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[Villanelo]

First thing, this is my first post here, even though I have been playing this game since TB made a video about it a million years ago. I love this update, and the game is now at its best. The universe feels great, and I love the direction where everything is going.

BUT, there is something that, in my opinion, could be improved.
I have been a fan of economic simulators since I have memory. I loved Railroad Tycoon 2 when I was a kid, I fell in love with the Patrician series as soon as I tried it, and I have spent more time playing moded OTTD than I am comfortable with. So take my opinion as the opinion of someone with that background.

I understand the point of the 60% taxes is to not make the trade part too grindy, and let the player experience the whole game more freely. That is a great conceept, in theory, but what that means is that THE ONLY way to make profit when trading is by taking advantage of the events.

This translates into two things:

A) The only "role" that you can play as is an opportunistic bastard who takes advantage of people's problems in order to make a ton of money. Kind of like those guys/goverments who sell weapons to african countries. Or those who exchange food and medicines for diamonds. Sure, they make more money than anybody else, but... you know, morals and stuff. Being forced to behave this way is not something I enjoy.

B) And more important, talking about gameplay... if you want to play as a trader (avoiding fights as much as possible, focusing on just making money in a peaceful way), the only gameplay option that you have is "wait till an event happens". I am not even kidding. Most of what I have done has been buying when an event appears, storing massive quantities of random things, and then waiting again till another event appears, and moving those things to where the game tells me I have to go. Most of the time in between is me being close to a huge fleet orbiting a planet, waiting, and waiting till the game "lets me" keep playing.

Now, since I know this game is heavily in development, I said to myself.. hey, maybe you can fix "the problem" by yourself... So I started looking at the files, and when I found a way to change the tariffs, I changed them, to 12% (I started with 10, but that seemed to "cheap". Even 12 could go a little higher)
What do I have now? A game where you have to pay A LOT of attention to where to buy, where to sell, and how much it costs you to move things. Now I am much more involved with the game. I even have charts written by me in a paper while I play. Now I FEEL like a trader, instead of an opportunistic bastard. Of course, I house ruled out the events (since I would get MASSIVE ammounts of money if I used them), and I never "take advantage" of any planet. I simply buy where things are produced, and sell where things are needed.
Now the game feels a lot more like I am a part of this amazing universe instead of a player.

I understand that the system was created this way for specific reasons, and I am in no way saying that my way is better than the official way. But I thought I could share my opinion, in case someone felt the same way I did.

[Kipcha]

i brought up a similar topic and came to the same conclusion where the new "tariff's" were turning trading into "wait outside a station for an event" instead of actual trading between stations that produced items.

Something id love to see is tariff changed by faction rep, or by a skill. Even if say you went with 15% base.
A skill that: Per pt removed 1% of the export tariff, (or 0.5% of Tariff's) At 5pts you gained 'Contacts" in the base that allowed you to dock/trade at all reputation levels. at 10pts a % discount to purchased goods.

Though that sounds a little too good. Personally i think trading should cover atleast 3 skills.

Ideas for possible things to put on skills

%boost to cargo holds
Some kind of expanded cargo hold hull mod
%reduction it tariffs
%reduction in price
Removal of faction rep locking you out from docking
Bribery option for faction rep
% modifier for all reputation changes.
Ability to add shielded hull mod.
Bribery for hold scanning

[Flare]

You could always sell it on the black market if you're adamant about avoiding the tariffs.

[Kipcha]

You could always sell it on the black market if you're adamant about avoiding the tariffs.

and take huge notoriety / reputation hits after a few trades, and eventually being unable to dock.

Despite trade looking nice on the surface, the frigate deathball still seems to roll around with impunity. That said though the nerf to the lasher so you cant mount a 360* shield on it is a real pain, the AI is suffering trying to use it now.

[Toxcity]

Trading on the black market doesn't give you a giant reputation hit. The most I got from doing it was up to -4 rep, which you can easily gain back by trading on the open market. You can also avoid it entirely by trading some stuff on the open market while you trade stuff on the black market.

[Villanelo]

You could always sell it on the black market if you're adamant about avoiding the tariffs.

I could, yes, but that was not the point of my post. I wasn't looking for ways to make more money. If anything, I was looking for ways to make LESS money, or, to be precise, to make money in a sensible/honorable way.
Anyway, I already "fixed" the problem, and adjusted my game more to my likings. That is all the OP was about, in case someone shared my opinion.
The game truly feels like a different game, with a different goal, when you lower the tariffs to a sensible point.

[Flare]

You could always sell it on the black market if you're adamant about avoiding the tariffs.

and take huge notoriety / reputation hits after a few trades, and eventually being unable to dock.

Well yes, but this is only if nothing is done to counteract the reputation hit. For the most part, I think the tariffs are just a reflection of each planet trying to protect their local industries against vulturistic middlemen as well as competitive logistics industry in place that put the squeeze on the prices. For the most part, it's a lot like real life, if the delivery of goods is an immensely easy thing to the price differential between the factories and the "offshore" wholesale buyers wouldn't be that different.

I think the compounded tariffs are so hurtful because there aren't many ways to get around them as in real life. There's no special zoning the player can take advantage of in order to avoid or at least minimize the tariffs at he expense of time. Nor do the tariffs differentiate between different sorts of goods. And there's no differentiation of tariffs between places. It might be cheaper in terms of tariffs even though you're compounding another tariff into the mix to bring in a type of goods into the US, and then ship it across Canada rather than shipping the goods to Canada straight from country X because of the trade deals the US has with Canada and X.

You could always sell it on the black market if you're adamant about avoiding the tariffs.

I could, yes, but that was not the point of my post. I wasn't looking for ways to make more money. If anything, I was looking for ways to make LESS money, or, to be precise, to make money in a sensible/honorable way.
Anyway, I already "fixed" the problem, and adjusted my game more to my likings. That is all the OP was about, in case someone shared my opinion.
The game truly feels like a different game, with a different goal, when you lower the tariffs to a sensible point.

Ah I misunderstood you. As far as I'm concerned middlemen like the traditional trampy cargo barge owner who does his own wholesale and shipping can't really do anything without hurting people unless he's doing very specific humanitarian work. Even in cases where there's a famine, sometimes whenever the UN donates food to an area hit by starvation local farmers in the periphery do get affected as their prices plummet. Likewise, even for mundane shipping, they are the haulers of globalism's negative impact - that of ruining local industries because they just aren't competitive enough. In the rough and tumble world of free market capitalism, there will always be victims, it just depends on whether you think they deserve it or not.

[TJJ]

Trading on the black market doesn't give you a giant reputation hit. The most I got from doing it was up to -4 rep, which you can easily gain back by trading on the open market. You can also avoid it entirely by trading some stuff on the open market while you trade stuff on the black market.

I'm pretty sure it's based on the value of the sale in proportion to the size of the market.

Case in point, when I sold several thousand food to Asharu's black market my opinion with the independents dropped by over 100 points.

Now I've got oodles of money the black market might as well not exist.

[Kipcha]

Trading on the black market doesn't give you a giant reputation hit. The most I got from doing it was up to -4 rep, which you can easily gain back by trading on the open market. You can also avoid it entirely by trading some stuff on the open market while you trade stuff on the black market.

But how many times did you get that -4 rep?
As for "trading some stuff on the open market" again youre encountering the tariff.
I would like to know what a good ratio of black market to open market trade is in order to see if its actually economically viable.

Well yes, but this is only if nothing is done to counteract the reputation hit. For the most part, I think the tariffs are just a reflection of each planet trying to protect their local industries against vulturistic middlemen as well as competitive logistics industry in place that put the squeeze on the prices

Indeed but the question comes down to "is it viable" i dont know what ratio you would need.

Lets take some data i allready have then.
Buy: 200 units of Supplies. 20 Credits a unit. 100 via Open market(@26/unit), 100 via black market(@20/unit).

Total price: 4600.
Two Cerberus Frigates from Corvus to Magec: 880 Credits. (Supplies and fuel)

Sell 200 Units of Supplies, 50 Credits a unit. 100 via Open market(@35/Unit), 100 via black market(@50/Unit)
Total Price: 8500

Minus shipping cost; 7620.
Not bad right?
Its actually just right when your average bounty against 4 ships would payout 5100-9000 depending on the bounty value and salvage value.

However, not all is right in mathland here.
Often these things change price as you buy them. Selling goes down by 1 credit per unit(for some weird and *** up reason) on both markets.

Lets look at that again then.
Selling supplies at:
35/unit: you get 9 units sold (35, 34, 33, 32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27) till you hit 0 profit margin resulting in 45 credits.
50/unit: you get 30 units sold (50, 49, 48, 47.... ect ect) till you hit 0 margin resulting in 465 credits.
Our total sold here would make us 510 Credits.

Minus our shipping cost..
Net Profit -370
Being generous we could fit all 39 units onto a single Cerberus bringing our shipping cost down to 440.

Net Profit: 70 Credits....

[Histidine]

However, not all is right in mathland here.
Often these things change price as you buy them. Selling goes down by 1 credit per unit(for some weird and *** up reason) on both markets.

I just exited a game where I sold ~100 units at once at the listed per-unit price or close to it several times. Obviously it's not going to work if you flood a 10^2 population station with hundreds of items at once.
The tooltips on price icons in the Intel map gives the demand, though I haven't tested to see whether the value accurately reflects how much you can sell before the margin drops.

[Sethfcm]

Yeah, I'm thinking it's fine as it is without skills, because someone without any training/knowledge of trading would likely get this screwed over, but we need skills to reduce tarifs, increase/decrease good prices, and as you mentioned allow us to make cargo hold mods etc. Like 3 skills for trading, maybe 2 political skills as well to make a full 'political' or something akin to it skill tree, Then we need 5 industrial skills for various things related to owning, and operating bases (one military one, maybe 2, 1-2 for production n such, and 1 for actual construction maintenance etc.) then I feel the game will be very well rounded in terms of skills, and also have a handy method of balance.

As it is you're pretty much stock standard newbie without skills, and therefore anything you try to do without skills in it is quite hard/rough, and I enjoy that it's balanced, fair, and immersive (in my opinion), but we need skills to fix the trading system.

So yeah I'll be awaiting either a modder or a patch to fix trading before I do it anymore after realizing I had to be a smuggler to make anything (outside of events).

[Kipcha]

The tooltips on price icons in the Intel map gives the demand, though I haven't tested to see whether the value accurately reflects how much you can sell before the margin drops.

and thats where i need more data atm.

After selling 1 item and seeing the price drop by a credit for each unit to a station that had "75% not met" i eventually gave up roaming the stars looking for some kind of sense. i do have a huge google docs sheet from it though. Farming alerts is the best way to earn money.

Also the fact that the Intel map doesnt update with prices you have just been looking at not 3 seconds again is painful.

skill tree,
So yeah I'll be awaiting either a modder or a patch to fix trading before I do it anymore after realizing I had to be a smuggler to make anything (outside of events).

Skill tree: industrial maybe, i was thinking Green skill tree for "logistical" as the green tree also includes using larger fleets which works well with the whole "build a trading fleet" idea.

As for modding/patching, check OP apparently setting tariff to 12% (which is amusingly close to the import tax where i live) is much more manageable.

[Alex]

Just wanted to say hi, and welcome to the forum!


To respond to what I think the general sentiment is in this thread: yes, having to wait around for events is a problem. Where I think the game is lacking right now is in giving you enough control/options over precipitating events/creating the conditions for a favorable trading run. Ideally - as far as what I'm going for, anyway - the time between trading runs would be spent trying to set them up/find out about new ones. Right now, the game doesn't provide you with adequate tools to do that, but it's something I'll look at in the future.

For now, I'd suggest doing a more hybrid approach, doing some bounties to keep you busy. A pure trading fleet is going to be a bit problematic.

[Kipcha]

For now, I'd suggest doing a more hybrid approach, doing some bounties to keep you busy. A pure trading fleet is going to be a bit problematic.

At that point why bother going hybrid at all? unless you just mean "do events, then kill pirates while you wait for the next event" because otherwise its just plain more profitable to go doing bounties, its more profitable to kill pirates without bounties than it is to trade without alerts.

[skeolan]

... So I started looking at the files, and when I found a way to change the tariffs, I changed them, to 12% (I started with 10, but that seemed to "cheap". Even 12 could go a little higher)

What do I have now? A game where you have to pay A LOT of attention to where to buy, where to sell, and how much it costs you to move things. Now I am much more involved with the game. I even have charts written by me in a paper while I play. Now I FEEL like a trader...

I understand that the system was created this way for specific reasons, and I am in no way saying that my way is better than the official way. But I thought I could share my opinion, in case someone felt the same way I did.

This lines up with my feelings as well; but, I'm stumped on how to reproduce your edit, Villanelo: I edited starsector-core\data\campaign\econ\economy.json to change "defaultTariff":0.3, into "defaultTariff":0.12,, but all the tariffs in-game are still 30%! I closed the game, made the edit, reopened and started a brand-new game from scratch to get it to regenerate the economy and such; made no difference.

I ran a findstr for all instances of the term "tariff" under starsector-core\ but can't find anywhere else that isn't commented out. Evidently this JSON entry isn't what I'm looking for; What am I missing here? Is the tariff value overridden by some constant in the Java I need to go find?

 I realize i'm asking for help putting the game's trade mechanics into "easy mode" here, but if Villanelo's testimony is any indication it's probably gonna be a little more in line with the play experience I'd prefer, at least at first. Can y'all give me a pointer or two on what I'm missing to make this edit stick?

(This didn't exactly feel like a "Modding" or "Bugs" question, so I hope it's not inappropriate to post as a reply on this thread. Apologies if I made a bad call there.)