What should the success rate of caravans be?

ArchivedUser

What do you think is the right balance of successfully moving goods vs the caravan falling to someone raiding them? If the raids are successful too often the incentive to keep the economy moving may lose out to the risk of losing your goods. 

Where do you wanna see the caravan success chances?

ArchivedUser

Wherever they end up

The whole point of player driven RNG is no one knows

ArchivedUser

I feel they need to be more successful than they aren't, else few will risk their resources running them.

This coming from a guy who wants to raid them

ArchivedUser

This really isn't something that can be determined tbh. You can have player as well as npc guards. As well as fortified and upgraded caravans, if your well prepared they should always be a success, if you get lackadaisical and just try to do things quickly you'll end up screwed. 


It's funny, what the caravan system is, it quite literally is the Oregon trail crossing a river  you pay a higher price, get reinforcements or take a safer route. Decide to risk it, don't pay for protections and try to go quick and you risk dying of dysentery. I mean getting raided and lose you goods. I think if you prepare and pay for the protections it'll be 80%+ success with the occasional raid force taking you down. If you don't bother to do anything, probably 20% success rate. You can also try to sneak by at off hours to avoid people. 

ArchivedUser

Krojak said:

I feel they need to be more successful than they aren't, else few will risk their resources running them.

This coming from a guy who wants to raid them

I want to be on both sides of them. I also know I only part time game anymore so I will be needing others to make the caravan to defend

ArchivedUser

McKnightrider said:

This really isn't something that can be determined tbh. You can have player as well as npc guards. As well as fortified and upgraded caravans, if your well prepared they should always be a success, if you get lackadaisical and just try to do things quickly you'll end up screwed. 


It's funny, what the caravan system is, it quite literally is the Oregon trail crossing a river  you pay a higher price, get reinforcements or take a safer route. Decide to risk it, don't pay for protections and try to go quick and you risk dying of dysentery. I mean getting raided and lose you goods. I think if you prepare and pay for the protections it'll be 80%+ success with the occasional raid force taking you down. If you don't bother to do anything, probably 20% success rate. You can also try to sneak by at off hours to avoid people. 

That is what I'm hoping for. A well balanced system should still slightly favor the caravan, since raiders shouldn't know exactly where it is and where it is going.

ArchivedUser

I feel like caravans will need to succeed more than fail, otherwise why send them? I can tell you right now, any time I see a caravan from another alliance (free PvP zone), and I have even the slightest chances of winning, I'm going in.

ArchivedUser

if the fail rate is too high people will stop doing caravans and since they are extremely important for node development and maintenance if people just stop caravaning it will be a disaster.

Either that or make the fail chances high and make the reward from caravaning incredibly good to offset the fail chance. So that people don't get discouraged.

ArchivedUser

I am hoping they have a decent success rate but as others above have mentioned, it will all depend on the effort put forth by both sides in which side wins.   Defense or offense will not win without planning and skill. Ya might want to toss in a bit of luck also!

ArchivedUser

60-80% seems like the best balance.

ArchivedUser

The bigger guilds I think will be the most dangerous because they won't need to pay for protection, because they will have a team of guildies to protect it instead. I know I will be one of those people that will be protecting my guild caravans and will be primarily pvp oriented. BRING IT PLEBS!!!!!!

ArchivedUser

This is player driven so i can't answer this. 60-70 seems a decent number to reward both attackers and defenders though.

ArchivedUser

It will also depend on time of day. If your moving goods at off peak hours you'll have less to worry about. 

ArchivedUser

I'm going to go with 80%.  I think raiding a caravan should be a challenge.
But at the same time I'm with @Rune_Relic.

ArchivedUser

I could be completely miss remembering but even if your caravan gets turned over only a certain amount of the traveling resources will be lost.  Now whether the remaining then makes it to the destination or is sent back to the starting point I can't remember.  If it is the later then there might be a case to camp a caravan route and the sending team would never get through so I doubt this will be the case.  As the Devs will have absolutely no control over the success rate of caravans (How much effort you and your associates put into the protecting Vs the aggressiveness of the bandits on your server will decide it) I feel a better discussion should be on the amount you lose should you fail to protect the caravan.  I think if it were my caravan I would find a 60% + of my goods getting through taking into account runs where you are robbed and not robbed would be an acceptable loss rate. At this level I would still keep using that facility.

ArchivedUser

They need to get where they are going in one piece 70-80% of the time but like most who have posted I will echo that the success rate will depend on the efforts of both 'sides'.

If a caravan fails I don't think the sender loses everything; only a portion of their goods BUT none of the goods will make to the intended destination so there is that.

Depending on how hard much is involved, I wonder if we can set up multiple caravans with most being decoys?  Could make for some very interesting economic strategy.

Also, as a part of weakening a node in anticipation of a siege;  if all / most caravans entering a node are stopped will that actually hurt / weaken a node?  I think is has to...…..

ArchivedUser

Also in for somewhere around a 70 - 80% chance of success. If the risks exceed the reward, it's simply not worth the effort.

ArchivedUser

100% of caravans that leave their destination should have the potential to reach their destination.

The rest is all about player preparations to ensure that happens.

ArchivedUser

Success rate depends on the server and the region.
That's all about the players and emergent gameplay.

ArchivedUser

I wont vote as the success rate will be determined by the players.

ArchivedUser

'If the fail rate is too high.....'

....and what if you cant get above level 4 without resource import ?

ArchivedUser

Rune_Relic said:

'If the fail rate is too high.....'

....and what if you cant get above level 4 without resource import ?

Stop being antisocial and join a guild that can help?

Just a thought

ArchivedUser

whitedude31 said:

Rune_Relic said:

'If the fail rate is too high.....'

....and what if you cant get above level 4 without resource import ?

Stop being antisocial and join a guild that can help?

Just a thought

People keep saying this, I say be antisocial and pay for hired help in true roleplay fashion! 


"Hey...can you help me deliver this caravan?"

and I'll be...

ArchivedUser

Ummm. What? There should not be a set numbers. Whatever happens happens. No need to provide carebear crutches. 

ArchivedUser

Id like to see a 50-70%  Depending on the return.   Obviously, the farther you try and travel, the more likely you are to get attacked.  AND the farther from civilization you are, the less likely.  The closer to the big cities, It increases the odds of being attacked, AS WELL as the odds that people defend you.  

Clarification: When i state "Success" I simply mean Turning a Profit.  I dont mean they reach their destination.  Im talking about, I, a Merchant invest in 10 caravans of X.  How many of those 10 make me gold.  So an AVERAGE merchant. Not talking about Big guilds, or the top tier guys that are a cut above.  If the average merchant has a 60% CHANCE to profit, I think its in a perfect spot FOR BOTH parties.  

As stated previously, IF the rates of success are too low, merc guilds will prosper, as hired guards.  Pirates are prospering as they are raiding everyone, and merchants will suffer, crafters will suffer, and eventually the BiS gear will only go to pirates (As they main pirate guild in each region will get *free* access to caravans) and only widen the gap.  

IF Caravans are 80% success+, Then more people will start doing them, IE Archeage Trade runs.  As more people do them, the opportunity for pirates increases, and with the quantity of caravans going on, the success rate will drop back down.  So idealy I think 55-75% is the best case for both sides.  As a pirate, Id like to see my group win 75% of our attacks.  Id hate to see a 20% success rate on attacking.  Then it'd be smarter to just join them and make gold that way.  

Also:
Success rate means nothing to us at the moment.

A 20% success rate sounds SUPER low but its DESCRIBED as high risk high reward.  If the payout is 5x, then a 20% success rate is breaking even. 
So we dont know the 'potential' reward, AND as the game evolves theres so many factors; Raw mat cost, processed profit margin, end product payout. 
As the success rate drops, the VALUE and raw materials goes up, a 25% success rate with a potential 3x pay is a loss. But as the raw mat becomes rarer, the payout becomes 5x, and now its profitable. 

ArchivedUser

game is going to end up being a gank fest...

ArchivedUser

It really doses depend on how may caravans are being sent out. if 100 are sent out at the same time the, of course, some will fall victim to raids.

ArchivedUser

Most of the talk here seems to be about personal caravans to transport resources.  I feel like those will have a higher success rate.  Node driven caravan quest are supposed to be really beneficial  in node progression more so than just the everyday farming/gathering/questing.  So if 2 nodes close by to each other are fighting to get to that next level and only 1 of them can progress i feel the success rate is gonna be allot less just due to each side having spies in the opposing node with announcments going out locally about raiding each others caravans.  This will obviously be more prevalent at launch than later once we start getting more metros.  What say you guys? 

ArchivedUser

I am not advocating for IS to implement some sort of auto success caravan mode or for them to dictate how well the caravans do, just wanted opinions on where folks think the number should end up for the game to be active and the world sustained.

ArchivedUser

whitedude31 said:

Rune_Relic said:

'If the fail rate is too high.....'

....and what if you cant get above level 4 without resource import ?

Stop being antisocial and join a guild that can help?

Just a thought

Yes Yes. As always you ignore half the equation.

Joining any guild has 0 guarantee of success.

ArchivedUser

Ezenkrul87 said:

Ummm. What? There should not be a set numbers. Whatever happens happens. No need to provide carebear crutches. 

There won't be a built in guaranteed percentage of success.  The way to partially  control the success rate is the number of NPC guards and how tough they are.  That will determine the baseline effort required to take and loot any particular caravan.

I would guess that on top of the baseline protection the players sending the caravan will have the option to spend some coin to  beef up the NPC guards and then of course they can also choose to escort the caravan to its final destination.

The length of the caravan route will determine the length of time the caravan is 'at risk' from attackers.

The good thing is that no matter how much protection the caravan has OR how big the attacking force is either side will always be able overcome the opposition IF they have enough firepower.