You all have convinced me that scrying is not broken, so I will avoid
emasculating it for now. In fact, I'm getting the impression that magic
may be a bit weak overall. I don't know if implementing the other half
of planned skills would help; probably not. They're mostly of the same
sort as the existing ones.
I tend to be cautious with magic, since it's so easy to let a few too-
powerful spells unbalance the design. However, it seems that I've fallen
into the Atlantis trap, and being solely a trader or a magician is not ax
workable career choice.
This is bad, we must fix it.
Trade
-----
I consider trade to be mainly shuttling goods between markets, but also
producing goods for sale to markets (this includes fishing, for example).
What is the problem with trade?
1. Tuning
Are the quantities and prices of goods simply set so the
profit is too low? Are more tradegoods essential to making
trade work as a career? Or is some other crucial element
missing from the design?
2. New idea #1.
Someone had an idea where increased trade activity in a
market would increase the location owner's taxes, thus
giving the war types a reason to encourage traders (instead
of killing them).
My objections to this idea seem unfounded in retrospect.
Perhaps every $10 of trade activity in a market could generate
$1 additional tax base for the city.
3. New idea #2.
Cities could produce new items from input tradegoods.
City [ev18] produces:
fish oil from fish
ale from clay pots and barley
trade who price qty item
----- --- ----- --- ----
buy ev18 7 9 clay pots [95]
buy ev18 15 30 barley [99]
buy ev18 3 100 fish [87]
sell ev18 5 25 fish oil [97]
I require that the input items be pure tradegoods; they
must be bought from another market, not raw resources
obtained with mining or COLLECT.
If some unique and -useful- goods were generated by this
method, then traders would be the only folks would could
cause them to be produced.
I need some suggestions for useful items which could be
produced from non-raw-material input items.
Magic
-----
Magic is in worse shape than trade, since there it offers no way to make
money directly.
Some ideas:
- Have an Alchemy skill "Turn lead into gold". Sell lead
in markets.
- Let magicians train their apprenticies into battle mages.
They would then have at least one useful item to produce.
I don't have any good ideas for how magicians can earn money directly.
I don't have ideas for useful (but not -too- useful) new spells I can add.
Suggestions welcome.
Keep in mind that gold generation ideas should be limited, preferably
at several points. Note the Lead-into-gold example above is limited
by the Alchemist's time, as well as through the amount of lead a market
will sell.
Spell ideas of the sort "Incinerate up to 100 foes instantly" are ignored.
Magic should be more subtle than that (but I guess I may have made it too
subtle).
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@rt.com>