SP - Player, NPCs & Troops Suggestion : Workshops

[Tandwan]

Workshops as a whole provide income to whomever controls the workshop, be it an NPC or the player. With that said, they are extremely valuable for a number reasons the least of them being income. I'm not going to go into it all so I will cut to the chase.

I believe that when you go to purchase a workshop that there needs to be a few more balances before the NPC will do so. As it is now, all you require is a positive relation and a set amount of gold, and truth be told i'm not even sure if the relationship is required. I believe if an NPC is going to give up something so valuable that you need a higher reputation for it to even become an option. Say, 20 - 30 relationship before he will even discuss selling you anything in the town. There's already a check in the game for purchasing a troops, if you have negative relations they won't sell to you. Why not make it for workshops as well? This gives people a reason for keeping their relationships at a decent condition if they plan on expanding into getting workshops.

 

[Ask]

Workshops are already pretty crappy, do we really need to have them nerfed even more?

 

[Tandwan]

Workshops are already pretty crappy, do we really need to have them nerfed even more?

I'm not sure what you call "Crappy". Let's look at some points :

A workshop when you take the correct talents, location and correct resources/workshop will net you 300-500 Denar a month. This if placed in a good location that's not going to get immediately sieged and captured will pay for itself in 3 years, maybe 4. A single workshop at clan Tier 1 can net you anywhere from 300 - 400 Denar a month. Average troop wages for a normal warband (this is taking into account you're not overloading on high tier units but keeping it reasonable) at Tier 0/1 are nowhere near that and the workshop can easily sustain a player and even earn a tidy profit. If you play the game sensibly and focus on building up an industrial base at the start you can easily max out your workshops(2) at clan Tier 1. This averages around 28-30k Denar and in truth that's not a large sum at all when you consider early game I run trade and fight looters, do missions and tournaments.


Workshops and Caravans when talented right offer you a very juicy 1 renown a day of passive gain. This may not seem like much but combine that with Clan Tier 1 requiring 150 renown you can easily earn that in a maximum of 50 days. In truth you can get this faster by just grinding bandits, but this is passive gain with passive income. You can sit in a town and twiddle your thumbs for that long and still reach Clan Tier 2. This takes into account that you're doing trading enough to get that trait at125 which even that's not a huge deal if you buy mules/sumpters low and sell high. This continues to grow until at Clan Tier 5 you have a total of 6 workshops running and giving you 6 renown a day.

Lastly, with a workshop being their biggest source of income, why would a merchant or otherwise in a town just sell their workshop to the first person who tromps up with a minimum amount?

 

[Ask]

A workshop when you take the correct talents, location and correct resources/workshop will net you 300-500 Denar a month. This if placed in a good location that's not going to get immediately sieged and captured will pay for itself in 3 years, maybe 4.

So in 3-4 years, assuming the shop never gets lost in a war, generates a grand total of 12-15k, paying itself back. Becoming a mercenary and hunting looters provides more income without needing to go out of your way investing 12-15k first, once you become strong enough or participate in armies, fighting against enemy lords provides much more income. Specially if you're lucky enough to capture some lords and ransom them.

Workshops and Caravans when talented right offer you a very juicy 1 renown a day of passive gain.

This is the biggest value you can usually get out of workshops and caravans, it makes the grind towards higher clan tiers a lot less annoying. This is the one saving grace they have, and luckily, you don't need to spend a lot of points into trading to get the perk since it's rather low level.

Lastly, with a workshop being their biggest source of income, why would a merchant or otherwise in a town just sell their workshop to the first person who tromps up with a minimum amount?

I don't disagree with you at all. Don't get me wrong, I also think that it's very dumb that a lot of the things we can currently do in game require basically nothing. You can get married to a rich, important noble while being practically poor, completely irrelevant at clan tier 1, and without having ever talked before to your future spouse. You can become vassal just by grinding a little bit of renown, without needing to have good relationships with your future liege, riches, a respectable army. You can also be a complete nobody and suddenly become elected as the next king of the kingdom you recently joined.

And you can purchase workshops like if it was nothing. The issue is that, out of all those things, workshops are the slowest to provide any benefit, and the benefit they provide is minimal even in the long run, so having an extra road block in the way of getting workshops that are already so meh to get feels inconsequential, when you could just be marrying a random lord and sell all their gear for 100k denars in profit, or use friendly fire to kill your liege and become king.

If a change like this ever comes through (which I would actually like, just to give the game a bit more roleplaying feel), it should be after they are expanded upon and made worthwhile whatsoever, for more than just renown.

 

[Terrorblade]

You have got to be kidding me if you want workshops to be nerfed. They are already useless, and its hard to get consistent money from them.

 

[Nodice83]

I believe that when you go to purchase a workshop that there needs to be a few more balances before the NPC will do so. As it is now, all you require is a positive relation and a set amount of gold, and truth be told i'm not even sure if the relationship is required. I believe if an NPC is going to give up something so valuable that you need a higher reputation for it to even become an option. Say, 20 - 30 relationship before he will even discuss selling you anything in the town. There's already a check in the game for purchasing a troops, if you have negative relations they won't sell to you. Why not make it for workshops as well? This gives people a reason for keeping their relationships at a decent condition if they plan on expanding into getting workshops.

Workshops require a general re-work - and this is just a drop in the ocean of needs... As a couple of forumites have already mentioned - workshops are pretty nerfed today (petty and usually flat income). Making them harder to get can result in an even longer rate of return (caravans would do equally good in terms of passive influence if not better).

What you propose can be applied to many other aspects of the game to make it more rational, rewarding, and simply fun to play. Unfortunately, when you look at Bannerlord as a whole it is more or less a stream of unrewarding grind with a meaningless (or almost non-existent) end-game. Not even mentioning the "tall" gameplay...

P.S. Plus I honestly have not heard of any rational 'community' idea being seriously considered by the dev team recently.