Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7 8

Author Topic: On Trade Design  (Read 49101 times)

ciago92

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 577
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #75 on: March 07, 2014, 05:41:27 AM »

Exploiting opportunities is all well and good until those opportunities dry up, in which case a player with a fleet full of freighters and tugs might as well just hold down shift until an appropriate event pops up. That might be an issue, but it wouldn't break trading.

Well, if the average time between events is < the average time needed to resolve an event, there should be no problem. In fact, Alex plans to actually limit the information we get about events, so I would assume there will be several of them happening simultaneuosly, of which you have to choose one to interact with. Of course getting information abut an event is part of the challenge as well, that's probably what a trader spents his time on between actual runs.

I'm figuring on the several events at once thing as well, and I would assume at least some of the perks from the industry tree would have to do with getting information quicker or getting more precise information
Logged

Midnight Kitsune

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2846
  • Your Friendly Forum Friend
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #76 on: March 07, 2014, 12:13:35 PM »

If profitable trading can come only from pop-up quest events, it does not sound like something worth bothering.

I will just stick to killing and looting everything that moves, and conquering NPCs' assets if possible.

Quote from: Alex
An Atlas fleet might be just the sort of thing you can use to really cash in on an event you took pains to predict/cause, while a faster fleet might be able to be more reactive, but wouldn't have the cargo space to really capitalize.
Right now, player needs Atlas fleet just to loot equal-sized opponents (bad in standard, worse in Exerelin), and being forced to use multiple Atlas ships (and Oxen and/or Navigation 10 to speed them up) for optimal play, which is a significant drain on Logistics, is obnoxious and not fun.
I have to agree with Megas here. I think the main reason why people wanted trade is that they wanted another source of income incase of "death spiral" situations. Trade has almost always been the low risk, low reward non combat income choice for people starting out or restarting. (IE got blown up and have very little money) But in this situation the risk is higher, the reward is unknown and the source of income isn't always there, relies on the RNG AND could involve combat from the looks of it.
Logged
Help out MesoTroniK, a modder in need

2021 is 2020 won
2022 is 2020 too

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #77 on: March 07, 2014, 12:19:08 PM »

Well, both you and Megas are missing a couple of things that seem obvious from here.

1.  Balance changes to the amount of loot you get after battles is almost inevitable at some point.  Right now it's ridiculous Monty Haul levels of loot.

2.  Balance changes to how much that loot is worth, too.  The cost of Supplies is pretty key here.

In short, I kind of expect piracy to be a lot less profitable, when all things are said and done, balance-wise, so that Events are typically worth doing.  The way it works now is just not representative of where balance will shift as other things start coming into the game.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #78 on: March 07, 2014, 01:13:13 PM »

Quote
I think the main reason why people wanted trade is that they wanted another source of income incase of "death spiral" situations. Trade has almost always been the low risk, low reward non combat income choice for people starting out or restarting.
Also for those who care less about low-level twitch-fighting and care more about high-level corporate management.  For example, one player just wants to blast ships like in an arcade shump, while another wants to abstract away all combat and focus on building up and running a (virtual) business.

Trading from random events only seems unreliable (at first glance).  It feels like player needs a fleet of freighters ready at any moment.  I do not like fleet of freighters, especially Atlas, being required at almost all times for optimal play.

@ Xenoargh:  Hopefully sooner than later.  I get the feeling that feature implementation and bug fixing have priority over game balance.  Loot was common enough to require an Atlas fleet in 0.6, and loot was increased even more in 0.6.2.
Logged

Sundog

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1723
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #79 on: March 07, 2014, 01:17:58 PM »

@Gothers, ciago92: Ok. I can see how timing things so the duration of events overlap properly could make down-time for traders a non-issue.

@Midnight Kitsune: In addition to xenoargh's points; I don't get the impression that Alex is interested in low-risk, low-reward means of progression, and I wouldn't blame him. Repeatedly doing a simple task for little gain is what many people call grinding.

Midnight Kitsune

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2846
  • Your Friendly Forum Friend
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #80 on: March 07, 2014, 09:31:11 PM »

One thing I want to know is how trading is going to be balanced against piracy? The reason WHY piracy is so profitable is because of that little brown box that has an 80 to 1 ratio of sell price to cargo space. AND because everyone needs them, everyone will have them AND they are completely granular! (IE if you find a 3000 credit sell price/ 30 cargo space item and you only have 25, you can't take it without going over the normal limit, thus losing that money. BUT if it was 30 supplies, you can take 25 and only lose a little bit.) And unless there is an update to change it, supplies will ALWAYS be the same price AND profitable if you pirate
And the line for balancing this on is gonna be a razor's edge. Cut the price too much and supplies end up being as worthless as they were in .54.1 which removes a "limiter" on the pirates.  Increase the usage rates and you hurt the trades more than the pirates. Decrease the drop rates and you will, at best, make "non freighter" small fleets pointless to fight and at worse make the starting game have an even HIGHER

Also, why bother having a "normal" trade system in if all you are going to do is make it an unprofitable trap for new players? And yes, I truly feel as this is a newbie trap. Most people think of the trade system as the newbie option which they can use to get themselves situated and use to the game a bit. And it might just end up turning them off completely from the trade system and becoming a full time pirate, thus basically making it worthless to them.
And even if they DO learn, they are STILL bound by what the RNG throws at them. Pirate and/or enemy faction presence could end up making their trading run worthless if they can't get to the station. And of course, the event might very well end before you get there too and with the trade system unprofitable unless under the influence, this means that you just took a major hit to your account. And once this is all over, whether you failed or succeeded, you still have expenses like supplies, repairs, more or better ships, and other trade items.

Also, will these events give exp points? If they don't then it is just one more reason to be a pirate as you will need to fight anyways to get more levels in order to boost your industry levels.
And speaking of levels, will they be getting rebalanced? Will the soft cap be moved upwards? Will there be an increase in what you get per level?

So TL;DR:
The way of the pirate pros:
-Is mostly self sustaining once you get started (you earn plenty of supplies to sustain your fleet, thus you don't have to spend money on them and that money can be put towards upgrading your ship or weapons)
-Is mostly free from the will of the RNG
-Events are optional and can be skipped if they are unprofitable
-Much faster and much more rewarding job that can end up upgrading your ship for "free"
-Much more choice in skills and aptitude what to take come character level up
-Get to blow ships up (The BIGGEST pro here!)

Cons:
-Death Spiral

The way of the trader pros:
-Can mostly avoid combat

Cons:
Subject to the will of the RNG
-If you get pulled into combat and you are a pure trader, you have a much higher chance of losing
-Normal trading is a newbie trap and could potentially put off new players from the trade system
-Less money and more time spent
-Money is used in more places, thus slowing the upgrade process and can even result in a similar "death spiral" situation (no money to buy trade items and only have one ship
-Since this isn't a "quest," most likely the only reward will be money, meaning that combat WILL be needed to level up industry
-Events are basically required
Logged
Help out MesoTroniK, a modder in need

2021 is 2020 won
2022 is 2020 too

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7174
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #81 on: March 08, 2014, 12:16:36 AM »

...
Also, why bother having a "normal" trade system in if all you are going to do is make it an unprofitable trap for new players? And yes, I truly feel as this is a newbie trap.
...
-Death Spiral
...
-Since this isn't a "quest," most likely the only reward will be money, meaning that combat WILL be needed to level up industry
...

The reason the normal trade system exists is to be influenced by events. Or for you to screw with by hunting the regular freighters. Or for you to sell your pirated loot :P. And don't forget the luxury goods as well, which hopefully will be a more interesting implementation of 'ship a to b' than usual.

The death spiral is mostly a myth. Yes it takes a little time to get used to the system, but once you do its easy to not death spiral.

I also hope that the experience for industry is separate from the combat experience: its always bugged me a bit that you get better at selling things by killing bandits (then again maybe people are afraid of you? I dunno). I don't think its going to happen though, because it would require a rework of how the skills are laid out/the entire leveling system. :P

This new trade system kind of reminds me of how the crew of Firefly got by - looking for opportunities, making deals with shady sorts... they certainly didn't have a cake trade run to go back and forth on. Then again their ship was unarmed and constantly falling apart due to lack of funds for repairs... (CR problems anyone?)
Logged

Gothars

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4403
  • Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity.
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #82 on: March 08, 2014, 01:48:43 AM »

There are also some REDACTED ideas about making travel through non-hostile territory hazardous.
This new trade system kind of reminds me of how the crew of Firefly got by - looking for opportunities, making deals with shady sorts... they certainly didn't have a cake trade run to go back and forth on. Then again their ship was unarmed and constantly falling apart due to lack of funds for repairs... (CR problems anyone?)


Mh, I wouldn't mind it at all if some of the hazards of space travel were of technological nature. Especially early on, while your tech skills are low and you fly an old rust bucket, maybe something just gives and you have no hope but to be rescued. You know, Firefly's "Out of Gas"-episode.
Logged
The game was completed 8 years ago and we get a free expansion every year.

Arranging holidays in an embrace with the Starsector is priceless.

Megas

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 12118
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #83 on: March 08, 2014, 06:12:32 AM »

Quote
The way of the pirate pros:
The biggest one for me not yet mentioned - XP and levels!  I want to reach level 50+ for power!

P.S.
Quote
And speaking of levels, will they be getting rebalanced? Will the soft cap be moved upwards? Will there be an increase in what you get per level?
This is why I anticipate Industry with dread, if it gets must-have skills akin to Fleet Logistics.  Level 40 is roughly my soft cap in standard 0.6.2, but my preferred level is higher.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2014, 06:20:02 AM by Megas »
Logged

ciago92

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 577
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #84 on: March 08, 2014, 07:29:31 AM »

There are also some REDACTED ideas about making travel through non-hostile territory hazardous.
This new trade system kind of reminds me of how the crew of Firefly got by - looking for opportunities, making deals with shady sorts... they certainly didn't have a cake trade run to go back and forth on. Then again their ship was unarmed and constantly falling apart due to lack of funds for repairs... (CR problems anyone?)


Mh, I wouldn't mind it at all if some of the hazards of space travel were of technological nature. Especially early on, while your tech skills are low and you fly an old rust bucket, maybe something just gives and you have no hope but to be rescued. You know, Firefly's "Out of Gas"-episode.

As intriguing as I find the idea, I cannot see any semblance of fun in the suggestion :-\ it's just taking control away from the player and forcing them to rely on the lucky chance that a good person rescues them rather than pirates or someone they're hostile with
Logged

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #85 on: March 08, 2014, 12:40:16 PM »

@Midnight Kitsune:  Without going blog-length about this, I will just say that all of that's solvable. 

A bit of rebal on how profitable piracy is, XP rewards for Events (which, like I've said before, are just a few breaths away from actual Missions, in terms of gamecode structure), etc., can give players two different paths to take that are both worth doing. 

There's nothing wrong with XP for Events; you've just delivered the life-saving drugs to a world on the brink of extinction while heroically dodging pirates and all that, with the possibility of a Gotcha battle as you deliver the goods to keep things interesting.  If Events are handled well, then you're going to deserve some XP, because it was risky, involved making real choices and took enough time to be like a side-quest.

The way I imagine it, combat / piracy will gain more XP but less money than Events and vice versa.  So if you're grinding credits, you're doing all the Events you can (and, if you are up for it, doing combat where opportunity knocks) but if you're grinding XP, you're probably engaging in combat.

At some point, there probably needs to be structures in place that negatively reward killing everybody indiscriminately as well, like bounty hunters being sent directly after you, etc.  I really think that the life of the Pirate should be pretty exciting, in that sense.

Quote
As intriguing as I find the idea, I cannot see any semblance of fun in the suggestion :-\ it's just taking control away from the player and forcing them to rely on the lucky chance that a good person rescues them rather than pirates or someone they're hostile with
Actually, the "ran out of gas" mechanic in EV was a lot more fun than the current "ran out of gas" mechanic in SS. 

Slowly drifting to a star (and may the gods never let that happen to ye more than a few hundred units from a system, it can take a couple of minutes) where you may just get eaten by a huge fleet you can't fight along the way is a lot more boring and helpless-feeling than using your "emergency broadcast system" and attracting a friendly, if pricey, helper.

Quote
The death spiral is mostly a myth. Yes it takes a little time to get used to the system, but once you do its easy to not death spiral.
Wait, no.  Last update was mainly about CR rebal and a whole in-game tutorial system, just to fix the problems with 0.6, yo.  Note the complete lack of flamey posts these days about this stuff; it got fixed.

Lessons need to be learned there; creating situations where newbs will get Very Dead Very Early should get avoided in the design.  The difficulty ramp is a big deal.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

xenoargh

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 5078
  • naively breaking things!
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #86 on: March 08, 2014, 01:01:12 PM »

Oh, and!

UI Stuff

Alex, you're going to have a tab in the UI we can go to that just shows the current Events, right? 

If we highlight an Event, will it do nice UI stuff like highlight the destination(s) so that newbies know where to go?  I think that's important. 

Heck, it'd be really nice if newbies could call up the Hyperspace map even when they aren't in Hyperspace, too; that's a fairly-small UI project that could go a long way, especially if they could call that up, click on a destination System, see the System in that view, click on their final destination, and have their fleet's autopilot do like the AI's does, pathfinding-wise.

Structurally:

Are Events going to get their own completion Dialog?  Or get tied into existing Dialogs?  I'd prefer the former, honestly; I think it'll be much more flexible and it won't break mods.
Logged
Please check out my SS projects :)
Xeno's Mod Pack

Mattk50

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 420
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #87 on: March 08, 2014, 01:49:16 PM »

Im a little worried about the... validity of the trade system. if it is *only* random events creating trade opportunities, there is a large problem. Additionally, some profit should be possible even without these events, so you have something to scrounge if you really need to.

What i mean is, all these fleets of traders roaming around, if a certain station has a pirate infestation at a certain point in its orbit maybe, that prevents any traders from getting to that station, during that period prices should rise due to lack of traders visiting and prices could go up.

I agree with the assessment that from your blog post, it sounds like trading will be nothing more than a thing you get a popup quest for every now and then and do, rather than a real profession that makes buying an atlas fleet worth it. It could just be from the blog's presentation rather than your actual intentions though.

Edit: additionally, if im not a trader getting trader event popups could get very annoying. it did in evochron mercenary and that was only for distress calls.

Was just looking through the comments and realized I totally missed this one; sorry about that!

I'm not sure why trade being event based would be a problem; you're saying it's because you need to be able to scrounge something up if you need to but... why is *that* necessary? In a nutshell, I see making money from standard trade as a bad thing because it encourages safe, boring trade runs. You might say that responding to an event isn't any better, but the difference (hopefully) is that you can do more interesting things to set yourself up to respond to an event effectively (such as, say, cultivating connections to get the information early, or even acting to create the necessary conditions for an event to occur), and then the actual "trade run" is the culmination of that work and planning, rather than being the actual work.

An Atlas fleet might be just the sort of thing you can use to really cash in on an event you took pains to predict/cause, while a faster fleet might be able to be more reactive, but wouldn't have the cargo space to really capitalize.

As far as the UI, popups would indeed be annoying. The idea is that you get messages (in the lower left corner, that widget is being reworked), and you can click on them to get additional information if you're interested. Otherwise, they can just be ignored.
I think that ability to scrounge if you need to is neccasarry because currently, especially for new players, doing anything at all can be difficult without a straight winning streak vs very small hostile fleets. This streak is even harder to accomplish considering that they are actually new players who are still learning combat. Anyone who gets wiped out gets shot back down to one frigate, and if they didnt save, no money. there has to be something for people to do in these situations other than just gamble on finding enough lone enemy frigates to kill before their supply cost outweighs the gain.

and the main issue with it is that you cant become a "trader" you're just at most some guy who has an atlas sitting in storage for these random events that pop up once in awhile. I feel like it could be more, especially if there were outside factors you could use to manipulate prices such as deciding to blockade a certain outpost or a source of materials, or shooting down rival trade fleets.

In mount and blade, a game with a similar sandbox overworld, trade was somewhat nebulously presented to the player, but the way it worked is an interesting example. Every town had a certain amount of prosperity determined by the facilities built within, how much surplus it had, and how many traders would come to it. Now, traders would only trade with prosperous towns, creating a feedback loop. The differences in prices of goods between towns became legitimate, because towns with serious bandit infestation problems in the surroundings would pay much more. This scales the risk with the reward for trading: there isn't a force on the player to necessarily find the absolute safest route because the profit won't be worth his time. If the player risks being spotted by a party of bandits, he may have to defend himself. If he outmaneuvers them, he gets away.

You mentioned this in the blog, that you feel like it doesnt make sense for players to want to avoid combat in certain situations... but this is exactly what players who want to be a full time trader are about. Players who like to be traders in games laugh at the idea of "i will trade when a popup tells me i can", because its rediculous. Though, typically most of the fun is finding when a trade can be profitable and figuring out the system, if empire building or the main story is the focus and there are no gaping loopholes in the trade system, it shouldnt be something that people feel forced to do


BTW, thanks for interacting with your community to the degree you do. Its really quite incredible, many devs like to insulate themselves from most suggestions and any criticisms, and i think there's something lost when that happens.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2014, 01:58:24 PM by Mattk50 »
Logged

mendonca

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1159
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #88 on: March 08, 2014, 02:30:02 PM »

I'm not convinced the intention is for 'random' events dealt with by 'pop-ups' - i.e. the sort of thing that happened in Transport Tycoon for subsidised routes. They were good to get on the back of, for mad profit, but as far as I could ever tell - pretty much random - or if they weren't, they were far enough removed from the actions of the player - or the visible behaviour of each world - to be effectively random.

The challenge for Alex will be to make 'events' appear congruent with the actions within and around the systems so that the player can get to either predict or attempt to influence the various variables that make things happen.

I could be wrong of course, but it sounds to me like this is the sort of thing that is being aimed for - events aimed to be more like specific things that REFLECT the state of a system, which are necessarily granular so that the player has a chance of identifying and interacting with these things - but are not necessarily determined on the basis of a roll of a d6, or having a certain number active at any time.

On the safe trade route thing - I spent about a third to two thirds of my youth running robots from Barnard's Star to Sol, and sending Luxury good back - all in order to save for the next biggest ship so that I could make more money to buy the next biggest ship (Frontier: Elite 2). That game, for all its wonder, was in some ways (and with the benefit of hindsight) dreadfully boring.

I for one am excited to see where you take your thoughts, and your game, as always.
Logged


"I'm doing it, I'm making them purple! No one can stop me!"

Hari Seldon

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 121
    • View Profile
Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #89 on: March 08, 2014, 03:32:39 PM »

Could you talk a bit about Trade scale?  The "large Atlas convoys" mentioned in the Atlas description makes it seem like you can't fix a food shortage on a core world even if you max your fleet out with Atlases.  You would need multiple fleets?  You would need to encourage or protect other convoys too?
Logged
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." - Salvor Hardin, Foundation
Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7 8