Altar Spacebux Pricing

[Bionic_Crow]

imo I think the altar pricing with spacebux is a little too much right now. For pretty much the basic set of a 12 use chalk, thauma and sacrificial knife is like 7.5k I believe if my excel sheet is correct, which I believe is way too much. I know someone said its pretty much secret content but I feel like either the pricing maybe needs to get adjusted or maybe wage's for job adjusted or something along those lines. According to the wiki Captain which is one of the highest paying jobs other than AI gets a base wage of 1700 spacebux BUT thats only if you survive on the shuttle, not counting crew objectives/pilot seat. So pretty much you'd have to play captain for like 5? rounds or so while SURVIVING(which is hard nonetheless) and doing your crew objectives as well just for the CHANCE to mess with the altar and hope people don't space it/say your runes to try and fuck you over/ or just fuck you over in general. A lotta stuff can happen during rounds like say you spend all your hard earned buckaroos to get a ritual kit but then nukies come and blow up the station, theres no way to get that money back or just continue messing with the ritual yknow, it's all just gone and  there goes 7.5k. I'm only making this suggestion because I think the Altar/Ritual mechanics are dope as fuck but im too broke to experiment with them due to learning how much spacebux I had to offer up anyways and what gave what. I'm curious to as what other people think, too expensive? or am I just an excessive gambler essentially .

[Arlian]

When you have players who beg for spacebux over the radio you know it's bad (I've seen this happen a few times already). I do think it's excessively priced. If the secret content angle is important, perhaps make it harder to reach the altar and lower the price for someone who goes out of the way to find it?

[Wisecrack34]

I have mixed feelings on the Ritual Kit. On one hand, It absolutely 100% is vastly overpriced. It causes players to go out of their way to play in a less fun way. On the other hand Spacebux are not meant to influence the round much, they're supposed to be more along the lines of a Nanotrasen Gift Shop so the idea of a Ritual Kit being available for cheap is bad and not good. On the third and final hand, I don't know what the Altar is so I have no meaningful thoughts on it.

[warcrimes]

it's definitely not getting cheaper honestly.
regular players have 7-digits of banked spacecash, just uhhhh steal their chalk or something

[TheMaskedMan2]

I just feel like it should be a Chaplain thing, not a spacebux thing. For other people it can be acquired through like, merchants or debris or something. Kinda like having to go through the trouble of building a genetics computer if you want to mess with genes.

[zjdtmkhzt]

I don't think the altar thing is permanent, that is just the way to obtain it for a "trial run" of sorts during spooktober?

Honestly, I do kind of agree with this thread though.
Rituals are a system that lends itself well to experimentation and messing around with it, but the steep bux cost and limited amount of uses for each piece of chalk go against that a lot.

I am guessing that the bux cost was meant to be a sort of limit so it's not spammed too much or something?
But I think that any other way of limiting it would be nicer, it makes little sense to restrict chalk to people that have lots of rounds played and that never spend their bux, which is essentially what the current means of obtaining them does.

[Rilor]

I think it should cost ectoplasm personally, its something that isnt too difficult to get but does require effort and a bit of knowledge, and its based purley on the current round, which is sort of what this kind of thing should require to get

[zjdtmkhzt]

Eh, ectoplasm requires pretty much zero effort to get in limitless quantities?
If the spacebux cost is kept, I think it'd be nicer if the knife and thaumometer and stuff were free with the chalk or something, at least.

[KikiMofo]

I don't know what this altar or ritual stuff is but if it's something that can give you an ingame advantage via spacebux then I don't like it.

[kyle2143]

Well, I made the altar. I've heard some points here so I'll address em, but I won't spoil any secrets. Aside from the obvious one that everyone seems to already know.

This is NOT going to be a permanent fixture on the station for gaining ritual chalk. I made it for Spooktober to add a little spice and mystery, and I wanted to give rituals a little test. Mainly for general balance stuff and bugs, most of which I've tackled so it's been a success on that front.

It is supposed to be expensive, it's kinda supposed to be a spacebux sink in that sense. I only wish I had the time and foresight to bother to track how many each person spent trying to puzzle it out. I wanted it to be expensive so that it can't be spammed out round after round by someone the whole month. Having said that, there's a bit more to the altar than it seems like you're aware. Namely, the optimal way to get a quality piece of ritual chalk. There's more to it than just dropping spacebux. Plus, I like to think that the relatively high cost encourages cooperation between players.

The altar will be gone with Spooktober at the end of the month. I know right now it's like using spacebux for a competitive advantage, but that's really so I can slowly test without things getting too crazy while I am also busy irl.

Having said all that, maaaaaybe I was a bit too stringent with the amount of uses pieces of chalk have at lower levels. I've seen some things that give like 20-ish uses which honestly does feel bad. I'll adjust them a bit in the players' favor I think.

[KikiMofo]

Oh it's just a spooktober thing? That's fine, just like when we got spacemus crap going on and people are killing seals to get krampus to show up.

[zjdtmkhzt]

Played a bit with the new chalk with more uses, which is a lot nicer!

I'd still prefer if the instructions, thaumometer, and knife came free with the chalk.
Right now, if you don't pay about twice as much as the chalk costs, you will lack the information from the thaumometer and the ability to sacrifice more easily, which feels pretty bad, imo?
On the other side, paying double for some side-items feels pretty bad too.

Also, I think it'd be nice if a ritual that didn't have enough energy didn't disappear. (Even without persisto.) So that if you fuck up, you can try again without having to waste more chalk.

[kyle2143]

I'd still prefer if the instructions, thaumometer, and knife came free with the chalk.

Well, the knife is unnecessary for rituals in most situations. The instructions can be gotten very cheaply, and the thaumometer, also pretty cheap. 

Like I said, I was trying to have there be bigger costs so as to foster people working in teams to figure out ritual chalk. Also, so that they would be hard to spam every round. Maybe that was wishful thinking.

[KikiMofo]

Come on kyle you know the rules. If its new it HAS to be ran into the ground. One person will use it till they get bored and then the next person and then the next person. It goes on till everyones had enough of the new thing.

[kyle2143]

I've beat the system.