Selling weapons to players that don't have the tech level

Sometimes I see weapons that people could not have according to their tech level on the covert report. Which made me wonder if it would be possible to introduce a way to trade weapons that you produced with another player that may or may not have the tech level itself, for a minimum of 1,5x the cost of producing the weapon involved.
That way, you can specialise more and use your weapons factories as sources of income, like your unit production. It would also make it possible for smaller players to buy expensive defensive / offensive weapons to give them a one-time boost in a conflict with a higher-powered player.
As a bonus, I can see people with lots of high-tech weapons factories try to create demand by warmongering or sabotaging and other people resisting that, thus increasing the opportunities for roleplay and increasing realism.
And yes, I admit I am building my account so I can afford the research for mobile artillery.

Hmm. I can see what your getting at here Jiro but the question that immediatly pops up is how will this affect the Weapons Dealer or Black Market where prices fluctuate due to availability and demand

Also, this would/could give way to stronger players "feeding" new/smaller players to attack people they couldnt attack on their own,,,,,,, so there might be an issue there as it is exploitable, but its a risk that I feel may be offset if you add that to the infiltration missions so others might can see it?

Jiro wrote:Sometimes I see weapons that people could not have according to their tech level on the covert report. Which made me wonder if it would be possible to introduce a way to trade weapons that you produced with another player that may or may not have the tech level itself, for a minimum of 1,5x the cost of producing the weapon involved.
That way, you can specialise more and use your weapons factories as sources of income, like your unit production. It would also make it possible for smaller players to buy expensive defensive / offensive weapons to give them a one-time boost in a conflict with a higher-powered player.
As a bonus, I can see people with lots of high-tech weapons factories try to create demand by warmongering or sabotaging and other people resisting that, thus increasing the opportunities for roleplay and increasing realism.
And yes, I admit I am building my account so I can afford the research for mobile artillery.

I agree there should be this update, but only on the galactic market, where you would not know who you are selling to.

We obviously don't want to put players at a disadvantage, who are not in a major alliance. As you know, this update would be abused to have an alliance collect massive ammounts of kuwal to research the most expensive weapons and then sell them to their members, leading to a growing gap between the strongest alliance and all the other ones. Strongest alliances would become much stronger (suddently guys who had IFV in an alliance are armed with weapons after mobile artillery), and allianceless players would be screwed.

Therefore I think that the weapons should be offered on galactic market, so that everyone can benefit from this.

ALSO at the same time weapons in weapon dealers should not fall below 200%, so that people selling weapons can sell them for some profit (100-200% of real price). With falling prices, there would be little profit and much less incentive for players to sell weapons.

Kenzu wrote:Therefore I think that the weapons should be offered on galactic market, so that everyone can benefit from this.

That and buying from such a market would not make the weapon available immediately but also maybe require some shipping time, couple of hours

Well look at the other side of this coin,

Who will make and sell the weapons?
Bigger guys with money to burn.

Who will buy them?
Smaller guys who cant afford them.

Who really wins?

@ Kenzu,,,, Most everyone discovered in the TIE vs TOC war that MA is not the most efficent weapon. Its high cost, and high upkeep make it rather inferior to the MBT for attacking forces. Getting weapons to high above you is more hurtful then helpful, not to mention if war happens they cant be replaced very easily.

Still,,,,, just want to reiterate who really wins with this update? the little guy buying a weapon he can't produce at 1.5 times it real cost, or the big guy selling weapons and making .5 of the cost for free?

MA = 522,000
Sale price =783,000
Profit = 261,000

So lets say someone buys 500 bill work
500 bill / 522,000 = 957,855 MA (rounded)
957,855 MA sold at 783,000 =750,000,465,000
profit = 250,000,465,000

So your looking at a 250 bill profit for a 500 bill investment, and this potental may be daily during war/building times.

Has the potential to be another "strong get stronger and weak pay higher upkeep" update so be careful with it.

@Nomad: the weak account may come out on top as well if these are weapons he needs. At the moment, nobody needs Mobile artillery. But at least you do not have to find out after spending 155bil Kuwal.
But a smaller account that buys MBT in order to get a defence that stops farming that bothers him, without investing too many units into defence (and thus increase AE with no additional income), wins from the trade. As does the person making the weapons.
Outsourcing weapon production becomes a strategy you can use to grow faster in other categories. And when it becomes important/efficient you produce your weapons yourself, you spend the Kuwal for tech and weapon factories.

kenzu has been suggesting a system where people could produce weapons and offer them on the public market for the WHOLE population of players to buy for a while now. The idea itself isn't new to either of us and we have been looking into a potential implementation.

I personally think a system where one could "loan" their weapon factories (whether to only build weapons oneself can or build weapons from others) and training facilities to other players would sound interesting I have not yet thought in depth about all the potential ramifications and issues.
I do not exclude a option in the future where several people band together their weapons factories and training facilities to build some huge thing and train a crew for it (by "huge" I mean that the construction requires 10 mil turns worth of production for training and weapons each, by current standards), maybe some juggernaut which gives limited control by the building party for some time, making for an excellent strategic weapon, but then eventually and inadvertedly goes rogue becoming something that will attack everyone requiring a combined effort of players to be brought down (on the fly brainstorm).

I have an idea.

Make it so that the weapon dealers have levels for each weapon type. The levels don't affect any stats of the weapons themselves.
Level 1 weapons would sell for 60% of how much it costs to build, like now. There would be a capacity of, lets say, 1k weapons in level 1
Level 2 would sell for 70% of how much it costs to build. There would be a capacity of 2k weapons for sale in level 2
Level 3 has 3k weapons for 80% cost
Level 4 has 4k for 90%
Level 5 has 5k for 100%
Level 6 has 6k for 110%
and so on


As people buy up weapons from the weapons dealer, there would be less weapons in the current level for that weapon.

Lets say that it's currently level 5 for MBT, which means it costs 100% of build price. Lets say there's 250 left.
Someone buys up 250 MBTs, and level 5 gets depleted. MBTs now go to level 6, where there is 6k of, each of which costs 110% of the build price.

Players can sell weapons for a percentage of the current cost of that weapon from the weapons dealer. Maybe, say, 50%.

Lets say it's level 10 for MBT, which is 150% price.
Some fellow decides that he wants to sell some of his weapons.
He sells a bunch of MBTs for 50% of (150% of the weapon build price, which is the current price from the weapons dealer) or 75% of the build price to the weapons dealer, who buys them up himself. The amount of weapons sold gets added to the amount of weapons available in the level. If, say, 10k weapons are sold and there's room for 7k in that level, the current level drops one and the remainder fills up the new, lower level.

Each turn, the weapons dealer makes (10x the current level) of weapons himself, which gets added to the supply of weapons, so that unpopular weapons decline in price over time.






This combines the price fluctuations based on demand with the instant sell/instant cash of the current system.
Note, these numbers came from nowhere, so they can be changed.

Admin wrote:kenzu has been suggesting a system where people could produce weapons and offer them on the public market for the WHOLE population of players to buy for a while now. The idea itself isn't new to either of us and we have been looking into a potential implementation.

I personally think a system where one could "loan" their weapon factories (whether to only build weapons oneself can or build weapons from others) and training facilities to other players would sound interesting I have not yet thought in depth about all the potential ramifications and issues.
I do not exclude a option in the future where several people band together their weapons factories and training facilities to build some huge thing and train a crew for it (by "huge" I mean that the construction requires 10 mil turns worth of production for training and weapons each, by current standards), maybe some juggernaut which gives limited control by the building party for some time, making for an excellent strategic weapon, but then eventually and inadvertedly goes rogue becoming something that will attack everyone requiring a combined effort of players to be brought down (on the fly brainstorm).

I hope you finish what you started first.

I hope you

think in depth about all the potential ramifications and issues.

as well.

yup