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Author Topic: New player : Tarrif questions  (Read 14291 times)

AINC_07_STALKER

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #15 on: September 20, 2019, 03:42:44 AM »

First , thank you for all your responses.

Secondly : As exerelin_config.json for Nexerelin mod has a setting to lower / increase tariffs to what ever you want.. and this setting has to be pulled from the base game ...

Does anyone know of any Guides or are they able to provide a guide on how to edit the default tariffs?


I love the game , and with a tariff at 10% i can make legit profits from most goods buying low and selling high even accounting for diminishing returns and the 10% tax each way from buy to sell.


Thirdly :  Does anyone know how to edit the buy / sell price adjustments based on quantity of goods?



For my own game experience , i would much prefer to have a lower tariff , and reduce the price change on buying / selling by a factor of 2 over what it is currently.

Atlas exists in the game. Has a capacity of 2000 or so.  Be nice to be able to run a trade fleet with that as my center piece and even with numerous different goods , i would like to sell in higher quantities than i am able to currently.

Heck even my newbie trade fleet has 6000 capacity.
Finding it hard to justify a trade capacity over 2000.
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bobucles

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #16 on: September 20, 2019, 04:21:04 AM »

Quote
Sure, but how long did that take and how much effort was it?
With a starting point at level 16 with $110k and 3000 cargo, it took about 1 game year to reach $2mil. I died/got busted/tripped and loaded a lot of times along the way so it's a pretty ideal scenario, still learning the ropes and all that. Take from that what you will.

The difficulty is going up as every trade is attracting a cargo inspection. The trade commissions are becoming very hard as it takes 3-5 different planets to round up enough materials. Trade missions like 4000 domestic goods, 850 heavy machines and 500 transplutonic ore are pushing the limits of the default economy.

There are definitely superior options like the amazing hauls from research stations or chaining contracts. I had a single blueprint haul worth nearly a million credits!

Agile

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #17 on: September 20, 2019, 05:29:12 AM »

The trade system admittedly does have some faults.

For example, procurement missions in the 5K food goods, delivered in 20 days, and all the planets nearby combined don't have 5000 food (im looking at you, Hegemony planets).

That has to be fixed; procurement missions either have to be lowered in amount to half of what the market has available, or higher level colonies need to give more of a good in general to make these trades profitable.

Another problem: food, one of the most important and hardest to get good in the game (considering the lack of ariable planets and poor terraforming technology that doesn't allow proper terraforming) is the CHEAPEST item in the market, when it should be a lot more expensive in general.

Next problem: bar missions unable to be negotiated with and sending huge death fleets when you fail them despite trying your best to do them, unlike loans which you can negotiate with tri tachyon people (kinda weird it works out that way).

Problem after that: Tariffs can NEVER be lowered no matter WHAT you do. Despite being Cooperative with a faction, they don't lower their tariffs, which doesn't make sense with the theme of the game. Sure, if your a neutral nobody that no one knows about it, I get that they'd tariff the *** out of you so they can pay for their war ships to fend off other factions who do the same thing. But if your cooperative, have access to their military markets, and know the names, faces, and interacted with their leaders; why are they STILL charging you 30%? It should be 5% at maximum, so they break even a bit on you.

It'd give reputation and open market trading some credibility; sure, black market is still good, but making friends with the local top dogs means you can openly trade in large volumes (which black market can't do) while making a profit. It would take a long time to get to that point, since cooperative reputation is difficult to grind unless you get system bounties and have a fleet made for it (but that has its own issues).

Trade isn't perfect, and it shouldn't be, but some of these are glaring issues that have been overlooked that make the experience feel a bit rushed.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #18 on: September 20, 2019, 06:51:41 AM »

I agree trading is not a viable or worthwhile activity, and mad tariffs is one of the major reasons for it. As long as trading is in the game, it should be balanced in a way that it is viable way to make money. Otherwise it is a complete waste of game development.

"But you are not supposed to make money on the open market!" Then might as well remove the open market. Remove the freighters from the game. Not to mention it is pretty nonsensical. There are hundreds of giant trade fleets in the game. If trading is not supposed to be profitable, why and how do they exist?

If the game is to be a good sandbox experience, all aspects of it should be worthwhile and have its own progression system. A trade-focused player should look forward to gradually upgrading from Hermes to Buffalo to Atlas.

The giant trade fleets exist because they're either directly working for governments or for giant trade congolomerates, and they don't need to pay those tariffs. Isn't capitalism wonderful?
That's the lore explanation.

The game design explanation is that open market trading is not supossed to make money, because it's *** boring - if you want to make money trading, you're going to have to engage with the gameplay systems a little more deeply than just "find producer, buy there - find consumer, sell there".

As for why the Open Market then exists in the first place, there are many reasons and they should be pretty obvious. Ditto for freighters - why they exist, even without open, standard trade being viable should be blatantly obvious.
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Yunru

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #19 on: September 20, 2019, 07:18:46 AM »

There is a way to play a profitable open market trader (iirc), and that's to play the tutorial, rush for the ability to Transwarp Jump, head on over to Chicomoztoc, buy the stuff needed for a makeshift Comms Relay and stick one in the tutorial system.

The stability of the planet never drops below 1, pretty much all goods are always in demand, on the only drawback is you can't take missions. Or receive intel... yeeeah.

bobucles

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #20 on: September 20, 2019, 08:02:38 AM »

Quote
Another problem: food, one of the most important and hardest to get good in the game (considering the lack of ariable planets and poor terraforming technology that doesn't allow proper terraforming) is the CHEAPEST item in the market, when it should be a lot more expensive in general.
The pricing of materials is likely inspired on real world commodity pricing. Raw naked cheap ore sells for around $100/ton, and dump truck quantities of food (like rice,soy) around $150-300/ton. Prices in game ballpark around the same ratios.

Fancier items like snack bars and steak would probably fall under domestic or luxury goods. There's a pretty good price for those.

DaLagga

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #21 on: September 20, 2019, 08:10:51 AM »

There is a way to play a profitable open market trader (iirc), and that's to play the tutorial, rush for the ability to Transwarp Jump, head on over to Chicomoztoc, buy the stuff needed for a makeshift Comms Relay and stick one in the tutorial system.

The stability of the planet never drops below 1, pretty much all goods are always in demand, on the only drawback is you can't take missions. Or receive intel... yeeeah.

But that's basically exploiting a bug, at which point you may as well just mod the game to give yourself a massive amount of cash IMO.  Cheating is cheating.  Not that I care if someone cheats in a SP game but I just don't understand why some players will spend hours abusing an exploit when a simple console command or something would accomplish the same thing in seconds. 
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Yunru

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #22 on: September 20, 2019, 08:15:14 AM »

But that's basically exploiting a bug, at which point you may as well just mod the game to give yourself a massive amount of cash IMO.  Cheating is cheating.  Not that I care if someone cheats in a SP game but I just don't understand why some players will spend hours abusing an exploit when a simple console command or something would accomplish the same thing in seconds.
No bugs involved. The system suffered a tragic setback and you're their only hope. You just choose not to help them except for profit.

Blurple Berry

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #23 on: September 20, 2019, 10:34:25 AM »

you can always kill some smugglers to "create" open market opportunities ;D
not exactly legal ... but not exactly illegal either
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SCC

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #24 on: September 20, 2019, 12:16:02 PM »

I agree trading is not a viable or worthwhile activity, and mad tariffs is one of the major reasons for it. As long as trading is in the game, it should be balanced in a way that it is viable way to make money. Otherwise it is a complete waste of game development.

"But you are not supposed to make money on the open market!" Then might as well remove the open market. Remove the freighters from the game. Not to mention it is pretty nonsensical. There are hundreds of giant trade fleets in the game. If trading is not supposed to be profitable, why and how do they exist?

If the game is to be a good sandbox experience, all aspects of it should be worthwhile and have its own progression system. A trade-focused player should look forward to gradually upgrading from Hermes to Buffalo to Atlas.
The way the player is supposed to trade is by exploiting shortages and other events.
The reason why other fleets can trade profitably is because they are established trade companies and they simply don't have to pay tariffs, since they have various deals. Or at least something like that is supposed to be an explanation. I think that Alex should just make trading add an anti-bounty on you, where pirates will come after you, since you tend to have valuable hauls. Ideally you should also need to get on good terms with one of the factions, just so that their enemies can send privateers and undercover agents after you.
Currently, though, everyone just hates you and that's that.

Locklave

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #25 on: September 20, 2019, 01:51:48 PM »

Yeah there's sort of an odd problem in that I've basically stopped caring about the black market and just see it as the "real" market.  The rep hits are so minimal and so rare, while it's the only way to make money (and tons of it, even off normal goods) through trading.

Really it's the only solution. I used to care and just got sick of it at some point.

Going in dark is tedious, the rep it is annoying at most, the losses for using the normal market are too extreme. Even the quantity market price modifiers scale worse on the normal market.

I wonder if this is part of why I started to lean heavy into pirate friendly runs.

The game design explanation is that open market trading is not supossed to make money, because it's *** boring - if you want to make money trading, you're going to have to engage with the gameplay systems a little more deeply than just "find producer, buy there - find consumer, sell there".

Show us a link to where "The game design explanation" is or never post that lie again.

Pony up.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2019, 02:02:57 PM by Locklave »
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Eji1700

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #26 on: September 20, 2019, 02:32:12 PM »

The main problem right now comes from the purpose of the 3 markets.

Current implementation:

1. Normal market-

Worst selection of items, heavy markup.  Almost always available (non hostile).

2. Military market-

Same markup as previous market ( i think?), better selection of items, access limited heavily by nation relations and commission status.

3. Black market-

Same selection of items as regular market + some, but with lower quantities.  No markup.  Possible relation penalties/issues.

I really don't think this models the idea of a black market well.  ANY play ship can dock in full out transponder mode, ALWAYS knows where the blackmarket is/how to reach them, and then can trade freely among them for minimal penalty.  I will always do black market shopping first and then go to the others as needed.  I've yet to really notice any penalty for this.  Yeah occasionally I get a rep hit or a bad scan, but it's trivial and rare.  Mostly it's just obnoxious having to always hit 1 to quickly get through the scan pop up and then listen to the sound effect to see if i got someone cranky.

I've been working on a fairly large post on some economy tweaks to suggest, but part of it touches on markets (although a major portion of it talks about retooling salvage a little).  The general gist of it is  that so many things in this game are balanced by their "scarcity" and yet aren't really that scarce in practice.  A lot of discussions on these boards about weapons/ships boils down to "Why would I use X when I have Y", and often that's supposed to be because X should be harder to acquire, but in reality that's not often the case.  Further its SUPER binary where one minute you've got nothing and then a single decent expedition later and you've got boatloads of cash, weaponry, ships, and blueprints.

Suggestions-

1. Normal market-
Consistent and quality selection of items with more feedback. 

Some weapons especially should show up here more often.  The "upside" of paying the tariff should be reliability. I should be able to know that X planet is where I go to get railguns if i'm willing to straight up pay for it.  There could still be limitations depending on relations or ranking (its sort of odd that no matter who you are, with enough cash you can buy anything that makes it to the civilian market).

As for feedback, it would help a lot if it was made more clear to the player why it is I can find mortars everywhere but I sometimes don't see assault chainguns, as if you're totally new it's not even obvious that one is considered better than the other and thus more limited.  Someone else already mentioned having to "noah's ark" trade goods, when really you need a better visualization of trade in general to help consolidate the information that you know.  When i'm considering using my irl job skills to load trade data into a database to get a better visualization of my trade options I think it shows that there's something lacking.

2. Military market-
Better limitation of some better items to mostly military ONLY.  Something as valuable and dangerous as a Gauss Cannon really should be locked down better.  Given the current lack of penalties for hitting up the black market you can never pick a side and still just get stuff through black market lotto. I think the raw power stuff should mostly come from salvage/commission, and thus require some sort of investment to find, or accepting that you'll be limited on access.

3. More limitations and interactions with the black market-
Why can a brand new pilot land on any planet and find a fully stocked black market even if they full announced their arrival and are loved or hated by the local authorities/populace?

I know there's a skill rework coming, but just like how a new pilot needs to put points into getting better at piloting/navigation/salvaging, shouldn't your ability to hunt down and interact with the black market and maybe pirates depend at least a little on that?  I don't want to totally cut off a players supply to limited things through the black market, but i'd like it to be than a dice roll and a formality.

To start with I think if you come in blaring the black market should be heavily limited in selection and quantity. I game if the authorities know who you are, they could be watching, so you can't get as much access.  Might even limit your ability to offload items (since selling is currently unrestricted).  Maybe just the basics and in low quantities  This then lets you have showing up with transponder off, or even better in "going dark", show you more stuff.

You could go so far as to have it be related to reputation.  Either its own metric or maybe make that another reason to be on the pirates/smugglers good side, and to help their presence.  A system with a low pirate or smuggling has a difficult to access black market (and thus fewer goods), but if that were to change suddenly its easier (and thus more goods).

4. Tweak trading:
Now that the black market isn't always a thing, you can have "ok" contracts available with more frequency.  If you put in the work through skills or in game actions you can get them to be really lucrative with no tariff, or you could see trade contracts for items that can't be sold/bought easily in non illegal means which means you must have a way to get to the black market for that area in order to take them (and they can be more profitable to reward that)

Hopefully something like this would make the black market a "goal" you could work towards and get better at just like exploration (more of a subset of trading i guess).   Some playthroughs would never use it, but it gives other options for roleplay as well (exploration/bounty hunter/ military pilot/trader/smuggler)
« Last Edit: September 20, 2019, 02:33:59 PM by Eji1700 »
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Histidine

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #27 on: September 20, 2019, 05:48:40 PM »

Good insights and ideas, Eji1700!

The game design explanation is that open market trading is not supossed to make money, because it's *** boring - if you want to make money trading, you're going to have to engage with the gameplay systems a little more deeply than just "find producer, buy there - find consumer, sell there".

Show us a link to where "The game design explanation" is or never post that lie again.

Pony up.
Accusing someone of posting a lie without first actually showing their statement to be false, is poor form — at best. I'd suggest not doing that.

Anyway:
On Trade Design blogpost
Quote
A trade run can still be fun, though, and it is fun to roleplay being a trader. It’d just be nice if there was more to it than shipping rocks from Point A to Point B, forever and ever – it’s the repetition and lack of choices that gets you.

One approach is to liven up the travel aspect, and we’ll certainly try to do that. By itself, though, that’s not enough – the player has incentive to optimize the “fun” out (since fun generally also means risk), and if there are many choices of trade routes, they’ll eventually succeed at it and start shipping rocks in a nice, quiet backwater.

The main problem is caused by having easily repeatable trade runs, so let’s just take care of it at that level. The economy will work in such a way as to make most (if not all) trade runs unprofitable by default.

Why does this make narrative sense? There’s a race-to-the-bottom in the profit margins for safely shipping rocks, and that’s before you factor in faction-affiliated cargo fleets that don’t even have to operate at a profit. Frankly, if you think about it, it *wouldn’t* make sense for easy profit to be available for shipping food or some such, under normal circumstances. Not of the magnitude the player would be interested in.

The way for the player to make a profit in trading, then, is to take advantage of extraordinary circumstances – a short window of opportunity that they can exploit in various ways.
(Note: The post is five years old. That said, no attempt I can readily recall has been made to change the resulting gameplay elements in the subsequent time)

Related: Trade & Smuggling blog post
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sotanaht

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #28 on: September 20, 2019, 06:18:30 PM »

Good insights and ideas, Eji1700!

The game design explanation is that open market trading is not supossed to make money, because it's *** boring - if you want to make money trading, you're going to have to engage with the gameplay systems a little more deeply than just "find producer, buy there - find consumer, sell there".

Show us a link to where "The game design explanation" is or never post that lie again.

Pony up.
Accusing someone of posting a lie without first actually showing their statement to be false, is poor form — at best. I'd suggest not doing that.

Anyway:
On Trade Design blogpost
Quote
A trade run can still be fun, though, and it is fun to roleplay being a trader. It’d just be nice if there was more to it than shipping rocks from Point A to Point B, forever and ever – it’s the repetition and lack of choices that gets you.

One approach is to liven up the travel aspect, and we’ll certainly try to do that. By itself, though, that’s not enough – the player has incentive to optimize the “fun” out (since fun generally also means risk), and if there are many choices of trade routes, they’ll eventually succeed at it and start shipping rocks in a nice, quiet backwater.

The main problem is caused by having easily repeatable trade runs, so let’s just take care of it at that level. The economy will work in such a way as to make most (if not all) trade runs unprofitable by default.

Why does this make narrative sense? There’s a race-to-the-bottom in the profit margins for safely shipping rocks, and that’s before you factor in faction-affiliated cargo fleets that don’t even have to operate at a profit. Frankly, if you think about it, it *wouldn’t* make sense for easy profit to be available for shipping food or some such, under normal circumstances. Not of the magnitude the player would be interested in.

The way for the player to make a profit in trading, then, is to take advantage of extraordinary circumstances – a short window of opportunity that they can exploit in various ways.
(Note: The post is five years old. That said, no attempt I can readily recall has been made to change the resulting gameplay elements in the subsequent time)

Related: Trade & Smuggling blog post
There absolutely have been changes made to those gameplay elements in the last 5 years.  Less than 5 years ago, food shortages were basically THE way to make money.  The extreme prices were brought down and the amount of resources a colony would buy for higher prices was strictly limited.  These days the only ways to make decent money in "trade" is to do quests or create shortages yourself via raiding, and I'm not convinced the latter actually works.
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SCC

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Re: New player : Tarrif questions
« Reply #29 on: September 21, 2019, 12:35:33 AM »

There absolutely have been changes made to those gameplay elements in the last 5 years.  Less than 5 years ago, food shortages were basically THE way to make money.  The extreme prices were brought down and the amount of resources a colony would buy for higher prices was strictly limited.  These days the only ways to make decent money in "trade" is to do quests or create shortages yourself via raiding, and I'm not convinced the latter actually works.
And there still are 30% tariffs, which indicates that Alex's opinion hasn't changed much. Disabling to disable industry, then rake in the money is actually pretty doable, since you can disrupt, say, a colony's space port for an entire cycle. Since no space port means -100% accessibility penalty, they pretty much are stuck with shortages for an entire cycle.
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