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[Dark.Revenant]

A quick application of Dijkstra's Algorithm would work well enough computationally, but there's a big problem: what you call "[going] the extra mile" is actually necessary for this to work at a basic level.  Otherwise, the player will just see nonsensical ranges that don't match up with the actual distance between markets in hyperspace.  The player has to literally see the winding route along which trade takes place to understand how hyperspace affects it.

This also has a negative side effect of making it even harder to establish an outpost in deep space unless the player has some method of clearing a path through hyperspace to make trade viable...  In short, a lot of work for a minor feature.

[SafariJohn]

Could make the waypoints and lines visible. Maybe even interactable. That would probably be way easier than the labels thing.

But yeah, the whole idea is almost certainly too much work.

[Chaos Blade]

Could make the waypoints and lines visible. Maybe even interactable. That would probably be way easier than the labels thing.

But yeah, the whole idea is almost certainly too much work.

What about if instead of visible, they should be attainable, both legally and less so (say if you are entangled with the faction/planet to a sufficient degree, you'd get the option to get (buy?) the route, alternatively, you could find some shady types and get the trade route data)

[gruberscomplete]

You know what would be fun to do with the AI ideas?

Let's set the history back a minute, and have the player experience the Second AI War.  That gives us:

1.  A Faction that wants to expand (and evaporate our outposts).
2.  A big-bad to fight, who gets stronger over time if not fought.
3.  Something that can destroy the Sector (finally, a credible threat).
4.  Possibility of working diplomatically with the Sector's other players to solve the issue (or fail, and everybody dies).
5.  Excuses to have ultra-tech show up to push players outside the normal power-curve in late-game play.
6.  The events in question can happen whenever we want or even shut off in the options, so the game's difficulty ramp can get tuned better.

Or we could just jump to the THIRD AI War.

[Hari Seldon]

Wait does this mean you could decrease a planet's stability by out-competing their markets with your own?  I don't want the Sector to spiral into ruin because I built some outposts.  Or maybe it could.  I would love choking the Luddic Church by out-competing their food market.

[namp007]

Love the blogpost, looking forward to all the changes to come.
I'm fond of all the changes and especially fond of the balance you keep between being able to impact/control certain aspects and preventing having to micromanage things.

The one thing I would like to see is customization of your faction. Choosing a focus on a certain tech-level or choosing between many small fleets or few large fleets.

I also read that you wish to hard-limit the number of outposts you can have. Would a system where the cost (or any other resource, even perhaps time) just exponentially increases with each outpost be viable? Theoretically putting no limit on the number of outposts but in practice making it near impossible to have more than X number of outposts. Perhaps then changing the skills that hard-limit the outpost number to a percentage reduction in cost or so.

Regardless of how these things turn out, I'm sure it will become an even better game!

[Alex]

Wait does this mean you could decrease a planet's stability by out-competing their markets with your own?  I don't want the Sector to spiral into ruin because I built some outposts.  Or maybe it could.  I would love choking the Luddic Church by out-competing their food market.

Currently, there's no real penalty to the market that got out-competed. Might be something worth looking into, though.

Love the blogpost, looking forward to all the changes to come.
I'm fond of all the changes and especially fond of the balance you keep between being able to impact/control certain aspects and preventing having to micromanage things.

Thank you!

The one thing I would like to see is customization of your faction. Choosing a focus on a certain tech-level or choosing between many small fleets or few large fleets.

Hmm - I think you'll be able to do at least some of these things, either directly or indirectly, but I don't want to get into the details before ironing them out

I also read that you wish to hard-limit the number of outposts you can have. Would a system where the cost (or any other resource, even perhaps time) just exponentially increases with each outpost be viable? Theoretically putting no limit on the number of outposts but in practice making it near impossible to have more than X number of outposts. Perhaps then changing the skills that hard-limit the outpost number to a percentage reduction in cost or so.

Regardless of how these things turn out, I'm sure it will become an even better game!

What I'm thinking right now is a hefty stability penalty - applied to all your outposts/colonies - for going over the limit. Since income is based on stability (going from 0 to 150% as stability goes from 0 to 10, at the moment) that wouldn't be precisely a hard limit, but in practice it would be highly counter-productive.

The idea is it's more of a temporary condition you dip into, while you either scrounge up an administrator or decide which colony to grant autonomy to or something along those lines. This isn't implemented yet, though, so things could change entirely.

[Chaos Blade]

Was thinking, as it stands, each location will trade a sort of item with other location, that is to say they'll have ONE organics supplier, ONE ore supplier, etc.

But, that rarely happens irl, you'd have multiple suppliers of X or Y goods, while I see you want to keep the system simple, wouldn't it be more interesting to rather than use the top supplier, to use the top two? or use some other value to determine if there is more than one supplier? (maybe tied up to the importance of the port, the lesser the port the smaller the number of different links it could establish, for instance)
this could make some markets more hub like, or give more trade lanes for the game to feel more interconnected.
I understand there is a matter of CPU usage that you want to keep manageable, but this could make each port be more robust

[The Ender]

I can't help but offer a critique:

That commodity UI as proposed in the blog is visual soup. There are too many states (and, if we're honest, probably also too many commodities), most of which don't present useful information to the player. This makes the information cluttered and difficult to read at a glance.

Fundamentally, all that a player wanted to manipulate makets wants to know is, 'Can I buy this at a discount?' and 'Can I sell this at a profit?'

Of course, putting extra detail on top of that is fine - but (at least IMHO) said extra detail shouldn't muddy the player's ability to see that fundamental information at a glance.


At a glance, why do I care if something is smuggled in? So long as a commodity isn't being traded on the Black Market, why do I care if it is being moved by ruffians? Heck, why do I even care what faction is moving it?

These things all add extra flavor, and they might intersect with a deeper level of gameplay, but I'm rather skeptical I need to see all of those states at a glance while just looking to do basic buy high/sell low trading and the visual noise they create isn't condusive to a clean UI. The flavor is also much more likely to be just missed or glossed-over by player trying to filter-out noise for practical knowledge when presented in this way , whereas nesting some of this information just 1 layer deeper (via, say, tooltips or a nested interface specifically meant for, say, smuggling or commerce raiding gameplay) would make the flavor stand-out more while steel being organic.

[Bastion.Systems]

I totally want the ability to choose a flag/name for my faction. Maybe a flag from a couple of presets like in the character creation screen. I really like RP-ing these things.

[zaimoni]

I can't help but offer a critique:

....

These things all add extra flavor, and they might intersect with a deeper level of gameplay, but I'm rather skeptical I need to see all of those states at a glance while just looking to do basic buy high/sell low trading ....

That is close to the minimum level of detail needed to provide enough information to trade without a contract.  If the UI doesn't provide at least that much, a savefile parser is needed.

[intrinsic_parity]

...Fundamentally, all that a player wanted to manipulate makets wants to know is, 'Can I buy this at a discount?' and 'Can I sell this at a profit?'...

 ...just looking to do basic buy high/sell low trading...

Manipulating markets and 'buy low/sell high' trading are two completely different things. I don't think that basic trading is meant to be a core gameplay mechanic. The core mechanics revolve around altering supply chains so that you can sell your outposts goods for money. In this case knowing who is supplying a market allows you to influence (destroy/cripple) that supply chain so that you can fill the void with your own outposts.

At least that's my understanding.

[Chaos Blade]

At a glance, why do I care if something is smuggled in? So long as a commodity isn't being traded on the Black Market, why do I care if it is being moved by ruffians? Heck, why do I even care what faction is moving it?

off hand, on the smuggling case, I'd say something is smuggled either because it is proscribed in the target market or it is getting around port/import fees... I am going to assume the former is the only one we really care, since it means trading that good to that port carries a degree of challenge (like avoiding customs), the latter might be a factor if contemplated (the profits might be either non-existing or marginal)

So, it is something we, as players, might be interest in knowing

[Histidine]

One thing that came to mind recently: How are different commodities with the same demand class handled? (Are Volturnian lobsters still a thing and do they still substitute for Luxury Goods?)

[Alex]

One thing that came to mind recently: How are different commodities with the same demand class handled? (Are Volturnian lobsters still a thing and do they still substitute for Luxury Goods?)

There are still some rough edges to be sanded down there. How I think it'll work is non-primary commodities would not be shipped by the economy, but might (or might not?) satisfy local demand. So things like Volturnian Lobster would be for flavor (ha) and/or player-facing missions/events, not something that gets simulated extensively under the hood.