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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#46
JoshParnell wrote:Imagine that a certain type of food is becoming dangerously scarce in Region X for whatever reason. You might be concerned that this instability could set of a chain of problems, and that the system will never recover from the underlying issue, perhaps because various factors in the region have conspired and resulted in the production of food in the region coming in way below the demand. Indeed, it could be a bad situation. But we can easily solve it: the engine recognizes the instability, and smooths it by giving Planet Y, situated in Region X, a "record growing season," and large amounts of the food are produced by Planet Y. The system slowly comes back into balance.
So essentially a stable system with random events that introduce temporary shifts in the balance.
Production in system X lowered, in systems Y and Z increased.

Would be a major improvement over X3's completely static system without creating an inherently instable system to begin with.
While power shifts are possible (and intended), opportunities to exploit them are simultaneously introduced in "nearby" systems.

Don't worry about it being a hack. As long as it's not obvious such as the player getting simultaneous messages about production +/- in 2 immediately adjacent systems, it's all good.
If the result is interesting and looks good, player's don't care. Game design is show business. =)


Instable systems have a tendency to spiral out of control.
Due to whatever reason energy production on planet X is lowered due to destruction of some facilities.
This lowers the rate of ore production, which lowers the rate of tech part production, which greatly delays the building of new power plants. During all this time military production cannot keep up with losses and the planet is taken over.
This has actually been tried in X3. People removed the handwaving from the system that kept it stable.
Took about 1 game day for the economy to break down in the entire universe.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#47
Those are some excellent ideas, Josh!

As with the dynamism, I would also guess that the only way to find out if it would work would be to test it, so hopefully everything goes as you have planned and it all works out to the extent that it possibly can.

If you do go with this idea of random in-game events, maybe you could even make the random events turn out something negative? As in, Planet Y has had some pretty good harvests lately, but has just had a drought which has reduced Planet Y's food output, and that these random events could have random amounts of severity.

At any rate though, good luck!
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#49
Demetrius wrote:What if a player created an unbalanced economy by buying up all the food that he could. That would raise the price. Then would the game just create more so then the value of the food just goes back down?
Again, only in the worst case. Since I very much want strategies like this to be viable, I will try to make sure that they are. But yes, it's possible that I will have to create a balancing force in that case, although I'm sure it won't completely nullify the player's actions!
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#50
This could result in a possible exploit...

Player buys all the food on planet X.
-> Prices for food rise. Player simply waits in orbit, then sells food all at once for a murderous profit, oversaturating the market in the process.
-> Prices go down again.
-> Player buys all the food, AGAIN.
Rinse and repeat until the players bank account shows unbelievably high numbers.

Only way I see around this would be to allow only the sale of small quanitites at once, adapting the price after each transaction - but that's tedious if you move large amounts of something, independent of whether you want to exploit or not.
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?

#51
Price calculation will be continuous, though, so you can't do that. For example, buying all of the food from one planet will cost a *lot* of money, even if the planet is overstocked. The first unit will be cheap...but that last unit will be very expensive. The calculation of the price will be continuous for everything in between.

So this means that, in order to "buy up" all of the food, first of all, it will take an enormous amount of money (and time, since you'll need to buy from a load of different locations).

But, more importantly, when you are ready to sell the food back, you will not make much of a profit, because, again, the calculation is continuous. Sure, you will be able to make a killing on the first unit that you sell back...but the location where you are selling will quickly become saturated, and you'll not make much at all for selling further units. In fact, if you sell back all of the food to the *same* location, you'll actually lose a considerable amount of money, because the place will be so oversaturated that you'll get almost nothing for much of your cargo.

On the other hand, if you do the same thing that you did when you bought up all the food, and sell it back by spreading it over a bunch of locations, you'll probably end up with about what you started with!

I think if the computation of prices is done correctly, the scheme you described does not work.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#52
Well, there are a lot of design specs that we simply don't know about.
Like how many places on a planet independently sell goods - if any - and how their stock levels and prices interact.

If it's one central planetary stock market then the scheme works just fine because you can sell everything in one transaction...

The same goes for any combat related issues. Everyone here is operating in a vacuum because nothing is known. *shrug*
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#54
Gazz wrote:Well, there are a lot of design specs that we simply don't know about.
Like how many places on a planet independently sell goods - if any - and how their stock levels and prices interact.

If it's one central planetary stock market then the scheme works just fine because you can sell everything in one transaction...

The same goes for any combat related issues. Everyone here is operating in a vacuum because nothing is known. *shrug*
Of course, but releasing information formally means writing it up in a lot of detail, so it takes time...which is why it's often easier to glean it from me in this form on the forums :) I wish I had enough time to do everything.

And what Bryce said is correct - the price per unit is calculated individually for every unit that you sell, so it doesn't matter if you sell in "one transaction," because it still looks like a bunch of single-unit transactions to the game, hence, the price is calculated continuously. So the scheme does not work!
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#55
Hardenberg wrote: Player buys all the food on planet X.
-> Prices for food rise. Player simply waits in orbit, then sells food all at once for a murderous profit, oversaturating the market in the process.
-> Prices go down again.
-> Player buys all the food, AGAIN.
Rinse and repeat until the players bank account shows unbelievably high numbers.
JoshParnell wrote: So this means that, in order to "buy up" all of the food, first of all, it will take an enormous amount of money (and time, since you'll need to buy from a load of different locations).
Even if what Josh said wasn't the case, I'd hope that something dispicable like this would be tracked in reputation. If the locals realize you're stockpiling just to raise the price to sell back at a higher price, maybe your rep would drop with those people and they might not want to buy from you again? Just a thought.

Also, one of the other threads got me thinking in regards to the economy. Instead of the economy staying (relatively overall) static and only temporary negatives and positives, why not just have an implementation where the universe evolves constantly to 'more' but at a slow enough rate that it doesn't affect inflation and prices?

Originally Josh said that if one planet has a bad season of crops, another planet will have a good season of crops, and there's your balance.

What if instead, the planets will over time just produce more crops if conditions are favorable? Kind of like reverse entropy? This way, should a planet falter, or eventually become decrepit and desolate (either by player interaction or the dice rolls on that planet come up too many times negative in a row), the universe recovers on it's own? I'm also banking on the fact the universe is big enough where even if you spent a month going around destroying planets and everything on them, it would be a negligible impact to the universal economy.
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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?

#56
@DWMagus
If I understand what you're saying, do you mean that the universe's total amount of wares should increase as trade, goods production, etc. builds up over time? This way if something should happen to planet Y's production/wares (or any other planets), it will have been offset by the extra wares/production produced from the universe's growth (through trade, goods production, etc.)? That sounds like a great idea, plus it isn't a hack either. It also makes sense that there would not be inflation, because even though the amount of money would increase with growth, so will the amount of wares. This sounds like balance through the dynamism itself, since the universe could recover without guaranteed positive events. :idea:


Also Josh, what do you think about the idea of random events being chance based (assuming you go with the idea of random events)? As in, Planet Y has a %35 chance that food production will come out %10 positive, a %25 chance that food production will come out %15 negative, and a %40 chance that food production will stay the same.
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#57
DWMagus wrote:Even if what Josh said wasn't the case, I'd hope that something dispicable like this would be tracked in reputation. If the locals realize you're stockpiling just to raise the price to sell back at a higher price, maybe your rep would drop with those people and they might not want to buy from you again? Just a thought.
Yeah, if anyone tried a profiteering scheme like that, especially with food or other life necessities, I'd expect pretty heavy reputation/legal repercussions. Something on the order of being banned from the system at laser cannon point.

Although attempts to corner the market in such a direct manner are actually very rarely successful, precisely because it tends to destabilise the market and encourage government intervention, and can easily ruin the investor(s) financially. The Wiki article has some very interesting horror stories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornering_the_market. Building a monopoly position in a certain market is much safer.
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Re: Economy and Crafting?

#58
Glad to hear that this (way too obvious, btw) exploit has been covered.
Another question on the economy, though. Is there a real consumption of resources? I.E., if Planet A lacks a certain resource (resulting in higher prices), will this affect the availability of this resource or other trade items? Will it affect the station/colony in any other way?

Example: If I need 100 units of food (for whatever reasons) and Planet A has a shortage of food, will this affect the number of food units offered for sale? Can it happen that a certain resource is completely unavailable because of supply shortages?

And in return: If an industrial planet lacks certain raw materials (let's say, iron ore), will this affect price and availability of other items (let's say, missiles, tools and refined iron)?
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?

#59
RageQuitKetchup wrote:@DWMagus
If I understand what you're saying, do you mean that the universe's total amount of wares should increase as trade, goods production, etc. builds up over time? This way if something should happen to planet Y's production/wares (or any other planets), it will have been offset by the extra wares/production produced from the universe's growth (through trade, goods production, etc.)? That sounds like a great idea, plus it isn't a hack either. It also makes sense that there would not be inflation, because even though the amount of money would increase with growth, so will the amount of wares. This sounds like balance through the dynamism itself, since the universe could recover without guaranteed positive events. :idea:


Also Josh, what do you think about the idea of random events being chance based (assuming you go with the idea of random events)? As in, Planet Y has a %35 chance that food production will come out %10 positive, a %25 chance that food production will come out %15 negative, and a %40 chance that food production will stay the same.
This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. Have the percent chance of good things happen be slightly higher than negative (in a large universe, maybe even 1% might be too drastic), that way you have the constant increase.

I'm a huge fan of balance through the game mechanics itself. I'm also sure that if Josh comes up with an economy system, then all this will resolve itself. I'd suggest one, but my ideas aren't though out well, and I know Gazz is probably already working on one (or has one in thought) that is much more detailed and would probably cover the same ideas I'd have anyways. Of course, I'm happy to toss in my $0.02 if Gazz needs ideas. :P
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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?

#60
Hardenberg wrote:Glad to hear that this (way too obvious, btw) exploit has been covered.
Another question on the economy, though. Is there a real consumption of resources? I.E., if Planet A lacks a certain resource (resulting in higher prices), will this affect the availability of this resource or other trade items? Will it affect the station/colony in any other way?

Example: If I need 100 units of food (for whatever reasons) and Planet A has a shortage of food, will this affect the number of food units offered for sale? Can it happen that a certain resource is completely unavailable because of supply shortages?

And in return: If an industrial planet lacks certain raw materials (let's say, iron ore), will this affect price and availability of other items (let's say, missiles, tools and refined iron)?
Ideally a planet would only be selling surplus resources.... by surplus, in the case of food, I mean more than the minimum required for existence. Above that point there should be some available to buy, lower quantities at higher price for initial surplus (as the citizens would still like more than just bare minimum sustenance, but are willing to sell at a certain price), and lower price as the surplus increases.

I would also hope, and think it is the case, that for output of X good that requires Y and Z in certain quantities that if they aren't available in those quantities then X wont be built. And yes that if Y and Z are running low then X should go up in price accordingly.

Another interesting interaction would be that if food gets low, it would cause unhappiness, which would reduce manufacturing across the board..... and if it goes below minimum sustenance then it should have a large impact on manufacturing.

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