Proposal for 1.82: support for economic changes

[cim]

One thing that comes up in the forums now and again is that the trading model in Oolite is a bit dull. Computers one way, Furs (maybe Liquor) the other way. Except in a freighter, or for your first few trips when you'd don't have the money for a hold full of the expensive goods, most of the goods don't even get used once you've figured it out.

A lot of the issues I think are - at the very least for now - up to OXPs to solve, but I think the core game can do a lot more to provide an interesting interface to do that.

The issues

• The commodities.plist format is not easy to work with.
• There's no real way to customise the available cargoes or add more, except through the sort of hack that New Cargoes or Cabal Common Library uses.
• Many of the trade goods aren't that useful.
• The optimal trade route is a boring one (and there's virtually no reason for a trader to visit a Mainly X system)
• Secondary station prices often are completely unrelated to system prices (even if the commodities.plists are similar).
• Secondary station illegal goods export is an easy way to make money and not easy for OXP authors to avoid except by just not selling them at all.
• The treatment of illegal goods makes no sense unless you assume that the Cooperative is a slave empire, and the smugglers are trying to take the slaves to the free Anarchy and Feudal worlds, while the police and mercenaries try to shoot them down.

The basic proposal

Reformatting commodities.plist to a more readable dictionary-based format would be straightforward - but wouldn't be compatible with older OXPs. There aren't that many OXPs with commodities in, though - and other than Galnavy I think they all have maintainers who are still around or licenses compatible with non-author bugfixes. Some of the modern trading info OXPs might need a bit of an update too, for different reasons.

If backward compatibility with the old way of doing things is absolutely needed, it could be achieved - keep commodities.plist but introduce a trade-goods.plist which overrides it whenever specified. Still, I'd rather not do that and it would make certain types of trade-based OXP horrible to write.

The formula used by commodities.plist is itself fairly incomprehensible, and is what it is for very specific hardware limitations in the 80s. A simpler formula with three parameters: an average price, an import/export variation size, and a random variation size would be able to give basically the same results, but would be much easier for OXPers to write to. ("Overflow" would be removed - high random variation can give similar results if needed) Additional optional parameters could allow trade good variation which is very hard or impossible to write to now.

The plist would define entry per trade good for the primary system market, and would allow (but not define in the core) additional entries. Additionally, scrap illegal-goods.plist and define legality here instead.

Secondary station market entries say how they differ from the primary market in price and quantities. There needs to be a way here for a secondary station to be able to define this for goods it doesn't know about because they're OXP-defined ... defaulting to "0TC,0Cr" will be absolutely fine for some OXP stations but not all of them. The way I'm currently thinking of for this is that trade goods are defined in classes (core or OXP) and stations can then select classes to apply pricing rules to, as well as "default" and "specific good" rules. So you might have:

Station X:
- Food (specific good): price adjustment +2, quantity adjustment: -3
- Consumer goods (good class): price adjustment: +1, quantity adjustment: 0
- Default: price adjustment: 0, quantity adjustment: -7 (same price as main, but hardly any items)

Allow secondary stations to have different capacity limits to the main station, per-good capacity limits, and their own import/export legality rules

This would also allow prices to be set outside the 0..102.3 range (again, the core game wouldn't use that)

What I'm thinking of as a basic format is something like this for trade good definitions:

Code: Select all

{
	// "food" should really be "oolite-food" by the prefixing
	// standards but that would be inconvenient for backward
	// compatibility of shipdata lines like cargo_carried = 'Food'.
	"food" = {
		"name" = "[commodity-name food]";
		"classes" = ("oolite-consumer-goods",
					 "oolite-edible-goods");
		"container" = "t"; // or 'kg', or 'g'
		"peak_export" = 7; // Poor Ag
		"peak_import" = 0; // Rich Ind
		"price_average" = 5.0;
		// fraction of average ~= 2.75 credits
		"price_economic_component" = 0.55;
		// fraction of average ~= 0.2 credits 
		"price_random_component" = 0.04; 
		"quantity_average" = 13.5; // gets rounded
		"quantity_economic_component" = 0.52;
		"quantity_random_component" = 0.04;
		"export_legality" = 0;
		"import_legality" = 0;
	};
	// or, for goods which people want to customise a bit more'
	"myoxp-medicines" = {
		"name" = "Medicines";
		"classes" = ("oolite-medical-goods",
					 "myoxp-hightech-goods");
		"container" = "t";
		"script" = "myoxp-trading.js";
		/* The trading script has a bunch of functions
		   which allow setting of prices, quantities, legalities.
		   In this case, they make the good strongly imported if
		   the planet description contains 'disease' */
	};
}

and this for station definitions, maybe a restaurant station? This goes in the shipdata.plist for the station.

Code: Select all

"market" = (
	{
		"applies_to_group" = "class"; // or good, or default
		"applies_to_name" = "oolite-edible-goods";
		"price_adjustment" = 2; // i.e. +2
		"quantity_adjustment" = -5;
//		"export_legality" = 0; // no setting = keep good default
//		"import_legality" = 0; // ditto
		"storage_cap" = 20;
	},
	{
		"applies_to_group" = "default";
		"price_adjustment" = -10; // goes out entirely
		"storage_cap" = 0;
	}
);

Extra possibilities
Mostly an illustration of the sorts of things OXPs could do with this, some bits maybe could end up as core features if there's a nice way to go about it that fits with the rest of the game.

...but the tricky thing with messing with the economy to make trading more interesting long-term is that it makes it even harder for a Jameson to get started if they don't know all the tricks and are figuring out what to trade where the hard way. You'd need some way to significantly increase the outgoings of a veteran compared with a new commander, which is difficult without major rewrites of other bits of the game.

• Volume-based pricing. Scale prices back towards galactic average by the trader volume of the system - so safe systems have more traders than dangerous ones, and hub systems have more traders than edge ones. Going out into the backwaters might get you better prices.
• Adjust the Industrial prices. At the moment the Industrial goods - Machinery, Computers, Luxuries - have basically guaranteed prices. They're all also very expensive, which means the Ind->Ag trip doesn't really have any cheap cargo to dump for pirates. Carrying a few barrels of food back to the Agricultural is really not an obvious trick; dumping even one barrel of the real goods probably wipes out the entire profit on the run, at least to start with. Significantly dropping the prices on one of the Industrial goods might help.
  
  Alien Items should probably generally sell for more than 50Cr - you get that much from destroying them, and that's easier.
• Adjust the peak economies per trade good. Having every good best in Rich Ind <-> Poor Ag means that it's hard to see how the "Mainly" systems get any trade at all. For the basics (Food, Alloys) it's fine, but it might be interesting to say that (e.g.) an Rich Agricultural imports Luxuries at the best price (they're rich enough to afford them) and exports Liquor at the best price (fine wines are how they got to be rich).
  
  Even neater would be if those peak economies formed an eight good cycle around the eight economies, so getting the best trading profit (especially with volume-based pricing as well) might involve a carefully-plotted cross-chart trade route.
  
  Having looked at this, I can't figure out a sensible cycle to do that which isn't completely arbitrary: especially not with keeping alternating Ind/Agri hops so that regions such as the Steel Halo or the Fertile Crescent don't suddenly become excellent trading areas. That idea might have to be an OXP which added extra trade goods specifically for the cycle.
• Do something about the illegal goods laws. Import illegality for trade goods? Or have police able to scan your ship for illegal goods in flight? But also change the smuggling punishment to try to avoid in-flight ship destruction for slave transports? I'm really not sure how to deal with this one - any ideas? At the moment the laws don't make much sense with just the core game, and they really don't make sense with station OXPs added.
  
  With that done (somehow?!), it should also be possible to adjust the illegal goods prices. Make Slaves/Firearms generally the most profitable Ind->Ag trade pair so that there's a reason to carry them over Furs/Computers (Narcotics still being a wildcard)

[Redspear]

Some thoughts on the various commodities...


Production

To make something requires both the materials and the methods to be available.

Luxuries
Perfumes, Spices, Coffee

If luxuries are an industrially produced (or packaged) item then might that be done most easilly with direct access to the materials themselves? Could they be best placed as the domain of mainly industrial worlds where industrial production can be combined with the finest raw materials from the same planet for a competitive price?

By the same token, might narcotics be the realm of mainly agricultural worlds, in the sense that some might require a great deal of processing. A mainly agricultural world might be best placed to have both access to the raw materials and the means of processing them and so be able to produce cheaper narcotics.


Demand

Perhaps the other planet info could be used besides government and economy types.
Might firearms and/or food sell better on a planet prone to civil war, for example?

* Slaves Usually humanoid

Perhaps most slaves are human (seems likely given their frequency) and so perhaps they sell better to non-humans...

Could furs be more valuable in mountainous worlds? or narcotics on boring planets?
Are textiles cheap on lobster worlds (not much use for them perhaps)? etc.


The Black Market

Perhaps illegal good are not sold via the commodities market as such, but rather must be bought and sold more directly. Maybe you need to build up a reputation to get the best deals or the biggest quantities. When you find somewhere to sell, if your rep isn't high enough, you might not be able to find many customers.

I'm imagining something similar to the current contracts and parcel deliveries system but instead of a time limit and a destination, there's simply a price and a quantity; a commodities market outside of the commodities market if you like, were rep is important (to be trusted not to inform the authorities).

[Switeck]

Have you read my Switeck's Shipping OXP on the subject?

[spara]

This part of Oolite definitely deserves a rethink, but I feel that extra care is needed to add interest and variety to it rather than complexity. I think that the simplicity of the current system is fundamental to the original Elite vibe.

Reformatting commodities.plist to a more readable dictionary-based format would be straightforward - but wouldn't be compatible with older OXPs. There aren't that many OXPs with commodities in, though - and other than Galnavy I think they all have maintainers who are still around or licenses compatible with non-author bugfixes. Some of the modern trading info OXPs might need a bit of an update too, for different reasons.

The current calculation formula is so complex that there really aren't many out there that really know how to tweak it or even design a new market with it, so a total redesign is more than welcome. Maybe some conversion script could be written to update the old plists?

The plist would define entry per trade good for the primary system market, and would allow (but not define in the core) additional entries.

This sounds interesting, but as you have outlined, should be left to the oxps. As it adds complexity. This also requires multi page market, doesn't it?

Allow secondary stations to have different capacity limits to the main station, per-good capacity limits, and their own import/export legality rules

This is definitely a good idea. ConStores for example would definitely benefit from this.

[*]Adjust the Industrial prices. At the moment the Industrial goods - Machinery, Computers, Luxuries - have basically guaranteed prices. They're all also very expensive, which means the Ind->Ag trip doesn't really have any cheap cargo to dump for pirates. Carrying a few barrels of food back to the Agricultural is really not an obvious trick; dumping even one barrel of the real goods probably wipes out the entire profit on the run, at least to start with. Significantly dropping the prices on one of the Industrial goods might help.

Then again the trading part of the game could be seen as a ladder type of thing where you advance from the cheap commodities to the more expensive ones. I like the feel of advancement you get, when you move from food to computers.

Alien Items should probably generally sell for more than 50Cr - you get that much from destroying them, and that's easier.

Or lower the bounty.

Even neater would be if those peak economies formed an eight good cycle around the eight economies, so getting the best trading profit (especially with volume-based pricing as well) might involve a carefully-plotted cross-chart trade route.

Now this would be a very cool change. I think that the dullness comes from endlessly jumping between two systems.

At the moment the laws don't make much sense with just the core game, and they really don't make sense with station OXPs added.

Yes. Currently it's basically up to the player to write the rules in their head. It would be more interesting to have systems where illegal goods were not illegal. This would require some new tools for the player to see these limitations before they jump in. Maybe an upgrade to the chart showing illegal imports?

[Switeck]

The price ranges of Oolite v1.80 and earlier can be considered good rules-of-thumb for what future prices should be for existing commodities, but prices and availability can vary inside that range based on system conditions.

The handful of "unreachable" systems might be extremely desperate for goods and pay top profits for whatever they would normally want.

Corporate States may have more predictable amounts for sale -- meaning more food typically for sale at an Corporate State Agriculture than an Anarchy.

Extremely high tech or low tech systems might skew prices and availability some. A TL=14/15 Rich Industrial system might have more computers for sale, but at a slightly higher price than a normal Rich Industrial system.

The demand for minerals should be much higher at industrial systems than currently. They might have none or only very little for sale and at a high price. Give Asteroid Miners more to do.

Rock Hermits may vary from "picky" in what they'll buy to looking much like the main station's prices. As-is, they're only good for selling Liq/Wines and buying whatever they have for sale (Radioactives, Alloys?, Minerals, Gold, Plat, Gems.)
Their buying and selling capacity may be limited to 63 TC, roughly half the main station's selling limit. Probably best to not limit that further since freighters might visit there.

[Thargoid]

Generally I would very much support this, as working with commodities.plist is a real pain.

However one point I have to give on the proposals above is how much work they would be to implement if you were doing a full set of items for a market. Here I draw a parallel with the old and new versions of the sub-entities in shipdata.plist. The new ones (especially for flashers) have a much wider scope of possibilities etc, but they are a complete nightmare to set up in the plist if you have a lot of them (at least compared to the very quick and simple way that the old style used). I can recall several hours of grumblings and swearings when I converted all the flashers used on some of my stations from the old to new versions.

That isn't to say that new and wider ranging options should not be considered (indeed quite the opposite), but just to remember that it shouldn't hopefully be too much of a chore to actually use the things fully. The above code snippets to me look like they may engender equal profanities that the sub-entity conversions did...

[Zireael]

I agree with everything pointed out in the OP

[cim]

This part of Oolite definitely deserves a rethink, but I feel that extra care is needed to add interest and variety to it rather than complexity. I think that the simplicity of the current system is fundamental to the original Elite vibe.

Agreed.

Maybe some conversion script could be written to update the old plists?

In this case, relatively straightforwardly.

This also requires multi page market, doesn't it?

Yes. Not difficult, just not needed before. Probably also a key to sort the trade goods - traditional order, alphabetical, sort by price (both ways), sort by quantity available, sort by quantity carried.

Then again the trading part of the game could be seen as a ladder type of thing where you advance from the cheap commodities to the more expensive ones. I like the feel of advancement you get, when you move from food to computers.

The problem with the market at the moment is there's virtually no reason to ever carry an industrial good which isn't Computers, even for your second trip (Leesti to Diso / Zaonce to Isinor). The guaranteed profit on them is so good that even when your money is such that you can afford 2 Machinery but only 1 Computers (possible on that second trip) the Computers still gives basically the same expected profit (Average profit of Machinery Leesti to Diso, 9/TC. Computers, 22/TC)

So you only get that ladder on the Industrial side. It doesn't last very long on the Agricultural side either - first trip you're definitely best filling up on Food. Third trip, assuming you took Computers back, you're better off buying as much Liquor as you can afford, then putting Food in the rest of the space. (Furs are sufficiently unreliable in price that there are always at least occasional times when Liquor is a better option, especially for trades between non-extreme economies)

The ladder will last longer if you haven't played before and start by trading Machinery from Lave to Zaonce, obviously.

That said, without major - and definitely OXP-level - rewrites to the game economy, there's not a lot of room for a ladder anyway. Two thousand credits will fill an expanded Cobra III with Computers and it really doesn't take long to get that sort of money - but if you have a class of trade goods above that which cost quite a bit more but make hundreds of credits profit per container, it makes late-game money even easier to obtain.

Now this would be a very cool change. I think that the dullness comes from endlessly jumping between two systems.

There are ten legal tonne-class trade goods (Industrial exports in italics):
Food, Textiles, Radioactives, Liquor, Luxuries, Computers, Machinery, Alloys, Furs, Minerals
Any of Minerals, Textiles or Radioactives could plausibly be switched to go the other way if you wanted a fifth Industrial export.

I've not been able to come up with a coherent 8-good cycle that:
- doesn't add extra goods
- means that of the best hops at least 6 of 8 (and ideally all go across the Agri/Ind divide [1]
- has some plausible handwavy economic fiction behind it so that the game could say for example "Average Agricultural (Goat Herding)", "Rich Industrial (Nanotechnology)" to explain why that economy primarily imports and exports those goods.

[1] Note that, per the above list of goods, "mining" can be classified as an Agricultural occupation if you want.

Anyone else want to have a go?

However one point I have to give on the proposals above is how much work they would be to implement if you were doing a full set of items for a market.

I'm hoping that in general with good use of the "goods class" system that most stations you wouldn't have to write very much at all to give similar behaviour to 1.80 ... and for the rest the ability to read back what you just wrote rather than going "now, what does element 7 of this unlabelled array mean again?" might be worth it on its own...

[Zireael]

There are ten legal tonne-class trade goods (Industrial exports in italics):
Food, Textiles, Radioactives, Liquor, Luxuries, Computers, Machinery, Alloys, Furs, Minerals
Any of Minerals, Textiles or Radioactives could plausibly be switched to go the other way if you wanted a fifth Industrial export.

I've not been able to come up with a coherent 8-good cycle that:
- doesn't add extra goods
- means that of the best hops at least 6 of 8 (and ideally all go across the Agri/Ind divide [1]
- has some plausible handwavy economic fiction behind it so that the game could say for example "Average Agricultural (Goat Herding)", "Rich Industrial (Nanotechnology)" to explain why that economy primarily imports and exports those goods.

[1] Note that, per the above list of goods, "mining" can be classified as an Agricultural occupation if you want.

What have you come up with regarding the 8 good cycle, cim? Maybe seeing your ideas will make it possible to brainstorm something better?

[cim]

Maybe seeing your ideas will make it possible to brainstorm something better?

I'm deliberately not posting my idea for that very reason: I'm fairly sure that one or two of the links which I keep thinking of as "obvious" are actually sabotaging the whole thing, and I don't want to lead people down what I suspect is a dead-end.

[Svengali]

The current calculation formula is so complex that there really aren't many out there that really know how to tweak it or even design a new market with it, so a total redesign is more than welcome.

Frame created a helper tool some time ago -> https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 5&p=164521

[Disembodied]

• Volume-based pricing. Scale prices back towards galactic average by the trader volume of the system - so safe systems have more traders than dangerous ones, and hub systems have more traders than edge ones. Going out into the backwaters might get you better prices.

There's huge potential in adjusting the in-game economy (and potentially huge amounts of work, too ...). From a game point of view, the one thing which is crying out for adjustment is a risk-based (or at least effort-based) element. At the moment, you get a greater reward for taking computers from Ensoreus to Isinor (Rich Ind Corporate State -> Poor Ag Confederacy) than you do taking them from Ensoreus to Zaalela (Rich Ind Corporate State -> Average Ag Feudal), even though the risk is far lower on the Isinor run. And the prices for export goods are much better on Isinor, too. Greater risk (or, at least, greater effort) should equal greater reward.

Using the volume of trader traffic in a system would be a great way to adjust profitability. Perhaps it could be done without affecting the prices so much as the quantities of goods available on the free market (i.e. not tied up in big shipping contracts). Isinor might have really cheap agricultural products, but - because it's a hub system - there's only ever a few TCs on sale that the player can buy up. If you trade in safe/easy-to-reach systems, you're feeding on scraps. If you want to fill a hold with 35TCs of Computers, say, you'll have to go off the beaten track and/or visit more than one system. At the moment, trading is pretty much jump to one system, fill up, jump to another, sell it all and start again; instead, it could be more like jump along this route of Industrial/Mostly Industrial systems, accumulate a high-value cargo, and sell it at one destination.

...but the tricky thing with messing with the economy to make trading more interesting long-term is that it makes it even harder for a Jameson to get started if they don't know all the tricks and are figuring out what to trade where the hard way. You'd need some way to significantly increase the outgoings of a veteran compared with a new commander, which is difficult without major rewrites of other bits of the game.

The F4 contracts screen might be a help here, if it started to offer short-range, small-volume contracts which beginning players could take on, as well as short-range parcel contracts. Adjusting the profitability would need a bit of thought, but if the contracts made sense (i.e., take Ag goods from an Ag world to an Ind world) they could help educate new players, as well as providing them with a little money up front and a chance to earn a reputation.

Increasing a veteran's outgoings is trickier, but the easiest choice might be to add multipliers to repair and maintenance costs for expensive pieces of equipment, since that's really what separates the veterans from the beginners.

Another option might be to require licenses for trade in the more profitable "restricted" commodities. If the licenses need regular renewal, that's another outgoing which only a veteran would be able to afford. Other reputation-based outgoings could be added, such as bribes, or protection money.

[Zireael]

Here's my take at the 8-good cycle.

Machinery -- Food
In-universe fiction: Poor Agris badly need machines to produce food, textiles & liquor, and Rich Inds need food because they're too busy producing expensive hi-tech stuff to produce it. or maybe they think farmers are beneath them and no one wants to work in agriculture. or maybe they're too polluted to produce food. or maybe ...

Computers -- Minerals
In-universe fiction: Avg Agris are rich enough to afford computers but not as wealthy as to import luxury goods. They use said computers to increase the efficiency of their food, liquor & furs production. On their part, they export minerals used in fabricating computers and other electronic devices.

Luxuries -- Platinum/Gold
In-universe fiction: Rich Agris want luxuries, since they can afford it. They export food, liquor, textiles & furs and limited quantities of precious metals, which are then used to manufacture luxury goods on industrial worlds.

Alloys -- Radioactives
In universe fiction: All sorts of industrial planets produce metal alloys, but usually, Computers, Luxuries and Machinery demand better prices. Therefore it's mostly Poor Inds and Mainly Inds which export them in any considerable quantities. In exchange for alloys, Rich and Mainly Agri sell radioactives that the industrial planets utilize in producing the industry-scale factories.

Platinum/Gold -- Luxuries
In universe fiction: Hanging in the balance, Mainly Industrial and Mainly Agricultural planets rely on precious metal deposits to boost their economies. They are bought by factory conglomerates on other worlds to produce luxury goods.

Textiles -- Luxuries
In-universe fiction: Agricultural worlds manufacture textiles from plants which are inedible completely or partially. They are then used in producing luxurious outfits for the wealthiest in the Eight.

Furs -- Luxuries
In-universe fiction: Game is abundant on most agricultural worlds, with a possible exception of the most industrialized ones. The furs of exotic animals are sold to other world producers who work them into veritable works of art - the sought-after cloaks and furs and shawls for the rich.

----
This would be all for now. Did I forget something? I made liberal use of this table: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Tradin ... ofit_Table -- and yeah, I tried to do something so that computers aren't the industrial export to rule all and food isn't the agricultural export to rule all.

[cim]

Here's my take at the 8-good cycle.

Plausible reasoning, but not quite what I'm looking for in terms of format.

Basically what I'm looking for is:
PA (Goat Herding) Imports: Machinery (goat handling sticks); Exports: Radioactives (goat venom)
AA (.......)
.....

So that there are eight different goods (ideally legal and tonne-sized) named as imports, one for each of the economies, and those same goods are named as exports (again, one for each economy). Then, if you join the imports to the same exports, you get an 8-long loop (rather than a 5-loop and a 3-loop, for example) like
Food -> Textiles -> Radioactives -> Liquor -> Luxuries -> Computers -> Machinery -> Alloys -> Food

Perhaps it could be done without affecting the prices so much as the quantities of goods available on the free market

Oh, I like that - adjust quantities by the number of trade partners, and prices by the system danger.

[Zireael]

In economy order:

PA: import Machinery (farming machines), export Food (fruits, wheat, grain whatever)
AA: import Computers (various electronic devices), export Textiles (computer-controlled & machine-produced quantities of cotton, silk, velvet, nylon)
RA: import Luxuries (custom-made outfits for the rich), export Furs (animal and beast furs and skins)
MA: import Alloys, export Minerals (silicon, germanium, tin, lead)
MI: import Food (fruits, wheat, grain whatever), export Alloys (their own metals melted using poor infrastructure they have)
PI: import Furs (animal and beast furs and skins), export Machinery (farming machines)
AI: import Minerals (silicon, germanium, tin, lead), export Computers (various electronic devices)
RI: import Textiles (computer-controlled & machine-produced quantities of cotton, silk, velvet, nylon), export Luxuries (custom-made outfits for the rich)

In import order:
PA: import Machinery (farming machines), export Food (fruits, wheat, grain whatever)
MI: import Food (fruits, wheat, grain whatever), export Alloys (their own metals melted using poor infrastructure they have)
MA: import Alloys /someone has to/, export Minerals (silicon, germanium, tin, lead)
AI: import Minerals (silicon, germanium, tin, lead), export Computers (various electronic devices)
AA: import Computers (various electronic devices), export Textiles (computer-controlled & machine-produced quantities of cotton, silk, velvet, nylon)
RI: import Textiles (computer-controlled & machine-produced quantities of cotton, silk, velvet, nylon), export Luxuries (custom-made outfits for the rich)
RA: import Luxuries (custom-made outfits for the rich), export Furs (animal and beast furs and skins)
PI: import Furs (animal and beast furs and skins), export Machinery (farming machines)

8-loop:
Machinery -> Food -> Alloys -> Minerals -> Computers -> Textiles -> Luxuries -> Furs -> Machinery