SP - Economy Why equipment pricing should dramatically drop

[Tryvenyal]

Cheaper gear and more expensive troops sounds like the way to go for sure. Army building and fief maintenance should be the money sink, not new gear (which rarely ever turns up to begin with).

If this is the general concent of this suggestion, I fully agree!

 

[TimIZ]

Btw: what`s up with these bloody javelins? I almost fell from the chair yesterday as I gained +23 (!!!) smithing skill after crafting my first Damascene steel javelin. Even had problems to find a town that could afford it. Normally I only take looted equipment for me and my companions but damn, is this flood of crap pieces annoying.

15 years of constant war against every possible lord and you only get **** equipment, 1 year of constant smithing and you have the best weapons and can easily buy the best stuff for your companions too. I don`t even bother to buy workshops or caravans anymore. Just feels so stupid and illogical.

 

[TimIZ]

Same with 2 handed swords. Spend one year smithing, craft a level 200 masterwork sword and you`re doing more damaga at 0 2-handed skill than with your looted stuff at level 300. Mount and Blade: Smithing simulator, that`s it.

 

[Gojek]

I would recommend an early game where you have to enter the service of a merchant as a caravan guard, the service of a notable to join patrols or join a bandit group as a gangmember. It will take some time/renown to get enough trust. After that you will be entrusted with a command over a small party be it a caravan, a patrol or a gang (you will not have to pay wages in this stage). Now you can have a little influence on the world. In this stage you earn a wage and get a percentage of the earnings.

I like this idea a lot! Some would consider this an early grind. However, it appears very realistic to me.
Why would some peasants want to join a party of some random unknown traveler and look for a fight with looters and bandits? Having this added would make it more realistic. It could be a 30-day contract quest that could give the player X renown - enough to make it believable that some peasants would actually follow you willingly into a battle.

It would be also cool to have an option while starting a new campaign if you want to start as nobody, experinced mercenary, lord or king

 

[The Yogi]

Another thing we do not want to do is to separate the valuation for looted, legitimately bought, bartered, and crafted items. Also, we like to one-to-one correspondence of item and troop tiers (which makes judging value everything in the game easier for players as well.)

That is a good point - but take it all the way. Value also the gear used to equip and promote troops the same way as the gear you can trade with. Equipping the player character or a companion with a certain set of equipment should cost the same as equipping (promoting) a troop with the same set of equipment. And that cost should be a couple of hundred denarii at most for a full panoply. Only luxury gear (gilded/bejewelled/decorated) should reach anywhere near the thousands of Denarii.

With that one tweak, you'd take a great stride towards fixing the entire economy of the game. Battle loot and smithing would become hugely less profitable, and trading and taxes comparatively more profitable.

 

[niekdegrijze]

One of the economy issues TW is putting band-aids on is the loot selling post battle victory. The reason for one of these artificial and arbitrary band-aids is because of an earlier problem: the exorbitant costs of equipment. Equipment costs as they are make no sense given the rest of the game.

For example: unit upgrades. Unit upgrades are much much cheaper than the equipment those units receive. I can afford to upgrade multiple units into crossbowmen long before I can afford a crossbow for myself. Well, I can't even find any for sale most of the time, anyway. The game already has an excellent upgrade mechanic with having to buy a warhorse, or horse, to upgrade certain units. This mechanic should be in place for all upgrades whenever you go from a troop not having a crossbow and large shield to suddenly having one (for example). You actually have to pay for that equipment. The costs for equipment should drop radically, in some cases to less than a tenth of current prices (a basic crossbow should cost around 50 or so), and should be more readily available for purchase.

Conquest of enemy soldiers involves stripping the dead and surrendered of their gear, robbing them of their money and valuable goods, etc. If the prices for a crossbow is 50 and not 20k plus, that won't be an issue, will it? So instead of putting a band-aid on a problem, why not fix the problem in the first place? General equipment should be readily available and not be a money sink. Masterwork level equipment could be pricey, or adding in the ability to hire a smith to make master crafted custom gear could serve as a money sink, but basic equipment should be cheap, functional and plentiful, solving the loot-to-wealth problem and enabling the early game player to easily find and purchase basic gear to outfit himself as he wishes to play. As mentioned, this also provides the bonus ability of unit upgrades being consistent across the board in a way that makes sense.

Old post but still very well put. The above coupled with higher tax income will make it worth the investment in manpower and gear to get a new fief that brings you income.

 

[Flesson19]

with smithing, trading horse and crafting orders, not even to consider fighting with high roguery and merc contracts money is never an issue for me after about day 100-150. I can make and have a video showing me making 450k in just the first 25 days smithing, and with horse trading I can make 50-100k in about 10-20 days, then there's khuzait bandit bases with laborers quest, there are so many ways to make money