A possible fix for "submarine income"

[LianaThorne]

Now I'm not actually posting this to annoy people who are into using the exploratory missions to make Gil off of. I'm going too anyways because it's an elegant solution and the work around for how you submarine people will try to keep in fuel is just hilarious to me.

Solution: ceruleum fuel becomes untradeable.

This limits it to just that fc able to get fuel for their subs or airships to be sent out. This could also be a way to liven them up too as pretty much all these fcs are solo owned.

What's the workaround to this. Easy. Put an alt in the fc who can carry the fuel to another fc you own or someone else's you are selling too.

The fix for this is to have a cool down between leaving a fc and joining a new one. Say 72 real hours.

I can keep going but this probably annoyed enough people and I was mainly posting it because I had seen another topic about those that utilize voyages as income.

Cooldown already exists for leaving and joining at 24 hours. It's already obnoxious enough when most games have a 2h cooldown so I'd rather not make it longer lol. Imagine meeting a group of people that you'd like to leave your FC to be with in theirs but you have to wait 3 days to do it. :X

It's also really not hard to farm credits in a day if you really wanted to (spamming crafting/expert delivery/alt character progress, etc.).

These changes just seem like a way to screw over the Average Joe rather than fixing submarines. The only thing that will actually fix it is removing it from FCs and making it something everyone can access via Grand Companies.

[StouterTaru]

I was curious how much ceruleum tanks were selling for, and dove into some numbers:

• 250k per stack of 999 seems to be the norm on NA servers
• 9 tanks per 24 hour optimal voyage
• 4 subs, I stack will last 4 weeks (27.75 days)
• ~140k gil for repair materials for 4 subs * 4 weeks
• ~13M gil payout over that time

[Jojoya]

Using cash shop items can also cut out some time, specifically the job boost gear. Takes out the need to play the alt at all outside of a few FATEs and a roulette lol. It's not required but makes it easier.

Right but that depends on the player's ability/willingness to spend real world money on getting the boosts.

I'm not expecting all sub farms to dry up overnight. Some players would still spend the money or they may have the time and just love operating workshops. But how many would decide it's gotten to be more work than it's worth? How many wouldn't even bother getting started because there would be a lot more effort required at start up if they aren't going to spend the money for boosts?

I was curious how much ceruleum tanks were selling for, and dove into some numbers:

• 250k per stack of 999 seems to be the norm on NA servers
• 9 tanks per 24 hour optimal voyage
• 4 subs, I stack will last 4 weeks (27.75 days)
• ~140k gil for repair materials for 4 subs * 4 weeks
• ~13M gil payout over that time

Yep, "maintenance" costs for subs is currently pretty low. Most of the cost is in the start up, especially if someone would rather buy materials/parts instead of farming them.

I know a lot of players do enjoy the sub farms as an activity, which is why I'd rather see workshops removed from housing and placed elsewhere. Most of the complaints would stop.

Changing how fuel is acquired (along with repairs) should be more of a last resort if sub farms continue to increase in number and impacting the overall housing supply. Right now there are a decent number of smalls for players who want but don't have a house. Those will be gone in 10 weeks between the new Xbox players and those returning for Dawntrail.

SE needs to implement good solutions that satisfy both sides of the discussion. It's definitely possible. They just need to be willing to do it.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

On one hand I understand people being salty at the thought of people making 'easy' money. But reality is it's months of time investment to get running and gil only gets you so much. After 6 months or so of getting subs sorted with my fc mates we split the gil monthly between us all for 2-3 mill per person between 6-7 people. Not exactly huge. I have six houses and my crafters can make anything I want. Unless I go for more houses I have no need of gil at all.

If you want to make gil there are plenty ways to do it. I got the gil for three mansions, two mediums and my cottage WITHOUT sub income. I sold odds and ends and didn't buy much at all, I crafted anything I wanted or went and grinded for the drop in the case of things you can't craft. I'm now just building up gil for nothing at this point.

I'm hoping for this housing mirage system to allow me to expand the interior of the houses and that's about it. I don't much care for the gil sink mounts, they just look gaudy.

Even if there is a handful of people making hundreds of millions via subs, there's not much they can do with it besides hoard. If they want to sell gil they'd be better served botting, less time investment. The only issue is people buying up dozens upon dozens of plots for the sake of subs but I don't think there's too many of those either. Even the ones I have seen they are buying up small plots that sit empty for weeks and weeks because anyone interested in housing can get a small easily enough on all servers apart from a couple.

Not against making tanks untradable but as you've said you can work around it easily enough. Even my small fc has enough credits for thousands of tanks that someone could pop an alt into grab a few months of tanks and leave.
Unless SE clearly state it's bannable and actually start taking action about it ppl will find every work around.

I'm not really bothered, as I've said... gil only gets you so much in this game and it's nothing you can't get yourself anyway. I don't care what title, house or whatever else someone else has.

I'd still love SE to add a ward that's just instanced housing to allow people to buy their dream plots. You'd at least have one well populated ward and everyone can get themselves a large house should they so choose.

[ForgivenAvarice]

You propose a solution but you don't specify what even the problem is. "Submarine income" is not easy gil, that perception can only stem from someone who has never tried to set up multiple workshops themselves.
As others have pointed out many times, it takes months of prep and a big pile of gil to get it started. And if you want to get into the big FC numbers, you need multiple accounts for logistical reasons. So why shouldn't people be allowed to do it in your opinion?
Also, people don't do this to sell gil, that would be stupidly ineffiecient. Because when you will inevitebaly get banned, it takes forever to get it up and running again.

And as for why people do it then, i can only speak for myself: it's just fun to see the gil number go up. Started with gathering, then got into crafting to hit the first gil-cap and kept searching for ever more efficient ways of growing that bank. It's just the "natural" preogression of looking for ways of investing your gil to get better returns with the less amount of active management required.

So people that do this at scale are already rich and you aren't really "annoying" them by imposing any kind of restrictions or nerfs on the workshop system, they already made their fortune.
I personally couldn't give 2 shits about it being nerfed at this point. I'll find somehting else to invest gil and time into.

I have 80+ FC's running subs, but i bareley check them anymore because it gets boring over time, so i would even welcome a change to workshops to have a reason to look at other stuff again.
Imo it would be way cooler if they made all the workshop related materials and rewards bound to the FC, so you had an actual reason to work together to make vessels and do voyages, to get the rewards for your members.
But as it stands, it can easily be done by 1 person and all the rewards are worthless because they can be sold on the MB. So all that really is worth doing with the workshop is farming salvage for gil, which is really boring.

[WinglessSeraphim]

Imo it would be way cooler if they made all the workshop related materials and rewards bound to the FC, so you had an actual reason to work together to make vessels and do voyages, to get the rewards for your members.

This is actually the reason why I made my own FC. The FC leads in all 3 of the FCs I was in long term restricted who could use the subs and workshops and didn't make it easy to even try to be one of the few who could. So there's a problem right there.

[Burmecia]

This is actually the reason why I made my own FC. The FC leads in all 3 of the FCs I was in long term restricted who could use the subs and workshops and didn't make it easy to even try to be one of the few who could. So there's a problem right there.

i might be wrong, but i have spend some time in jp dc recently [am from eu and my mains/usual servers are there]; and to me it looks like its not unusual for jp players to just not be part of fc vs if you dare to be fcless in na/eu server you'll be bombarded 10 times/day by local sprout farm.
peeking into jp players fc company profiles, it also seems to me that often their fcs indeed are very small, and compared to any random eu fc they are house-less often. and i want to emphasise that these are just my observations. there are houseless fcs in na/eu of course, but i notice them less often than i have noticed houseless jp fc.
i wonder, do the players who dev team like to listen the closest aka jp players just prefer smaller fc? because to me too it absolutely looks like small fcs make simply more sense from technical standpoint.
it is depressing to be part of usual bigber na/eu fc where you kinda cannot enjoy the perks fc could have, becaue workshop/gardening plots/house furnishing are absolutely gated behind fc leader and their few close friend officers. and, that is smart in paradigm na/eu likes, it'd be chaos to have 100 people do what they want when they want.
i am personally part of small fcs only with some friends, and because we are irl friends of course everyone can do everything as they please, because technically the fcs as we have them currently feel the best in and for small groups, instead of +100 people cohort.

[Reinha]

i wonder, do the players who dev team like to listen the closest aka jp players just prefer smaller fc? because to me too it absolutely looks like small fcs make simply more sense from technical standpoint.

I have heard the same thing, that JP players like to be in small fcs. Whereas western players will make up derogatory terms like "shell fc" if anyone dares to make a fc with their spouse or a friend instead of being fodder for huge free companies with an equally huge list of rules.

It absolutely makes sense from a technical standpoint to have a small tight knit fc. The fc chest is quite limited and not something that can realistically hold items from 50+ people but for fewer people it works great. You can also only have 2 buffs active and in my previous fcs those were usually ones I didn't benefit from but the low level members did. Now I get to choose the buffs. And these are on top of the perks an fc house offers.

You propose a solution but you don't specify what even the problem is.

It's always the same song and dance on the housing forum and nobody ever specifies the problem, lol.

"Look, a ward on a dead server owned by a single person!" Yes, and?
"Look, someone is making gil with submarines!" Okay...?

[MAJRIS]

What is the point of stomping it to the ground for regular fc's just because a tiny portion (roughly 35% of mist on Alpha btw) are shell shacks?

Make voyages Account-bound, send out max 4 with 24 hour cooldown.

[Shibi]

(With only 6 sub farms of my own, I fall into the make fuel come direct from credits camp.) However, importantly.

Looking out into one of my wards right now....



You want subs? Are you in NA or EU?

1. Buy a second account for one month to form an FC on Materia. Make 4 characters on each of the two accounts. Leave all at level 1, except your sub alt.
2. Form your FC and start levelling to 6 (For me, the fastest is to buy a warrior class boost and expansion skip on the sub alt then run Shisui ~80 times solo)
3. You can dop your second account sub as soon as the fc is formed.
3. Pay for the 8 extra retainers (you absolutely need these to fund your ceruleum tanks)
4. Level your sub alt character and FC leader to 2nd Lieutenant. Yay squadrons.
5. Level your miner to cap
6. Level all 10 retainers to miner cap
7. As soon as you get FC 6, buy one of the few hundred empty plots, small is best as you can use your free 1 million gil for level 30 in Materia. Goblet is best as it's the easiest to get a level 1 mule into.
8. Start your sub grind. You need cobalt, mythrite, and darksteel mainly. Crafting crystals. A lot. Your subs need to be on this as soon as they can. In the first few weeks keep the 10 retainers very busy and craft, craft, craft
9. It will be about 6 months wait now. Keep your 10 retainers on 18h ventures, trade in the blues. Buy venture coins. This can be a bit of a pain until you get it rolling.
10. Log in every day without fail, do your 10 retainers, go into the dungeon, send out the 4 subs (do your calculations on what route will give the move XP)
11. Have one retainer on dark shards.

After those 6 months, you should have 100,000 a day coming in for those 10 retainers you are paying for. Gather it up, every 6 months to a year, pay a month on your second account and do the 1,000,000 gil trade shuffle to exfiltrate the gil back to your home DC.

Congrats you are now earning 30 million gil a year solo for no work (apart from the daily retainer grind) That 30 million costs you an extra $192 a year. So.... 200,000g / US$