chasing a minion (in General)

trying to hire a new minion and I cant catch up with the cost at 120CBD avg a battle..If I don't train the XP the cost of the minion will remain the same?..And when I do hire the minion and then train the XP, he will be weak anyway because I couldn't train the XP..what a catch 22..So hire the weakling and the money is wasted anyway..

So its great making all the XP with the old fart XP bonus but you dont get CB to go with it and if you an older ID guy like me..Its like a dog chasing his tail..and it does you no good what'so ever...and again we reach the fork in road.......hmmmmmmmmm.....

do like OB does... forge

get a loan.

forging is no fun
and you have to pay back loans

okey I find it doesnt matter if you train or not the price goes up anyway

Correct, price is based on VPR, not trained MPR. So if you are accumulating experience, the cost will go up.

Are you saying that even if you don't buy BA, and don't spend the cash rewards any place else, you will never catch the cost for the additional minion?

I must have missed some threads -- I had no idea that buying additional minions was now an absolute impossibility without USD, loans, or forging? If that is the case, Jonathan should put up a HUGE warning if you start a team as a singleton...

Minion prices are worse than buying BA on an NCB. I've a 1.4 million MPR single minion char. Not very big these days.

24 million is the expensive option for an additional minion.

yes thats it If I just play I will, what seems to me not be able to get another minion.. if I dont buy some CB or sdo omething else...I was 73k away from him and 40 BA later Im around 87k from him now..So hes moving expotentially away from me..I know its small beans but I felt at any rate I should be able to buy a minion before I hit 100k PR. not so it seems...I still havin fun wackin peeps down here with multi million dollar multi minions with a Fireball and A Cb T shirt :)lol

well i do need to clarify that I cant but the higher XP minion..I can get the cheap one but thats counterproductive having a dead 2nd minion before he even gets warmed up..So yea I can acquire the welfare minion on food stamps

you are fighting guitar godz and continually losing, you need to fight people you win against to increase rewards, both xp and cash.

you are also fighting people whose score is almost equal to your pr. you need to find ones that are higher that you can beat to increase your rewards as well.

since you have been gone a while you should probably read this:

http://www.carnageblender.com/wiki/Tips+for+New+Players

just understand that your ncb is not a nub so not all of it will apply.

Start fighting people higher than you that you can beat, change equipment or strategy if need be.
I can buy all BA each day, don't even have the strongest strat or equipment or the patience to search for specific opponents and I still make at least a little ground on the minion purchase.
Yes it will now take me at least another year to catch up after recently forking out for a VB insta and an AoJ but if it's possible for me to catch up over 50mill (current price + estimated growth over that year) then 20k for fighting slightly better at your level is childs play.

sorry for the multiple posts, but you would probably be better off shooting for the aquisition of a tattoo before hiring another minion.

"Are you saying that even if you don't buy BA, and don't spend the cash rewards any place else, you will never catch the cost for the additional minion?"

o_O

This is an interesting question. Has anyone tried to figure average cash rewards versus MPR cost of new minions?

If you look at my example - 24 million for an extra minion at the expensive rate. I'm earning about 1.5-2 million at the moment, so that's roughly 16 weeks time without spending any other money I'll be able to afford that minion. Except I won't because by then I'll have roughly 16 weeks growth. I don't know how much more expensive that minion will be but I will definitely be short of cash.

I think if Shark were winning more of his battles and fighting opponents that gave a challenge bonus, he would find that he could catch the minion cost.

Win/Loss doesn't really matter, does it? If you lose, you get no cash, but you also get no experience. All that matters is the cash/experience ratio, and whether or not that paces with how much minion cost grows in the singleton scenario.

Even fighting higher or lower doesn't matter. If you fight a higher opponent and win, you get more cash...and also more experience that will increase new minion cost.

New minion cost is like three bucks per experience point, right? I seem to remember one-month being a magic number, where in the singleton case, your new minion will have one-month the experience of the first minion, and you have to pay one-third of the experience of the first minion.

So, if on average the cash rewards are not three times the experience gained, it won't pace. My arithmetic and ratios might be off, but I think I am right in saying all that matters is the cash:experience ratio in the rewards. I'm almost sure it doesn't pace for an NCB, but if it doesn't even pace for just a straight character, then something is amiss.

"one-month"...am I drunk? I mean "one-ninth"... Gah!

incorrect sut, a loss gives reduced cash and exp not 0. Only SM's give 0

I assume it is still the same ratio, though, even in a loss.

Let me save up some BA, then calculate total cash gained and total experience gained and ratio it out. If the ratio is not enough to pace with minion cost per experience, that will tell the tale.

indeed. I would be interested to see if it is possible for chars up at the top who are getting under 15% cb to keep up with hiring costs

Heh, and even CLAN bonus doesn't matter, since again, it enhances (or doesn't) both cash and experience...

OK, here's some data:

NO BONUS (used Hubbell)
TRAINED FIRST (so started with no experience)
50 BATTLES

Cash gained: $32,578
Experience gained: 22,842 (around 5700 per minion, four minions)

So (and here is where my numbers may be wrong), if a singleton got 22,842 experience points, and one-ninth of that is 2538, and paying $3 per experience point that the new minion will have (high-price option), that would mean $7,614 would have just been added to the minion cost

I made about 4 times that amount in cash.

Someone needs to point out where my math is wrong, run some figures of their own, or confirm the numbers to show that a no-bonus character makes plenty of money to catch up to new-minion cost, even in the single-minion scenario.

That has not a thing to do with an NCB where experience gains are much higher but cash rewards remain the same.

Shark, what is your NCB bonus? I can work it into the numbers to see how impossible your situation is. *smile*

i would guess that at some point n*b bonus growth will outpace cash rewards in regard to minion cost if not so already. my ncb is getting around 350 percent bonus to xp. that amount will continue to grow as the game ages. i would be shocked though if standard growth will not keep up and that would be the best argument so far for reduced minion costs if it were the case.

i guess only ncb growth will out pace it as nub growth cash rewards increase over time as well.

Ok, I've been running this char for 16 weeks, no BA bought MPR pretty much 1.4 Million, expensive minion cost is 24 Million. No way I would have managed to save that much during that time. You hit a point where it's not unusual to make 1-2 million a week, but not for at least the first couple of months.

I wouldn't have been hugely out, and with a bit of buying and selling or borrowing no problems whatsoever, but that's not the point is it? Without all of those, on fight rewards alone the expensive option is completely out of reach.

Cheap on the other hand is easy.

Oh and forget getting more than one minion...no way.

And don't rewards drop for a time higher up when your challenge bonuses start to drop? So savings would fall back even further...

so we probably need to plan on starting an ncb run with the number of minions we want or saving enough to get minions as well as ba during it.

i did start mine with all four, but that is because i wanted the xp spread evenly across them.

The issue is that you're using a NCB...

Typically, your earnings would grow about 3 times faster than your minion cost, but since your bonus to XP is over 200%, and your bonus to money is 0%, you're outpacing yourself.

If you really want another minion, I'd advise taking a loan for what you need, as hiring will also slow down the growth of the cost of the next minion(s) (To the point where you can ever-so-slowly catch it, even with a NCB)...

Enlist for $1,211,888 Enlist for $484,755
PR / MPR : 327,433 / 230,298
Created March 14, 2009

you tell me at 381% NCB bonus

I think Jonathan should definitely at least put a warning on the NCB page... Even if you didn't buy any BA, things don't pace very well to get one hired later.

yeah, i was trying to figure out where we could add something to the wiki.

i guess we need to bring the wiki ncb page into line with the wiki style guidelines and then add a section on tips or suggestions?

got it started, it says in there that any saved ba is brought down to 160 when a ncb is started, we can save up 1600 though right?

http://www.carnageblender.com/wiki/New+Character+Bonus+%28NCB%29

So not only is the MPR growth of your team 'taxed' with a NCB, so you're supposed to save cash in advance to purchase all the BA you require, you're also supposed to save up enough cash to purchase the number of 'end game' minions you want as well.

As well as already having all the items you require, all at the highest possible pluses.

As you can never earn enough cash during your run to support this.

Isn't it time the Taxes were removed?

i am not sure i understand your tax gl. are you equating not reaching your full potential or a lack of a bonus to a tax?

Increased BA cost was put in place as a restart tax.

Alongside that Tax, we're supposed to have enough cash to buy all BA, as we need equivalent BA expenditure to hit the 95% target, all the items we need, already all upgraded, and as it seems, all the cash we already need to purchase all the minions we will require in the future for our new character.

That seems a little too much to me.

i guess it depends on how difficult you think it should be to get in the top five or ten.

in my mind, the more difficult it is the less disposable the nature of teams in cb2. so the fact that it grows more difficult over time to hit the top bothers me little.

as it is now getting in the top fifty or so is pretty darned easy. getting to the very top is pretty darned difficult, at least with an ncb.

Maybe a lower cost should be implemented for people that just want to hire another minion rather then gain forkloads of exp to kick start said minion.h

I, and many others, have wanted a very low cost 0 xp minion option.

While making it free is not viable, having it as a 500k or 1M cost would certainly be a welcome addition.

we HAVE 0 cost minions... they require the RoE

Huh?

How can someone who is a single minion now hire a 2nd minion at 0 xp?

And then in a few months hire a 3rd at 0 xp and a 4th?

Please explain.

not possible in hindsight, but the same effect can be achieved if planned ahead is i think what novice means.

Only with the RoE, not with a normal tattoo, so only really worth doing if you've either got a normal tattoo sitting dormant, or the cash to buy a big one later when you decide to stop using the RoE.

So it's down to cash again really isn't it?

Not exactly.

With the RoE you cannot use/grow a tattoo.
That in itself is a major problem.

that can be overcome with planning as well, just not with a single ncb run. again i don't think it is supposed to be easy. jon's main problem with the rolling bonus was the promotion of laziness. all of this seems perfectly in line with that sentiment.

But the existence of this game IS the promotion of laziness. We could all be out doing our jobs, or saving the world, or promoting environmental or personal responsibility. We could be lobbying our governments for better, cheaper and more efficient operation. . .but here we sit, clicking 'fight' over and over again ;p

Not promoting laziness is a terrible argument for anything Jon wants to do with a GAME.

Just my 4 cents. ;p

"I, and many others, have wanted a very low cost 0 xp minion option.
While making it free is not viable, having it as a 500k or 1M cost would certainly be a welcome addition."

Have it cost the buyer's current MPR, or half that if the former is too much.

"that can be overcome with planning as well, just not with a single ncb run."

Why should it take six, twelve, eighteen months to have a *chance* to get to the top? I understand that CB is supposed to be a long-term game, but that's kind of insane, expecting a person to put 6+ months into something, and then another 6 in an attempt to make it to the top. And if you fail? Oh well. There's another six, twelve, eighteen months in store for you! :)

IMO, a person should be able to do better than the bottom of 6/20 without spending USD on an NCB. As it stands, the only realistic way for a non-USD spender to get to the top, without putting in at least a year's worth of work in advance, is the NUB. And if you waste that... Well, I guess you just suck horribly at this game, right? :)

It's nice to have a game where players always have a chance to reach the top, but it kind of loses its magic when you realize just how virtually impossible it is now that your NUB is gone and you're not at the top.

And that's it folks.

In a nutshell.

6/20 is around 2.8m mpr. i think i will hit between 3.2 & 3.3m mpr with my ncb. i haven't spent any usd on it at all. i won't be a top ten, but i really don't think i should be either. i should be in the top 50 though and more importantly i grew my tat quite a bit on the run.

you make it sound like a 350 percent bonus to xp rewards and tat growth is nothing. it is so much more than we had in cb1. after 21 months in that game fighting hard, when cb2 opened i was only just over 50 percent of the top mpr.

Yes,

But if you were a 3 minion character, could you afford to buy your 4th after your NCB is done? Without USD.

why exactly should the ncb make that possible? was that its design intent? as far as i remember the ncb was created to get you to a certain mpr and that was all it was designed for, a nub for vets who had gear already.

if you are trying to get a new feature added to the ncb that would allow you to do that and get all your minions then i wish you luck. my only point is that it is doing what it was designed to do.

i was merely trying to find ways within our current system to achieve people's goals. this is the system we have to work with unless jon changes his mind, and once again if that is what you are asking for then i wish you luck!

ps ~ whether that is the case or not, we should probably move to a new thread. i wish you luck shark and hope that your ncb run goes well, yell if ya have questions!

This thread is about chasing a minion.

I was asking could you afford to buy another minion after your NCB is over?

Or is the cost too high?

My views on the NCB are irrelevant to that question.

Or better yet, when you ran Igot noname, could you have bought a minion when you sold it? Without USD.

no, i could not even with normal rewards while buying ba. so i started an ncb with four from the start. ; )

i will end up about the same place mpr wise as i would have if i had kept igot but i will have four minions / kill slots. i will have added around 2m levels to my tattoo, which was already 4.6m. i will have also added gear to the new minions and upgraded it quite a bit. all of this was done with no usd input.

this is why i do not feel it is broken or needs new goals added to it!

So it likely appears the answer to the original post is that you cannot realistically keep up with new minion costs if you are not a NUB. At least if you buy BA every day.

So you will likely have to discard that character and restart with the number of minions you want.

And use the RoE to get the xp distribution you want all while not growing your tattoo.

At least there are choices :)

it doesn't have to be a wasted run though, grow the heck out of a tattoo!

Very true,

However, 6 months is a long time to do a NCB run just to grow a tattoo.

you can also save money for the next one or spend it on gear for the next one. i am just saying that it doesn't have to go to waste.

I thought about making a post like this.


I thought long and hard about it. Hey, at one point, I was halfway through writing one up. Then I realized there was just no point.


It's been like this forever. And isn't going to change.


Think. Right now, my expensive minion is 63 million. People do NOT have that kind of spare cash for a minion.

Do you realize it would take almost a year to earn that much money assuming typical BA buying and usage. That the kind of patience and planning out of someone is -ridiculous- to expect? This is, quite frankly, A GAME. It is not a job. And for too long it's been just that.

I remember a few years ago someone made a post about having clan bonus off days on Holidays. And someone else (who's name I won't mention) said that people should be rewarded for playing on holidays because it shows they're more dedicated. Why? When did a game become something that absolutely required your attention, regularly for every day of your life?

As someone said earlier in the thread, this game exists in 6 MONTH intervals. Most text based games are RESET more often than that.

Tattoos will continue to be ridiculously valuable.

Minion costs will be prohibitively expensive, BA will continue to be obscenely expensive on NCBs and the incentive to sell out and start a NUB will never go away because it's probably the only way most good players will ever get a real shot at things.

And even then, it'll still cost 6 months of their time =)