Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: Market Limits  (Read 2438 times)

Agile

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 190
    • View Profile
Market Limits
« on: May 05, 2020, 09:30:02 PM »

I believe that Markets need a limit.

What do I mean by this? Right now, you can sell any item, any quantity of said item, to any market in any world with nothing to stop you. You could, figuratively speaking, flood an entire market with huge amounts of goods you don't need since you just blew up a pirate base, and that planet will accept the goods, no matter the volume.

This, I believe, is bad as it introduces "metagame" plays and bad design such as selling huge amounts of loot to planets / pirate stations then blowing them up when realistically they'd never take that much loot, or planets always printing out vast amounts of money in the form of shortages.

I believe that markets, in order to be more organic in the game, need "limits".

For example, a level 3 planet will have an X amount of cash it can spend in the market; lets say the cap is theoretically 1 million credits. When you sell to the market, it uses this limit to determine whether it can pay you, the player. For example, lets say the market on this level 3 planet has a shortage of 1000 recreational drugs; you fill that shortage and get 500k credits. Now this planet has a coffer of 500k credits left to give. If you do not buy anything from this planet, the coffer remains at a static 500k.

Lets say you then decide to sell a bunch of junk that is worth another 500k to this planet. Then you try to sell some more; you are unable to and all sell options are then removed because there is 0 credits in this market place. You must now either buy from the market to replenish the credits the planet has (for a total cap of 1 million credits since its a level 3 planet), or you must way for 1 ingame month.

Every ingame month, an X percentage of the markets full worth is regenerated. For example, lets say every month 10% of the total market comes back. In this case, every month 100k is brought back into THIS specific planets coffers. This prevents the abuse of low level / low stability planets constantly being money printers because now they have both a soft cap (percentage based being brought back every month) and hard cap (x amount of money per level of planet).

You can still make money but it is much harder as markets are less exploitable through raiding / infinite loops of cash due to level 3 pirates in the system constantly raiding and somehow said planets having infinite cash to pay off all the exorbitant prices you charge them to fix their shortages.
Logged

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7174
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #1 on: May 05, 2020, 10:09:42 PM »

At present selling many of a commodity drives its price down. Would simply accelerating that for smaller markets do the same thing?
Logged

Agile

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 190
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #2 on: May 05, 2020, 10:26:51 PM »

At present selling many of a commodity drives its price down. Would simply accelerating that for smaller markets do the same thing?

Yes and no. Then you can just sell x amount and go to another station then rinse and repeat.

I believe a more long lasting consequence to market manipulation like market limits would be a better idea, since this also covers the issue of market shortages being big money printers as well.

Logged

Amoebka

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1318
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #3 on: May 06, 2020, 04:24:08 AM »

That would just force players to visit multiple markets each time they want to sell a large quantity of something. It's busywork that wastes real time and doesn't offer interesting choices.
Logged

dead_hand

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 72
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #4 on: May 06, 2020, 04:41:00 AM »

I do not like this idea. It's too player-centric. What I mean, is that it's unlikely that the player is the only person that ever trades with a market, there's likely independent traders, traders from other factions, etc. So likely that when you sell too much of something, the market can figure out a way to sell it to another market that needs this excess stuff you just sold.

However, perhaps there could be some system that markets try to stockpile at least some amount of goods, if they have experienced shortages. E.g. if a market has experienced a food shortage multiple times in the past year, it should try to keep extra stockpile of food, if the player decides to sell an excessive amount of it, such that it would dampen the effect of the next shortage if it occurs.
« Last Edit: May 06, 2020, 04:43:44 AM by dead_hand »
Logged

Serenitis

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1458
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #5 on: May 06, 2020, 06:07:57 AM »

The short answer is: Why does it matter?

It's a single player game, so the player being able to "dump" a large quantity of a thing at a market is a useful convenience that affects no-one else.


Logged

intrinsic_parity

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3071
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #6 on: May 06, 2020, 11:21:26 AM »

If there really is an issue with shortages being too profitable (which isn't a problem in my experience), then I think a better solution is to add more pirate fleets around the planet to make it more difficult to land and sell stuff, rather than just capping how much can be sold.
Logged

SapphireSage

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 257
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #7 on: May 06, 2020, 11:43:05 AM »

Something like this would slow things down somewhat but could certainly help with the issue that you can just raid Epiphany's Starport and feed them drugs, weapons, and marines and make 1M+ credits per month early on till you tire of it. Otherwise, it's be annoying to offload all those weapons/metals gotten from combat though metals are usually pretty worthless, so you can just dump them out the window really.
Logged

intrinsic_parity

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3071
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2020, 03:45:20 PM »

If there are issues with shortages being repeatably exploitable, then you could speed up the stability decay process so that the markets decivilize faster as a consequence for the players misdeeds.

I also vaguely recall not being able to trade with places after I raid them because they are reasonably *** at me. Is it not like that?
Logged

Scorpixel

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 172
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2020, 04:35:33 PM »

Speed up decivilisation?! That's the last thing we need, the core worlds are already under a tsunami of pirate zombies in vanilla, most markets don't even have ground defences or a patrol hq and die of a mean stare.
Logged

intrinsic_parity

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3071
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2020, 04:59:25 PM »

Strange how people have such different experiences. I think I've seen ~5-10 planets decivilize in all of the campaigns I've ever played. I guess an alternative is to make core colonies more resilient to raids so it's harder to create destabilization.
Logged

SapphireSage

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 257
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #11 on: May 06, 2020, 10:43:43 PM »

If there are issues with shortages being repeatably exploitable, then you could speed up the stability decay process so that the markets decivilize faster as a consequence for the players misdeeds.

I also vaguely recall not being able to trade with places after I raid them because they are reasonably *** at me. Is it not like that?

They do get mad at you, but it doesn't matter too much since they're only mad for about a month when you break their spaceport for the better part of a year. Just go out and gather what they need and by the time you return they'll be ready to buy. Afterwards, you just begin the trade circle where you buy from cheaper places and sell at ludicrous shortage values.

Also I'm not sure if its vanilla or Nexerelin, but you can pay a pittance of money, supplies, and marines and remove the "recent unrest" that causes low stability, as long as a planet does not have zero stability then it won't decivilize and removing "recent unrest" penalty is usually enough to keep them afloat and lucrative even through the food shortage.

Strange how people have such different experiences. I think I've seen ~5-10 planets decivilize in all of the campaigns I've ever played. I guess an alternative is to make core colonies more resilient to raids so it's harder to create destabilization.

I'm not sure if you play Nexerelin or not but, as far as I can tell, deciv issues depend on whether you use it or not as factions in Nex will not only defend themselves from pirates but will regularly go out and smash pirate/pather stations harassing them and prevent them from dominating with penalties and raids. Whereas in vanilla factions will completely ignore pirate harassment save for putting out a bounty before rolling over and letting the pirates walk over them until stability hits zero for everyone.
Logged

dead_hand

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 72
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #12 on: May 07, 2020, 12:47:16 AM »

...

Also I'm not sure if its vanilla or Nexerelin, but you can pay a pittance of money, supplies, and marines and remove the "recent unrest" that causes low stability, as long as a planet does not have zero stability then it won't decivilize and removing "recent unrest" penalty is usually enough to keep them afloat and lucrative even through the food shortage.


That's a Nex addition.
Logged

DatonKallandor

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 718
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #13 on: May 07, 2020, 01:53:51 AM »

If you're playing with Nex, you're not playing the regular game. So any market opinions don't really apply.
Logged

SCC

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4112
    • View Profile
Re: Market Limits
« Reply #14 on: May 07, 2020, 04:12:44 AM »

If markets had money limits, it would be nice to be able to sell remotely. Dump a stack of metals on the market, but you get only a fraction of that stack sold, at an optimal price. The stack then drains every month until it's empty. It would give a choice between gaining more money immediately, but less over time.
Pages: [1] 2