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« on: June 03, 2023, 01:43:03 AM »
Right now, Starsector trading is easiest and most reliable way to make money. From experience, I am able to make millions per month within the 1st cycle of my game. I want Alex to make trading a challenge, but neither a chore or a money printer.
The first question is how do you make millions within the first cycle. The answer is fairly straightforward. Check high demand and supply and buy and sell to make a profit. The nuance is that tariffs cut into those profits. That's fine. Just black market trade in plain sight. The penalties to faction relations are negligible and easily recoverable. This is the only downside of trading. The annoyance of trading is not having enough goods and enough customers to sell. It's easy to outgrow the market with a massive fleet that can buy multiple worlds' worth of goods in one trip.
The second question is why is it so easy? The reasoning is multifaceted. The distance between core worlds are small so fuel costs are low. The maintenance and crew costs for ships are negligible. You can avoid most hostile forces by trading. Easy access industrial skills and cargo hull mods allow for substantial increases in revenue and profitability.
So what would be some adjustments to these issues?
First, remove the storage industrial skill. I think this skill makes trading easier with no thought behind it. Furthermore, it's unrealistic. You bought a ship that can hold 10,000 liters of fuel. It doesn't magically gain an additional 5,000 square liters of fuel storage. At least with built-in hull mods you are physically changing the ship. This makes trading less efficient and the player has to care more about logistics ships.
Second, high trading volumes should attract pirates. This happens in some trading missions. I don't see why pirates don't attack players in general for their trading volume. Pirates should be threatening players for their loot. The more valuable the commercial loot on the player has, the more powerful pirates should be to intercept player fleets. This forces the player to invest in combat ships, officers, and training for skills to defend their goods.
Third, planets and stations should embargo players for a month if they are caught carrying a substantial amount of illegal goods or have extreme levels of suspicion. This means the player can no longer buy or sell ships and goods. However, they can still access the bar. This embargo allows for new character interactions. For example, what if you can bribe officials to let you bypass the embargo?
Fourth, add more competitive merchants fleets to potential reduce shortages and surpluses. It's a cutthroat economy. There should be a constant flow of traffic to plug in shortages and surpluses. Every time there is a shortage, multiple fleets from multiple worlds with shortages, let's say three fleets, should attempt to be launched to solve the shortage. This does not mean each fleet is able to resolve a shortage on their own. Let's say a main trading fleet comes by to resolve the shortage but it will take weeks before it is launched. A lot of smaller merchant fleet could spawn and come by to fill the gaps bit by bit for the early premium of selling these high demand goods.
Fifth, add sector wide events that can lead to shortages and surpluses. The lore of the economy in Starsector is chaotic and fragile, and it should be. We have a bunch of specialized planets in a protectionist economy. This leads to incredible amounts of inefficiencies. For instance, Starsector could have boom and bust cycles for certain industries. This could cause tariffs to dramatically increase, certain black markets to be shut down, and significantly tighter security. In boom times, tariffs could be a lot lower and suspicion of black market goods could be negligible. Players should be incentivized to understand and take advantage of sector politics. An opportune moment could make players go from exploration and colony building to repurposing their entire fleet for trading.
Sixth, add privateers. Factions that don't like players trading with their enemies should do something about it. Factions could employ privateers that target players that had substantial trading with their enemies. They could demand a hefty fine, destroy or take their goods, or even the destruction or transfer of a trade ship.
I think with just some of these changes, trade will feel like a challenge that's dynamic and threatening enough that it forces players to incorporate other facets of the game to survive in the cutthroat trading economy of the game.
