Duke to Brass ratio needs to be seriously nerfed

[Kattla]

My only issue is that it cost about 15 times more tokens to buy 1 unit of brass than it does to smelt it. Time can't be argued, since you'd have to smelt the brass you buy into the forge, anyway. Either 1:1 it, remove raw-brass from being sold, or increase the number of tokens needed to equal 1 brass in the forge. Otherwise, that brass in the trader's inventory is just there for no reason other than to say "gotcha " to new players, whom then in turn will never buy the brass again and just smelt the tokens.

 

Perhaps you can mod it to suit your taste?

[canadianbluebeer]

Solo play, it's time to gather mats for gunpowder, then doing quests for brass.

Shotgun factory takes about 2hrs realtime to fully clear if fetch/clear. (or over a full day gametime)

 

I just dropped 18k to buy a motorcycle since I dont' have the perk/book or parts.

 

duke to brass is just fine so far.

[Ghostlight]

1 level below insane atm only because we have some people on server that don't want it. The difficulty level doesn't change the fact that its by far the fastest way to get brass and massively outshines any other way. I mean you can do non T5 quests too and still get a ton of brass that way as well, it doesn't even have to be T5.

 

I wasn't disagreeing that it was the best way to get Brass, just trying to work our how you can do a T5 in less than a day. It takes us the entire day and we are armed to the teeth. Every room is a major battle. We often fire more ammo in a tier 5 clear than horde night. [Assuming we decide to fight the horde and not let the base mangle them].

[Jugginator]

Perhaps you can mod it to suit your taste?

 

It's nothing to do with tastes lol it's an oversight at best. 1 duke token = 1 brass in the forge. Or, 15 duke tokens from trader = 1 brass in the forge.

[AtomicUs5000]

It's nothing to do with tastes lol it's an oversight at best. 1 duke token = 1 brass in the forge. Or, 15 duke tokens from trader = 1 brass in the forge.

 

I don't know how this was overlooked. It is literally the first thing to balance. I never bothered to look because it should be a given. Just gonna bite my tongue and walk away.

[Grolbu]

You know you can change the recipes for virtually everything in the game in the xml files right ? I haven't look at brass yet but if it works the same way as all the food and weapons and ammo you can make it 10 dukes for 1 brass or 1 duke for 100 brass or anything else you feel like. Don't call for the game to be nerfed for everybody just because it doesn't suit your playstyle, just add a modlet to nerf your game.

[Crater Creator]

I think the biggest issue brought up here is that dukes are more valuable to scrap than to use to buy brass items. I haven't independently verified this, but if true, then surely we can all agree that shouldn't be the case, because it makes brass items for sale pointless. This isn't a play style thing, this is just basic game design: there shouldn't be things in the game that have no use case. Everything else about how long quests take and different people's rates of brass consumption is secondary to this more basic imbalance.

[Scyris]

Brass is so easy to get in A18. Out of all the different metals that is the one that we have the most of, and we don't even smelt down Dukes to get it. A mixture of finding more in trash, getting more from breaking down sinks, radiators being a commonly found item now, being able to break doors to get the brass knobs, plus other ways, means that we no longer have to worry about it. I remember in past builds brass was one of the rarest materials you could find. Now it is literally everywhere lol.

 

It was easy to get in A16 and a17 too, just don't waste bullets stupidly. If your up against 1 or 2 zombies even ferals there is no reason to pull a gun out, just melee em down. Not using the smg turret is also a good way to save brass, as it does crap damage for how fast it eats ammo, compared to a perked player. Even in a16 I often had stacks of brass just sitting in storage as I had no use for it. Gunpowder is kinda the crutch now in a18, as it just crafts slow, yes multiple stations but sometimes you can't find that second set of beakers or ones for sale/in the world.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

OK so that's a quest that took all day probably, and gave just enough Brass to cover 1 player in the group's bullets for half a horde night.

 

Play on Insane, multiplayer and come back tell me that's enough Brass.

 

Just pointing out that not every group's Brass consumption rate is going to be the same as yours.

 

Yeah horde nights in a MP game with a party tend to cost exponetally more resources, due to the insane amount of zombies that will be coming. I'd stil be more worried about having enough gunpower to make those bullets.

[Scyris]

Actually I can clear a t5 fetch in about 5 minutes or less. I actually timed one a few days ago and from accepting to getting their and getting the bag took me 3 minutes. Was 800m away and bag was on ground floor. Otherwise you just walk around building until you get close to bag, then break in and grab it. Feel free to nerdpole as needed. Quest complete.

 

If we are playing in a group of say 5 people then that 5k dukes just because 20-25k dukes instead as we share the quest and EVERYONE gets the reward for it. So thats 20-25k brass in 5 minutes time.

 

I mean why would anyone ever sit there and harvest brass from a POI collecting 30-40 a pop when doing the quests gives so much more PLUS resets the loot, gives you a large chunk of xp, AND gives you 1-2 quest rewards which include purple items.

 

For the clear's they definitely don't take all day unless your group is a bunch of new players who don't need to work togethor. We usually do the T5's with 3-4 people and at most clear them in 2 hours of real time and get a TON of loot and XP for everyone while doing so.

 

I mean even doing the lower tier fetch quests gives you 1-3k brass for a few minutes work which is a far better ratio then sitting their stripping brass from buildings.

 

It takes you 2 real time hours to clear a t5 clear quest with 3-4 people? how? I do it in 30 mins solo usually, 50 min max. Less if I don't waste time wrenching everything that I can. I use melee mostly a sledgehammer, and a unperked pistol usually as my poi raiding gun as I tend to have so much pistol ammo from loot I got nothing else to use it for. I play on warrior difficulty, as its a nice blend of risk+zombies not being bullet sponges. I also do not turret cheese, I only use junk turrets on horde night thats it, otherwise I feel they are pretty op and game breaking for how good they are even as a non-int build. If I was a Int build though i'd use the turrets a ton, as i'd be speced in them most likely. So far all of my games have been 0 int games. I get adv engineering lv 1, and when I find the nerd glasses, that sets my intel to 2, I get grease monkey 1, for a early game vehicle and ability to make wheels, since its rng if I find any vehicle schematic by then.

 

My current game is intersting, I think loot abundance is bugged, as when its set to anything below 100% (I have it at 75%) a ton of diff loot containers seem to bug out and are empty 95% of the time, Small ammo piles to name one thats almost always empty, I think out of 40 I looted only 2 actually had ammo in them, and thats with it set to 75%. At 100% Loot, those small ammo piles ALWAYS have stuff in them. So the fact 25% lower is making almost all of them empty seems like a bit of a bug to me. Its like instead of lowering how much they give by 25%, its taking the fact they give 1 item and making it always give 0/be empty. I am going to have to actually make ammo this game I think as I am deff not finding enough by looting for horde nights.

[Marinxar]

nvm... issue was cleared.

[Jugginator]

I think the biggest issue brought up here is that dukes are more valuable to scrap than to use to buy brass items. I haven't independently verified this, but if true, then surely we can all agree that shouldn't be the case, because it makes brass items for sale pointless. This isn't a play style thing, this is just basic game design: there shouldn't be things in the game that have no use case. Everything else about how long quests take and different people's rates of brass consumption is secondary to this more basic imbalance.

 

Ill check on other brass items in a bit, but that's the issue lol don't know why people are like "lul if joo want to change it go to da xml lul no nerfy game". Not a case of nerf, not a case of balance nothing to do with questing rewards, it makes zero sense to have brass for sale at a trader if you get 1500% more brass out of 1 token in the forge than buy 1 piece of brass at a trader. You can't do anything with raw brass but put it in the forge.

[Scyris]

Ill check on other brass items in a bit, but that's the issue lol don't know why people are like "lul if joo want to change it go to da xml lul no nerfy game". Not a case of nerf, not a case of balance nothing to do with questing rewards, it makes zero sense to have brass for sale at a trader if you get 1500% more brass out of 1 token in the forge than buy 1 piece of brass at a trader. You can't do anything with raw brass but put it in the forge.

 

You forget that balancing is something tfp is quite poor at. I mean most of the melee weapons other than sledge and club are basically useless past mid game on nomad, and possibly earlier on warrior and up. Not to mention the smg still hits like a potatogun, it should do at least the same damage as the pistol does. Why you ask? there is a full auto mod now, could slap that onto a pistol and there you go a faster reloading smg that hits about 40-50% harder. I don't even bother with the smg, I just scrap or vendor them right away as its not worth using over a pistol at all.

[Ghostlight]

It takes you 2 real time hours to clear a t5 clear quest with 3-4 people? how?

 

Insane difficulty most likely. That's why it takes me an in-game day to clear the Shotgun Factory. Also the way we play the game, questing is very late-game activity for us. Our priority is very much to get our "horde killer" base complete by the day 28 or day 35 horde. Typically we do not quest AT ALL until that is achieved. And if by then we were not playing on Insane, we will definitely crank it up to Insane. So basically my experience of tier 5 clears is on Insane difficulty when our combined gamestage is approaching 1000.

 

If anyone wants to claim they can clear a tier 5 under those circumstances in less than a game-day and do so without burning 2000+ casings per player, you'd have to show me a video to convince me, because I do not believe it is possible.

[Jugginator]

Welp on the topic of duke to brass ratio, here are the numbers. These are taken with zero points into better barter, no buffs. I included max barter with a magnum (book perk) and a cigar separate (e.g. Big Faucet | 250/150 means 250 is no barter, 150 is max barter). Smelt time is with no advanced bellows - raw data. Brass in the chart is brass netted in the forge after smelting. Cost is, well, cost to buy it.

 

Item | Cost | Brass | Smelt Time

---------------------------------------

Brass x 10 (min sale) | 40 | 1 | 1 second : so, 1 bought brass cost 4 tokens each. (ty Flu, opps lol)

 

Big Faucet | 250/150 | 25 | 25 seconds

 

Small Faucet | 160/96 | 16 | 15 seconds (could be 16 seconds now that I think of it)

 

Candlestick | 240/144 | | 60 | 1 minute

 

Doorknob | 80/48 | 20 | 20 seconds

 

Trophy | (missing data opps) | 20 | 20 seconds

 

Radiator | 400/240 | 100 | 1 minute 40 seconds

 

-------------------------------------------------------

 

I don't feel like doing the math, but I don't think it's worth anyone's time or tokens to spend more tokens than what a brass item smelts into over just putting the tokens into the forge, getting more brass than they would have by smelting the item. Not even the time makes sense to smelt, they're all equivalent to 1 brass = 1 second. Minus the radiators, they lost a lot of time.

 

Now, that doesn't mean looting these things needs to be changed, certainly gathering these brass items from the world = brass you didn't have and didn't cost anything, but buying any of these from a trader is just dumb, moreso if you buy raw brass - you're overpaying when you may as well put the tokens in the forge, for a free trade out. Buying something like a Candlestick nets you 60 brass, while costing you 240 brass. o.O

 

These numbers are killing me Pimps, plz fix or save game-resources and just remove them from trader stocks.

[theFlu]

Brass x 10 (min sale) | 40 | 1 | 1 second : so, 1 bought brass cost 10 tokens each.

Isn't that 4 tokens per brass (not that it's any better that way)? 10 brass for 40 dukes?

Big Faucet | 250/150 | 25 | 25 seconds

Small Faucet | 160/96 | 16 | 15 seconds (could be 16 seconds now that I think of it)

With the faucets in game, I think you're also better off Selling one instead of smelting it. That could make some sense since they're quite complex items, but of course materials-wise, not exactly sane .. those I can live with though, I just treat it as a deco, until they come up with an actual use for them

[mr.natural]

1 bullet casing costs 2 dukes at the trader.

2 dukes melts into 2 brass = 1 bullet casing from the forge.

[Ghostlight]

Yeah but the smelting of dukes is more or less "unlimited", I think that's the issue, NOT the actual ratio.

 

That said, I still do not think that the smelting ratio should be changed.

 

As we can see above it is on a par with the cost of buying bullet casings directly, with the added hidden cost of smelt time and forging time (both of which are NOT negligible). There is also the opportunity costs of the player not having whatever item(s) or resources he could have otherwise purchased with those smelted dukes, and also not having the other resources or forged items that he could have made if he hadn't been smelting and forging the dukes to casings.

 

I would therefore argue that the ratio of dukes to brass is just fine, giving these hidden costs and opportunity costs that go with it; and that any Brass product other than Bullet Casing should be removed from all trader inventories.

[Laz Man]

No doubt, if I'm halfway to being a millionaire without doing Trader quests, I can only imagine how easily Dukes would be gained if I did do them.

 

Ironically, I've got really no need for brass any more. I've got so much ammo for my turrets stashed away (and the blade traps are the primary BM horde killers in my base), and I'm already finding so much ammo that my Rifle has 2,000 7.62mm rounds in storage chests over and above what I'm carrying, that I really don't much need it for anything any more.

 

That said, I'm deep into late game and well past the point of any practical progression in my current game.

 

Edit: The other issue this raises, is that I'm playing a 4k map, have looted only 2 of the 7 or 8 towns that are on it, and I'm well past "done" for this game. At least for SP, even an 8k map would be massive overkill for me on default loot settings anyway.

 

Sounds like your ready for the next difficulty setting. 😎 Maybe lowered loot abundance or more max alive horde night zeds if your not already set it to max.

[mr.natural]

Yeah but the smelting of dukes is more or less "unlimited", I think that's the issue, NOT the actual ratio.

 

That said, I still do not think that the smelting ratio should be changed.

 

As we can see above it is on a par with the cost of buying bullet casings directly, with the added hidden cost of smelt time and forging time (both of which are NOT negligible). There is also the opportunity costs of the player not having whatever item(s) or resources he could have otherwise purchased with those smelted dukes, and also not having the other resources or forged items that he could have made if he hadn't been smelting and forging the dukes to casings.

 

I would therefore argue that the ratio of dukes to brass is just fine, giving these hidden costs and opportunity costs that go with it; and that any Brass product other than Bullet Casing should be removed from all trader inventories.

 

The ratio of melting should be 4-10 coins into 1 casing IMO

[Brian9824]

I think the biggest issue brought up here is that dukes are more valuable to scrap than to use to buy brass items. I haven't independently verified this, but if true, then surely we can all agree that shouldn't be the case, because it makes brass items for sale pointless. This isn't a play style thing, this is just basic game design: there shouldn't be things in the game that have no use case. Everything else about how long quests take and different people's rates of brass consumption is secondary to this more basic imbalance.

 

Yep definitely this. Its one of the biggest indicators something isn't balanced.

 

 

 

It takes you 2 real time hours to clear a t5 clear quest with 3-4 people? how? I do it in 30 mins solo usually, 50 min max. Less if I don't waste time wrenching everything that I can. I use melee mostly a sledgehammer, and a unperked pistol usually as my poi raiding gun as I tend to have so much pistol ammo from loot I got nothing else to use it for. I play on warrior difficulty, as its a nice blend of risk+zombies not being bullet sponges. I also do not turret cheese, I only use junk turrets on horde night thats it, otherwise I feel they are pretty op and game breaking for how good they are even as a non-int build. If I was a Int build though i'd use the turrets a ton, as i'd be speced in them most likely. So far all of my games have been 0 int games. I get adv engineering lv 1, and when I find the nerd glasses, that sets my intel to 2, I get grease monkey 1, for a early game vehicle and ability to make wheels, since its rng if I find any vehicle schematic by then.

 

My current game is intersting, I think loot abundance is bugged, as when its set to anything below 100% (I have it at 75%) a ton of diff loot containers seem to bug out and are empty 95% of the time, Small ammo piles to name one thats almost always empty, I think out of 40 I looted only 2 actually had ammo in them, and thats with it set to 75%. At 100% Loot, those small ammo piles ALWAYS have stuff in them. So the fact 25% lower is making almost all of them empty seems like a bit of a bug to me. Its like instead of lowering how much they give by 25%, its taking the fact they give 1 item and making it always give 0/be empty. I am going to have to actually make ammo this game I think as I am deff not finding enough by looting for horde nights.

 

I had said at most. Usually when we clear a T5 we loot it, take all the concrete and cobblestone, break down a lot of the stuff and really strip it down so when it resets we get all that loot again. Got 2 wrenchers who go to town on it, while the rest of us gather the other mats. Higashi is my least favorite T5.

 

If we just rush and clear its far faster. We also have the game modded for more zombie spawns so we tend to try to be a little more methodical.

 

That is part of the issue though the reward vs the time is just so good

[Brian9824]

Yeah but the smelting of dukes is more or less "unlimited", I think that's the issue, NOT the actual ratio.

 

That said, I still do not think that the smelting ratio should be changed.

 

As we can see above it is on a par with the cost of buying bullet casings directly, with the added hidden cost of smelt time and forging time (both of which are NOT negligible). There is also the opportunity costs of the player not having whatever item(s) or resources he could have otherwise purchased with those smelted dukes, and also not having the other resources or forged items that he could have made if he hadn't been smelting and forging the dukes to casings.

 

I would therefore argue that the ratio of dukes to brass is just fine, giving these hidden costs and opportunity costs that go with it; and that any Brass product other than Bullet Casing should be removed from all trader inventories.

 

Except your neglecting to take into the time required to gather the brass items. It takes a LONG time to gather brass from a POI for a small amount compared to the quest option. Even with those buildings with all the radiators you have to go room by room and clear it, gather all the brass by breaking the radiators. Limited to carrying it back in stacks of 5, and it doesn't respawn.

 

Versus doing a quest getting far more brass, and having a POI respawned so it has more loot available again, as well as getting the xp reward, and the reward for the quest at the end.

 

I mean the opportunity cost of having to smelt it is basically 0, just make another forge if you have a bottleneck, and even if you went out and harvested brass you'd still have to smelt and forge that into casings.

[Jugginator]

Isn't that 4 tokens per brass (not that it's any better that way)? 10 brass for 40 dukes?

 

With the faucets in game, I think you're also better off Selling one instead of smelting it. That could make some sense since they're quite complex items, but of course materials-wise, not exactly sane .. those I can live with though, I just treat it as a deco, until they come up with an actual use for them

 

Opps lol. Yeah it was very late at night when I did it. Yeah it's just none of these items make any sense when comparing numbers. You're better off selling these to the trader then smelting the brass (or just smelting them), and if you purchase any brass item from a trader you're getting ripped off. I dig the ability to smelt brass, that's not the issue, just it's stupid to buy brass from a trader now, in any form or fashion.

[Kage848]

Skimmed the thread. Fun pimps, please dont balance the game around people that cheese pois. I dont and if you balanced for that I'd be screwed and screwed for playing the pois as intended.

 

Not judging either. You wanna cheese you do you. I have been know to do it. But I dont come to the forums asking for nerfs based on that either.

[Jugginator]

Skimmed the thread. Fun pimps, please dont balance the game around people that cheese pois. I dont and if you balanced for that I'd be screwed and screwed for playing the pois as intended.

 

Not judging either. You wanna cheese you do you. I have been know to do it. But I dont come to the forums asking for nerfs based on that either.

 

... Wrong thread? This has nothing to do with cheesing POIs, it's about the brass items the traders sell being a stupid purchase with the reimplementation of smelting duke tokens.

[Brian9824]

... Wrong thread? This has nothing to do with cheesing POIs, it's about the brass items the traders sell being a stupid purchase with the reimplementation of smelting duke tokens.

 

It's a bit of both, or really 3 separate issues.

 

1. Dukes are worth far more then the brass items that you can buy with them

2. Quests are such an overbalanced way to get brass that it renders any other method to be almost pointless

3. Shared quests make this so exploitable allowing people to get 50k+ brass a day easily

 

 

For #1 they could always rebalance the cost of brass items

For #2 that's gonna be much harder, and take a lot more thought. Having more involved quests would go a long way into resolving this though

For #3 it could easily be fixed by making those you share a quest with get a lesser reward then the main quest holder