How will the player's cargo get "translated" into these new single-digit market abstractions? If I bring 1000 units of [commodity] to market, will it affect the market supply/demand or are the abstractions simply driving prices and are independent of actual quantities being traded? Or is the cargo system being abstracted, as well?
This is a part that could probably use a bit more "being made clear to the player" work, but how it works is like this:
There's a quantity for each commodity (internally called "econUnit"), that maps how many cargo units of it translate into one economy unit. (This was actually there in the previous version of the economy; I think it was used to figure out how many icons to display.)
If a player sells the commodity to a market, its availability will increase by (quantity sold / econUnit) for a month. Buying will do the opposite, i.e. you can cause a month-long shortage by buying stuff up.
Also, the first 3 economy units of a commodity - that is, if 0 units are available - only take one econUnit's worth of cargo; after that it's 1 econUnit's worth per economy unit. If that makes sense.
The transaction widget - where it shows the current transaction, the tariffs, etc - shows a group of icons, either green or red outlined, that indicate when what you're buying/selling will impact economic availability, and there's a tooltip there.
Is there any chance of getting something that lets you map the top planets you have scanned? That way you could find the best place to set up with the closest and highest production planets for each resource within a reasonable distance. It would be useful for people who want to setup self sufficient colony groups.
The Planet subtab in the Intel tab lets you sort stuff, but, right, I think I see what you're asking - a way to visualize that data. My gut feeling is that there won't be so many planets that this will be a problem, but I'll definitely keep an eye on it. Another aspect is that I'd expect someone to put up one outpost somewhere, build it up, then add another one, and so on - so it wouldn't necessarily be a situation where you're trying to plan out everythnig at the same time.
P.S. When 0.8 first came out I spent 11 days on a save(it came out at the perfect time for me) and TL:DR I ended up with 50mil+ cr and had nothing to sink money into, please tell me these colonies can get really expensive for fun and profit.
I didn't really get into it in this blog post, but yeah, there would ideally be lots of things to throw money at. I'd also like to cut down some of the more out-of-control revenues streams.
also I had 5 apogees, I like apogees... don't judge.
Perfect, best scanning range w/o going up to capitals
That seems odd, since you literally do not have enough food to feed yourself, but apparently can still divert some to someplace else.
Hmm, that doesn't seem all that stange to me. If the other destination is in your faction, you could see why you'd want to share whatever food is available. If it's out-of-faction, the companies involved (below your level) are making profit-based decisions, etc.
Overall, I really like this system.
Cool, thank you!
Will we be getting more reliable view of this information from other star systems without attempting to build an outpost? It's the sort of info that would make trading a lot more plausible!
I'd like to work a "nearby markets" into the market info screen somewhere.