Author Topic: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?  (Read 3353 times)

Alice Malice

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Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« on: April 02, 2020, 10:02:11 am »
I've been playing for a while and I'm finding normal and hard difficulty to be far too easy for the most part, but the fact that all of your items sell for only 25% of their base value on DOMINATING is a such a drag for me. It doesn't even make the game any more difficult, it just means I need to waste way far more time doing merchant runs and hauling loot since I'm planning on buying all the workbenches for my house as well as the Devastator jet ski.

I was wondering if there's a way to just manually edit the DOMINATING economic modifier so that my items sell for their normal base value. I managed to find a game file called 'difficulty', but when I open it in notepad it's just a bunch of gibberish. If anyone knows how to do something like that, I'd really appreciate it, since I'm super excited to experience the hardest content the game has to offer - I just don't want to have to spend loads of extra time doing menial tasks like hauling thousands of kilos of loot and going on merchant runs across the entire map every hour.

TheAverageGortsby

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Re: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« Reply #1 on: April 02, 2020, 11:34:54 am »
Not yet.  The idea of customizing difficulty settings has been brought up before, and the specific example you make here is one of the things Styg has said he would consider implementing at some point.  Maybe we'll see it in the next big patch?  I don't know.  But there doesn't seem to be a way to decouple the economy from the difficulty settings.

You don't need to worry too much about it, though, to be honest.  Even on DOMINATING you have enough money as long as you don't blow it like a pro athlete at a strip club.  Quest rewards and world loot aren't cut by 75%, only things you sell.  If you just can't handle the idea of not buying a nice jet ski and fancying up your house, then roll a crafter with Disassemble.  The amount of money you can pull out of the game thanks to that feat is just bonkers.  It certainly makes it so you don't have to lug everything back, just to afford the stuff you need and want.

Alice Malice

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Re: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« Reply #2 on: April 02, 2020, 04:16:17 pm »
Ah well, guess I'll just be more frugal than normal in that case. I do think being able to customize each component of the difficulty options to a degree would be a great quality of life change in the future, though. You could even add an achievement for beating the game on the standard DOMINATING settings so as to not cheapen the achievements of people who beat it without customizing.

Dumb question regarding the disassemble feat, but I think I'm missing something major - the idea behind it is to disassemble stuff you find and use those components to craft gear to sell, right? But since the components you get from disassembling items only have 90% of their original quality, wouldn't you just make more money by selling the thing made from the components in the first place? Or is there some kind of extra value modifier for things the player crafts or something?

TheAverageGortsby

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Re: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« Reply #3 on: April 03, 2020, 12:12:34 am »
Dumb question regarding the disassemble feat, but I think I'm missing something major - the idea behind it is to disassemble stuff you find and use those components to craft gear to sell, right? But since the components you get from disassembling items only have 90% of their original quality, wouldn't you just make more money by selling the thing made from the components in the first place? Or is there some kind of extra value modifier for things the player crafts or something?
Three things to consider:
1) When you disassemble then reassemble something, it is fully repaired.
2) Some items have a very high value modifier on their components.  Firearms, crossbows, chemical & energy weapons, tasers, metal armor, and riot/tac armors all have high or very high value modifiers, so pieces you can pull off other gear and then use to make those things will be more valuable on high-modifier items than on low-modifier items.
3) Most items have a total value modifier that increases with the number of optional components.  As an abstracted example, a weapon with just frame and barrel would have a 1.0 total value multiplier.  With one optional mod, a 1.1; and with two, 1.2.  That means you get 20% more value from each piece by putting four pieces together to make one gun than you would putting them together minimally.  For the actual numbers, look here: https://www.underrail.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blueprints#Value_multipliers

It may not be obvious at first, but once you grok the underlying process, you can cheese the everloving hell out of the economy, by using Disassemble.  The tiny 10% item quality hit means nothing when you're just putting things together to maximize value, especially since most of the components you'll use won't have quality values anyway.

harperfan7

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Re: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« Reply #4 on: April 03, 2020, 03:36:56 am »
Or just take mercantile.
*eurobeat intensifies*

TheAverageGortsby

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Re: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« Reply #5 on: April 03, 2020, 04:55:27 am »
Or just take mercantile.
In order for Mercantile to even come close to being close to what Disassemble can offer, you have to get to 140 effective, so you can get the extra 20k charons for selling the Reef Glider.  Other than that, it's only worth a few thousand charons in quest reward increases, and then the discount for buying stuff.  Disassemble is easily worth 25k charons, and with some merchant runs, it's closer to 50k.  Since you can't really profit from buying components on DOMINATING (exception: cheap 4th-component items when crafting, like cloth/padding for light/medium armors, or simple muzzle devices/grips for firearms) regardless of Mercantile, it's not really the same.

Of course you're right that Mercantile helps with the economy, but it targets a different section of the profit pathway, and cannot in any way stand as a substitute for Disassemble.

Alice Malice

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Re: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« Reply #6 on: April 03, 2020, 09:48:19 am »
Alright, that makes a lot more sense. I'm terrible at maths, so thanks for explaining  :)

Tamior

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Re: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2020, 09:52:53 am »
FYI: disassemble is a good feat for actual crafting, as well. See some discussion here: https://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=5078.0

Styg

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Re: Changing DOMINATING economic modifiers?
« Reply #8 on: April 09, 2020, 08:35:29 pm »
I don't think I'll add configurable difficulty to the current game, but I am leaning towards it for Infusion.