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: About tariffs, and what they translate into.  (Read 17447 times)

Flare

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 906
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #15 on: October 25, 2014, 10:29:25 PM »

Quote
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.

Why did you not calculate the black market rates? It is the point of the quote you're addressing.

Quote
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....

I'm not quite sure that actually happens in the game yet. According to this post: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8359.0

It most certainly doesn't. Price adjustments as far as I know are not instantaneous like it is in some other games. The game requires time for the market to account for how much the traders have brought in over a set period of time. I think Alex pointed out in that thread it won't be as safe to dump all that food on the world in one big transaction, but it mostly seems to be limited to food shortages.

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.

Yes it is sometimes more profitable to do bounties, although these too sometimes dry up, but I think the main difference is that there's no real danger to doing trade runs nor is there a test of player skill. In your traditional trading archtype system, it's usually little better than a cookie clicker in terms of actual gameplay.
Logged
Quote from: Thana
Quote from: Alex

The battle station is not completely operational, shall we say.

"Now witness the firepower of this thoroughly buggy and unoperational batt... Oh, hell, you know what? Just ignore the battle station, okay?"

Debido

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1183
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #16 on: October 26, 2014, 01:28:50 AM »

Curiously, the construction of markets can be quite easily procedural. 30%? With a procedural system,  that Alex is moving towards and also the fact that tarrifs are a mutable stat, I wouldn't be surprised to see variable market tarrifs across the different star systems, and to vary based upon faction relationship.
Logged

Kipcha

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • CORE
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #17 on: October 26, 2014, 01:34:47 AM »

Why did you not calculate the black market rates? It is the point of the quote you're addressing.
Except i did, at a 50/50 rate in order to avoid the negative rep. Because someone theorized that splitting the trade in order to offset the black-market reputation hit. however i wasnt sure what the actual ratio you needed was so i went with 50/50.

But to humor you here we go. Supplies as always because i have that data on hand.
1x Cerberus
Buy Supplies at 20/Unit.
Sell 30 supplies at (50,49,48...ect) resulting in 465 Credits.

Include cost of a single cerberus from Corvus to Magec at 440 Credits.

Thats a grand total of 25 credits profit.
compare that to my calculations on page 1 of doing a 50/50 split you actually make 180% additional profit (to 70 creds), in fact looking into this 50/50 is the most efficient split.

Quote
I'm not quite sure that actually happens in the game yet. According to this post: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8359.0

It most certainly doesn't. Price adjustments as far as I know are not instantaneous like it is in some other games. The game requires time for the market to account for how much the traders have brought in over a set period of time. I think Alex pointed out in that thread it won't be as safe to dump all that food on the world in one big transaction, but it mostly seems to be limited to food shortages.
Price changes are instantaneous for non alert goods as far as i know. I havent looked at alert goods yet.
If you go to a station to sell 1 item at 114 credits. and you shift click to stack two together the total price is not 228 but in fact 227.


Quote
Yes it is sometimes more profitable to do bounties, although these too sometimes dry up, but I think the main difference is that there's no real danger to doing trade runs nor is there a test of player skill. In your traditional trading archtype system, it's usually little better than a cookie clicker in terms of actual gameplay.
please read what i said again
In terms of most to least profitable;
Alert Trading.
Alert Combat
Non-Alert Combat
Non-Alert Trading.

Even if Combat Alerts dry up. Non-Alert combat is still vastly more profitable than non-alert trading.
The ONLY time it is not more profitable to do bounties is when you have a food shortage aka "Alert Trading"

Curiously, the construction of markets can be quite easily procedural. 30%? With a procedural system,  that Alex is moving towards and also the fact that tarrifs are a mutable stat, I wouldn't be surprised to see variable market tarrifs across the different star systems, and to vary based upon faction relationship.
Being able to change the tariff with reputation or a skill would be very nice and would possibly make trading more useful. That said if the current system is totally procedural in a few in-game years (so long as the AI is charged tariff and doesnt have infinite money)the economy would actually balance out and allow player trade to actually work.

As it stands now there is just no room for trading, either the production/consumption rates are too low, or the AI is too omnipotent.
Logged

ciago92

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 577
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #18 on: October 26, 2014, 06:29:02 AM »

maybe I'm just being stupid, but why are you trying to make a profit off of supplies? They're the general catchall usage item, I can't imagine that was the intended trade good for profit. Try running trade routes where you take food from production sites to consumption sites, or metal from mining facilities to shipyards kind of thing would be my suggestion. Those would make more sense as far as making a profit. Supplies I would imagine as being fairly consistent in price (not completely, but on average) since they're a catchall term for stuff to keep your ship running. I have trouble believing that they're an intended trade route good. Make money off commodities not supplies
Logged

SafariJohn

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3010
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #19 on: October 26, 2014, 08:24:41 AM »

Watch trade disruptions. You'll see prices for supplies shoot way up. Enough to make a profit.

Edit: I'm only replying to ciago, not the OP.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2014, 10:59:24 AM by HartLord »
Logged

Darloth

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 592
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #20 on: October 26, 2014, 10:54:31 AM »

The point being made is that the original poster wants it to be -possible- to make a profit without events or reputation hits, and has used supplies as a convenient example of the maths as to why it isn't.
Logged

Aereto

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 278
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #21 on: October 26, 2014, 11:01:20 AM »

The point being made is that the original poster wants it to be -possible- to make a profit without events or reputation hits, and has used supplies as a convenient example of the maths as to why it isn't.
Getting the point across as regular merchant, I suppose. Still, trade disruption is considered an event, right? Or probably the usual economy when there's pirates making the area in need blockaded.
Logged

Kipcha

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 26
  • CORE
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #22 on: October 26, 2014, 12:06:31 PM »

supplies?

I Just used it since i had data on hand as i was watching them for the past few in-game weeks out of curiosity.

The point being made is that the original poster wants it to be -possible- to make a profit without events or reputation hits, and has used supplies as a convenient example of the maths as to why it isn't.

This was much of my point here.
Non-Alert combat is still profitable, while Non-Alert Trading is currently almost impossible to turn a profit. (Working as intended according to Alex)

Getting the point across as regular merchant, I suppose. Still, trade disruption is considered an event, right? Or probably the usual economy when there's pirates making the area in need blockaded.

Yes, Trade disruption is an event if you are talking about the icon on the UI that raises prices by a considerable margin.
Logged

Villanelo

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #23 on: October 26, 2014, 12:43:02 PM »


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.)


Sorry for not replying faster. Weekends is usually the time when I am most bussy at work.

Yeah, I tried changing those values too, and that doesn't work at all. Funny thing is, the rest of the values in those files, you can change (changing the size of a market, what they produce, what they need... you can change all of that) but the only number that does not respond to any change is the tariffs.

What I did was I started a new game, and then I modified the save game file. If you look for "default tariff", you will see a line of code (lots of them, really. I believe there is one per market, so you could have different taxes in different markets, although this is only speculation on my part) with a value of 0.3. I just replaced every single line that said that to the number that I wanted, using the "search and replace" function of word.
The bad part is that you will need to do the changes again in every single new game that you start, but hey, I don't mind that.
I must admit that it took me an embarrasing long time to be able to change that particular value. :p
Logged

skeolan

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 3
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #24 on: October 26, 2014, 01:38:00 PM »

What I did was I started a new game, and then I modified the save game file. If you look for "default tariff", you will see a line of code (lots of them, really. I believe there is one per market, so you could have different taxes in different markets, although this is only speculation on my part) with a value of 0.3. I just replaced every single line that said that to the number that I wanted, using the "search and replace" function of word.
The bad part is that you will need to do the changes again in every single new game that you start, but hey, I don't mind that.
I must admit that it took me an embarrasing long time to be able to change that particular value. :p

Thanks for the pointer! I'll give that a whirl.
Logged

Villanelo

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #25 on: October 26, 2014, 02:44:07 PM »

Thanks for the pointer! I'll give that a whirl.

I hope you like the new balance. Best thing is, you can change it according to your own likings. ^_^

Also... I would avoid using the events right now. With reduced tariffs, and the absurd benefit rates of the events, using them would just make you rich stupidly fast, and that would ruin the point of the whole experiment, right?.
(This last part is more for people willing to try the change instead of just focused on you. You can, of course, play however you preffer :p )
Logged

Flare

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 906
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #26 on: October 26, 2014, 08:30:19 PM »

Quote
I'm not quite sure that actually happens in the game yet. According to this post: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=8359.0

It most certainly doesn't. Price adjustments as far as I know are not instantaneous like it is in some other games. The game requires time for the market to account for how much the traders have brought in over a set period of time. I think Alex pointed out in that thread it won't be as safe to dump all that food on the world in one big transaction, but it mostly seems to be limited to food shortages.
Price changes are instantaneous for non alert goods as far as i know. I haven't looked at alert goods yet.
If you go to a station to sell 1 item at 114 credits. and you shift click to stack two together the total price is not 228 but in fact 227.

You are right, prices do reflect demand right away. The thing that made it seem like it wasn't was that you need to buy a whole heck of a lot to seem to make the price fluctuate. I'm sitting here playing with organics and the price only seems to raise by one when you buy above 200 units of it, it mostly seems to be quite trivial unless you're buying and selling in the thousands.

Again on supplies, I had to buy over 400 units of it for it to move the price index up by one credit per unit. I did this right at the start of the game (have not confirmed that the star is always the same). Were you buying at a place where there was a demand for supplies that wasn't being met?

For profits as low as that, it seems to be a matter of transportation costs and volume. For low earning goods it seems like you need an atlas to be non-trivially profitable. The only upside to this seems to be the consistency of such routes because you are no longer bound by the dependence of having to do the rush jobs. and kinda gives the game a little bit of end game insurance.

Quote
Quote
Yes it is sometimes more profitable to do bounties, although these too sometimes dry up, but I think the main difference is that there's no real danger to doing trade runs nor is there a test of player skill. In your traditional trading archtype system, it's usually little better than a cookie clicker in terms of actual gameplay.
please read what i said again
In terms of most to least profitable;
Alert Trading.
Alert Combat
Non-Alert Combat
Non-Alert Trading.

Even if Combat Alerts dry up. Non-Alert combat is still vastly more profitable than non-alert trading.
The ONLY time it is not more profitable to do bounties is when you have a food shortage aka "Alert Trading"

I reread your post, and I think I understand your point well enough. I'm just saying that looking at profitability alone shouldn't be the only picture when deciding when an alternative route is competitive or not. You said that bounty-less killing of pirates is more profitable than non-event trading and thus why even bother with trading at all, but I think this argument neglects the other factors when considering whether an action in a game is plain better than another one, especially when comparing two actions where the risk involved as well as the skill required to mitigate this risk is very far apart.

Things like risk and the amount of skill required to accomplish the alternative route like bounty hunting should be taken into considerations as well. Otherwise a highly dangerous mission against an elite full fleet is going to look equal to a lucrative trading run in terms of player rationality when it obviously shouldn't. Making a mistake while fighting pirates is going to cost the player far more than what is netted by a victory, there's barely any scraps left to recover most of the time.

Quote
Curiously, the construction of markets can be quite easily procedural. 30%? With a procedural system,  that Alex is moving towards and also the fact that tarrifs are a mutable stat, I wouldn't be surprised to see variable market tarrifs across the different star systems, and to vary based upon faction relationship.
Being able to change the tariff with reputation or a skill would be very nice and would possibly make trading more useful. That said if the current system is totally procedural in a few in-game years (so long as the AI is charged tariff and doesnt have infinite money)the economy would actually balance out and allow player trade to actually work.

As it stands now there is just no room for trading, either the production/consumption rates are too low, or the AI is too omnipotent.

I personally think that if you're going to put in tariffs and customs into the game, it might be worth considering putting other stuff that compliments it. Certain planets might have a trade agreement with each other, and if you take goods from each of these two planets no tariffs, or at least far lower tariffs, would be charged. Another example could be

Logged
Quote from: Thana
Quote from: Alex

The battle station is not completely operational, shall we say.

"Now witness the firepower of this thoroughly buggy and unoperational batt... Oh, hell, you know what? Just ignore the battle station, okay?"

Draba

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 732
    • View Profile
Re: About tariffs, and what they translate into.
« Reply #27 on: October 27, 2014, 07:09:56 AM »

We had a 4 day weekend due to a national holiday so I finally had some time to play Starfarer.
This thread roughly sums up my opinion about trading: it would be nice to be able to make a profit without events.

I actually did enjoy trading starts in X games(excluding Rebirth ofc :)).
Hauling around some energy cells/basic foodstuff had a nice pace to it.
I'll certainly try reducing tariffs to something sensible and avoiding events.

On the grinding aspect:
Bounties and events are by far the most profitable things in the game,
if you are looking for quick/easy money there's no point in normal trade. Imo players would
never feel to be forced into it. I think it'd actually add a bit of variety (and a nice roleplay aspect), with nothing else to do
I actually got bored of killing pirate fleets. 1 brawler and a few wolves roll over any current bounty target,
maybe it's time to attack one of the main factions for some actual blastage :)
Logged
Pages: 1 [2]