Markets in V1.82

[ocz]

Ok. Hang on a while, I'll see what I can do about it. "Ye Olde Hermits OXP" coming up .

Modding shipdata.plist and creating markets that emulate the old behaviour? Sounds good. But fritz is right about RH being to boring. Police and stuff. I'm not in favour of game breaking price differences, but small ones are A'OK and a little extra OXP in dependence to whatever OXP you're writing right now, implementing something along that lines, might spice thinks up a bit.

[ocz]

And he has already finished it.
Ye Olde Hermit Markets

[Disembodied]

The RH markets were a little bit disappointing for me too. When I was new to Oolite (using 1.82 already) and docked at an RH for the first time, I was expecting something really different from the main stations, a big slave market for example, where you can get really good prices for captured pilots, or significantly higher prices for food and liquor. But it was only a standard market with less capacity, the only real difference being that you can leave with illegal goods without getting into trouble. Even police is present, snatching away my captured offenders before I can sell them...

It would be nice to have more market variation, but messing with prices is tricky if you want to avoid creating a free money pump (buy X dirt cheap on the station, ship it to hermit, sell it for big profit; buy Y dirt cheap on the hermit, ship it back to the station, sell it for a big profit ... rinse and repeat). What might be possible, though, is for rock hermits to exhibit occasional one-off spikes in demand for certain commodities - e.g. food, liquor & wines, narcotics, machinery, slaves, possibly firearms (adapted into mining tools and/or used for self-defence against marauders and claim-jumpers) - and occasional gluts (i.e. cheap, and lots of them) of minerals, radioactives, alloys, gold, platinum and gems - with a time-limited window of opportunity that the player can try to take advantage of. These should be relatively rare, though.

I think, too, now that the game can be saved anywhere, it's important to have these limits on rock hermits, to avoid making piracy too easy. Before, pirate players had to run the gauntlet of the main station on a regular basis: now, they don't need to, and if they could easily save, and sell all their purloined loot at any hermit they came across (which are now persistent from game to game), piracy becomes far too easy. So the quantity limits make sense, to me (but the occasional bonanza, as above, might be nice, especially if it could be tapped into a Snoopers-like rumour network).

[Cody]

I think, too, now that the game can be saved anywhere, it's important to have these limits on rock hermits, to avoid making piracy too easy.

I'd be inclined to agree, but repeatedly pulling into rock hermits and only finding 1kg of platinum or 2g of gemstones for sale (apart from the usual minerals and radioactives, that is) simply stops me from putting the effort in to visit them (with suns set far off, it takes time to visit starward hermits).

[Switeck]

As Cody pointed out, the distance to Rock Hermits is enough of an impediment that the reward can be a little better than a couple kg or g of precious metals/gems. Buying prices at Rock Hermits could differ from the main station by maybe a couple Credits/TC because traffic is so infrequent and total capacity is small.

Random Hits Space Bars at least are right along the space lanes, so they don't need either a big market or large price differences from the main station.

[Norby]

the distance to Rock Hermits is enough of an impediment that the reward can be a little better

Especially if [wiki]Deep Space Pirates[/wiki] is installed - it is possible to check the existence in the market script and give better prices. Economy in RL always follow the risk.

For those who find the Torus too slow in travel to hermits:
- the core game already increase the speed on long distances,
- [wiki]Torus To Sun[/wiki] is made to help on any long journey including hermits,
- at last resort the time acceleration in development builds is the best real-time saver.

Not all stations allow save, easy to disable. Moreover it is permanenty disabled in any stations without fixed position, so OXPers can design moving hermits, for example orbiting around the Sun (like real planets or even comets) which could get some bonus due to must survive another travel also.

There is a trick to prevent hermit detector addons: do not spawn the station until the player is not in visible range (~100km). So must get some info first about the location then explore the region to find a hermit with very good market.