Eternal Oortstone

Suggestions
1

Fueling a 1 shard/hr portal for a year with 24 hours a day and 365 hours a year is 8760 shards which comes from mass crafting 630 rough oortstones.

I suggest a mass craft for an eternal fuel source which never depletes, requiring about 630 rough oortstones to craft (I honestly think this will be a welcome addition even if this ratio is higher, you’ll look at me funny but I’d be okay with 6300). Requires a second slot for portal conduits so you can add the startup cost of oortshards. If you have Eternal Oort and Shards, the portal cost is first fulfilled by the Eternal Oort, and then secondly Shards.

Examples for clarity:
You have a 10 shard/hour portal. You put in 6 Eternal oort and some shards. It now eats 4 shards/hour. When the shards run out the portal closes.
You have a 10 shard/hour portal. You put in 10 Eternal oort and some shards. It stays open as long as your beacon is fueled, even if there are no shards remaining.
You have a 10 shard/hour portal. You put in 11 Eternal oort and some shards. It stays open as long as your beacon is fueled.

This is why I believe this will not tank the price of oort. As a disclaimer I’m sure you know I’m both an avid hunter and a portally dude.
Currently the cost of maintaining a portal is the coin cost of shards and the memory/time cost of refueling it. By the law of supply and demand, the memory+time cost is like a tax which reduces the total amount of shards that are used. And the upkeep is a psychological cost which reduces the total number of portals that are fueled. People hate upkeep and the feeling of upkeep. By increasing the value and usefulness of an oortstone, demand for portals and oort will increase, which will partially offset the increase of supply.
People who only hunt as a chore to fuel their upkeep won’t need to feel the need to anymore. The total number of begrudging hunters will reduce, which will also reduce supply.
I draw an analogy with machine coils. Most people don’t make maximum efficient use of their coils–machines idling etc. But since coils never disappear people will keep buying them and hoarding them because it feels like capital and it is capital.
And lets remember that oort can be turned into decorations too ho ho ho.

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2

Having to fuel with Oort helps ensure that portals belong to active players that currently care about the operation of that portal, though. Similar to beacon fuel, having to regularly stock fuel your portal is a mechanism for freeing up portal real estate as people play more or less of the game.

This is also why the Amalgam and the higher tier beacon fuels are more expensive; you can be away for longer, but it will cost you more.

4 Likes
3

That should also be up for discussion if that’s needed. A portal can be used from both sides and if you’re able to keep your build up with GC, why can’t you keep your portal up?

Code Gleam might not care at the moment about their portals because they aren’t active but there certainly are active players that would care to visit them.

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4

This is a really good point. In my view, a portal hub owner that cares a lot about the people being active could close eternally fueled portals if they knew the player was gone.

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5

And in that case either the owner of the portal can allow others to fuel them while they’re away, or eventually they’ll die off and a space in the market will open up for someone to compete. This is one of the things that I like about Boundless - nothing is eternal, so once you get to the top you have to keep yourself there.

3 Likes