Perfectly balanced economics?

[Cholmondely]

I feel like economic balance in Oolite is the unicorn I care most to catch, and the hardest balance beast to tame.

It's also non-linear because of player skill and methods they use.
Torusing all the way to the main station? Really quick...if there's nothing in the way.
Fighting your way through large clumps of pirates in an Anarchy? Slow and can be very dangerous...with likely damage to your ship which incurs high costs, even if only refurbishment is needed more often.

Sure. But as a working argument, lets assume a vector factorized by only two values:
1. player skill + style
2. desired (rate of) costs and incomes

Just wondering as regards these two....

Cim's revamped witchspace jump version for his SOTL scenario makes jumping much more dangerous. If one succeeds then his "flight computer" equipment makes it a bit easier the second time, and somewhat easier again the third time...

If it was copied from SOTL and added to the game as an extra mechanics OXP (as Cody has suggested), I suspect that it would change trade and piracy:
a) With the increased chance of blowing a gasket en route:
(i) trading becomes more expensive
(ii) resisting pirates on arrival becomes more difficult
(iii) following somebody through an unknown wormhole presumably becomes much, much more dangerous
b) applying this to NPC traders
(i) they would only trade between the same old systems, only a few would expand their trade routes
(ii) there would be an extra reason for them to avoid the more dangerous systems (see a ii, above)
c) applying this to Pirates
(i) also less likely to venture outside their territories, except through tunnels they have learned to navigate - and less likely to follow you through a wormhole. One presumes that the Thargoids are unaffected...

This would result in a deserved increased profit for trade with new systems and with dangerous ones such as anarchies... It would also make the game more fun (for some of us, at least!)

And, of course, one can then introduce complications such as Solar flares impacting on the difficulty, or nearness to planets/stations, or conversely nearness to the witchpoint beacon might make it easier to do so (hence all the craft flying from station to the beacon to jump from there...).

[Cholmondely]

So the fact that I have an aegidian account at all is the direct result of me not being able to find an economic balance with downloadable mods alone. That's not including the other minor deficiencies in my Oolite gaming -- economic easy money was the worst most despised one for me. I went all the years between finding Oolite until very recently without a bb account and since no mod combo gave me balance, I finally signed up to see if I could fix that.

(Before I go on, I see that as a fixable problem in itself. Not sure how the wiki or the in-game list of mods could be updated information wise -- I know it's all "there" -- but I just feel like an earnest Ooliter should have found it naturally after that amount of time and checking mods etc.)

Your first reply got me so far in the right direction that the things I was most pissed off about trader economy are somewhat solved for me now. What I am left with is minor but still significant (to me) imbalances, and I have had to break my rule* and start editing code to fix them and I'm still not done.

To clarify, my current list of economics-effecting mods is now:
- SW Economy (thank you)
- Risky Business
- heavily tweaked(increased) equipment prices, Vanilla and mod equipment
- Docking Fees
- Stashes
- Pirate Coves (<-- I do not dock at any Hermit I am attacked from)
- Free Trade Zone
- Smugglers
- Random Hits
- Switeck's Cargo Contracts (untested)
- Escort Contracts (in the process of modding fees)

Top are colored because they form the "core" of the economic balance, others are damn relevant but I reckon if I removed every one I would still have the "core" of the balance generally.

And since it has significant effect on income (and therefore balance), I will mention that the combat difficulty and consequence level I play with is very high. I have most of the difficulty-increasing mods I have been able to find -- too many to list -- Hull Damage (increased 2x), almost all of my equipment is breakable, I reject almost every advantage-increasing mod or player-centric "cheat" there is, and unbeknownst to me my entire current save game has been played in very strict Iron Man mode -- so the constant danger and occasional damages cause serious setbacks until I die and it's game over for real. This all hugely effects income and business decisions.

Equipment increases and the justifications for it:
- Fuel. Vanilla fuel was hardly even a cost, barely an annoyance. I've increased it I think 2.5x -- and much more at other dockables -- so that every injector burn and every emergency fill-up at a dockable is a serious business decision, and even route divergence might begin to affect profits.
- Weapons, especially missiles. What was an "annoying" bounty wipe out is now essentially a guaranteed loss of some profit.
- All equipment, vanilla and mod, have been considered for cost "fairness" in my estimation and about 1 in four have been increased significantly.

As per my comment before:

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

Having now implemented all this I can say it turns out I was right!



*Editing code was something I resisted for years specifically. Like I wouldn't even look at the code. There's a whole story to that but for now, I am still resistant to any serious manual modding.

Two questions, Sir Szaum-ix:
1) Any chance of your publishing some of your code for the rest of us to use/peruse?
2) Do you know how real-life traders confirm that they really want to do a deal? I keep on fluffing up.

[szaumix]

Two questions, Sir Szaum-ix:
1) Any chance of your publishing some of your code for the rest of us to use/peruse?
2) Do you know how real-life traders confirm that they really want to do a deal? I keep on fluffing up.

Been big on work for several months, plus I got the shits with the too-easy AI lol, will have to crack open my game dev files and see what I've got lying around! Also real traders use brokers, brokerages and exchanges, I still see stations as essentially simulated trading floors (exchanges) with static prices.

[Cholmondely]

Been big on work for several months, plus I got the shits with the too-easy AI lol, will have to crack open my game dev files and see what I've got lying around! Also real traders use brokers, brokerages and exchanges, I still see stations as essentially simulated trading floors (exchanges) with static prices.

Merry New Year!

1) AI

Have you tried the newest version of Skilled NPCs where you can tweak their reaction times? Here is Nite Owl's comment:

Methodology
Been slowly lowering the Reaction Time numbers prior to every jump into either a Feudal or Anarchy system. This lowering has been done in steps of 0.25 per event. Started with the default of 1.5 then went down to 1.25 then down to 1.0 etc. My ship is fully equipped with a very Iron Ass and is a bit on the Uber side. My combat skills are quite good.

Result
Most of the battles remained quite easy even when facing five or more opponents. That is until the Reaction Time setting got down to 0.25. That number appears to be the threshold at which your enemies start to fire at you very quickly. When this threshold is reached or crossed the opponents you face become much more aggressive. Occasionally they will even fire at you in large bunches. Combine this with a Pilot Difficulty Level of 7 or more and dog fighting gets very interesting.

If you go this low with your NPC Reaction Time and that high with your NPC Pilot Difficulty Level then you must Stay Frosty.

2) Static Markets.

There were two OXPs which looked at this:
In System Trader which adjusts one commodity at a time (but the equipment just says "change in commodity" - not how much, and there seems to be no record anywhere of what the price/quantity used to be)
Real-Life Economics only alters prices (which eventually settle at zero over time on my computer).


3) Economics of Ship production.

Do you have any thoughts on this?