Spice Expiration: Do the Pros Outweigh the Cons?

[only_plays_tribals]

...Buy spice in Luirs, put in spice pouch inside another container and keep on person. A type he WOULD likely need sometime in the next RL month on his travels. Two weeks go by and come to situation where it would make life a bit easier, not a true need but easier. Get pouch out and Well, no go on the spice. So instead of a hey, that was handy, time to get more it was, Hey what a waste of money, not doing that again.

This precisely mirrors my experience with the spice decay upon returning.

[John]

I like the concept.  It creates demand by having it degrade, and removes people inheriting bricks and bricks of spice.


I think the timers could be adjusted - but I've seen some items last super long.

If we assume it's 4x the quantity in the next tier:

	Grain	Pinch	Knot	Thal-Knot	Brick
Grain	1	4	16	64	256
Pinch	1/4	1	4	16	64
Knot	1/16	1/4	1	4	16
Thal-Knot	1/64	1/16	1/4	1	4
Brick	1/256	1/64	1/16	1/4	1

q. Should there be a linear timer for spice degradation?  aka If you have a knot, it degrades at 1/4 the time as a pinch, and 1/16 the time as a grain?
q. What part of spice is degrading too quickly?   The grains?  Pinches?  Thal-knots?

I could see an exponential decay from Brick downwards, so that a brick decays at 100 days, a thal-knot decays at 50 days (rather than 25 days), a knot decays at 25 days (rather than 12.5 days), a pinch decays at 12.5 days (rather than 6.75), and so on...  we "punish" the rich for buying a brick..and it spoils faster if it's still in a large quantity, but still spoils slower in total.

the current implementation js a failure at creating demand. I would argue anything that degrades quicker then 3 months (in a container in an indoor room) is too quick. And by that I mean 2160 hours. Yes, I realise that is 90 days played if someone kept it on their person at all times. But if someone does keep it on their person, chances are they will use it or sell it. It's simply too high risk in Allanak to carry all the time.

To be honest though, that's so much hassle what's the point. If CLANS are stockpiling, get VNPC clannies to use it all up. Degrading spice js a sledgehammer to a small problem. It has made the problem worse, not better.

[X-D]

Another point.

I like the concept.  It creates demand by having it degrade, and removes people inheriting bricks and bricks of spice.

It does not create demand...Know why? Because nobody actually NEEDS spice. Spice has never had a really high demand, and not because people had chests full of it laying around but because it has relatively small and limited effect, costs are high for that effect and the current main city of the world does not allow it anyway.

Makes me think the actual intent was to make it go away...if so, quite effective there.

[tapas]

Recently my PCs havn't had any trouble storing or keeping spice. For months or even years.

[Evilone]

I haven't had much experience with spice since Tuluk so I'm a bit out touch with how it decays, but I think it should exist, but from the general view it needs much longer timers. I'd also be in favour of increasing it's effects - Kurac only produced spice maybe? So buying from the main source makes it that little more worth while. Create that real demand.