I tend to play technologists far more often than magi, and have found that there are a rather large number of items which return a rather large amount of profit when sold to the right people. Conversely, I have found several that you make a loss on. Electricity and Mechanical have been the biggest cash cows so far - the Shocking Staff and Eye Gear, specifically, easily earn more than ten times the amount of gold it costs to make them, even with no Haggle skill; the Flow Specktrometer is also a good source of income. Gunsmithing has been the worst - with the exception of the Handcrafted Flintlock and the revolver, pretty much everything you learn to make in that disclipline apparently costs more to make than you can get back by selling it. Anyone else have a particular technological cash cow they like to milk? Is there an item with a higher profitability that I've missed (and are its components reasonably easy to find)?

I haven't played a technologist for some ime now, but I think that the eye gear was the best option. It's engredients are extremely easy to find, with several pairs of glasses you can buy every day from the guy in Ashbury you practically only seek for the mechanical part which can often be found in an inventors equipment. There may be self-made tech items worth more than the eye gear, but the time it takes to find the engredients and compose them together isn't worth it when compared to eye gear.

_________________
Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.

I too have found that peddling the shocking staff as a great way to make money. The first time I did so made me incredibly nervous because I was afraid that I was taking the first step to flooding the market with shocking staves. I expected that putting more shocking staves in circulation would mean that they'd fall into the wrong hands and I would face an NPC who was using one of my own shocking staves against me! It would appear that the game designers put no such consequence in the game, so hocking one's technological creations is in fact a simple way to generate capital.

Would it be possible to mod the game such that what a character sells to the shop keepers influences the game balance?

I'm really not sure, although it would be kickass if it were possible.

I'm going to cautiously say I don't think so. At least not without some major reworking of the way the game handles the shopkeepers.

_________________
If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

Actually this can be easily scripted by using the "buy object" attachment point.

I stand corrected.
Teach me to expect everything to be complex.

_________________
If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

let's say a script is attached to all those merchants in i.e. Tarant who will usually buy the shock-staff. can the script refer to / update a single global variable counting how many shock-staffs the player has sold in Tarant alltogether?
if yes, the said "kick-ass mod" would check that number whenever the player enters tarant. if it's reasonably high, the script would update the equipped weapon of some NPC's with shock-staffs.
same would go for any tech weaponry
live economy FTW!

If four days constitutes a grave dig, I'm in it with soviet because a live economy is more or less what I'm looking for in a game. Any game.

Specific to Arcanum, a consequence to an otherwise unchecked cash flow is what I imagine. After all, there is no such thing as a free 834 coin for a shocking staff.

I think, if such a thing were to be implemented, it would fall somewhere between 'pretty awesome' and 'totally kickass'. Although also potentially dangerous to me, as most of my income comes from unloading scores of homemade technological weapons onto every junk dealer I can find. Would be nice to actually have some consequences for that.

This sounds amazing.... now to just compile this and sneak the idea into AWIP when Rroyo isn't looking...

_________________

now a question for the wise mod-makers: is there a "sell object" attachment point?
should be something like this:
SELL OBJECT
when called: when PC sells an item to NPC
triggerer: item / list of specified items
attachee: PC
extra object: NPC
effect of RETURN AND SKIP DEFAULT: same as above.

because as far as I understand the scripts, it'd be much easier to make a "live economy" mod work with other mods if it has a script on the PC instead of attaching scripts to all NPC merchants.

but what real impact could the PC have on the economy ? It's just one person, selling tens, maybe hundreds of technological gizmos within a few months - unless you're willing to force some absurdity, like a noticeable value drop in shocking staves after selling just 5(50?) of them.

While technically possible and theoretically valid, this idea would be quite worthless in practice... Unless someone would try to crash the explosive grenade market by selling 10 000 of them to everyone in Tarant, Caladon, Ashbury and Blackroot, even handing out freebies just to be sure their prices drop slightly.

Also, there aren't enough random encounters with humans, who are the only beings that might actually use any tech gadgets the player would sell.

_________________
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroy ... ldyet.com/

I have to disagree.
while a single manufacturer wouldn't have a noticeable effect on a free market, the player's party is close to being the Arcanum-wide monopolist on tech weaponry of any kind. one could imagine the Boil clan leaders asking the merchants about new weapons from time to time. and while the merchants have the same old stuff for years, after the player enters the scene, new and beforehand unseen items enter the market.
IMHO the point is not the quantity, but the quality of new high-tech weaponry that enters the market. while shock-staffs may be too high-tech to spread across Arcanum, I'd imagine that producing large amounts of revolvers, balanced swords and feather-weight axes for sale would make orc bandits and molochean asassins considerably more dangerous.
AFAIK there are few, almost none, NPC's wielding high-tech weapons. some would be more dangerous if they got tech weps to use. with the trains connecting major cities, certain spread of tech weaponry seems reasonable.

I see your point, The_Bob. The impact of one seller may be negligible enough for Arcanum's programmers to overlook.

Practically, who's going to have the coin to purchase a shocking staff for 800+ gold? Perhaps a wealthy collector of technology, not necessarily an adventurer the player would encounter! However, the Mollochean Hand is organized enough that its members might have the resources and the foresight to pick up these items as they find them. Assuming their agents are following the player to some degree puts them in the same locations in which the player is selling these devices, making access to them near inevitable.

The speculation here is bordering on fan fiction, but negligible or not, to me the impact of that one seller seems more probable than impossible.

If we were to adhere strictly to what the game world shows then yes, the player is quite likely the greatest source of technological gizmos in whole arcanum.

There's a few stun and explosive grenades to be found. Two looking glass rifles, one hand cannon and an elephant gun. One can also come across two mechanized guns and one high velocity pistol. I've made more guns then that before getting to Caladon. It also takes a lot more grenades then one could find during a playthrough to actually fight a way through any situation.

Also there's a lot of things that simply cannot be found or obtained, weapons, gizmos, armors. Considering the ease with which the player can craft these items, the set that is naturally available during a campaign is easily dwarfed.

However the idea that the player is the only person capable of creating a significant amount of technological gadgets is quite naive, or at least a bit of an underestimation of the game. In many instances the story and fluff paint arcanum as a thriving world much larger and more fascinating then what the in-game representation actually provides.

More importantly, NPCs act as if they were a part of a much bigger and livelier world. They don't run around panicking over the low population of arcanum - there's less then 2000 people in all towns and villiages combined, probably even counting the dwarves.

Introducing a game mechanic based upon a shallow observation of the game world would enforce the actual simplicity and shortcomings of the game, rather then make the game appear more complex and mysterious.

I mean, just think of what it would imply if indeed the player, in his limited capability, was a major source of technological gadgets - so influential that without his contribution to the market, a specialized cult of assassins would've been unable to obtain a Tesla rod, even if they actually wanted one. Just what would it say about arcanum if the player was indeed the only person capable of producing large quantities of dynamite and grenades ?

Making the world smaller and centered entirely around the player makes games appear shallow and simplistic. Arcanum does its best to pretend the world is a lot larger and more complex then it actually is.

_________________
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroy ... ldyet.com/

point taken. this is indeed a major logical shortcoming in my reasoning.
tho a few new questions come up this way.
if, as The_Bob pointed out, the world lives beyond the player's limited observations, the molochean hand acts unreasonably, using a very limited range of weaponry. one should expect them, [spoiler]an ancient order of asassins, backed up by a continent-spanning conspiracy,[/spoiler] to provide the actual killers with best gear available. same goes for specific NPC's, i.e. Bates (+ Chukka and the guards) and the melee master - they might be not levelled, but at least significantly better equipped.

for the molochean hand, a possible explanation, slightly changing the story, would be the following: the actual order is almost extinct; their mode of operations consists of hiring regular bandits and mercenaries who enter the continent of Arcanum (much like european fugitives entered North America), providing them just with the target's description and the amulets, paying them a little incentive (or maybe some spare equip) and promising the entire sum upon return with the player's severed head. in that case only very few true molocheans would ever encounter the player, [spoiler]i.e. Vollinger and Gideon.[/spoiler]
the random encounters would then be just hired hands, thus maybe needing some adjustment in the dialog (i.e. the ability to talk or buy them off) and maybe a sript to randomize their equipment and combat AI.

adding some high-tech (and with the same reasoning high-magick) objects around the world (an adventurer's corpse placed next to a wolf pack) would help, much like the "Small Camp" location near Quintarra where the player finds something looking much like another adventuring party/ a merchant caravan that met it's demise by wildlife.

I'm quite impressed with this conversation. Keep it up! My only commentary would be, even if you assume that this IS a big, living world, things don't spread as far then as they do today. Even with the trains. If you sell 200 or so eye goggles in one city, it may not spread to others terribly much, but it IS going to have an effect upon the value of them in that city.

_________________

that's part of the discussion - there are AFAIK no shops in Arcanum that sell high-tech crafted items. to make a step towards "live economix", the (currently theoretical) mod would IMHO add crafted items to high level tech merchants' shops and decrease the amount of components for sell. tho I can't really estimate the amount of modding needed, a living world would require a blacksmith merchant who buys i.e. iron ore and steel from the player to have pure ore on sell the next day.
P.S. did you ever ask yourself what kind of blacksmith Shrouded Hills has, if he needs you to find pure ore? the quest would make a lot more sense if Lloyd requested i.e. 2 steel and 2 iron ore and would sell a balanced sword after quest completion
P.P.S. modding question again - is it possible to divide a merchant's goods into restockable and not restockable?

The main reason for limiting the availability of tech gizmos is that otherwise there would be no point in spending character points on schematics. For example, IIRC you can't find a repeater rifle anywhere in the world - you have to learn the schematic to have the base item needed for making a charged accelerator gun, a mechanized gun or a flamethrower. If these were available through inventors/gunsmiths then one could make all these guns simply by buying tech manuals and the needed parts - effectively trading 3 char points (+ some for the needed int) for around 4000 gold - or less if the player can pick locks well enough.

Also, if all the tech weapons and armors were as plentiful as they possibly should, there would be no need at all to make them yourself, especially since there aren't that many tech followers.

On a higher level, this means that proper representation of the game world in this regard was not viable gameplay-wise, at least not with the way things work in arcanum.

If for example using tech weapons required expertise to properly use and maintain them, like craft a new nozzle for the flamethrower or replace the firing pin in the machine gun, providing a wide selection of weapons wouldn't obsolete all the tech skills. Using weapons or other advanced tech items would've been terribly expensive for a non-technologist.

Currently, once you pick up a tech gizmo, all you need to worry about is fuel/bullets/batteries and a visit to the quality smith in Tarant once a week. There are no advantages from having tech expertise other then simply being able to create items. More importantly, there are no disadvantages coming from lacking the expertise once you own a specific tech item.

_________________
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroy ... ldyet.com/

hm. looks like a logical flaw again. shame on me
while a tech player suffers a malus on using magickal equipment (the bonuses of the items go negative (there was a thread here stating this, can't remember where), making them inferior to regular equipment of equal value), and tech items carry hefty maluses for mages (the gun from the Vendigroth schematic had a 85% chance of crit fail on a 100 MA character ), a magick-tech neutral (or low-tech) player will be able to use a high-tech item without any disadvantages of lacking tech aptitude (TA).
(I'm actually not too sure here. IMHO having low TA will cause high-tech stuff to crit-fail too. does anybody have low-tech high-level chars and spare time to test the crit-fail chances on that Vendigroth gun?)
while this is absolutely real - you don't have to know chemistry or physix to pull the pin and throw a grenade - it makes my plans unbalanced.
but maybe this can be solved with the introduction of use+maintenance expertise, as The_Bob suggested.
I'm sorry to deviate into hardcore theoretical modding again, but that could look somehow like this:
a character has crafting expertise, derived from the college in question and IN + manuals, as it works right now. thus being smart allows you to craft stuff by following a manual, while u lack the knowledge and experience on using the crafted item under combat conditions.
the character then has use+maintenance expertise, derived from the colleges and skills to which the item belongs (i.e. firearms, gunsmithy and chemistry for flamethrower; melee, smithy and electrix for charged axe) and from the character's TA and IN. this expertise should influence the high-tech items in a similar way as MA influences spells - a master swordsmith will more or less fail with a flamethrower. a master chemist / demolitioner will do better due to experience with ranged combat and fire. but the full power of the said flamethrower is reserved for a master gunner-gunsmith-chemist-demolitioner who has understood and mastered all the principles of the weapon's operations. (assuming A:WIP or Carcanum in play and levelcap of 100)
as a slightly more realistic approach - is it possible to expand the mage-tech aptitude from 100-0-100 to 300-0-300? or maybe make individual spells / skills / tech colleges contribute less to the scale?

Where do you sell this tec items. i find it hard to sell eye gears. i know i can sell them in S.hill, some one in turan did buy them. but i did not find anyone for Ashbury. do i need to be haggle expert for this?

_________________
If I die before I wake
Hope I don't come back a slave!

There's a junk vendor in most cities that'll buy anything at fairly reduced price. For example, in Tarant he's by the docks. I don't' recall if there is one in Ashbury, or where he is if he's there.

_________________
There are things in this world that I dislike. One of the things I dislike the most is a serious argument, well constructed, delivered by someone who makes themselves difficult to respect.

Aiden, grab the e-guide from the downloads. it has a plethora of merchant informations, including a list of whoever and whereever buys any given item in unmodded Arcanum.
P.S. sorry, slightly too banned to answer in time

Ive found that making the explosive grenades gives best profit overall...cheap ingredients ( a tin can and horn of blackpowder ) makes 3 grenades that sell for 1120 coin a piece everytime...flash grenades sell for abour 320 coin and fire obstructions sell for about 656 coins each...i ran around tarant for 10 game days finding materials in trash bins and buying them from shopkeepers to make said items and made enough profit off it to but the bates mansion and have some coin to spare...lol

_________________
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines