Zyeir
Daomei,
Your solution to use the occupations to make catalysts does not make any sense as stated previously. You are better off not making cats at all, and instead using the time to level the skill, in fact if you take into account the timer required to grind occupations to a point of producing q250 cats, it makes no sense at all.
I really do not understand why you keep saying that occupations are a real alternative when they are clearly not. You keep bringing it up but the math does not pan out. If you want to refute this, please post a very detailed analysis of grind times on occupations for production of cats, as well as an estimate of the timer required to grind the occupation levels to mastery.
I beg your pardon, but you are talking rubbish about something you obviously haven't tried and don't understand. I have all basic occupations complete (grade 6) which took me - as a beginner who still made many mistakes and hadn't all recipes at 100% - bit more than 3 mths of time and always small portions of my playtime (Granted, finishing all kitin lair occupations was hard at times, but was thrill and fun as well). Using 100% recipes, it takes 39 days to complete an occupation from start to grade 6 (needed for q250 cats), and you can do 3 occupations at a time without any hassle, 4 with a bit of changing every day, and at maximum4.5 on average (one day 4, next day 5, or one day 6, next day 3).
Average time to obtain a set (2x4 certs) for producing occupation products takes between 6 and 15 minutes for the non kitin lair occupations. For kitin lair occupations, it widely differs between around 5 minutes for medic, and up to half an hour for larvester (which is worst of all and I don't recommend to use it for cat production at all). All that is without optimizations such as acting in bigger teams, using mount for magnetic cartographer etc. which can bring down production time further. Note that kitin lair products count double for cat production, you need only 9 instead of 18 as a component to obtain nexus crystals.
I estimate that cat production takes about 10% of my overall playtime when I am doing it alongside my normal play which involves much digging, crafting, training of melee and magic, boss hunts, and roleplay. That way I get an average of 1000-1800 cats (q250) a day. I am fine with under normal conditions. At times when I am doing tasks involving insatiable hunger for cats (such as when I finished light armor doing up to 15 lvls a day) I have to increase effort, involving my alt etc., and even continue without when running out of cats.
Furthermore your claim that OP cats are "free" is nonsense. Aside from the dapper cost, it take a good amount of coordination and resources in the form of time, weapons, and mastery of combat skills by many players to take and hold an outpost. I am sorry that on aniro new guilds have no chance at attaining one, but that should not be a reason to punish the rest of the population by making outposts irrelevant.
You misunderstood me. As far as my way of expressing myself is responsible, I apologize. I know very well, and already mentioned before, that winning and holding an op is quite a lot of effort, and that it is fully ok that the holders get a reward in cats and mats. When I am talking about cats for free that refers to the situation before patch 1.12 when cats were available so abundantly that they were useful but worthless and given to anybody for free.
I am in no way opposed to outposts contributing to cats supply, only I am opposed to a monopoly of outpost holders as well as to a plethora of op produced cats rendering all other methods worthless.
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Daomei die Streunerin - religionsneutral, zivilisationsneutral, gildenneutral