Commodity sub-types

[Disembodied]

Here's a slightly off-the-wall suggestion, which would probably involve a whole chunk of extra programming, not to mention some fiddling about with the UI on the market screen, but I'll see what people think:

Create commodity sub-types, with different price ranges.

An example: in Oolite, all food is "Food". From prime wolf steaks to pre-chewed bio-mush, it's all just "Food". 1TC of caviare is worth the same as 1TC of beets in brine. OK, it could be argued that caviare and its ilk are all sold as "Luxuries" - but that means that "Luxuries" is covering an awful lot of high-end stuff: costly fabrics (as opposed to bog-standard Textiles); 12-year-old single malt whisky (as opposed to "Liquor"); rare earths (as opposed to minerals); rubies (as opposed to spinels); and so on. What if we created three or four sub-categories of each cargo type? We could even give them planet-specific names (Za Brew, etc.). If we get the game to think of them as "Liquor and Wines Class 1", "Liquor and Wines Class 2", and so on, then the different names the player sees shouldn't matter: Class 3 Liquor is priced in each system as Class 3 Liquor, whatever the player-facing name happens to be.

Richer planets could have higher demand for top-end stuff, but not an unlimited demand. You might bring in 20TC of Atriso velvet, which commands high prices in Onrira - but the local merchants only need (and are only prepared to buy) 8TC right now. This could be done by setting low maximum on-station amounts for each commodity sub-type, which could vary according to planetary wealth/population. This would encourage players to carry a greater variety of cargoes, and maybe help ease things away from the bog-standard Furs-Computers trading axis. Trading in these sub-commodities - especially the more expensive ones - doesn't need to be more profitable than trading in the current items: to avoid upsetting the game economy, the profit levels available to the player should remain about the same. But to get those same levels, the player would need to fill their holds with 4TC of this, and 6TC of that, and 2TC of those, and 8TC of some of the other, and so on, rather than just 35TC of either Computers or Furs, depending on where they are.

It might even be possible for this not to automatically knacker all pre-existing OXP station markets, if the original market remained as a default and all sub-commodities were treated by those unmodified markets as their main category: try to sell high-value Esesla Spice Apples (a "Food Class 3") at an unmodified market and it'll just be treated as "Food". But it would be possible to create different market types for core game stations, like main system stations and rock hermits, and maybe have other classes for other stations which could be based on their allegiance.

Generating the sub-commodity names would be a task, but perhaps it could be done from combining decently large word lists, and could include where appropriate any item mentioned on the F7 planet description.

This is, at best, a half-baked idea right now, and there are probably all kinds of issues I haven't thought about (and I could quite possibly be wildly wrong about some of the ones I have thought about). But: it's a suggestion. What do people think?

[Layne]

Isn't this mostly what the 'New Cargoes' oxp was designed to do? It sets up over a hundred sub-types of cargo using the base types to classify them in your hold, but when you go to the specialty trading floor, you can see them as specific sorts of foods, specialty liquors, types of computers or machinery, etc?

[Disembodied]

Isn't this mostly what the 'New Cargoes' oxp was designed to do? It sets up over a hundred sub-types of cargo using the base types to classify them in your hold, but when you go to the specialty trading floor, you can see them as specific sorts of foods, specialty liquors, types of computers or machinery, etc?

It's similar, to an extent, but where New Cargoes created hundreds of individual extra cargo types on top of the core system, I'm suggesting a core-game remake of the commodities system. "Food", for example, would cease to exist as a cargo: it would be the name of a little market in its own right, and each planet would sell a range of foodstuffs (and textile types, and alcohol, and firearms, etc.). You wouldn't have to find a special market for one particular high-end foodstuff: as far as the game engine is concerned, Grade 3 Food is Grade 3 Food, whatever it's called, and it would be valuable wherever you took it (although you'd still get the best price for top-end agricultural produce on a rich, populous industrial world).

This isn't an attempt to redesign the game economy so much as to simply redecorate it. Things should work pretty much as normal: Poor Ag-Rich Ind would still be the best trade route. But the player would be carrying a more interesting variety of cargo, and - I think - trading would feel more satisfying.

[Wildeblood]

+1 Turn each of the current commodities into a category. We've had this discussion years ago. I agreed then and still do now. This is probably OXP-able by now.

[Cholmondely]

Just for reference:

Cim's SOTL Altmap: One of 3 pages of the F8 commodities screen.

[Redspear]

Disembodied and I disagreed on this issue previously (respectfully, I like to think).

My essential argument is that broad categories hide that you're not including a great deal wheras specifics actually reveal that you're not including a great deal. Like zooming in on a low resolution map, only then is the lack of detail revealed.

To continue my analogy, including sub-types advocates zooming in, so then the next logical question might be: how far do we want to zoom in?
Is a sub-type simply a sub-category or is it a specific item? How many distinct items are for sale on eBay? Do we want that level of resolution? One might say, 'but of course we don't', so then we're still in categories rather than specifics.

This is important I think because higher resolution adds much more flavour (e.g. 'quantum processors' vs 'high-tech computers'). Problem is of course that a higher level of specificity for items can look increasingly odd in a 'galactic' commodites market unless you have a confusingly enormous list of them. How do you translate 'oysters' for example to a language with no experience of molluscs? How about 'sea-food', or even just 'food'? It's not perfect by any means but it's certainly functional.

That's the great advantage of broad categories: they're much more servicable in most situatuions; bit dull though, as has rightly been pointed out. Don't forget however that we already have a contract service that occasionally includes specific oddities to be shipped around the charts.

Then there's the actual 'reality' of how trading might work anyway. Is 'food' general? is it species specific? is the good stuff actually 'luxuries'? and/or is the whole thing largely irrelevant because much of it will either be: served at the station you shipped it to; or reprocessed to become palatable to a planet's main inhabitant type?

Can you really buy even 1TC of beef (in game, from an orbiting station) of is the convention that it's 1TC of meat and you get simply get a mix? Because if it's 'Ontidian goat's cheese' then we're going to need a really long (and I would suggest, highly unwieldy) list, whereas if it's simply 'dairy' then we're still living very much in category land and have added very little to the game.

Would it make more sense?
Would it require minimal additional complexity? (for the player)
Would it be more fun?

I'm not convinced that the answer to any of those questions would be 'yes'.

I'm not suggesting that things can't be improved upon but rather that adding flavoursome items such as 'Lavian Brandy' and the like means that they will either show up suspiciously often or once we start giving everything a planet name then the planet name soon becomes irrelevant. Either way it all too quickly becomes apparent that there really aren't many things being traded at all.


Suggestion (of which I'm far from convinced by):

Make luxuries an exceptional category.

It's arguably the one that would be most system specific anyway and even if a planet only sold one luxury item (eg. Lave and its brandy) then it makes sense that it's only available in one system.

As for selling it on, make it so that it counts as extra in another system i.e. 1TC of Lavian Brandy sells as 1TC + (lightyear distance from Lave / x) of luxuries anywhere else.

Any planet that lists 'evil juice', 'ma corn', 'wolf cutlet' or whatever in it's description then has a ready-made, specific luxury item for sale (likely why it's famous for it). Keep availabilty low and then it's not a cash cow but rather an occasional opportunity to pick up an item that you could sell almost anywhere else for a profit, regardless of the economy type.

[Cody]

Wolf cutlets? Only if they're from Cequququ!

[Redspear]

Wolf cutlets? Only if they're from Cequququ!

I see you're a connoisseur

[Cholmondely]

Disembodied and I disagreed on this issue previously (respectfully, I like to think).

My essential argument is that broad categories hide that you're not including a great deal whereas specifics actually reveal that you're not including a great deal. Like zooming in on a low resolution map, only then is the lack of detail revealed.

To continue my analogy, including sub-types advocates zooming in, so then the next logical question might be: how far do we want to zoom in?
Is a sub-type simply a sub-category or is it a specific item? How many distinct items are for sale on eBay? Do we want that level of resolution? One might say, 'but of course we don't', so then we're still in categories rather than specifics.

This is important I think because higher resolution adds much more flavour (e.g. 'quantum processors' vs 'high-tech computers'). Problem is of course that a higher level of specificity for items can look increasingly odd in a 'galactic' commodities market unless you have a confusingly enormous list of them. How do you translate 'oysters' for example to a language with no experience of molluscs? How about 'sea-food', or even just 'food'? It's not perfect by any means but it's certainly functional.

That's the great advantage of broad categories: they're much more serviceable in most situations; bit dull though, as has rightly been pointed out. Don't forget however that we already have a contract service that occasionally includes specific oddities to be shipped around the charts.

Then there's the actual 'reality' of how trading might work anyway. Is 'food' general? is it species specific? is the good stuff actually 'luxuries'? and/or is the whole thing largely irrelevant because much of it will either be: served at the station you shipped it to; or reprocessed to become palatable to a planet's main inhabitant type?

Can you really buy even 1TC of beef (in game, from an orbiting station) or is the convention that it's 1TC of meat and you get simply get a mix? Because if it's 'Ontidian goat's cheese' then we're going to need a really long (and I would suggest, highly unwieldy) list, whereas if it's simply 'dairy' then we're still living very much in category land and have added very little to the game.

Would it make more sense?
Would it require minimal additional complexity? (for the player)
Would it be more fun?

I'm not convinced that the answer to any of those questions would be 'yes'.

I'm not suggesting that things can't be improved upon but rather that adding flavoursome items such as 'Lavian Brandy' and the like means that they will either show up suspiciously often or once we start giving everything a planet name then the planet name soon becomes irrelevant. Either way it all too quickly becomes apparent that there really aren't many things being traded at all.


Suggestion (of which I'm far from convinced by):

Make luxuries an exceptional category.

It's arguably the one that would be most system specific anyway and even if a planet only sold one luxury item (eg. Lave and its brandy) then it makes sense that it's only available in one system.

As for selling it on, make it so that it counts as extra in another system i.e. 1TC of Lavian Brandy sells as 1TC + (lightyear distance from Lave / x) of luxuries anywhere else.

Any planet that lists 'evil juice', 'ma corn', 'wolf cutlet' or whatever in it's description then has a ready-made, specific luxury item for sale (likely why it's famous for it). Keep availability low and then it's not a cash cow but rather an occasional opportunity to pick up an item that you could sell almost anywhere else for a profit, regardless of the economy type.

So what's your take on New Cargoes, then?

But, seriously, it's a game. On the one hand, there are those of us who want some sort of realism, otherwise we find it difficult to believe in what we are doing. So perhaps not the endless burgeoning variety of Waitrose or the Harrods food halls, but certainly more than the rather prosaic vanilla game commodities.

On the other hand, I can see your argument about too much realism (and the unmentioned concomitant difficulties inherent in modelling them in-game - I can see that Phasted's OXP goes wonky with overuse, and that Vincentz never got his off the ground). In terms of your 3-point critique,

Would it make more sense?
Would it require minimal additional complexity? (for the player)
Would it be more fun?

My initial feeling is that it does make more sense.
But, I do find cim's endless list confusing, and quickly realised that I needed to "opt in" Market Observer to handle it.
As far as more fun goes, I didn't opt in any of my OXP aiming cheats, so ended up getting marmalised by the McNasties and never managed to work out the answer to that one!
Sounds as though once again the optionality of the OXP system steps in to save the day!

[Redspear]

Part of a much bigger discussion:
starts at end of this post (or close enough).

New cargoes - never tried it but if it's anything like the screenshot above then it would look to me like more complexity for little benefit.

On the realism issue: I think there's an assumption here that more options will look more realistic in game, and why wouldn't it?
Well, for exactly the reason I've been trying to explain...

'Food' is boring as a descriptor, no doubt, it leaves a lot to be desired; what it doesn't leave however is all of the enormous number of possibilities that could be included within that category. If we increase the resolution just a layer or two then we might need: meat; dairy; vegetables; fungus; etc. Still a bit boring don't you think? Do that for each of the current commodities and we now have a much more complex trading interface for minimal additional reward.

Typically, people aren't arguing for that level however, they're arguing for the "Atriso velvet" level of detail. To be fair, that really does sound more interesting but if that's to be listed then even ignoring the Atriso part, just how many types of textile would we need to list in order to present anything even remotely realistic? Even for one planet alone (with this one as the player's reference - ppresumably...), the list for most of the current categories could well exceed the number of commodities currently in game.

So catching all of them is either unrealistic or confusingly intricate, unless you use broad catch-all categories that do it for you and leave the player to imagine the rest, e.g. 'textiles', done.

So no, I don't think the proposed alternatives are necessarily more realistic, just more detailed.

There are other quirks with the current trading model that can be critiqued (some of which are included in the discussion linked above) but there are ways to address them by tweaking things already in game rather than adding new items.

Price can be varied, as can availability for example, those two things alone could easily break the computers/furs monotony that often results.

As for oxps saving the day, I completely agree: if you want more detail in your game then go for it. If any oxp floats the player's boat then that's all the justification they need.

[Redspear]

In terms of adding some flavour, how about this?

• You buy your boring 5TCs of food.
• A label is randomly assigned to that cargo so it displays in your manifest as (for example) "Food: Cequququan Wolf Cutlet".
• Sell it and rebuy in the same station and you might get "Food: Cequququan Prime Beef".
• The only part the trading model needs to reference is the bit that says 'food', so it's adding detail NOT complexity (beyond the negligible).

The only consistency required would be if you were to eject and then rescoop a cargo them the description should remain the same.

But they're all the same price?
Maybe some are more full/take up more space than others. Wolf cutlet might be stored differently to goat's cheese and so even if it's worth more you can carry less in a cargo pod.

What about the 'need' to include 'everything'?
Include a 'miscellaneous' or 'mixed' descriptor and you're covered.

[Cholmondely]

In terms of adding some flavour, how about this?

• You buy your boring 5TCs of food.
• A label is randomly assigned to that cargo so it displays in your manifest as (for example) "Food: Cequququan Wolf Cutlet".
• Sell it and rebuy in the same station and you might get "Food: Cequququan Prime Beef".
• The only part the trading model needs to reference is the bit that says 'food', so it's adding detail NOT complexity (beyond the negligible).

The only consistency required would be if you were to eject and then rescoop a cargo them the description should remain the same.

But they're all the same price?
Maybe some are more full/take up more space than others. Wolf cutlet might be stored differently to goat's cheese and so even if it's worth more you can carry less in a cargo pod.

What about the 'need' to include 'everything'?
Include a 'miscellaneous' or 'mixed' descriptor and you're covered.

I-i-i-nteresting... you have some interesting ideas, Sir!

I still derive a lot of pleasure from your Weapon Laws. Thank you for it! It very definitely adds to my game.

[Redspear]

I-i-i-nteresting... you have some interesting ideas, Sir!

And here's potentially another one...

But they're all the same price?
Maybe some are more full/take up more space than others. Wolf cutlet might be stored differently to goat's cheese and so even if it's worth more you can carry less in a cargo pod.

If each time you sell to a cargo the relevant commodity price is reset (random, minor variance) then any subsequent purchase being labelled differently might not seem so jarring. Add a similar price variation to all goods everytime you arrive in system (and again when you dock) and we've the beginnings of an illusory dynamic market.

I still derive a lot of pleasure from your Weapon Laws. Thank you for it! It very definitely adds to my game.

You're very welcome.

[Cholmondely]

The dynamic market in Phasted's OXP only affects prices, not quantities (which seems a bit weird!). The prices did seem to react to my actions, but without understanding his code, I couldn't really judge.