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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#76
Permits would be awesome though. Especially for the bureaucratic nightmare federations. "Do you have your weapons permit? No? Please go get your licensing permit, then find someone to give you a class B item permit, then find some one to give you a class BA-44593 permit, then find some one to get you a D class sanction permit, then find some one to give you a TYPE-B4-GENERIC-GUN permit, then find some one to give you a TYPE-B4-GENERIC-GUN firing permit, then find..."
"Open fire. I've just about had it with those Redtaparian Bureaucrats."
The nice part of sandboxes is that you can strangle anyone that gets on your nerves. Being cute and/or funny does wonders for your survivability in this type of environment. Being tasty and/or obnoxious doesn't.

The problem I see with the implementation of smuggling is that it's pretty hard to define "illegal" if your universe is basically a balkanized patchwork of small factions interacting with each other. One faction might be a proud warrior race type and trade freely in weapons and slaves, but maybe consider narcotics illegal (since they rot the mind and body of their warriors!). Another faction might be space hedonists who pride themselves to be the suppliers of the finest recreational narcotics within 50 parsecs, but consider slave trade amoral (since the poor enslaved guys can't go and enjoy themselves!).
Realistically, you can only have "illegal goods" per faction, and then you'd probably wonder if the deviants of that faction really pay enough to make smuggling worthwhile. It's also a rather dangerous minefield for a free trader, since he has no way of knowing prior what is illegal in a given system or not.

"What do you mean, scrap iron is dangerous contraband here?"
"Something about their biochemistry. Iron compounds act as a lethal nerve toxin to them."
"Drat. Then I just sold several tons of deadly toxin to a dangerous deviant..."
Hardenberg was my name
And Terra was my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#77
Hardenberg wrote:"What do you mean, scrap iron is dangerous contraband here?"
"Something about their biochemistry. Iron compounds act as a lethal nerve toxin to them."
"Drat. Then I just sold several tons of deadly toxin to a dangerous deviant..."
Heh.

Perhaps this is where the worth of information cashes in?
“The impact of space activities is nothing less than the galvanizing of hope and imagination for human life continuum into a future of infinite possibility.”
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#80
Ok, a few points I'd like to make...

First, the issue about buying up all the foods, then letting a famine hit, then selling the food back... As bad as it sounds, this kind of thing happens in the real world, throughout history. Heck, it happened during the last three decades here on Earth. But, in the context of a game, unless the food has been physically removed from the jurisdiction of the local strong arms (mob, government, warlords, whatever) the fact remains, they can just take it back.

Now, if you DID get it all up to your ship. Well, they can't take it back unless they have their own ships. And, as the legal owner, you can simply leave the system.

Reality is, if you control the orbitals, and they have nothing that can knock you out, then yes, you are in charge. What they're going to be paying you is called Danegeld. Also known as protection fees, taxes, extortion or blackmail. Honestly, I'd love to see a game that PROPERLY covered this... Mind you, if you land, you've lost your advantage and will likely be strung up or imprisoned, and your ship confiscated.

Second, economies fail, civiliations fall... In reality, we're well overdue for a collapse, according to historical trends. Alot of the smaller colonies could very well backslide if they have problems of any kind... Diseases, famine, pollution, disaster... Any of the above can doom a society, especially during terraforming\colonization.

Also, are there going to be dedicated space assets? Artifical environments (Space Habitats \ Stations) where trade\docking\repairs\construction will be occurring?

Regarding contraband... It would really vary by system\governing body, not be an overall thing... Different cultures\governments\power brokers will make different things illegal, for different reasons... It should be dynamic, overall.
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#81
@IceWing

This type of thing could actually be an interesting aspect. A mob boss type person who isn't outright breaking the law, but is having their peons do it for them. I like the idea of someone getting paid "protection fees" and the like.
Image
Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#82
Read through this thread and it's moved all over various topics. I wanted to make a couple comments regarding a organized crafting system. Take it for what it's worth.

Even procedurally generated, crafting has to be relatively simple or it will just become too onerous to be enjoyed even by the most die-hard crafting mogul. Generally, it seem the easiest way is to start at basic materials, that can be combined in some fashion into the next tier, which can be combined into the next, etc etc etc.

So you start with maybe up to a dozen base materials. Keep 'em pretty generic. For example, you have Common Ores, BioCarbons, Noble Gasses, Uncommon Ores, Rare Ores, RadioIsotopes, Energy, Unobtanium, etc. Then, maybe a ratio 3:2 BioCarbons+Common Ores results in one unit of "Plastics". 1:3 Energy+Rare Ores=1x Electronics. etc etc etc.

There will always be a demand for everything, but the more "refined" something is, the greater its value. Of course, it also takes time to make, space to transport, etc etc.

Eventually, though, you want to turn these materials into something useful - like a space ship - at that point you need a whole host of things build it - Electronics, Hull Plating, Life Support Systems, Reactor Systems, Engine systems, etc - all which were originally built from those core components, maybe through 3 or 4 or 5 generations of refining.

So the question comes back to, how do you maintain a sane number of crafting components, along with a sane UI to manage them all, move them all, refine them all and plug them into each other into something useful - that in turn you can either use or market.

I got no answers - and maybe not a good theme for this posting - except this - as wonderful as it is to want the universe, it still needs to be somewhat sane as a game.

--

My dream? Being able to have my minion ships and factories mining raw materials and refining them all up through whatever iterations needed to the point where I have my floating shipyards churning out Galactica-sized battle carriers to a regular basis while I see my enemies driven before me.

Also, maybe give Magrathea a run for their money in the Planet Building business. Moon-sized space station? Child's play!
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#83
Just a quick thought on the idea of buying up all of the food on a planet, wouldn't it be feasible for the josh to make the AI to just say "he wants to buy x (in this case food), do we need x, yes, well we cant sell all of it to this guy without some spectacular reason". it reminds me of josh talking about how the AI works in his dev log on dec 29th Here. in short if the planet faced famine if it sold off all of its food, simply buying ALL of it wouldn't be an option.
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#84
Or if the player really does buy up all the food on a planet, the planet's neighbors (assuming they're friendly enough to have neighbors) send in their relief fleet. Massively armed to the teeth, of course. Cue the sounds of millions of tons of food exploding along with your barely armed freighters. That's where the "protection" in protection money comes to mind.

I'm assuming planets - and factions - don't exist in a vacuum. And if allies can respond intelligently to events such as these, so much the better.

On topic: I'd really like EVE's bid/ask screen for orders:
Image I remembered making insane amounts of money (easily over 1B) playing the bid-ask spread (putting orders on both the buy and sell side), which isn't as simple as you might think - cross-regional market differences, the convenience factor, others also competing with similar strategies, trying to draw price projections, etc etc. I know people with more time and money than me making tens of billions or even more, but don't know how they did that (I already saturated Jita's market for most of the higher-margin components (invention, implants, etc) when I traded. Probably production/T2 stuff though.

Also love EVE's charting features:
Image I swing/intermediate term trade in real life, and it's fun -- or exciting -- to see games actually implement real trader tools into their interfaces. Bit of a stretch goal though.

Going more out there, any plans to implement short-selling or derivatives market? I actually wrote a Black-Scholes implementation for Skyrim as a fun project, but that's WAY out there.

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