I got bored yesterday and decided to throw a mod together. There's not much to show yet, but I'd like to officially introduce:
LazyWizard's Economy Mod
(note: this wall of text is temporary. I'll replace it with something more coherent as the mod progresses)So what will this mod actually do?Exactly what it says: add an in-game economy. It will also optionally add an endgame to Starfarer; more on that in a bit.
The current plan (subject to change as I explore what is possible with the API) is to give each faction a limited amount of funds to buy ships, weapons, and supplies with. Funds will be spent buying trading fleets, and lost when those fleets are destroyed. Trading fleets will get greater inventories as their available funds increase. This gives players a choice: you can protect these fleets so the station will be stocked with more goods and ships (and future fleets will carry higher-tech stuff). Or you can destroy them to damage a faction's economy and weaken their future fleets. Factions who are taking massive damage to their economy will start spawning fewer, larger fleets - this is so a low-level player can't take a faction out singlehandedly - as well as fast-but-powerful fleets to hunt down attackers (two Odysseys with Augmented Engines and a dozen fighter wings? Hell yes!). If a player manages to continue their piracy despite this, they can leave the faction unable to afford replacement ships, and thus effectively defeated - hence, an endgame.
I plan on releasing two versions of this mod. One will be as described above. The other will provide a constant flow of resources from out-of-sector to poor factions (representing support from back home), preventing permanent annihilation for those who don't want their game to end.
Why are you making this? You do know Alex is going to add a real economy to the game later, right?Yes, I do know that. I fully expect this mod to be completely overshadowed and abandoned once the real thing materializes. This whole mod is actually an excuse: an excuse to learn the Starfarer API, an excuse to re-learn Java after letting my skills rot in favor of C#, an excuse to code something interesting. Usually when I make something like this I keep it to myself, but I've read that others want a more dynamic Corvus and I figured I could help.
And if I run into some missing API functions and nudge Alex about them, well, it's all for the benefit of the rest of the modding community, right? (sorry in advance, Alex!
)
Will this be compatible with other mods?With the way I have it set up now, only with extremely simple mods like ship tweaks. Corvus.java is extensively modified, and I plan on completely revamping the spawn points as well. Eventually I'll have to rewrite almost all of the faction data unless I can get direct fleet building to work
(other modders: is there an API hook to add/remove ships from a fleet directly?).
However, if after I release this any enterprising modder wants to add my systems to their existing mod, feel free! Just remember it will eventually be obsoleted.
So what do you have so far?Mostly a headache
. Like I said, it's been a long time since I touched Java, and that was Java 1.6. Janino is 1.4 with a few 1.5 features bolted on. Half my time is spent being frustrated at what I can't remember anymore, or at features Java lacks that C# has; the other half is being #!% that what I do remember isn't implemented in Janino. Progress should speed up as I re-acclimatize myself.
However, I do have a
very basic economy server up and running. At the moment it's less than 300 lines of code, but the basics are there: it stores the necessary information on a faction's economy, can register new factions and look up existing ones, add/subtract funds, and prints out a nice financial report every in-game week. Right now it's running dummy data (it isn't hooked into Corvus yet beyond creating the economy server and filling it with faction data), but my next task is to start getting hooks into events going on in the sector (mainly tracking the status of trade fleets for now). The current short-term goal is to have trade fleets earn money for their faction upon delivery. Next I want them to base their cargo on how much that faction can afford. I'm taking this one step at a time.
When will you release a working version?I honestly don't know. Probably not soon. I've been able to make cheap hacks to get around current limitations in the API. It's entirely possible that I'll run into a brick wall where the API hooks for something I absolutely
need don't exist yet, and I'll have to wait for the next release.
If I do release soon, it won't be even slightly balanced, playable, or fun. I'm mostly concerned with getting the basic systems in place, not making sure all the math works out. That part requires extensive testing, and that's what you all are for.
If it won't be released for a while, why bother putting up a post now?Simple. I needed
a break feedback. Comments, ideas,
awed praise, that sort of thing. And if another modder spots something in my description that will give me a headache implementing, it'd be nice to know now so I can redesign.
And finally, for anyone who cares (and somehow made it through that massive wall of text):
Who the heck are you? What experience do you have?I'm just some guy, nobody special. You'll probably see me around the forums sometime. I don't post often, but when I do, I make them way longer and more technical than I need to. (Case in point!
)
As for my experience, I'm a hobbyist game developer. I've also made game mods for my own personal use for over a decade. As for real experience, I was a programmer on a MUD (proto-MMO) for six years. Not much else to tell.
Wait, you make us read that massive novel and don't even give us a screenshot?What, really? It's an economy mod, it has the most boring screenshots in...
You know what? Fine.
Whiner. 
