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[mendonca]

'Market buys' / 'market sells'? Normally I would think that is too specific, but now there is any number of markets, the specificity has some context.

I hope your actually doing some meaningful coding, and not just reading about grammar? (I followed the links and ended up learning that Lithuanian is the most conservative proto-indo-european language in modern usage ...)

[Aeson]

Regarding the stuff about active versus passive voice:  The difference between active and passive is that in active voice, the subject of the clause performs the action, whereas in passive voice the subject receives the action (or, to put that clause into passive voice, the subject is acted upon in a passive clause). Passive voice carries no implication that the actor is unknown, nor does it imply the agent is irrelevant. "The game was published by Activision" is an example of a passive voice sentence in which the only important information is about the actor (unless it's in answer to a question along the lines of "has the game been released yet?").

Passive voice also doesn't indicate who is doing the selling; first, second, and third person are all legal forms of passive verbs, just as they are in active verbs. Context can be used to clue you in to who is performing the action (for example, the sentence "Fred and George have been feuding recently, and Fred has been hospitalized again" carries an implication that George may have caused Fred's hospitalization, but there is doubt because such hasn't been explicitly stated), but the voice of the verb in the absence of other information will not provide any useful information about the agent. The person of the verb can carry information about who is doing the selling - I sell things while the market sells them; I buy things while the market buys them - but third person singular is the only English verb form which is normally distinct from the other verbs, and moreover the passive construction (some object or material) sells for (some amount) carries no indication of who is performing the action, as the person of the verb is determined by the subject of the sentence rather than the actor.

Regardless of how you decide to present the information, I would say that as long as it's consistent it will not be confusing for very long. Besides which, game economic systems should not allow the player to turn a profit by purchasing some item from Vendor A and then immediately selling that item back to Vendor A. Price fluctuations over time are reasonable, but that requires that you at least wait a little while before selling the item back to Vendor A, rather than selling it back before even leaving the market screen. That consideration makes me reasonably certain that whenever I see a game list two different prices for an item with one listed as the buying price and the other listed as the selling price, that the lower cost is what I get paid for an item while the higher price is what I have to pay for an item.

I also think that it might be interesting if the stability system influenced the type of market you had available - at present, the game provides something of a hybrid between a barter economy and a cash economy, where cash is the primary means of payment but goods can be provided instead. It might be interesting if that were the format for mid-stability markets, shifting towards a cash-only model in the high-stability markets and towards a full barter economy in the low-stability markets.

[Alex]

I hope your actually doing some meaningful coding, and not just reading about grammar? (I followed the links and ended up learning that Lithuanian is the most conservative proto-indo-european language in modern usage ...)

I've managed to avoid that trap for now

I would say that as long as it's consistent it will not be confusing for very long. Besides which, game economic systems should not allow the player to turn a profit by purchasing some item from Vendor A and then immediately selling that item back to Vendor A. Price fluctuations over time are reasonable, but that requires that you at least wait a little while before selling the item back to Vendor A, rather than selling it back before even leaving the market screen. That consideration makes me reasonably certain that whenever I see a game list two different prices for an item with one listed as the buying price and the other listed as the selling price, that the lower cost is what I get paid for an item while the higher price is what I have to pay for an item.

Right, that's true.

I also think that it might be interesting if the stability system influenced the type of market you had available - at present, the game provides something of a hybrid between a barter economy and a cash economy, where cash is the primary means of payment but goods can be provided instead. It might be interesting if that were the format for mid-stability markets, shifting towards a cash-only model in the high-stability markets and towards a full barter economy in the low-stability markets.

Interesting idea.

[harrumph]

Ah, the passive voice. My bête noire! I work as an editor, and most of my clients are academics for whom the passive voice is a beloved tool of obfuscation and misdirection. Don't know who said it? It was said! No peer-reviewed journal has ever asserted it? It has been asserted! Think just saying "I believe X, Y, and Z" would make you sound silly? X, Y, and Z are believed!

Anyway, as Aeson says, if it's consistent, people will understand it (I actually thought that "buy price" and "sell price" were clear enough from the beginning). It's always instructive, though, when faced with something like this, to look at how other people do it—in this case, how a similar concept is presented in the real world. Off the top of my head, I thought of currency exchanges, which usually say "we buy at" and "we sell at" (or maybe "we buy for" etc.). Using the first person probably won't work when the market is presented as a planet-wide exchange, but you could try something like "merchants buy at" or "vendors buy for."

[JDCollie]

Ah, the passive voice. My bête noire! I work as an editor, and most of my clients are academics for whom the passive voice is a beloved tool of obfuscation and misdirection. Don't know who said it? It was said! No peer-reviewed journal has ever asserted it? It has been asserted! Think just saying "I believe X, Y, and Z" would make you sound silly? X, Y, and Z are believed!

Anyway, as Aeson says, if it's consistent, people will understand it (I actually thought that "buy price" and "sell price" were clear enough from the beginning). It's always instructive, though, when faced with something like this, to look at how other people do it—in this case, how a similar concept is presented in the real world. Off the top of my head, I thought of currency exchanges, which usually say "we buy at" and "we sell at" (or maybe "we buy for" etc.). Using the first person probably won't work when the market is presented as a planet-wide exchange, but you could try something like "merchants buy at" or "vendors buy for."

Passive voice is the coward's way out! (I assert this notion   )

[Dark.Revenant]

A simple English change won't do.

Buys for: x
Sells for: x
By whom?

Sold for: x
Bought for: x
By whom?

Selling for: x
Buying for: x
While this fixes the ambiguity, this has the issue of swapping the key words used throughout the UI, since other elements assume "buy" applies to the player.

List price: x
Selling price: x
Eh.  Maybe?

Buy from: x
Sell to: x
Unless you want to insert the name of the market after 'from' or 'to', (e.g. Sell to Babylon 5) this isn't an option either.

Etc. No option is really ideal.

What you can do, however, is to remove those lines and instead add buttons labeled Buy and Sell with the appropriate cost numbers printed on them, thereby removing all ambiguity and helping to eliminate page-turning for the player.  I know I'd rather buy/sell on the screen that gives me all the relevant information rather than committing it to memory or referencing it every few seconds.

[CrashToDesktop]

I usually take it from the player's perspective.  If something says this is the "buy" price, that means I'll pay however much it is.  If something is the "sell" price, that means how much I'll get paid if I sell it to someone.

EDIT:
Also, take it from a logical point of view - which ever price is higher is most obviously the price you'll pay.  Otherwise, we'd all be able to make tons of cash by just buying and selling at the same station.

[Gothars]

(The tourism draw and funerary rites aren't correct, but are quite cool ideas. I should stick something like those somewhere in the game ... )

They are most correct though in that the "Orbital Burns" effect is a sort of background piece of setting that alters the market conditions rather than something which ties heavily into mechanics like the speed of outgoing ships or whatever. Well, at least that's the case right now. Perhaps in time it could be turned into a feature that has certain effects on other parts of the game which I won't speculate on.

Since "Jungle World" is an market condition, despite the market being on a space station, there has to be some kind of connection between station and planet. Maybe "Orbital Burn" is just the way the planet's gravity is overcome in this case: with rocket powered ships. (Alternatives could be space elevators or planetary mass drivers.) That would explain the huge fuel consumption. The "in time" effect might be a negative impact on the planet's ecological condition.

[Cycerin]

It could also be describing some sort of post-conflict damage to the planet, I guess.

[Taverius]

It could also be describing some sort of post-conflict damage to the planet, I guess.

Maybe, but I think Gothars is onto something here.

Anyone who's ever played KSP instinctively knows the silly amounts of fuel you use to put a small payload in orbit ...

[Eagle1]

Nice Hegemony logo! 

[maximusprime1010]

I don't know how many people I'm speaking for but, well. I found the trade screen confusing. My opinion is, is that you might be trying to reinvent the wheel (no disrespect). There is a reason spread sheets and graphs are so common and thus generic. As of yet they're the best way to relay large quantities of information and its relationship to other information in my opinion. By all means Jazz it up but don't feel you need to relay information in a new way. Ultimately all the player wants is for it to be ergonomic and attractive. Another reason the more traditional systems are beneficial is in terms of immersion. Charts are things used now in real life and the borders between virtual and real become slightly more blurred when aspects from either are incorporated into the other.
Other than that though the system seems great and I look forward to the update. I just feel using a tried and tested way to relay information and using time to make it attractive might be a better approach. However having said that until the systems are seen in play I don't actually know how they perform and you might replace the wheel with the hover jet or something cool like that.
I'm sure you'll do what's best and keep up the good work .   

[Gothars]

Aesthetic aspects aside, I think it makes a lot of sense that the information is not presented in the traditional way. It is, after all, not as if you could work with, control or build up the economy, as you would in a classic strategy game. You're just looking for opportunities to manipulate the market. So it makes sense to have a UI that only highlights these opportunities and cuts out the noise.

[Gothars]

OK, so we have harvested organs as contraband now, which is nice. But what else?
Thinking back to the adult themes thread, especially the parts about slavery and about the potential of wares being sci-fi themed, something came to mind.

Why not trade AIs? An conscious AI that is forced to do a particular job is the sci-fi equivalent of a slave. It's a big sci-fi topic that is connected with moral philosophy, what it means to be human and the dangers rough AIs could pose for human civilization. Having  AIs as a trade good could tie these themes into actual gameplay, maybe even with AIs as ship upgrades, officers and so forth.

[Sabaton]

Muahahaha, harvested organs, another way of getting rid of excess crew.