The trading game

[Commander McLane]

I seem to recall several discussions in which it was concluded that the quantities being traded were too small to impact the market prices...

Yes, indeed.

Furthermore, Oolite's price- and quantity-calculation formulas don't effect each other.

Which doesn't prevent you from trying to set the variables in a way that big price = small quantity and small price = big quantity, or whatever relation you have in mind.

But whatever you lot are planning, it is strongly advised that you get your head around understanding how commodities.plist works first, because this is the only way in which you can set prices and quantities during (or rather before) the game.

And I don't want to discourage you, but fact is that Oolite is not set up for the complicated relations between economies and prices which Trigg has in mind. It is set up for the simple linear increase or decrease between Poor Agr and Rich Ind which we find in-game. That doesn't mean it is impossible to use the formula for something else, but it means that (a) this is a very tricky business, (b) your possibilities are limited and (c) you may yourself find having to change the whole appearance of the Ooniverse in order to achieve what you want (for instance a solution will highly likely by incompatible with any station-OXPs; which may be a sacrifice that many players (me included) may not be willing to make).

Also keep in mind that it is very unlikely that Oolite itself gets reprogrammed in order to implement a new trading model. After all, Oolite is a remake of Elite in the first place, and the core game tries to generally stay faithful to Elite. And let's face it, Elite is neither a proper space simulation nor a proper economy simulation. It is a game which uses simplifications for gameplay's sake. Its beauty lies in its simplicity. You don't have to go through lots and lots of complicated screens and choices prior to any action. If you want that, there are other games out there suited for your needs. But Oolite should be kept simple.

[Lestradae]

I have wondered if something like this could be made by including conditions into commodity.plist.

Under certain conditions a certain station has that-and-that prices, under other conditions others.

No idea if that's doable, but I throw it into the fray - so that someone will try it out who isn't me

[Commander Trigg]

I've read the post on understanding commodities.plist, and I'm not sure quite how much understanding I now have.

That notwithstanding, it looks like the key to implementing this would be the "economy * MARKET_ECO_ADJUST_PRICE" calculation. If we could get this to give values to systems according to my earlier model instead of the existing one we'd be just about there.

[Ramirez]

To make the proposed system work you would need to set up entries in the commodity.plist for each economy type, and maybe even for each economy-government combo. This isn't difficult, provided you know what kind of prices/stocks you are aiming for. However it effectively means hard-coding the details for each system type, and overriding the current pricing algorithms. This would obviously create incompatibilities with other OXPs, but it's still worth trying out.

The simple linear progression comes from the need to keep Oolite's (and Elite's) algorithm as small and simple as possible, yet able to produce consistent pricing for 256 x 8 systems. Back in the early 80s there simply wasn't enough memory available to do anything more complicated.

The economy*MARKET_ECO_ADJUST_PRICE effectively gives the gradient of the commodity prices as you go up through the economy types. Thus, computers have an adjust price of 13 which means they're cheap at Rich Industrials and expensive and Poor Agriculturals, with a wide price deviation between the two. Platinum, on the other hand, has an adjust price of -2, which means it's slightly more expensive in Industrial systems than in agricultural ones, but overall the price differential is quite small.

[wades]

Probably I should read about commodity.plist, but

Oolite is not set up for the complicated relations between economies and prices which Trigg has in mind. It is set up for the simple linear increase or decrease between Poor Agr and Rich Ind which we find in-game. That doesn't mean it is impossible to use the formula for something else, but it means that (a) this is a very tricky business, (b) your possibilities are limited and (c) you may yourself find having to change the whole appearance of the Ooniverse in order to achieve what you want

Does this mean there's a single linear relationship that computes the prices for all commodities with the same coefficients? i.e. the commodity prices for a system are not computed independently? Or are you just saying that the relationship between a commodity price and an economy type has to be linear?

[Commander McLane]

The latter.

And if you're planning to script anything related to this, you really have to bite through the technical details. Wild speculation is nice, and is what is sought after in the phase of brainstorming, but practical solutions seldom are created through pure brainstorming.

Therefore my advice. Personally I've been there and done that, so I know a little what I'm talking about. But I have no intention whatsoever to change anything in the trading game. Therefore, whoever wants to run with it, should know the "terms of trade" (so to speak) of scripting, as far as commodities are concerned.

[Zbond-Zbond]

i cant really think of any device which would be able to scan your hold and know what you had

http://www.roadtransport.com/blogs/big- ... nyone.html
that will lead you to an interesting photograph which doesn't need the words to explain, but there are words there too.. (this is actually the light duty model)

meanwhile I regularly buy furs @ c. ¢45/t and sell them @ c. ¢95/t which is a profit of c. ¢50/t i.e. better than computers (unless purchased somewhere bent)

how about PlanetFall? PlanetFall 1.23.oxp - some interesting opportunities there - but not much good until ya got a few credits, due to periodic costs

[Zbond-Zbond]

Poor Industrial
Picture a landscape of row upon un-ending row of grey factories, smoke belching towards the skies and you have a pretty good idea of what life is like on a poor industrial planet. These factories churn out large quantities of low-grade mechanical goods, alongside the radioactives that are the inevitable side-effect of the manufacturing process. There is a high level of alcohol dependency and drug abuse amongst the population as they attempt to escape the drudgery of their dull, uneventful lives

SOUNDS FANTASTIC throw in some electronic music and I'll visit for three months (a summer continent please) (during Earth winters) ..and lets hope the musicians are from Ceesxe!

[Disembodied]

I have some concerns about altering market prices based on planetary government types, to be honest. Apart from anything else it seems terribly Earth-based: all Communist worlds are heavy vodka-drinkers; all Anarchies are hellholes. Surely not necessarily true, with so many hundreds of planets to choose from?

I think it would be best to keep the economics based on the economies, really. I like the idea of bringing more commodities into the equation, even promoting some triangular trading where possible, but it'll probably be easier to do this by reducing the likely available quantities of the top sellers (i.e. giving less of a chance of filling up your Cobra with computers or furs) and by giving more variation and potential profit margin to the secondary products, like liquor & wines, luxuries, machinery, radioactives, textiles etc. Mind you, this might well annoy the pilots of the larger haulers!

It should be noted though that we're never going to make trading in Oolite tremendously challenging or interesting: it's just too basic. Milk runs will be replaced with milk triangles; the old computers-furs mantra will become liquor-machinery-furs-computers. Which is better, and more of a challenge to find the best runs, but still not exactly gripping. In any case, quite quickly the focus of the game changes away from trading and on to combat, and we reach the point where we end up looking for things to spend our money on, after we've got our dream ship fully kitted out. Adding in a bit more luck, and some mission-type bonanzas created by the Bloomberg OXP, would seem to me to be the best option.

[allikat]

The other question to ask at this point, is what about those of use who don't drive a cobra? I have 140tc of space in my PCC, and I usually buy 3 commodities out on every docking. 35t each of computers, machinery and luxuries? Sure, load it up. On the way back, usually furs, food, textiles and some minerals to top it off.

[bigmike20vt]

as a general rule, does anyone actually play this game as a trader anyway (other than a little extra cash)?

am not knocking the career am just curious. i have never been able to pull myself away from the bounty hunter with cargo scooping elitieer myself, the milk runs have always been the way to get the money for my 1st decent laser and other basic bounty hunter gear and then that is it..

[JazHaz]

The other question to ask at this point, is what about those of use who don't drive a cobra? I have 140tc of space in my PCC

Me too!

I would like to see more stock of everything. Is it really realistic that a planet with billions of people would only have a few hundred tons of stuff for sale?

Also I would like to see the end of the 127 unit limit!

[Commander McLane]

The other question to ask at this point, is what about those of use who don't drive a cobra? I have 140tc of space in my PCC

Me too!

I would like to see more stock of everything. Is it really realistic that a planet with billions of people would only have a few hundred tons of stuff for sale?

Well, it's not the planet, it's the station. And according to the backstory, the station you're docking with is only one of a network of stations orbiting the planet.

[Zbond-Zbond]

The 127t limit only applies to the f8 commodities "spot" market.
f8/f8 opens up a different box-of-shims altogether (which could be thought of as a sort of derivitives market ?? perhaps ???) anyway, your main problem won't be too little cargo, but rather, deciding whether to go for a bigger ship. In this way I think that a wide range of trading opportunities are offered in Oolite.

And flying an Anaconda is such fun…

[Sarin]

As for those little numbers...what you buy/sell on open market are actually just leftovers. Most of cargo is moved via cargo contracts you can get. That is also reason why you can't really affect the economy, even when you shuffle full PCC from Xexedi to Laenin and back.

For the limit..well, I believe that main reason for this is ability to carry almost unlimited amount of gold, platinum and gems. You could make huge profit carrying those around and waiting for best price and best profit.