Thank you for all the positive feedback!
No playable release over Christmas & the new year Mr. Alex. That dog don't hunt.
It does feel like Accessibility being a % but one that counts down from 100 and can go negative with no cap, as well as modifying prices (but not by its actual % value) is a bit confusing. The idea that smuggling reduces accessibility as well is a bit... awkward? It is *true* that black markets are less accessible than open ones, but I don't think many people would phrase it that way.
Would 'Remoteness' or 'Trade Difficulty' be more intuitive? Then you could write the consequences in a fairly simple list like:
- 0 Trade Difficulty: 100% price, no unit restrictions
- 100 TD: 75% price, no unit restrictions
- Every further 25 TD: -10% price, -1 unit available to trade
Another advantage of this is that '20 Ly of distance adds 200 Trade Difficulty' also feels more natural than '20 Ly of distance reduces accessibility by 200%'. E.g. you can rewrite the Accessibility penalties as:
- Every Ly of distance: 10 TD
- Target has no spaceport: 150 TD
- Trade is smuggling: 100 TD
It also means you can have less subtraction in your calculations. In the current draft starting out with 100 then subtracting away feels like a bit more mental work for the player than just addition (though of course freeports etc. will require it anyway so maybe it's not that much of a benefit?).
Hah, that's funny - it was called "remoteness" up to about halfway through and then I switched it around to "accessibility".
Reasons:
"Accessibility" makes more sense to say than "remoteness" in many situations. To take your example, "smuggling reduces accessibility" makes sense. "Smuggling increases remoteness", less so - it kind of does conceptually, but you have to "make it fit" more. Same for things like trade fleet losses etc. "Remoteness" is a word that's focused on distance, while "accessibility" is more of a catch-all. "Trade difficulty" would also work, but it's a more awkward construction, and it's focused on trade, where accessibility could be used for other things.
Having a "good" value that goes up, and has negative effects when it's negative, is I think more intuitive. It also makes it easy to talk about bonuses and penalties. What's a "bonus" to remoteness? Negative remoteness being good feels like forcing an unnecessary double negative on the player.
"Accessibility", capped to 0-100, is how much profit you get from exports. Remoteness, you have to invert.
As far as the number of subtractions, there's actually more positives at this point, though I'd expect some other negatives to come in. Either way, though, it'll end up being a mix so I think that's a wash.
Basically it just feels a lot simpler to work with - when I was writing explanations in tooltips, "accessibility" was a lot easier to produce comprehensible explanations for.
if i understood correct each market will have different accessibility score for each other market depending on distance value. All other modifiers( which are super cool btw:) ) are fixed binary up/downgrades.( you have them or not).
Yep, that's correct. The only exception is waystations, where the modifier depends on the distance between the two markets and how far-off it is from the midpoint. Still working through some details for that, though.
My suggestion is when selecting a planet for colonization on the star map it may be useful to have a filter turning on/of radius around the planet indicating the penalty levels to accessibility from distance - 50% - 100% etc . ( similar to fuel range but around a selected planet not the player fleet)
Hmm - before you colonize, you can view a list of nearby markets, like so:
Spoiler
(click to view full-size)
It assumes the market you establish would have a spaceport and shows the accessibility of other markets - I think that just about covers what you're asking for, but in a slightly different way?
i am a little sad that those pretty colored reach indicator circles didn't work well for anything other than being pretty though. 
Same, same.
Great blog post! With this colony system shaping up quite nicely, now it'd be cool if we had a fleet and blueprint system where you could customize your fleets and manufacture ships/equipment in your colonies for which you have the blueprints for. That would be like the cherry on top!
It really would be pretty cool, wouldn't it?
Always nice when you get to slice through a Gordian knot of tangled game rules, eh?
Not going to lie, the way the design cruft fell away on adding accessibility was
super satisfying.
Not strictly related to the new stuff, but I have a question: How quickly does the system adapt to changes in a particular market's supply/demand?
The particular scenario I've been thinking of:
- Event temporarily increases demand for commodity X on a market
- Market immediately increases imports from supplier (possibly the same one it already had)
- No supply shortfall for player to take advantage of
The system adjusts instantly. However, for every commodity, there's an "available" stat which can be modified with temporary mods. So for example, if a trade fleet is destroyed, in addition to accessibility consequences for the market, commodities it was tasked with delivering (depending on what stage in its route it got destroyed at) will receive a -2 available penalty for 3 months. The penalty will stick even if the supplier changes in the meantime. So, an "increased demand" event would need to apply this same sort of penalty - i.e. call it "-2 unexpected demand" or some such. It might make more sense framed as a shortage, though.
