200k is not a lot, however it is enough to get some function from a base. At a minimum, you can get a room and a storage unit to put in it. Combined with the 15-member bonus, you can have 500k which is enough to add in power/control and a teleporter room and porter.
"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21
Guide to Base Teleporters
Yeah as a budding marketeer in need of more storage, I recently started a solo SG. I don't have the money (or desire) for two accounts, so the 15-member bonus isn't going to happen. The only way I can see to really get a base going is to buy the presitge.
Fortunately, I am fast approaching the 100m inf mark and I figure in another week I should have double that easily. I've read the guides and I know that for 2-300k I can easily get a mini teleport base going. Not sure about the storage stuff, but with more storage I can make more inf so yeah.
I guess that doesn't help much. I'd like to hear more from people that have been playing for more than a month (unlike me.)
D
Well, I posted my take on it - in the thread where you brought it up... It was long and detailed but the short answer is - pretty much no, the conversion rate is ludicrous and people that are "base-builders" aren't quite as likely to spend time marketing, farming, etc.
So they (most likely) wouldn't have the 100's of Millions or Billions of Inf to spare - that they'd need... in order to convert it into a really meaningful amount of Prestige.
(Note: the above is - IMHO.) 
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.
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<QR>
I'm both a marketeer and base builder, but I've never used the Inf>Prestige conversion. 500:1 is simply too bloated for the return you get in my opinion, even when I'm making 50-100mil per day. These days, with the AE, I can make 200k prestige (or more) in short order, so the idea of using the conversion doesn't even need to be considered.
Just my two bits...
While I am not really a marketeer I am a base builder. Some things that both my husband and I noticed were the following:
a) the conversion is way way too high to actualy use for base building
b) Our VG has more prestige than our SG but our SG toons have more inf than our VG toons
c) some of the costs to put things into the SG/VG are high when you really think about some of it.
Well that is my two cents on it.
<qr>
Only times I use the Conversion is if I come up a little short on a project I'm working on. Then I convert only enough to finish what I'm doing.
Black-Strike: lvl 50 AR/Dark Corruptor
Brutally Beautiful: lvl 50 BA/Inv Brute
Seared Earth: lvl 50 EC/EA Dominator
Yashi Onuku: lvl 50 Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu Stalker
Death-Widow: lvl 50 Night Widow
Well, i think it's a really high ratio. I spent 10mil inf on 20k prestige.
I just started a family SG and don't plan on inviting anyone so i don't have to worry about losing anything from the bins. We filled the 15 members with our 3 accounts easily but we still only have 3 rooms, a vault and a couple bins.
My opinion is unless you have a decent size SG with active members it's gonna be really hard to have a fully functional base. Hopefully we can keep it going with just us 3. We'll see. But i won't be spending millions of inf on prestige. 10mil inf for 2 mil prestige, i might, but not 20k.
And keep in mind that recently the devs drastically reduced the cost of some of the most expensive items (plot upgrades, rooms, high end power and control) and reduced rent to a fraction of what it was before. Since the price reductions were retroactive, a lot of players with established bases are sitting on a huge pile of prestige and not much to spend it on.
I've got three personal bases, and even if I never have a character play in SG mode again I'll have enough prestige to pay the rent for *years*.
The price reductions didn't help new base builders much, however. And given that you now need invention salvage to craft items, I'd guess that I lot of them don't have much infl to spare to convert to prestige. I'd think that converting infl to prestige would only happen in the rare cases were you have a rich in infl, poor in prestige new base builder.
Of course, if they were to significantly improve the prestige to infl ratio it could very well become appealing to new builders. But as a large-scale money sink? No way--many, if not most established base builders have more prestige than they can use at this point.
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I'd never use the conversion. I do play the market a bit and have been made very wealthy by converting base salvage to common salvage during the MA farm season however. Both our SG and VG have plenty of cash from a handful of players who worked hard back in the day.
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I just started a new VG on Virtue a couple weeks ago, and I didn't use any of my toons' inf to buy Prestige. The ratio, as others have pointed out, is just insanely lopsided.
I mainly used two of my 50s, a dom and a MM, to roll up about 200K in Prestige the first weekend for the new group, which has a total of 6 toons as members, all mine. As I pointed out in this thread, its far better to use your 50s to generate Prestige by actually finding mishes they're suited for.
As others have also pointed out, new base costs have gone down a little in Prestige, but the inf costs have skyrocketed since they stopped "confusing us" by giving us base salvage to use. It gave marginal help to new builders with the new Prestige costs, but as pointed out by others, it mostly gave established bases more to play with.
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Daemonchilde: ((fluffy thinks he's a tank)) Demon . Hunter: (( I think mine is >.> Daemonchilde: ((Yours is no longer fluffy, it is Obliteron, destroyer of worlds)) |
Lemme try and summarize what I've learned and see if there's anything I can teach:
1) Existing bases already have more prestige than they need.
2) People with new bases are likely to be infl-poor as well.
3) If you're making infl by playing the game, you're better off making prestige by playing the game.
4) People value 100 million inf far more than 200K prestige.
5) (do I understand this one right?) The inf costs of crafting for a new base are signficant. What is "significant?" a million? Ten million? Fifty?
... So a small percentage of the population, coming in with new bases, would be the only people who would want to convert. And they'd want to make [say] 100 million for themselves before they were willing to make 100 million for the base.
You can do that in the market. KeepDistance made a billion (1000 million) in a month, starting from zero. I can make 50 million in a weekend, easily, if I start with 50 million in cash. It probably takes me a couple hours to get the first five million but after that it just multiplies.
EXAMPLE: I made 13 million on an Impervium Armor, level 40, Res/Rech just now. Bid filled overnight. Spent about 9.5 million, it sold for 25, minus 10% Wents fees = 22.5. You can check my work- I buy for numbers ending in 908.
What would be useful for people to know? How to get from 20 million to 200? How to get from 0 to 20 million? Or do I have no real audience here?
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So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
[ QUOTE ]
So a bunch of us, in the market forums, were being armchair economists, as is our wont. Specifically, we were trying to figure out if there was really inflation in the game, which led to thinking about inf sinks, and someone brought up the inf-to-Prestige conversion.
I know it's 500 to 1, which was considered outrageous and ridiculous back in the days of old, when 20 million was wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
I guess I have a 2-part question:
1) Does anyone use the inf-to-prestige conversion these days?
2) Are any base builders also marketeers?
I'm not an official ambassador or anything, and I know very little about base building, but... is 200K prestige a lot these days? You can make 100 million inf pretty easily on the market, these days, and that converts to 200K prestige. For all I know 200K is nothing, or this is very old news, or nearly everyone has more Prestige than they can use, or whatever... but I thought I'd open a dialogue.
Ask! Explain! Discuss!
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yes and yes.
What I dont slot I sell. I used to sell it for fairly cheap. Thanks to all the nerfing going on I now pay attention to the prices. Iv'e made tons more than I normally do And it all goes towards prestige. I dont care about inf- I wish the exchange rate was better, I use all resources to generate prestige. It all adds up in the end with a huge plot and plenty to decorate with. Just look at the - The Twisted Burrow biggest plot size, tons of decorations, maddening mazes, its got everything but better editing tools.
edited because the caffine hasnt kicked in yet
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
Inf->Prestige swapping is a horribly broken ratio though, as some have pointed out. Removing drops from the equation, you're losing half of your Influence to get Prestige when in SG mode at level 50. I'd rather take that inf and make my toons more powerful by giving them better IOs and set bonuses so they can more easily complete tasks, which means they'll generate Prestige via regular game play at a faster rate.
You're better off putting your inf to work by upgrading your toons IMO so they can generate it more efficiently, especially if you can find like-minded people for your SG. Its not a quick fix, but it's for the long term. The long term fix is what should always be sought as it provides stability and continued, reliable advances.
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Daemonchilde: ((fluffy thinks he's a tank)) Demon . Hunter: (( I think mine is >.> Daemonchilde: ((Yours is no longer fluffy, it is Obliteron, destroyer of worlds)) |
[ QUOTE ]
Lemme try and summarize what I've learned and see if there's anything I can teach:
1) Existing bases already have more prestige than they need.
2) People with new bases are likely to be infl-poor as well.
3) If you're making infl by playing the game, you're better off making prestige by playing the game.
4) People value 100 million inf far more than 200K prestige.
5) (do I understand this one right?) The inf costs of crafting for a new base are signficant. What is "significant?" a million? Ten million? Fifty?
... So a small percentage of the population, coming in with new bases, would be the only people who would want to convert. And they'd want to make [say] 100 million for themselves before they were willing to make 100 million for the base.
You can do that in the market. KeepDistance made a billion (1000 million) in a month, starting from zero. I can make 50 million in a weekend, easily, if I start with 50 million in cash. It probably takes me a couple hours to get the first five million but after that it just multiplies.
EXAMPLE: I made 13 million on an Impervium Armor, level 40, Res/Rech just now. Bid filled overnight. Spent about 9.5 million, it sold for 25, minus 10% Wents fees = 22.5. You can check my work- I buy for numbers ending in 908.
What would be useful for people to know? How to get from 20 million to 200? How to get from 0 to 20 million? Or do I have no real audience here?
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm going to answer your bolded conclusion/question, because the other 4 summarized pretty well IMO.
For a beginning base builder, the most significant cost is the cost of building teleporters - and for blueside, the cost of building increased Energy/Control if you want a 'porter to every possible zone (because you need 11 'porters heroside, only 4 villainside).
This spot is where the bottleneck exists cost-wise. Each teleporter costs 15K prestige - and each can take 2 beacons at 10K prestige each - so the total cost of that "fully functional" teleporter is 35K. Times 4 means that just the items cost the SG 140K. Times 11, the SG prestige cost is 385K.
You also need to place rooms to hold those teleporters. Skipping over the smallest (and nigh useless transport room), those prestige costs start at 100K ranging up to almost 400K.
Villainside, you can put all possible 'porters into a Secure Teleport Bay 1 at a cost of 253K (63250/porter) or 2 Teleport Chamber 1's at a cost of 200K (5oK/porter).
Heroside, to place all possible teleporters, you will need more than 1 bay no matter what. If you place a Secure Portal Room (398,750 Prestige, 8 'porters, 49.843/'porter) and a Teleport Chamber 3 (162,500 Prestige, 3 'porters, 54,167/'porter), it's the "simplest" configuration epening on your base layout.
Influence costs, typically born by the Base Builder are higher now than before I13 because they now use invention salvage (common salvage, which increased in price during I14 so far)
To run all those teleporters, you need the second level of Control, at a cost of 500K prestige, invented with invention salvage, and unlocked with a badge. You also need enough Energy, although the lowest Tier Energy item can handle it if you don't have lots of other stuff. You can't use the Combo Energy/Control item, so you need separate rooms for each of them at 100K & up each (and note that Arcan Control items have ifferent footprints than Tech one and might ictate the need for a more expensive room).
and so on....
I guess what I am saying is that the conversion ratio is so high that unless the player has really high amounts of Inf that aren't being use to IO a character, it's not that useful fo any builder.
I to a little bit of "casual" marketeering, but I don't have more than about 60 million on any single character (got an excellent drop villainside) with a more likely average of 4-5 million. All of which will be spent on improving the character long before I woul even think of converting it to Prestige.
I was trying to get to your "useful" number, but I guess I didn't do very well at that. I think my answer is that there might not be one. I laid out some Prestige costs using just setting up Teleporters. Workshop/storage, which is the other big use for a base probably works out similarly.
An as a casual reader of The Market forum who tries to put some of your philosophies into practice, I have to say that although intellectually I *know* raising hundreds of millions if not billions of inf* can be done - but I would not be likely to put the effort into it because it isn't something I like as much as other activities.
My brain is hurting right now, so maybe someone else can do the math. At the current conversion ratio, how much Inf* does it take to get 300K Prestige? I picked that arbitrary number because we have a few guides how to set up bases for that amount sonce that's what you get for the first 15 members of a SG. I'm thinking way too much to make it worthwile to even try.
Altoholic - but a Blaster at Heart!
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
"You gave us a world where we could fly. I can't thank you enough for that."
Ad_Astra gave a good summary of the prestige costs of base building. Excluding infl to prestige conversion, the direct infl costs of base building are mostly for crafting items, and TPs are by far the most common item that needs to be crafted. (There are a number of mid and upper tier power, control and defense items that are also crafted, but that's usually not an immediate need.)
As Ad mentioned, a hero base needs 11 telepads and a villain base 4 telepads, and you have three salvage options each for the arcane and tech versions. They are:
Arcane:
Clockwork Winder, Temporal Sands, Simple Chemical, Psionic Manifestation -or-
Alchemical Silver, Symbol, Inert Gas, Black Blood of the Earth -or-
Ruby, Destiny, Silver, Hamidon Goo
Tech:
Computer Virus, Polycarbon, Luck Charm, Plasma Capacitor -or-
Circuit Board, Steel, Rune, Reactive Gas -or-
Temporal Analyzer, Titanium Shard, Fortune, Platinum
As you can see, there's a less costly option for each, and it won't cost a *huge* amount of infl by most standards, but especially with current salvage prices you can see why buying the salvage to craft 11 TPs would be daunting task to a player that doesn't have millions of influence to burn.
Hope that helps!
EDIT: Ooops! I forgot that these are the recipes that were originally proposed. There was much hue & cry amongst base builders regarding the requirement to use rare salvage for as basic an item as telepads, so the rare salvage was dropped. Now each recipe only takes the first three listed items to craft.
My Characters
Knight Court--A CoH Story Complete 2/3/2012
[ QUOTE ]
Lemme try and summarize what I've learned and see if there's anything I can teach:
1) Existing bases already have more prestige than they need.
2) People with new bases are likely to be infl-poor as well.
3) If you're making infl by playing the game, you're better off making prestige by playing the game.
4) People value 100 million inf far more than 200K prestige.
5) (do I understand this one right?) The inf costs of crafting for a new base are signficant. What is "significant?" a million? Ten million? Fifty?
... So a small percentage of the population, coming in with new bases, would be the only people who would want to convert. And they'd want to make [say] 100 million for themselves before they were willing to make 100 million for the base.
You can do that in the market. KeepDistance made a billion (1000 million) in a month, starting from zero. I can make 50 million in a weekend, easily, if I start with 50 million in cash. It probably takes me a couple hours to get the first five million but after that it just multiplies.
EXAMPLE: I made 13 million on an Impervium Armor, level 40, Res/Rech just now. Bid filled overnight. Spent about 9.5 million, it sold for 25, minus 10% Wents fees = 22.5. You can check my work- I buy for numbers ending in 908.
What would be useful for people to know? How to get from 20 million to 200? How to get from 0 to 20 million? Or do I have no real audience here?
[/ QUOTE ]
Ah so here it is..... you're not here to learn about Prestige. You're here to extol the virtues of marketeering. You wish to enlighten the unwashed masses. *rolls eyes*
If you're really here to legitimately learn about bases, good for you, but considering your tone of "I can teach you to rake in billions!" I somehow don't see this as your purpose here.
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Daemonchilde: ((fluffy thinks he's a tank)) Demon . Hunter: (( I think mine is >.> Daemonchilde: ((Yours is no longer fluffy, it is Obliteron, destroyer of worlds)) |
I really don't think that was his intention, Demon_Hunter.
Fulmens, even though finding the infl for salvage can be an additional hurdle to a new base builder, I think generating prestige is still the biggest problem. In addition, not everyone has the time or interest in learning how to make millions of infl on the market. And even if they did, I'm not sure many more would convert infl to prestige--the current conversion rate is just so ridiculous it feels (to me, and I suspect to many others) like throwing infl down the drain.
Ironically, if the devs want infl to prestige conversion to be more of a infl sink, they should make the conversion rate more reasonable. A while ago someone (Snow Globe, I think) did some calculations on what a reasonable rate would be given how quickly a level 50 can generate infl, so maybe it's time to dig that out again. If infl to prestige conversion was seen as a legitimate option, I think more people would take it, and ultimately more infl might be taken out of circulation. It could actually help some players with starter bases to boot!
My Characters
Knight Court--A CoH Story Complete 2/3/2012
[ QUOTE ]
I really don't think that was his intention, Demon_Hunter.
[/ QUOTE ]
Eh, perhaps, perhaps not. As soon as he went into "I can make 'X' influence and can show you to do it too" mode I stopped taking his post at face value as a request for information on Prestige costs. It just seemed to reek of "I'm doing better than you and I'll show you why" *shrugs* For the record, I'm not anti-Market. Far from it. Hell, I've got a few hundred million on toons on boths sides on Virtue.
Once he started talking about using the market instead of bases, I viewed the post as being yet another example of a marketeer telling everyone else they're doing it wrong though, regardless of the fun factor for the people they're talking to (or in some cases talking down to, by the tone of the discussion).
[ QUOTE ]
Fulmens, even though finding the infl for salvage can be an additional hurdle to a new base builder, I think generating prestige is still the biggest problem. In addition, not everyone has the time or interest in learning how to make millions of infl on the market. And even if they did, I'm not sure many more would convert infl to prestige--the current conversion rate is just so ridiculous it feels (to me, and I suspect to many others) like throwing infl down the drain.
[/ QUOTE ]
On these notes, we definitely agree.
I still stand by the idea though that instead of spending influence by converting it to Prestige, you're better off for the long-term by outfitting your toons and then being more efficient at generating Prestige via regular game play as a result, while also earning drops to sell or slot and more influence. Doesn't need to be a forum-approved FotM build to be successful either.
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Daemonchilde: ((fluffy thinks he's a tank)) Demon . Hunter: (( I think mine is >.> Daemonchilde: ((Yours is no longer fluffy, it is Obliteron, destroyer of worlds)) |
[ QUOTE ]
Or do I have no real audience here?
[/ QUOTE ]
This. [edit: Removed an over the top comment, but it is probably moot as it was quoted down-thread.]
The purchased prestige at the SG registrars is 1 Prestige to 500 Inf. If I am remembering correctly, before the reduction of the SGmode Tax playing the game earned 1 Prestige for every 100 inf lost, now it is 1 prestige for every 50 inf lost. Paying at the registrars is paying ten times too much.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
Demon_Hunter: The tone you thought you heard was not the tone I intended, but the essence is accurate. There are cases where people in community A complain, a lot, about problems that are known and solved in community B. (one common complaint is "things are too expensive.")
So I was, in fact, a guy with a solution looking to see if there was a problem that I could apply it to. Apparently there isn't.
Demon_Hunter, Snow_Globe: I apologize for troubling you.
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So you think you're a hero, huh.
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Thanks for trying, Fulmens.
The expense is mainly one of Prestige, even with reduced pricing, although the Inf* cost of Invention Salvage for teleporters is a one-time large expense, relatively speaking.
But much bigger problems are a very wonky Base Editing tool and the general lack of any attention or development from the Devs. I believe the last time we got *anything* new was either the Oro Pillar or the Inventions Worktable, and we have had one of our tools removed (base salvage). Very discouraging.
We had hopes for Sunstorm as a Dev of our own, but he's disappeared.
Altoholic - but a Blaster at Heart!
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
"You gave us a world where we could fly. I can't thank you enough for that."
Fulmens, i have several 50's i do nothing with IO wise. If you could teach me the way of the master to make tons on inf, i might would even but up prestige. I know it's not worth it ratio wise, but 200-300 mil could prolly get me a nice full base. Not sure but would help alot. lol.
Eryq2: Taking it to PM.
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So you think you're a hero, huh.
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Hey Fulmens,
Fellow ebil marketeer , base builder , amatuer badge hunter , pvper and Fan art forum artist person here
all the above means I likely have too much free time on my hands 
After IOing out my mains using things I learned from the Market forums I was sorta at a loss of things to do until issue 14 so a friend gifted me a base he was gonna get rid of as all his characters were moving to a friends SG .
im a bit ocd and while the base was lovely I suddenly felt the need to start decorating it and setting it up with various things seen and learned in this forum .
I wasn't keen on the idea of SG mates as this was gonna be my super secret awesome no stinky boys allowed fun time base .
I play alot but even with my play style prestige wasn't coming in fast enough for my liking so I started earning money on the market to fund my building .
and while the conversion rate sucks sweaty donkey oysters it honestly didn't phase me much as it was really a one time cost for me (theres not alot of need for extreme amounts of prestige after your base is finished ) and I generate enough prestige by myself to easily pay for my rather minimal rent
and to me it was worth it turning inf into prestige to get the base I wanted in the fastest amount of time possiable (nothing worse than starting to build something than running out of prestige )
im not sure if that helps at all as my play time and style likely dosn't fall under the norm .
still id love if the inf to prestige ratio was changed to be a bit more fair ...but I already have gotten everything I want so it wouldn't help me now
So a bunch of us, in the market forums, were being armchair economists, as is our wont. Specifically, we were trying to figure out if there was really inflation in the game, which led to thinking about inf sinks, and someone brought up the inf-to-Prestige conversion.
I know it's 500 to 1, which was considered outrageous and ridiculous back in the days of old, when 20 million was wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
I guess I have a 2-part question:
1) Does anyone use the inf-to-prestige conversion these days?
2) Are any base builders also marketeers?
I'm not an official ambassador or anything, and I know very little about base building, but... is 200K prestige a lot these days? You can make 100 million inf pretty easily on the market, these days, and that converts to 200K prestige. For all I know 200K is nothing, or this is very old news, or nearly everyone has more Prestige than they can use, or whatever... but I thought I'd open a dialogue.
Ask! Explain! Discuss!
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.