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Author Topic: after a few days of not sleep... i mean playing the game. my suggestions.  (Read 3334 times)

arwan

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so i have been pondering how we could make Starsector great again tm (its always been great BTW) and have come up with a few ideas that may in my humble opinion. be worth putting here.

1. economy and its taxes.

 obviously having a 30% tax on both purchasing and an additional 30% tax on selling is far in the extreme if your going to be trying to make any kind of profit. instead of using a high tax and stability to affect prices solely, we could probably use a 3rd system. (i know you don't like complexity for complexity sake but i truly think it would help here.) a fluctuating supply and demand system. in order of importance for determining price, this system should be the largest contributor, followed by planet or station stability, and then tax. so, obviously high demand, gets higher prices, while over supply, gets lower prices, and depending on the commodity, this could vary a lot. in my opinion the system should be somewhat randomized so that every month is not the same as the month before. so trade routes are not so obvious go here sell XXX make bank once a month. in addition again in my opinion, the planet or station stability should affect the prices by changing how much the prices can vary. so for example a planet with 9 stability may have a variance of only a few credits between a high and low price, but a planet with 1 stability would have a much larger variance between the high and low prices. additionally tax could be affected by the stability of a station or planet, as a local government has to allocate more or less resources to police a market to prevent illegal deals. taxes could also be affected by things like your standing with said government. poor standings incur higher "import taxes" that could vary in range from station to station (local government to local government, state to state, etc.) also taxes could be affected by the wars that a government is fighting. so a lot of hard war going on, higher taxes in their systems. easy war going on. not so much. in recap taxes could be affected by station or planet stability, standing with the local government (station senior staff) and a factions overall standing with you and the wars it is in. taxes should probably stay relatively low in most cases as to allow for an easier (though not necessarily easy per se) chance at making a profit once supplies and fuel costs are factored in.

additionally to make trading profitable have possibly an economy tab (like bounties) in the Intel screen. where you can find local contracts to move goods from point a to point b for a certain amount of credits, just like bounties work. instead of costing money to purchase the items. and getting money selling the items. you would show up, talk to a person in the station or on the planet, who once you arrive loads up the cargo, in sealed containers. for you to deliver where upon delivery you get paid. possibly add an option to get UP TO half the profits up front for things like fuel and supplies to make the trip. with a stipulation that late arrival or no arrival of goods will incur a lien on your future purchase and sales. in markets.

if at some point the player in game development (say with outposts) the player gains the ability to produce their own goods. possibly make an option to make money through trade by approaching business people on planets and stations and make contracts to sell to them the player made goods. (more if the player moves the product themselves, less if an AI picks up the goods though as with the player if the AI bites the dust the player is going to have to foot the bill for replacement of sold goods)

also how ships are acquired via black market and the black market in general. additionally when it comes to markets. i was thinking about the ship markets. and how easy or dreadfully hard it is to acquire that ship you have been searching for, for literal in game years. currently you have up to 3 different markets to find and purchase ships on.

 the open market, Again in my humble opinion it seems that the open market should largely be filled with both civilian craft, but also a fair number of D mod military hulls, primarily the ships that, that faction flies, and the ships from the factions that it is at war with in their area. these being ships the government is trying to sell off to help pay for their wars. and supply the independent citizens that may have taken a commission to help the faction. (so possibly require certain levels of faction rep to purchase larger military hulls. and possibly even more rep if said hulls have no D mods. or largely restrict non D hull variants to the military market.) as a way around getting certain ships if you dont want to take a commission with that faction. though obviously taking the commissions for a faction should still make it substantially easier and possibly cheaper to get the more rare hulls. additionally on the open market seeing more ships with military refits if you are in a system with a lot of fighting going on i think would be reasonable.

on the military market, i would love to be able to "window shop" even if i have poor standing or neutral standing with a faction, if only as a way for that faction to try and persuade you to improve your standing and take their commission, seeing cheaper prices for their ships may also help with this.  also seeing more variety would be helpful when trying to find those oh so rare ships that you spend years looking for.

on the black market, prices for ships should be both cheaper and more expensive (as to be quite prohibitively so) depending on what your looking to buy.) looking for a old beaten civilian freighter that the seller just does not want to pay taxes on to the government, that should be one cheap ship. but if your looking for that rare military ship that you just can not get otherwise, (probably due to very poor standing with whatever faction) then those military ships should be very expensive, and very excessively expensive for pristine hull examples. though again in a war torn system. this type of ship should not necessarily be rare. unless of course the hull is rare by virtue that their are not a lot of them around anyway. just that the party selling such a ship is taking excessive risk both to "salvage" the ship and then present it on a market for sale. the same kind of system should or could be put into the trade markets black market.


2. bounties.

bounties could use some love in my opinion. currently they are really simple quests. instead i feel they could use some livening up. such as, not all targets of a bounty should be of the pirate faction. instead some targets should be foreign government reps. and higher ups in corporations (think CEO of a company) who had a bounty put on them by a competitor. now if one just checks the intel screen like they can now. they should not get any additional information than what it already gives you. in which case if one does not do any homework before going out to kill a target. you may find that when you get there you really dont want to kill that person as it could easily make you an enemy of the state for someone you dont want to. or possibly (if say your killing a CEO for a company that makes fuel in hegemony space) increase the price of a good sold in a particular factions area of influence for a long while if your looking to buy, and make it very cheep to sell. and if you take out a foreign diplomat for example (without a faction commission for an opposing faction) you would take a small rep hit with that faction. (since you didn't represent a larger threat. but could conceivably argue that it was just a "job")

instead of just instantly going out and killing the target, one could land at a local station or planet and attempt to get further information on the target from the local government, the quality of the information that you get could depend on who you are asking. so a person in tri tech space may not know a lot about a target that a person in hegemony space made a contract on besides some basics, but those basics may be incorrect. while if you are asking within the same space as where the contract was made you should get a lot of reliable information on the target. and then possibly. if you are talking to the person who made the contract. you may be able to haggle for a better price.

3. faction commissions.

to me when i see "faction commission" i see a contract, one that should come with a term length. and with more perks than just go kill targets and get paid a pittance. in my opinion a faction commission should only last one-two in game years or cycles. as they are i believe just like the commissions that make a militia, or a irregular army as opposed to a professional army (Air force, Navy, Marines, Army, Coast guard.) as such to sweeten the pot to get people to take the commission a faction could put offer to give the player further deals (that might change over time) such as very cheap fuel or a monthly supply of fuel for free. xxx credit per month/week. cheap supplies or a free supply of supplies per month. possible selection of weapons, likely rare and or expensive. a ship (such as a frigate or destroyer, and if they really want you and like you a cruiser. and if you have a very large fleet already possibly a capital ship if you dont have one.) possibly the ability to fly around their space without your IFF on all the time. etc. etc.

i dont believe that taking a commission should instantly make you enemies with another faction. though it may hurt your standing with them a bit. i dont think it should just boom. 100 standing to -50 standing. instead your standing should take large hits if you decide to act upon your commission against said factions. i say this mostly because if your commission comes to an end. as i believe it should at some point. then you would not then be put into a situation where your all of a sudden at war with everyone and have no safe space to fly though. obviously taking out a bounty target against an opposing faction while having a commission with said opposing faction would have serious consequences. as you now pose a serious threat since you represent a military force) if it ever gets found out.

4. player outposts and their worth. (player production, possible to build ships, fighters, weapons, supplies, fuel, etc.) as i put in the brackets there, i dont know a lot of anything about what the game play features will be like with outposts. but it would be quite cool if i could possibly build more than one and then possibly specialize them into this or that. such as a ship dry dock, or the ability to produce fuel if it is on a planet that can support that. etc.

5. standing with factions. even if i go to -100 standing with a faction. over a long period of time that standing should in my opinion gravitate back towards neutral if you take no further actions against that faction. an exception being pirate factions. and the reverse should be true, over a long period of time even with a +100 standing. it should slowly return to a more neutral standing as your no longer working to help that faction. again i think this should take quite a long bit of time. but if down the line in the game you want to switch sides this could be one way to do that.

sorry for the excessively long post. but i had been pondering these ideas for a while and wanted to finally put them down here. even if they are met with a lot of negative responses.
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Alex
You won't be able to refit fighters and bombers at all. They're designed/balanced around having a particular set of weapons and would be very broken if you could change it. Which ones you pick for your fleet -out of quite a few that are available- is the choice here, not how they're outfitted.

Clockwork Owl

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Seconding with finite duration of commissions. you could renew it for progressively better terms or resign and become an indie again when it ends. Also with the faction standing part - if you were good terms with two opposing faction and signed in for one, chances are high officials in both faction will harrass you covertly for intel, arrangement of secret meeting or or whatever - not immediate accusation for treason and a bounty on your head.
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orost

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Quote
a fluctuating supply and demand system. in order of importance for determining price, this system should be the largest contributor, followed by planet or station stability, and then tax. so, obviously high demand, gets higher prices, while over supply, gets lower prices, and depending on the commodity, this could vary a lot.

The game already has a fully simulated supply-and-demand economy with commodity flow between markets driven by price differences and all that stuff. But the fact that you're not aware of that just shows how horribly underutilized and irrelevant that system is.

Quote
i dont believe that taking a commission should instantly make you enemies with another faction. though it may hurt your standing with them a bit. i dont think it should just boom. 100 standing to -50 standing. instead your standing should take large hits if you decide to act upon your commission against said factions. i say this mostly because if your commission comes to an end. as i believe it should at some point. then you would not then be put into a situation where your all of a sudden at war with everyone and have no safe space to fly though.

So generally all the factions aren't supposed to be at war with each other all the time. That's a bug in the current version. Normally your faction would be at war with 1-2 others at any given time, and only those would be hostile to you, and those wars would eventually end restoring your reputation to normal.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2017, 08:03:38 AM by orost »
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Hussar

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Quote
a fluctuating supply and demand system. in order of importance for determining price, this system should be the largest contributor, followed by planet or station stability, and then tax. so, obviously high demand, gets higher prices, while over supply, gets lower prices, and depending on the commodity, this could vary a lot.

The game already has a fully simulated supply-and-demand economy with commodity flow between markets driven by price differences and all that stuff. But the fact that you're not aware of that just shows how horribly underutilized and irrelevant that system is.

I would rather say "had"? The economy in 0.8 seems so much more bleak in comparison to 0.72. To the point it seems fake and not working at all. After all it doesn't make sense when you pick up info that some planet is starving, so their demand for food is huge - so you buy a lot and go there. In 0.72 and prior you were going to rack up a huge profit, sometimes to the point that faction would start an investigation about your smuggling activities. In 0.8? Well, price doesn't change! I literally had an occurence when I bought up all food on a planet I was at, fly over and sold the food... for less than I have bought it for. On a planet asking for a relief food convoys.

It doesn't make sense.

Further, people report (which I also confirm) that smuggling doesn't have any impact on markets either.

To me, economy is simply broken in 0.8.



@Commissions: I also second that. Though I'd wish we could enlist at some point perhaps.
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Megas

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Getting military ships from after-battle recovery has never been easier, but if you want to remove all of the damage, it costs a fortune for most ships.  Black Market should not cost so much that it is cheaper to restore ships (which are generally exorbitant to begin with).

And since it seems impossible for unskilled characters to recover ships without damage mods, I simply leave most of the ships damaged as they are and put common weapons on them.  Without Surveying, I do not have the easy money rolling in to afford everything I want all at once.
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orost

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a fluctuating supply and demand system. in order of importance for determining price, this system should be the largest contributor, followed by planet or station stability, and then tax. so, obviously high demand, gets higher prices, while over supply, gets lower prices, and depending on the commodity, this could vary a lot.

The game already has a fully simulated supply-and-demand economy with commodity flow between markets driven by price differences and all that stuff. But the fact that you're not aware of that just shows how horribly underutilized and irrelevant that system is.

I would rather say "had"? The economy in 0.8 seems so much more bleak in comparison to 0.72. To the point it seems fake and not working at all. After all it doesn't make sense when you pick up info that some planet is starving, so their demand for food is huge - so you buy a lot and go there. In 0.72 and prior you were going to rack up a huge profit, sometimes to the point that faction would start an investigation about your smuggling activities. In 0.8? Well, price doesn't change! I literally had an occurence when I bought up all food on a planet I was at, fly over and sold the food... for less than I have bought it for. On a planet asking for a relief food convoys.

It doesn't make sense.

Further, people report (which I also confirm) that smuggling doesn't have any impact on markets either.

To me, economy is simply broken in 0.8.


Food shortages are not as much broken as just very mild. If you look at the market graphs you can see that a "food shortage" event often means imports dropping by 10 or 15% and being just slightly lower than demand. Which is not exactly the profiteering-enabling disaster scenario we might imagine when we see the alert. And considering that markets that experience food shortages are usually poor and low-stability, and that food shortages reduce stability further, it's not surprising that there's no profit to be made.

I mean, if they had money to buy food, they wouldn't have had a food shortage in the first place, no?

(It's funny that you say that the economy and food shortages in particular feel fake in 0.8 - given that they were fake in 0.72 and just arbitrarily inflated prices, while now they work within the economic simulation, by reducing supply)
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Deshara

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a fluctuating supply and demand system. in order of importance for determining price, this system should be the largest contributor, followed by planet or station stability, and then tax. so, obviously high demand, gets higher prices, while over supply, gets lower prices, and depending on the commodity, this could vary a lot.

The game already has a fully simulated supply-and-demand economy with commodity flow between markets driven by price differences and all that stuff. But the fact that you're not aware of that just shows how horribly underutilized and irrelevant that system is.

I would rather say "had"? The economy in 0.8 seems so much more bleak in comparison to 0.72. To the point it seems fake and not working at all. After all it doesn't make sense when you pick up info that some planet is starving, so their demand for food is huge - so you buy a lot and go there. In 0.72 and prior you were going to rack up a huge profit, sometimes to the point that faction would start an investigation about your smuggling activities. In 0.8? Well, price doesn't change! I literally had an occurence when I bought up all food on a planet I was at, fly over and sold the food... for less than I have bought it for. On a planet asking for a relief food convoys.

It doesn't make sense.

Further, people report (which I also confirm) that smuggling doesn't have any impact on markets either.

To me, economy is simply broken in 0.8.


Food shortages are not as much broken as just very mild. If you look at the market graphs you can see that a "food shortage" event often means imports dropping by 10 or 15% and being just slightly lower than demand. Which is not exactly the profiteering-enabling disaster scenario we might imagine when we see the alert. And considering that markets that experience food shortages are usually poor and low-stability, and that food shortages reduce stability further, it's not surprising that there's no profit to be made.

I mean, if they had money to buy food, they wouldn't have had a food shortage in the first place, no?

(It's funny that you say that the economy and food shortages in particular feel fake in 0.8 - given that they were fake in 0.72 and just arbitrarily inflated prices, while now they work within the economic simulation, by reducing supply)

There's no game design more fake than a genuine one lol
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Quote from: Deshara
I cant be blamed for what I said 5 minutes ago. I was a different person back then

Hussar

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Food shortages are not as much broken as just very mild. If you look at the market graphs you can see that a "food shortage" event often means imports dropping by 10 or 15% and being just slightly lower than demand. Which is not exactly the profiteering-enabling disaster scenario we might imagine when we see the alert. And considering that markets that experience food shortages are usually poor and low-stability, and that food shortages reduce stability further, it's not surprising that there's no profit to be made.

I mean, if they had money to buy food, they wouldn't have had a food shortage in the first place, no?

(It's funny that you say that the economy and food shortages in particular feel fake in 0.8 - given that they were fake in 0.72 and just arbitrarily inflated prices, while now they work within the economic simulation, by reducing supply)

And have you tried a smuggling/trading gameplay in 0.8? I agree that maybe a food example was a bit extreme but it also perfectly illustrates the issue of 0.8. Prices don't change. Neither you can affect anything because do you smuggle or not, player trading have no impact upon the markets.

Try it, do a smuggler/trading gameplay to realize it further. Prices are pretty much the same for each planet no matter are systems raided/experiencing shortages/experiencing heavy smuggling. In 0.72 economy worked. Destabilized markets were a gamble, since that could mean a lot of this. All prices could go up, or all go down, or some go up and some go down. In 0.8 there's no chance opportunities for trading unless you get a lucky mission for it.

Haven't anyone even noticed that certain goods like domestic / luxury goods doesn't have even their prices updated so you'll never even seen them in a price tab changes? http://i.imgur.com/H5SZtFx.jpg

The only commodities that offer profit trough trading are drugs, if you happen to find the planet that sells them for extreme cheaps (in askonia). Nothing else does really, unless you got a procurement mission. And oh, the lobsters but there's like perhaps only 100 units in whole core worlds to buy each month (2 planets for 100% and occasionally on 2 more), so they're not worth selling outside of procurement missions either. In short, trading has been really limited in 0.8 - unlike the 0.72 where players could stabilize or destabilize markets with their actions.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2017, 12:49:14 PM by Hussar »
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orost

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I agree that there is nothing interesting you can do with the economy in 0.8. What I'm saying is that it's not a symptom of it being broken - if anything, it's less broken than it was in 0.72 or 0.65, and you can't make money off it because you can't exploit the brokeness. When you were making money off trading back then, you weren't really interacting with the economy, but just exploiting those fake shortage and disruption events that arbitrarily adjusted prices with no connection to the actual simulation.

Getting rid of that is, hopefully, a good step towards a genuinely more useful and interesting economy. Now if only we had some ways to actually affect what's going on in it...
« Last Edit: May 03, 2017, 01:15:15 PM by orost »
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Hussar

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I agree that there is nothing interesting you can do with the economy in 0.8. What I'm saying is that it's not a symptom of it being broken - if anything, it's less broken than it was in 0.72 or 0.65, and you can't make money off it because you can't exploit the brokeness. When you were making money off trading back then, you weren't really interacting with the economy, but just exploiting those fake shortage and disruption events that arbitrarily adjusted prices with no connection to the actual simulation.

Getting rid of that is, hopefully, a good step towards a genuinely more useful and interesting economy. Now if only we had some ways to actually affect what's going on in it...

Intrestingly in 0.72 I was doing way more of normal trade than shortages. In 0.8 you gonna have to do procurement 80% of times. That's my point.
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nomadic_leader

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When you make these topics, you really need to make the topic SPECIFIC to what the thread is about. Can you edit the thread title please OP? So that people interested in the economy will click on it? Right now it reveals absolutely nothing.

In another thread Alex (the game developer) says he basically turned off the shortages and disruptions because he thought they were causing weird bugs. http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11840.0

Or something. In any case, fake though they may have been, trade is broken without them.

You could argue that the disruptions are a simple way to simulate the many causes of 'real' supply/price fluctuations such as: Natural disasters; economic negligence, the election of anti-trade politicians (ahem), crime, etc. So maybe they aren't really that objectionable a game feature. I mean if things just get to an equilibrium and stay there it would be boring.  

The wars between factions should also cause widespread price increases as they lead to stockpiling, hoarding in the face of uncertainty, and reduced stability.

Also, do wars just start randomly between factions? I think it should be influenced by the volume and type of trade conducted between the factions. More trade of in-demand legal goods should promote peace between factions, whereas if a lots of stuf is being smuggled from one planet to another faction's planet where it's illegal, it should promote war.

Likewise, certain factions should consider other factions ideologically "subversive." For example, luddic church and pirates would be subversive to everyone. Tri-tach is subversive for Luddic church. etc. Example- a high volume of trade from luddic church to hegemony should tend to promote conflict, since the trade would be accompanied by greater exchange of luddic individuals and ideas that would disrupt normal hegemony beliefs.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2017, 01:50:06 PM by nomadic_leader »
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