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

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Author Topic: On Trade Design  (Read 49105 times)

Megas

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #90 on: March 08, 2014, 05:06:24 PM »

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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.
To that, I say "more XP and loot!", much like the Tarman zombie (from Return of the Living Dead) exclaiming "More brains!"

Hopefully, finished Starsector will let me accumulate enough power to carve out my own faction that can fight and eliminate all other factions, a bit like what Exerelin does.  In such a situation, everyone becomes an enemy, eventually.  NPCs are meant to be used until they become an obstacle, then they become a source of amusement.  (I got Starsector mostly for shmup combat.)  I will trade during early game if I can when my forces are too weak to fight, as a means to make my forces strong.  Once my forces can fight, the real fun begins...
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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #91 on: March 09, 2014, 01:49:08 AM »

-snip-
Matt here took the words right out of my mouth. While most vets here can beat the initial hurdle relatively easy, most newbies won't as they won't have the information that we do and in war, intel is power.

And I would also like to thank Alex for his involvement in the community!
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Gothars

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #92 on: March 09, 2014, 03:11:15 AM »

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.


Well, this all comes back to "doing something boring until you can afford to do something fun". I'm just really glad that Alex is attempting to change that to "doing something fun until you can do more and other fun stuff". There will be very local events by the way, I'd imagine that they are suitable to be exploited by a single ship.

I tried being a merchant in M&B btw, was bored the moment I saw that the ideal trade routes were already mapped out by others on the net.



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.

There will be no pop-ups! Who ever said there would be pop-ups?
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Alex

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #93 on: March 09, 2014, 10:42:59 AM »

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

Yeah, that's pretty likely.

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

There's a new tab (provisionally called "Intel") that shows all the recent news. Which includes events and other things.

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. 

There's a little sector minimap right next to the detail for a news report that shows your fleet's location and the system where whatever it is happened.

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.

Hm, maybe. It might seem like a good idea now, but maybe not later when there are more things going on in hyperspace.

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.

I don't imagine they'd get a "Dialog" at all. You'll find out that an event is over through the news.


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.

It's a valid point about new players, but, a counter-point: the "event" system could actually make it much easier for someone getting started. Part of the early difficulty is in figuring out what to do; profitable trade routes don't help if you don't know about them. One open route that you know about, due to news about something happening, is worth 10 routes you'd have to try to go all Excel on to figure out.

There are also some REDACTED ideas about making early-game combat more new-player-friendly in a way that makes in-fiction sense. But it's REDACTED.

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.

... and it all depends on the pacing, too. That's going to be a challenge to get right, no doubt, but I think you're looking at it in terms of things happening very rarely. I think it'll end up rather on the side of "something's going on all the time". There's also the potential for "exotic goods" trading runs being the default thing you do as a trader.


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.

That sounds good on paper, but one of the problems is that the player will almost always be able to outmaneuver the AI, so this "risk" is largely imaginary. The campaign movement systems in M&B and Starsector are pretty similar in this regard. Might need to adjust the mechanics aronud this... also, I'm thinking that the risks may become more legitimate on longer runs (hence, taking "exotic goods" from one end of the Sector to the other). Imagine if there was a profitable run from Corvus to the Hidden Pirate Base - would the pirate presense around the gas giant present a *real* problem? Well, it might, for some fleet comps, but not for others. And then you'd be back to "no risk". My point is that trying to balance normal trade with risk from other fleets is difficult. The player will get around the risk, and the system will break down.


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.

Very much this. To some extent, events will also drive things, but it's important to make them, as you say, congruent with/reflecting whatever is actually going on. Making stuff granular to present to the player is a large part of it, too - how would you find out about the off-screen goings-on otherwise?


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?

Liberties will be taken with scale if necessary, to make events "work". Not to a point where stuff won't make sense (a single Hound loaded with onions isn't going to save a core world from famine), but an Atlas might. After all, you don't know exactly how bad the shortage was, etc.


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.
And I would also like to thank Alex for his involvement in the community!

Thanks guys! I appreciate all your feedback and the discussions that spawn are generally very productive. I think our community is great ;)


I tried being a merchant in M&B btw, was bored the moment I saw that the ideal trade routes were already mapped out by others on the net.

I'm pretty sure I've spent quite some time poring over that very same forum post with the trade routes.


... alright, back to actually making this stuff happen :)
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xenoargh

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #94 on: March 09, 2014, 12:01:21 PM »

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I don't imagine they'd get a "Dialog" at all. You'll find out that an event is over through the news.
Oh; I figured you'd get a Pat On The Back for delivering those Antivirals to the world that had been struck by the Phage Plague or whatnot, or a nasty message from Tri-Tachyon after helping to deliver those Universal Weapons Kits to a Shrine of Ludd :)

Anyhow, just a thought; it helps make things special for the player and provide motivation and all that.  But I'll be happy enough if it just doesn't break everything to the point where I have to rebuild Vacuum a fourth time, lol :)
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Bribe Guntails

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #95 on: March 10, 2014, 05:39:20 PM »

Woo new content!

Will you be making station inventory stocking more limited and realistic during this phase of development?
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Alex

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #96 on: March 11, 2014, 12:25:28 PM »

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I don't imagine they'd get a "Dialog" at all. You'll find out that an event is over through the news.
Oh; I figured you'd get a Pat On The Back for delivering those Antivirals to the world that had been struck by the Phage Plague or whatnot, or a nasty message from Tri-Tachyon after helping to deliver those Universal Weapons Kits to a Shrine of Ludd :)

Anyhow, just a thought; it helps make things special for the player and provide motivation and all that.  But I'll be happy enough if it just doesn't break everything to the point where I have to rebuild Vacuum a fourth time, lol :)

Ah, yeah - that's a possibility. I was thinking more in terms of what happens when an event you weren't involved in whatsoever ends.

Will you be making station inventory stocking more limited and realistic during this phase of development?

To some degree. Weapons don't quite fall under the umbrella of the economy, so those will likely be as before, but commodity stocks should be based on actual market data.
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Sonlirain

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #97 on: March 11, 2014, 01:03:55 PM »

I'm still not really sold on "event only proftable trading" altho i can understand it not wanting to make dumb economy like:
This is a ore mine. they buy food and sell minerals.
This is an industrial planet they buy food/ore and sell goods.
This is a farming world they buy goods and sell food.
This is a hive world they buy goods and food.

Altho if making a trade system irks you tnen maybe... Transport Tycoon IN SPACE!
Simply put if your relations with a planet are good enough you can get "freight" missions that require the transporation of a certain ammount of goods provided by the planet to another planet (connected with a trade route).
You can do those missions manually or delegate some of your ships to do the freight running for you and with time (and planetary reations) you might get a contract to deliver goods at a regular basis you can (and should) delegate ships to because doing so manually would be a bore. Also cowardly officers that might become availble in the future would be the PERFECT ones for the job.
Over time you freight empire would span several planets and bed things wold happen if you decided to stop transporting goods for some reason.

This way we get some "trading" a logical trade system and a relatively safe source of credits in case of unforseen things happening to your fleet.
Of course said credits would not be great considering you're not the actual trader but do the footwork for ACTUAL traders.
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Obscure

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #98 on: March 12, 2014, 09:58:50 AM »


Altho if making a trade system irks you tnen maybe... Transport Tycoon IN SPACE!
Simply put if your relations with a planet are good enough you can get "freight" missions that require the transporation of a certain ammount of goods provided by the planet to another planet (connected with a trade route).
You can do those missions manually or delegate some of your ships to do the freight running for you and with time (and planetary reations) you might get a contract to deliver goods at a regular basis you can (and should) delegate ships to because doing so manually would be a bore. Also cowardly officers that might become availble in the future would be the PERFECT ones for the job.
Over time you freight empire would span several planets and bed things wold happen if you decided to stop transporting goods for some reason.

This way we get some "trading" a logical trade system and a relatively safe source of credits in case of unforseen things happening to your fleet.
Of course said credits would not be great considering you're not the actual trader but do the footwork for ACTUAL traders.

mm, earlier in this post I mentioned the possibility of such a feature, but Alex agreed that it doesn't quite fit with the scope of this part of the game. I like the idea of shipping for other entities for a lesser but fixed profit, but having an established economy will be necessary first, and it would be silly to not be able to buy and sell wares in an economy directly.
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NanoMatter

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #99 on: March 12, 2014, 03:02:35 PM »

This seems interesting, wonder if I could turn a system into socialism... The Domino Effect. Lol another coldwar
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Bob McBobbyton

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #100 on: March 16, 2014, 11:23:55 AM »

Yay! The starsector universe is expanding. ::)
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Obscure

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #101 on: March 17, 2014, 10:02:14 AM »

Hey, I'm not sure if this was mentioned, but I have to ask:

Are we going to be able to build autonomous fleets soon? I love the idea of directing trade fleets to pick up goods from one system and ship them to another without manually flying them yourself!

sonlirain mentioned this in passing when he was asking about freight missions, but I think this would be a great feature either way!
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Goumindong

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #102 on: March 17, 2014, 10:46:30 AM »

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.

There is a thing you overlook alex. There are players who simply LOVE doing spreadsheet style trading. Look at the X series and its fanbase... a giant part of the game is about trade and creating/shipping goods.
While you might think that simply going from A to B is boring ther ARE people who like doing just that so instead of discouraging people from commerce at every corner you should instead encourage people to do something else.


Well lets be clear. The hold of the X series is not trading, its empire creation and industry. The "spreadsheet style trading" in X isn't really trading, its production. When trading in X people generally buy a freighter and automate it. This is because, well, trading is boring.

Industry has hold because people like seeing what they built and its permanence. Being the actual space trucker doesn't have much hold. The real hold is more the resources over which you have power.

Functionally, trade and industry have to do two things in order to be a valuable game mechanic. If they aren't doing these things then they're distracting from the core gameplay (which is, primarily in my view, space combat and exploration)

1) Give impetus for player action

2) Enables player action

Basically if i am building an empire, then defending and expanding the empire are my impetus for action and my reward is the continued income (larger fleets, more power, what not)

My ideal "trade" system isn't really a trade system, but an "empire system". That is; the player is his own faction and has his own stations and his own ships which do all the things that other factions do. The rest of the economy, directly visible to the player can operate entirely statically (in fact it probably should, to make starting over easier) and with no profit. Who cares if NPC traders are moving between worlds making no profit, they're NPC's, they don't have to follow the normal rules, they are there for me to shoot or aid, not to wonder about whether or not they have utility functions and properly evaluate the costs and benefits of each action.

An empire system also makes a lot more sense with respect to the logistics of the game. It gives a good mechanic for fleet size restrictions**, it produces supplies and fuel which determine the maximum range of your fleets. It gives you things to do even if you've made everyone mad at you.

The structure of this is actually really simple. As an empire you have a certain amount of production capability per planet/station, from which you can make ships, from which you can make supplies/fuel, from which you can produce more infrastructure*, and from which you can produce trade goods. If you have a "trade fleet" they will sell trade goods to the nearest station at the static market price so long as they make it there. The "profit" you get is simply the difference between how you value your production capability versus the price of the good. [Aside: while a large abstraction this is probably closer to economically "right" than near any other system]

This provides impetus and enables players actions. A more complicated system would tie in relations to other factions based on how easy it was to raid your ships and how profitable it was to stop trade versus taking over the production capacity of the planet (versus the risks involved in the fight). An even more complicated system would involve limiting information, so that if a trade convoy went missing in deep space/local space but no one was around to see it happen/report back you won't know who took your stuff. (this similarly makes pirates more interesting as they try to hide themselves as traders while also being combat capable enough to take down a convoy when no one is looking)

But it is, in no way, a real "trade" system. Because flying to places without some sort of strong impetus (like story) tends to be pretty boring.

*Within a limit

**Generally the individual performance/fleet size/ship effectiveness performance tradoffs are not ideal. Better tradeoff systems  have the tradeoffs within sections so that players have a choice of which types of ship performance advantages they have, a tradeoff of which types of fleets they work best with(So, think "command advantages"), and and in which aspect their flagship is strong . This makes things generally easier to balance while also feeling better for the player.

It's a valid point about new players, but, a counter-point: the "event" system could actually make it much easier for someone getting started. Part of the early difficulty is in figuring out what to do; profitable trade routes don't help if you don't know about them. One open route that you know about, due to news about something happening, is worth 10 routes you'd have to try to go all Excel on to figure out.

There are also some REDACTED ideas about making early-game combat more new-player-friendly in a way that makes in-fiction sense. But it's REDACTED.

A free floating idea. Mercenary work. You sign up for some number of days, receive a salary and you and your ship become part of a mercenary fleet. You have no command/control of the mercenary fleet, you consume none of your own resource, all you do is control your own ship in the event of a fight (with a conditional mechanic which says that retreating while over 50% hull and 50% CR means contract failure).
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JP161

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #103 on: March 19, 2014, 04:17:33 PM »

Se let me get this straight;
Trading in Starsector is done via events that stay active for a (short?) period of time, but there should be several around at any time to pick from?
 - Are these commodities picked from planets or stations just as you now would buy a new gun or a ship?
 - Are some places better for them than others or are the differences mostly about the size of the colony (core world producing more stuff than fringe one) or something else?
 - Are you intended to do something like:
1) Hear about an event happening over at planet Z that makes the left kneecap of a dancing robot profitable if sold there
2) Figure out where this particular kneecap is produced
3) Have enough capacity to carry enough to really make some profit in addition to having the speed to get there
4) Hope no-one else has bought it empty or pay through the roof for whatever they have left once you get there
5) Find another place if the last one was indeed emptied
6) Then beat the competition to said planet or end up with cargo hold full with kneecaps for dancing robots that are now worth less than you purchased them for because the base purchase price is always higher than the price others are willing to pay?
If so, it doesn't honestly sound too appealing to me. I do hope there's something very basic I'm missing here.

And yes, there are people out there who do like trading. The pure 'buy cheap, sell expensive' -experience. But if it's final that that kind of trading isn't going to be in Starsector proper, I can live with that. :)

As for the 'getting paid for delivering cargo for certain planet/corporation/faction/whathaveyou'; that sounds like a fine addition to the game along with the event-driven trading. Even if the majority of the bulk trading of onions is done by corporations or something that the player doesn't even see, it shouldn't eliminate such a huge opportunity for trading in the game!

Could even consider it as a good way to get into it without having to resort to the planet a -> planet b -> planet c -> planet a routine. There's tons of trading happening all the time in the universe behind the curtains.

Now just like the events, one corporation (or faction or planet etc.) gets hit hard by something similar to the events or just gets really lucky or something, tons of possibilities;
 - Competition sabotaged their ships and the only way they can stay in business is to call for outsider help
 - Company got a REALLY good deal on some big batch of coconuts but they simply don't have enough capacity to ferry them to the coconut-hungry dancing robots that refuse to dance without them
Anything goes, really. Especially since it's among several WORLDS. Tons and tons of trading and corporations there.

Anyway, in addition to the event system, (maybe under the industry tree as a skill?) have a list of currently available freight orders for the the player to accept the one (more than one?) that suits his current ability to complete.

Granted, it's not too different from the events but it is less catastrophic and more .. errr, let's say "sustainable" and it might help keep the 'regular trading' feeling in. Rewards could be based on the amount of goods you can carry, be it a single Hound, fleet of them or a big ol' Atlas. Of course, that's in addition to such things as distance and how dangerous the route is etc., you know, the usual.

Basically something that isn't quite so random as these events seems to be (to the uneducated) and does give a moderate profit without being easily optimized into "planet a -> b -> c -> a" routine.

Suppose these could be considered missions or ...quests... more so than events, at any rate.

Btw, how is the new player experience intended for Starscape proper? One frigate and of ya go?

Thinking that having a real mission-like interface could help out starting players to get off the ground. Be they newbies or just someone who got their fleet blown to smithereens.

Something along the lines of 'guard the caravan' in Fallout 2. To be part of a bigger caravan and being able to tackle some easy kills for some exp, maybe loot and pay, depending on how successful the run was.

Well, whatever you end up doing, this game is tons of fun. Really good stuff, wish more of those games that claim to be finished could raise up to the same level where Starsector already is!
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xenoargh

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Re: On Trade Design
« Reply #104 on: March 19, 2014, 04:21:06 PM »

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coconut-hungry dancing robots that refuse to dance without them
I... man, that almost makes me want to make an Event system prototype. 

Just to make that image.
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