but that we take a bit to consider what price point we're putting certain things at and that we're being consistent with our prices on the wiki so you don't suddenly have things like Origin putting out a small starship that costs less than a small house. (Take a look at this old WIP Price Index that Wes made, it's probably a decent starting point for whatever this ends up turning into)

It may be that we end up deciding "Oh we think that we should increase the cost of starships that are armed and equipped for combat, and those basic ground vehicles seem too expensive, an E1 soldier shouldn't have to save for most of a year to buy a car" and adjusting them so that all our prices are more or less in line with each other.
 
This is usually the part where this thread, pitched several times a year it feels like, devolves and then never becomes anything.

I move forwards that since this seems to have considerable support (it doesnt need to be super-upvoted, we can just do it and then submit it, ya know?) that those interested convene in a thread on the discord regarding this topic and then start spitballing or start a doc where this project can start bootstrapping.
 
(Take a look at this old WIP Price Index that Wes made, it's probably a decent starting point for whatever this ends up turning into)
Why not just tidy this up and finish it? Looks like it's been worked on recently and was already a collaborative thing based on the version history. It's basically what was proposed in the first post without all of this extra unrelated discussion about adding character money mechanics. All it really needs is a few more examples and to have that massive struct table (which looks like it was there to pull examples from) taken out.
 
Yeah, I agree. I've already started on a price guide so we'll just use that. Further improvements can be made as we go.

Changed thread to "In progress."
 
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