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Author Topic: Trade/Piracy/Supply and Demand  (Read 1823 times)

Eji1700

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Trade/Piracy/Supply and Demand
« on: September 28, 2019, 02:38:24 PM »

Was tooling around with my super scavenger character (basically maxed industry) and saw that the pirate base I was by was just about to launch a trade fleet stocked with heavy weapons/drugs/etc.

Having never actually tried piracy in all the time i've been playing, i hung around and wiped the floor with it.  Somewhat surprisingly to me I only got the usual expected haul (supplies, weapons, fuel, heavy machinery) and no cool illicit goods to hock on the market.

Am I missing something or is this intended functionality, because if so it seems like it's missing a big sell to what can make these games interesting.  I've heard that random combat isn't supposed to be the point of the game, but there really should be some way to turn a profit on trade convoy attacks outside of using the resulting manipulated market.

It'd also give more of a reason to have some frigates in a fleet for the post battle hunt down of all the convoy ships, which as of right now doesn't really ever seem to be worth the time/effort (despite being a nice twist on ship design goals and playstyle sometimes).

Further in some relation to this it's really unclear to me WHY some items are needed by planets. I get it all functions on industries (which is pretty hidden from the player) and I've gotten some understanding of that from colonies, but what exactly is triggering all this demand for harvested organs?  Why isn't food more important?  What exactly are transplantation being used for?  Do high tech planets have different demands from low tech ones?

Arguably the player never needs to know any of this, but it is something that's fun to mess with in the ways we currently can, so I'm hoping that there's more (either that i'm missing or that's in the pipeline).
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dk1332

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Re: Trade/Piracy/Supply and Demand
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2019, 03:09:19 PM »

wait, let me as some a couple of questions

-did the trade fleet finish loading their goods?
-did you destroy their cargo ships?

for the 1st, if yes, then you should have gotten some of their goods. Which depends on your scaving ability and your fleet's scaving ability (# of ships with salvage gantries).
if no, then there is no salvaged to be have since they are still loading their cargo.

For the 2nd one, if yes, then their goods should be in the vacuum of space waiting to be salvaged properly. If no, then there's your issue. You let the ships carrying the cargo get away.

Industry functions aren't completely hidden from the player. For example, harvested organs are wanted in colonies for "medical" purposes. The higher its population, the higher the demand. It's not like humans can grow another liver if they want to. Food is only needed when there is a shortage caused by different reasons (e.g spaceport disrupted, convoy raids). Usually, food is easily acquired by many colonies via "in faction supply" or are produced locally. There are shown in the "colony info" tab. You can access it via colony>market>press m. It should show you what does what (putting your mouse over the industry) and what needs what (a small window in the right where there are some item icons). You can also check of which markets needs more via pressing F1 when you mouse over an item.

Colony demands depends on what industry that colony has. Smaller colonies requires less since its industries are smaller. The bigger the size of the colony the more it will need. It doesn't really depends on the colony's tech level, but I may be wrong on that.
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Eji1700

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Re: Trade/Piracy/Supply and Demand
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2019, 03:42:58 PM »

wait, let me as some a couple of questions

-did the trade fleet finish loading their goods?
-did you destroy their cargo ships?

for the 1st, if yes, then you should have gotten some of their goods. Which depends on your scaving ability and your fleet's scaving ability (# of ships with salvage gantries).
if no, then there is no salvaged to be have since they are still loading their cargo.

For the 2nd one, if yes, then their goods should be in the vacuum of space waiting to be salvaged properly. If no, then there's your issue. You let the ships carrying the cargo get away.

Industry functions aren't completely hidden from the player. For example, harvested organs are wanted in colonies for "medical" purposes. The higher its population, the higher the demand. It's not like humans can grow another liver if they want to. Food is only needed when there is a shortage caused by different reasons (e.g spaceport disrupted, convoy raids). Usually, food is easily acquired by many colonies via "in faction supply" or are produced locally. There are shown in the "colony info" tab. You can access it via colony>market>press m. It should show you what does what (putting your mouse over the industry) and what needs what (a small window in the right where there are some item icons). You can also check of which markets needs more via pressing F1 when you mouse over an item.

Colony demands depends on what industry that colony has. Smaller colonies requires less since its industries are smaller. The bigger the size of the colony the more it will need. It doesn't really depends on the colony's tech level, but I may be wrong on that.

I know for a fact I killed their cargo ships, but maybe i jumped them too early.  I'll give it another shot later and see the results.   
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Ebola

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Re: Trade/Piracy/Supply and Demand
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2019, 04:41:04 PM »

Killing trade fleets also causes a shortage on the planet it was heading for so it's better to just camp the target system, loot the wrecks and then "just happen to come by with the exact stuff you guys need, what a coincidence haha".
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Histidine

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Re: Trade/Piracy/Supply and Demand
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2019, 06:04:43 PM »

On the combat loot thing: It does sound like the fleet hadn't loaded its cargo at that point. IIRC the fleet interaction dialog text appends a "(loading)" to the list of cargo if this is the case.
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Plantissue

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Re: Trade/Piracy/Supply and Demand
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2019, 05:37:42 AM »

Killing trade fleets also causes a shortage on the planet it was heading for so it's better to just camp the target system, loot the wrecks and then "just happen to come by with the exact stuff you guys need, what a coincidence haha".
You have to do it some distance away or in hyperspace, otherwise they wouldn't trade with you even with the transponder off for some time.
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