On the other hand: basic logics and market laws. All in the world aims toward balance, regardless of whether it's realistic game or not. Good math imitation will balance itself. If you will change something - there will be another points of equilibrium. It will not be worse or better. It will be just different. The problem is: it is not MMO like EVE, or at least Time Zero. And there is no neural network to replace thousands of players. So, dont demand miracles from it.
Have you even played Starsector? the game already has a basic market simulation that balances itself out. No need for server farms and neural networks. The only thing the game doesn't have is a way for the player to interact with the open market in a meaningful
and legal way.
You're comment reminded me of another post I read in a related thread on here about tariffs. The poster was claiming that what we as the player do when it comes to trade is the equivalent of filling out car's trunk and then going to another country and selling the content. He was wrong. We can attack convoys and see exactly what ship composition they have. We can acquire said ships on the open market. We can man and supply said ships. The only thing that we as the player can't do is make a profit on the open market. Why? because Alex was lazy and when he realized just faring cargo from one location to another could turn into a grind and be boring he just slapped a universal 30% tariff on all open market transactions to disincentive us from trading.
Similar to how Mass Effect isn't just an FPS game, so too Starsector isn't just a combat game. We know there is an open market. We can see prices go up as we buy ever increasing units of cargo. We can see prices go down as we sell ever increasing units of cargo. We can see trade fleets move across the map. We can attack said trade fleets and see exactly what kind of ships they're made off. We can reclaim some such ships and we can buy such ships from the open market. For all intents and purpose Starsector has an inbuilt trading system that self corrects and a trade minigame the player is designed to play with. And then Alex realized that like every single other space game with a trading system that came before, the trading system in Starsector can be abused by just faring goods between just two places so he slapped a 30% tariff on all transactions to disincentive us from interacting with the system in the first place. AND because the black market was already there players just moved to the black market like nothing happened.
Trade is broken in this game. Making money isn't. TRADE IS. This is one thing most people don't want to admit on here. We say trade they counter we smugling, we say trade they counter with missions, we say trade they counter with piracy, we say trade they counter with bounties to make money. The game has a trade mechanic that has been intentionally gimped so as to disincentive it's usage.
@Histidine I actually added the idea of punitive tariffs for when prices go to low or too high so as to disincentive players from trading too much and from making trade too profitable. Basically, I took into account Alex's initial objection in regards to trading, faring cargo between two points in boring and repetitive, but trading onto itself can be fun and entertaining - there are entire games built around the idea of trade after all. (some even set in space) When a game tries to do too much we end up with No man's ... Spore, when a game tries to do too much we end up with Spore. With the exception of the first stage that to my knowledge only has one counterpart in Flow, all other stages have had multiple games set in just that one stage that outclass spore in every way. I don't think Starsectors trade system should compete with Elite, X, The Guild or The Patrician series, but Alex can give us at least the same level of trade as Port Royale, Sid Mayers Pirates or the old EV games. And considering going to
economy.json and editing the
"defaultTariff":0.3, to
"defaultTariff":0.0, is all it takes to make trade as engaging as it was in those latter games... That's why I made the proposals I have, I don't just want the artificial limit on trade removed, I can do that myself, I apreciate Alex and agree with the thoughts behind tariffs. Trade can be boring, if all you do is hold the mouse bottom to get to your next location it is boring, I just don't agree with his solution, at all.
As for AI, the way I see it, If I buy weapons I'm probably going with the ship inside a military base/hangar to get the ship retrofitted, the chance of having an AI core found under such conditions should be grater then 0%. Maybe not 100%, but still, greater then 0%, similarly for other illegal goods like organs and drugs maybe... even if they're high value, think of it as the relative of a patrol inspection. They're not actually inspecting my hold, but if the people retrofitting my ship happen to stumble over a few crates of illegal narcotics, or organs, or ai cores...