Cmdr Wyvern wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 5:55 pm
A perfect economy?
If you wanna get realistic about it, there's no such beastie. Once the robber barons and banksters get involved, it goes right out the aft airlock, and we're lucky the market works at all.
I'm going to advocate for the devil here and argue this on principle.
I get the feeling that most of us are old men here that like Elite/Oolite because of "how games used to be/feel". So most of us would have been through home loans, watched rates rise and fall, watch politics affect markets, and I have little doubt some of you would have or have had or considered investments which implies enough knowledge of markets to at least attempt success. I'm a stock, warrants, options and commodities contracts trader in real life. I think everyone here understands
basic market logic, which includes basic supply/demand, term risk, etc. And basically, all the functions that define real life market behavior mostly exist in Oolite as well and there is nothing stopping a dedicated tweak that would match real life behavior -- in fact I doubt it would need to be that elaborate.
To prove it, I'll use real life examples:
1. Trade routes between systems are conceptually no different to Airports between cities and countries
2. The trip to and from your nearest Hermit/Bar/FTZ/Sun,mission checkpoint, etc is no different to a trucker's route to and from cities or locations. In the case of Hermits, it's more like driving to a quarry or a farmer's market.
3. Smuggling is self-evident, the effects of prohibition are self-evident
4. The ease or difficulty of bribing cops or customs obviously effects trade mass. My boss from China compares bribing cops in China to business taxes, it's that common and run-of-the-mill.
5. Piracy still happens not just on african seas but along highways against convoys. No so much in the west but definitely all over the place (I've visited SE Asia, and I have personally run into gangsters there, and personally known a reformed Nepalese pirate -- actual highway pirates, long story). Any route considered "dangerous" (gangster ridden) would immediately see less traffic, more armed and paranoid truckers seeking higher commissions, and a subsequent market effect. Just like in Oolite, it does correlate neatly with government -- maybe not type, but the effects and policing of governments etc.
6. The cost or difficulty or moral conundrum(blood diamonds etc) of producing or procuring any given commodity does affect prices.
7. Just like in real life, people ask, "
If it's so easy and lucrative, why doesn't everyone do it?" and if they're right, everyone does until it stops being easy or lucrative. As a real life market guy, I can tell you that EASY + LUCRATIVE is rare, and whenever/wherever EASY + LUCRATIVE pops up it stays that way about five minutes.
So with only those said -- and that's hardly an exhaustive list of easy comparisons, there is nothing stopping the following tweaks/rebalances, which any of you that have tweaked Oolite will instantly recognize as achievable with .plist's and game code.
a. reprice any commodity you like at its base, economy or fluctuation range
b. reprice ships or any given piece of useful equipment until it more realistically reflects market value
--- example: I've repriced fuel and docking fees to more accurately reflect trade cost decision making.
Imagine if flying a jet from LA to NY cost like $500? Markets would be affected.
--- example: I have repriced a lot of equipment.
Imagine if buying a new fishing trawler catch setup cost $500 instead of $20,000?
--- example: I am in the process of repricing weapons.
Imagine if the trucker's Uzi in the case of a mexican heist cost him $10? Everyone would have uzis instead of shotguns, six-shooters or baseball bats
--- I may consider tweaking ship prices, but there's no hurry since I am a while off my next ship anyway
c. Introduce tariffs on commodities and watch all your trading habits change on a dime, it works in real life politics/economics.
--- I do consider this conceptually solved at least in part by increased Docking Fees, Diplomancy, and a few other oxps though..
d. Distance-based trading could be covered, at the very least, by contracts. I have watched you all argue over this in at least one thread and there is an argument for it since it certainly affects real life contract commissions.
e. Smugglers has purchasable ASC beacons for hermits, as soon as I figure out how I'll
extend that to -- or simply remove beacons for -- Bars/Liners(markets)/FTZ/etc and reduce some of their appearance probabilities to much less than half at least, and/or, make their locations jump around.
f. UNPOPULAR/CONTROVERSIAL OPTION INCOMING: replace(remove) Torus use with injector use generally, tweak jump costs vs injector costs so that the one does not affect the other, and watch your trading decisions suddenly change as racing to GalCop for help, or the Cori, suddenly costs more. I already do this (Sun/boring trips excepted) and with my fuel price hike it massively affects my decisions.
I didn't mention Agr/Ind and tech, both covered by Risky Business which I am still sampling and yet to form an opinion on. Probably looking for less fluctuation variance regardless, but that's probably just me.
Notice that none of these would require any dramatic coding, except tariffs I guess, just tweaking of existing values. None of them would result in an overly complicated market either. Also keep in mind these are off-the-top-of-my-head ideas, and I was inspired by real life markets not because I'm an ideas man.
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