[MERGED PR] Starstone value reduction

[github_bot]

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About the PR
Reduces starstone sell value range to 300,000-450,000.

Why's this needed?
You can reliably get 1-2 from the mineral magnet every single round in 10-15~ minutes. With a value 500k-4.5 million this can easily cover cargo for the entire round.
Cargo is already expected to be profitable without starstones so a reduction shouldn't make life any harder for them while still being a substantial budget boost.

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[Ikea]

My only concern is that starstones were really the only way to get listening post pod gear on a classic round. That can be easily fixed by reducing the cost however. Besides that good pr.

[Katzen]

The new value is just a range I picked that felt big without being impossible to spend.
My guess is that 300k might be the optimum for not breaking the economy while still being Big Money.

[BatElite]

The new range of this PR is actually 250k-350k (down from 500k - 4500k)

[mralexs]

IMHO I'd rather see more expensive stuff to buy (or traders restocking) than nerf the monetary value of stsrstone due to their rarity

[cyberTripping]

it was bound to happen eventually. but yeah, starstones needed a nerf at some point. This seems like a good spot for it: it's still ridiculous enough to pay for a singularity setup basically on its own, and for one or two to solve the payroll, but you're still gonna need several or an additional revenue source if you want to break into the truly insane numbers. I'm sure theres tweaking that could be done: maybe the average should be slightly lower or higher, or the range should be a bit wider, etc, but generally I agree with the principle behind this change.

as some justification for this, since i agree with it:
lowering the amount starstone can give opens the window to add more avenues of profit to things like botany, where rng results like starstone dont really fit into their gameplay cycle. Additionally, it means mining for materials like syreline and gold is a bit more relevant.

As someone who likes QM, your job was kinda done once miners hit a starstone or two (and you got gragg to show up finally). I'm not going to say I hated this, I love an opportunity to fuck off and have no responsibilities beyond dicking around, but that being said I've seen QMs who really hated the absurd price Starstone scored precisely because it made them feel irrelevant, or made their wheeling and dealing pointless. This is still plenty of fucking money, to be clear, it's just a bit less than the absolutely wild several-million credits.

The new range of this PR is actually 250k-350k (down from 500k - 4500k)

This was a mistake in their PR commits, the price in the PR is now what they meant it to be, and what is written in the thread.

[Cal]

I would really like it if this came with a general buff to how much Cargo makes.

I hate how I can get some real shit offers and just spend 20 minutes taking each individual pen out of the office crate just to get a measly 2k from it.

[BatElite]

PR merged but wrt Cal's comment
Imagine if twirling an open box dumps all the contents out
That'd make the pen one a lot less painful.

[Jakson]

I'm not sure if I agree with this change, but it's already merged and probably gonna stay but I'll just voice my opinion. Starstone RNG was pretty balanced and made it pretty rare if your searching for it based off of RNG alone (which is what most miners and QM's do), and even when cargo becomes rich, QM's always enjoyed it, I've never seen a QM not be happy when I show them a starstone. When I play QM myself I also enjoy it, because you get to buy whatever you want, build your own bar in cargo, get a kitchen, build a singularity outside of cargo. It gave a lot of fun to the QM's, because most QM's don't enjoy waiting for a single trader to show up so they're forced to buy and sell jumpsuits or some other weak cash production.

[Katzen]

Yeah but I think getting at least 300k is still super nice, I'm happy to see gold bullion for 50k playing QM. Getting 1 million+ before just meant budget wasn't even a thing.

Also I should really have put a changelog on this!!!

[palpetinus]

Suggestion: also make it a market thing, not restricted to Gragg. Even if Mining is rushing it, if you're unlucky, Gragg can leave at minute 10 and poof goes your money.

[Katzen]

Suggestion: also make it a market thing, not restricted to Gragg. Even if Mining is rushing it, if you're unlucky, Gragg can leave at minute 10 and poof goes your money.

The risk is newbie QMs not knowing and people grumbling but I was thinking about adding a market value (say 100k below Gragg's minimum) to help prevent accidents.
It doesn't make much sense that a gem considered universally valuable would get you ripped off just because the trading market doesn't have a price for it.

[AlyasGrey]

Dumb idea... sending starstone out on the regular market results in receiving an obscene amount of pizza.

[Lady Birb]

How does Gragg have so much money anyway? Though then again before asteroids were added to the quantum telescope he was the only way to get erebite.

[Mouse]

How does Gragg have so much money anyway? Though then again before asteroids were added to the quantum telescope he was the only way to get erebite.

Certain byproducts of rock worm metabolism are highly valued by humans for some unfathomable reason.