Secondary Market Definitions Defined

[phkb]

Your table does not look quite right to me. There seems to be too little variation. There are only ever 10TC of food on sale? Never 9 or 11? Not to mention 5 or 15? et cetera...

Hmm, yes it doesn’t look quite right, on reflection. I’ll rerun the process and check. I may have had a bug in my process that I fixed later, but was still present in the data I posted.

[phkb]

There is no point in offering for sale something almost nobody can buy.

Other than for immersion's sake. Seeing 800 units of food on offer does a couple of things (a) it reinforces how big the station is; (b) it reminds us there might be other traders in the universe. Both of those things can add to immersion.

I agree that so long as Hathor's prices aren't lower than found at a Poor Agri. then profitability wouldn't be so great...but this is easier said than done!
price_adder, price_multiplier, price_randomiser are all based off the main station in-system, not Poor Agri. prices.

Which may lead us to abandoning the market_definition method, and taking a new approach with a market script. We'll see how far we can get.

[phkb]

Your table does not look quite right to me. There seems to be too little variation. There are only ever 10TC of food on sale? Never 9 or 11? Not to mention 5 or 15? et cetera...

I just reran Galaxy 1, and got almost the same answer. And I double-checked my code, and confirmed it's working as intended. For this run, across Gal 1, in all Poor Industrial systems, there was always 10 units of food for sale, and possibly as much as 11. So, with the other run I did, from which I created the table shown previously, I never hit an poor industrial system with 11. They were always 10. Hang on while I run the process one more time...
...
*taps fingers on desk*
...
*watches an arquebus Oolite Youtube video in background*
...
*gets a drink from the fridge*
...
*checks log file*
...
And I'm back. For that run, at Poor Industrial systems, it was 10's across the board, min and max. So, weird as it is, it's also pretty accurate.

[Switeck]

There is no point in offering for sale something almost nobody can buy.

Other than for immersion's sake. Seeing 800 units of food on offer does a couple of things (a) it reinforces how big the station is; (b) it reminds us there might be other traders in the universe. Both of those things can add to immersion.

You can only buy a small portion of the total cargo on the station, not because the rest isn't for sale but to keep a single ship or small group of ships from cornering the market. 1 full Anaconda dumping off here only replenishes enough for a handful of smaller freighters...which gets into the question of why an Anaconda would unload here in the first place if the prices are unfavorable to do so?

Can Anacondas land on planets and load up there?

[Cholmondely]

The experimentation continues.

It would be interesting to know what problems (if any) you are still being afflicted by.

[Nite Owl]

Mostly it is just a matter of getting the numbers right to achieve my goal. My original intent in all of this was to rework the Markets of the three types of Rock Hermits found in the Spicy Hermits OXZ. Quite a while ago the "spara method" was used by me to rework the Markets of the Deep Space Dredgers to a desired condition. Never having been one to leave well enough alone that lead to a total revamp of the Deep Space Dredgers OXZ to the point that my version is extremely different from the authors original intent. My goal with this thread was to gain enough knowledge to get the Spicy Hermit Markets to somewhat resemble my Deep Space Dredger Markets using the newer "cim method". Most likely once this goal is achieved the reverse can be done and the "cim method" can then be applied to the Deep Space Dredger Markets. At present the Spicy Hermit Markets are still not where they should be so the numbers keep getting changed every time they get docked with.

The idea is that both the Dredgers and Rock Hermits should have lots of mined stuff for sale at very cheap prices. This includes Radioactives, Alloys, Minerals, Gold, Platinum, and Gem-Stones. They should want to buy Food, Textiles, Liquor/Wines, Luxuries, Narcotics, Computers, and Machinery at very high prices. None of these items that they want to buy should be for sale at these Markets. The latest coding run at achieving this found a few fundamental flaws in my logic so things are currently being tested under another reworking of the code. One problem that cropped up was too many Pirate Coves being spawned which prevented me from getting accurate information on the other types of Rock Hermits. This lead to the spawn rate for Pirate Coves having to be lowered in that OXZ. When you are trying to get something to work properly within a mix of 300+ OXZs without there being any conflicts you do tend to run into a cascade effect. A change to one influences many others. It will all work out eventually but might take a long time to get just right.

[Cholmondely]

1) Is it actually possible to "fix" SW Economy so that the markets of the so-called mining systems actually act as such (rather than as agriculturals with zero quantities of agricultural commodities but with low prices for them)?

I thought I fixed this?

Just tried your fix again with: agri_quantity_reductor: 6, // increase this value to remove more agri-related goods (1.5 = 2/3rds of original, 2 = half original, 3 = 1/3rd of original, 4 = 1/4th of original)


The agri goods are still far too cheap for there to be any point in selling goods from a real agri world there - so no "third trading pole" yet exists.

[phkb]

The agri goods are still far too cheap for there to be any point in selling goods from a real agri world there - so no "third trading pole" yet exists.

Then the issues are a bit deeper than we thought, and will require a different approach to solving.

[Switeck]

The idea is that both the Dredgers and Rock Hermits should have lots of mined stuff for sale at very cheap prices. This includes Radioactives, Alloys, Minerals, Gold, Platinum, and Gem-Stones.

Rock Hermits should almost be trying to throw Minerals away, (maybe half price?) because those are low-value and bulky TC capacities instead of kg or g like Gold/Plat/Gems. Keep in mind the main station in-system usually won't buy more than 50-80 TC of Minerals due to already having way too much for sale. Industrial systems should be using Minerals like crazy and not have as much for sale at the main station...but they do too! It's enough of a problem for there to be multiple OXZs to alter Minerals amounts for sale.
Radioactives and Alloys should probably be rarer than Minerals, since most random asteroids/boulders/splinters do not contain much suitable material to turn into either.
Gold, Platinum, and Gem-Stones long ago had a bug in their logic which caused amount for sale to flip over to 0 often. More recent Oolite versions just assumed low amounts were "normal".

They should want to buy Food, Textiles, Liquor/Wines, Luxuries, Narcotics, Computers, and Machinery at very high prices.

I disagree about needing very high prices for stuff they want, with minor exceptions for Food and Liquor/Wines as those are consumed constantly rather than occasionally. On the assumption you're already going to one of these stations to load up on mined stuff, carrying stuff to sell is not a big deal besides knowing how much Dredgers and Rock Hermits will buy. So instead the prices for what they need only has to be a couple credits more than the main station. Food might be 2-5 credits more and Liq/Wines might be 5-10 credits more -- although the price difference can be greater so long as the max they want is low enough to not be "money for nothing".

None of these items that they want to buy should be for sale at these Markets.

To force a commodity to 0 for sale, use these modifiers:

Code: Select all

"quantity_multiplier" = 0;
"quantity_randomiser" = 0;
"quantity_adder" = 0;

One problem that cropped up was too many Pirate Coves being spawned which prevented me from getting accurate information on the other types of Rock Hermits. This lead to the spawn rate for Pirate Coves having to be lowered in that OXZ. When you are trying to get something to work properly within a mix of 300+ OXZs without there being any conflicts you do tend to run into a cascade effect. A change to one influences many others. It will all work out eventually but might take a long time to get just right.

Yes, we cannot consider changes on 1 station in a vacuum, we also have to determine how each extra station fits with the rest of the Ooniverse.

Station exclusions is something I started doing to avoid too many 3rd party stations in a TL 13-15 Rich Ind. system.
But it grew to having a secondary purpose -- spreading the increasing number of 3rd party stations around further, so I didn't need to reuse the same 3rd party station as much.
Some stations (like Nuit, which I repurposed partially as a Dictatorship's supreme leader's palace) I placed in only a couple Galactic Charts.

My goal is to give most systems 1 "specialty" station (beyond the 1-4 Rock Hermits it likely already has somewhere) to make each system a tiny bit special.

Anarchies (and Random Hits), Commies!, Dictators/Imperial Astrofactory, FeudalStates (Feudal gov.), and Free Trade Zone (Multigov.) OXZs help to make their respective gov. type systems "interesting", so we can consider those system types at least mostly "covered" with extra stations.

The middle economy types can be the most interesting station-wise, because they might have the tech to build and use a Biosphere to support their growing heavy space industries.
And/or they might have an industrial-type station such as SIRF shipyards or Salvage Gang (from Anarchies OXZ).

Considering extra stations tended to only be manufactured in higher TL systems or be affordable in richer systems, this meant that Poor Agri. systems tended to get left out.
At the poorest low-tech systems, even the main station was only a repurposed Rock Hermit station.

That leaves Confederacy, Democracy, and Corporate State systems needing extra stations...
Which can be covered by all the stations that tend to be found in "safer" systems.

This matters for market fixes and reworks because when there's multiple stations in 1 system in close proximity, it's pretty safe and cheap to hop between them and use price differences for quick profit.
That means most of the commodity prices should not deviate far from the main station prices to avoid "free money" balance issues.

A partial way to avoid this problem is by making smaller stations only sell or buy a subset of trade goods, which are suitable to the station's purpose.
For instance, Hoopy Casinos might only be buying/selling tiny quantities of Gold, Platinum, and Gems (and Furs?)...and buying even smaller amounts of food and Liq/Wines?

Another way is due to plot reasons the other secondary stations can be far apart, so even if there's considerable profit to be made from visiting them it's time-consuming to do and with possible pirate ambushes along the way. Free Trade Zone comes to mind on that note.

[Cholmondely]

The idea is that both the Dredgers and Rock Hermits should have lots of mined stuff for sale at very cheap prices. This includes Radioactives, Alloys, Minerals, Gold, Platinum, and Gem-Stones.

Rock Hermits should almost be trying to throw Minerals away, (maybe half price?) because those are low-value and bulky TC capacities instead of kg or g like Gold/Plat/Gems. Keep in mind the main station in-system usually won't buy more than 50-80 TC of Minerals due to already having way too much for sale. Industrial systems should be using Minerals like crazy and not have as much for sale at the main station...but they do too! It's enough of a problem for there to be multiple OXZs to alter Minerals amounts for sale.
Radioactives and Alloys should probably be rarer than Minerals, since most random asteroids/boulders/splinters do not contain much suitable material to turn into either.
Gold, Platinum, and Gem-Stones long ago had a bug in their logic which caused amount for sale to flip over to 0 often. More recent Oolite versions just assumed low amounts were "normal".

They should want to buy Food, Textiles, Liquor/Wines, Luxuries, Narcotics, Computers, and Machinery at very high prices.

I disagree about needing very high prices for stuff they want, with minor exceptions for Food and Liquor/Wines as those are consumed constantly rather than occasionally. On the assumption you're already going to one of these stations to load up on mined stuff, carrying stuff to sell is not a big deal besides knowing how much Dredgers and Rock Hermits will buy. So instead the prices for what they need only has to be a couple credits more than the main station. Food might be 2-5 credits more and Liq/Wines might be 5-10 credits more -- although the price difference can be greater so long as the max they want is low enough to not be "money for nothing".

None of these items that they want to buy should be for sale at these Markets.

To force a commodity to 0 for sale, use these modifiers:

Code: Select all

"quantity_multiplier" = 0;
"quantity_randomiser" = 0;
"quantity_adder" = 0;

One problem that cropped up was too many Pirate Coves being spawned which prevented me from getting accurate information on the other types of Rock Hermits. This lead to the spawn rate for Pirate Coves having to be lowered in that OXZ. When you are trying to get something to work properly within a mix of 300+ OXZs without there being any conflicts you do tend to run into a cascade effect. A change to one influences many others. It will all work out eventually but might take a long time to get just right.

Yes, we cannot consider changes on 1 station in a vacuum, we also have to determine how each extra station fits with the rest of the Ooniverse.

Station exclusions is something I started doing to avoid too many 3rd party stations in a TL 13-15 Rich Ind. system.
But it grew to having a secondary purpose -- spreading the increasing number of 3rd party stations around further, so I didn't need to reuse the same 3rd party station as much.
Some stations (like Nuit, which I repurposed partially as a Dictatorship's supreme leader's palace) I placed in only a couple Galactic Charts.

My goal is to give most systems 1 "specialty" station (beyond the 1-4 Rock Hermits it likely already has somewhere) to make each system a tiny bit special.

Anarchies (and Random Hits), Commies!, Dictators/Imperial Astrofactory, FeudalStates (Feudal gov.), and Free Trade Zone (Multigov.) OXZs help to make their respective gov. type systems "interesting", so we can consider those system types at least mostly "covered" with extra stations.

The middle economy types can be the most interesting station-wise, because they might have the tech to build and use a Biosphere to support their growing heavy space industries.
And/or they might have an industrial-type station such as SIRF shipyards or Salvage Gang (from Anarchies OXZ).

Considering extra stations tended to only be manufactured in higher TL systems or be affordable in richer systems, this meant that Poor Agri. systems tended to get left out.
At the poorest low-tech systems, even the main station was only a repurposed Rock Hermit station.

That leaves Confederacy, Democracy, and Corporate State systems needing extra stations...
Which can be covered by all the stations that tend to be found in "safer" systems.

This matters for market fixes and reworks because when there's multiple stations in 1 system in close proximity, it's pretty safe and cheap to hop between them and use price differences for quick profit.
That means most of the commodity prices should not deviate far from the main station prices to avoid "free money" balance issues.

A partial way to avoid this problem is by making smaller stations only sell or buy a subset of trade goods, which are suitable to the station's purpose.
For instance, Hoopy Casinos might only be buying/selling tiny quantities of Gold, Platinum, and Gems (and Furs?)...and buying even smaller amounts of food and Liq/Wines?

Another way is due to plot reasons the other secondary stations can be far apart, so even if there's considerable profit to be made from visiting them it's time-consuming to do and with possible pirate ambushes along the way. Free Trade Zone comes to mind on that note.

Sounds like an excellent oxp to publish, if it were doable without too much work.

But I presume that each individual dockable oxp has been individually tweaked, so that collecting everything into a shipdataoverrides.plist would prove a significant pain in the unmentionables.

I find it profoundly impressive how people like you have tweaked the oxps to create such individual Ooniverses.

[phkb]

Back to Hathor stations...
So, we've identified that we want food prices at or near Poor Ag prices, have some textiles and liquor/wines available, and pretty much nothing else.

I did some analysis of the spawning criteria across all charts and this is what I found:
G1 15 systems (Mainly/Rich/Average Agricultural, TL8-11)
G2 19 systems (Mainly/Rich/Average Agricultural, TL8-11)
G3 17 systems (Mainly/Rich/Average Agricultural, TL8-10)
G4 12 systems (Mainly/Rich Agricultural, TL8-10)
G5 18 systems (Mainly/Rich/Average Agricultural, TL8-11)
G6 21 systems (Mainly/Rich Agricultural, TL8-10)
G7 16 systems (Mainly/Rich Agricultural, TL8-10)
G8 17 systems (Mainly/Rich/Average Agricultural, TL8-10)

We have 3 economy types to cater for, and nothing greater than a TL11.

To make sure we don't apply a Mainly Ag discount on a Average Ag system, we need to change the way we spawn stations in. This will require 2 things: some extra shipdata.plist entries, and a condition script.

Let's have a look at the changes required in shipdata:

Code: Select all

//  *************************************************
//  *            H A T H O R                        *
//  *************************************************
{
	"hathor_template" = {
		is_template = yes;
		condition_script = "hathor_conditions.js";
		ai_type = "stationAI.plist";
		auto_ai = yes;
		aft_eject_position = "0.0 13.0 0.0";
		beacon = "TSBEACON";
		energy_recharge_rate = 40;	
		frangible = "false";
		has_ecm = "true";
		heat_insulation = 5;
		market_monitored = yes;
		market_capacity = 256; // we're giving this station a big capacity
		max_energy = 20000;
		model = "2xhath.dat"; 
		name = "Hathor Station";
		roles = "station(0) KW_hathor"; 
		subentities = (
			... list of subentities, trimmed for brevity ...
		);	
		shaders = { 
			... shader definitions, trimmed for brevity ...
		};
		smooth = "false";	
		thrust = 50;	
	};
	
	"hathor_mainly_ag" = {
		like_ship = "hathor_template";
		market_definition = (
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "food";
				price_multiplier = 0.6; 
				quantity_multiplier = 5;
			},
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "textiles";
				price_multiplier = 0.7; 
				quantity_multiplier = 2.0;
			},
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "liquor_wines";
				price_multiplier = 0.85; 
				quantity_multiplier = 2.0;
			},
			{
				type = "default";
				quantity_multiplier = 0.0; // no other products
			},
		);
	};
	"hathor_rich_ag" = {
		like_ship = "hathor_template";
		market_definition = (
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "food";
				price_multiplier = 0.7; 
				quantity_multiplier = 5;
			},
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "textiles";
				price_multiplier = 0.75; 
				quantity_multiplier = 2.0;
			},
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "liquor_wines";
				price_multiplier = 0.88; 
				quantity_multiplier = 2.0;
			},
			{
				type = "default";
				quantity_multiplier = 0.0; // no other products
			},
		);
	};
	"hathor_average_ag" = {
		like_ship = "hathor_template";
		market_definition = (
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "food";
				price_multiplier = 0.8; 
				quantity_multiplier = 5;
			},
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "textiles";
				price_multiplier = 0.8; 
				quantity_multiplier = 2.0;
			},
			{
				type = "good";
				name = "liquor_wines";
				price_multiplier = 0.91; 
				quantity_multiplier = 2.0;
			},
			{
				type = "default";
				quantity_multiplier = 0.0; // no other products
			},
		);
	};
	... sub-entities after this point ...

So, the original data key, "hathor", we've renamed to "hathor_template", and applied the "is_template" property to it. We've taken the market_definition out this entry, because the "is_template" flag will prevent this ship key from being spawned on its own. Instead, we've created three new ship keys: hathor_mainly_ag, hathor_rich_ag, and hathor_average_ag. These are like_shipped from the template (so they inherit all the template's properties), but they also define a slightly different market_definition, with slightly less discounts applying for the rich ag version, and even less in the average ag version.

The next bit is to create the condition script. I've called mine "hathor_conditions.js", and it will go into the "Scripts" folder of the OXP. Here's what it looks like:

Code: Select all

"use strict";
this.name = "Hathor_Conditions";
this.author = "phkb";
this.copyright = "2023 phkb";
this.description = "Condition script for ships.";
this.license = "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0";

this.allowSpawnShip = function (shipKey) {
    if (shipKey === "hathor_mainly_ag" && system.info.economy == 4) return true;
    if (shipKey === "hathor_rich_ag" && system.info.economy == 5) return true;
    if (shipKey === "hathor_average_ag" && system.info.economy == 6) return true;
    return false;
}

You might have noticed I didn't change the roles on any of the new station versions I defined. They will each have the "KW_hathor" role, will is picked up from the template. So, the spawning routine will ask the Oolite ship database to create a station with the role "KW_hathor". For each of the three ship keys, the "allowSpawnShip" function of the hathor_conditions.js file is executed. Then based on the ship key in question, we do a check of the current systems' economy, and we only allow it (ie return "true") if the ship key matches the appropriate system economy value.

With all that set up out of the way, how are our numbers looking? Well, I'm glad you asked.



As you can see, bargain basement prices on food, with lots available, some tempting prices on textiles, as well as on Liquor/Wines. And nothing else for sale at the moment, with all the other prices matching the main station. We can look at those items next time.

So, is this method helpful? Let me know what you think.

[Switeck]

Sounds like an excellent oxp to publish, if it were doable without too much work.

But I presume that each individual dockable oxp has been individually tweaked, so that collecting everything into a shipdataoverrides.plist would prove a significant pain in the unmentionables.

I find it profoundly impressive how people like you have tweaked the oxps to create such individual Ooniverses.

The problem is that what I've made is an extremely small OXP, basically a single script.js file, that decides the fate of millions...I mean decides what stations to spawn in a system.
Making a script that does this is the EASY part!

The hard part is removing all the station spawning scripts from every station OXP/OXZ that you wish to put into one main station spawning script.
It's mostly just tedious searching through all the different station OXPs+OXZs for what logic they use to spawn, but I only really needed to do that once per station.
Additional pain if you make the improved spawn routines allow saving games at the secondary stations.

Tweaking the spawning rules is never done, because adding 1 new station can force you to figure out where to squeeze the new station in without reducing prevalence too much on the other stations.

[Switeck]

As you can see, bargain basement prices on food, with lots available, some tempting prices on textiles, as well as on Liquor/Wines. And nothing else for sale at the moment, with all the other prices matching the main station. We can look at those items next time.

I'm going to dissect the market screenshot.
Food - 14 TC at main station, 140 TC at Hathor -- so 10x Food at 1.9 credit price difference
Textiles - 15 TC at main station, 60 TC at Hathor -- so 4x Textiles at 2.2 credit price difference
Liquor/Wines - 20 TC at main station, 80 TC at Hathor -- so 4x Liquor/Wines at 4.3 credit price difference
About 700 credits profit selling to the main station, not considering that the main station may not be able to hold 140 TC food.
...Or that the other 2 stations may have higher buying prices.

Both the prices and amounts are workable without any obvious balance problems.

Food has a quantity_multiplier = 5; while Textiles and Liq./Wines have a quantity_multiplier = 2;
...So the 10x and 4x results happen because Hathor's market max is 256 instead of 127 like the main station. (~2x as large)

[Cholmondely]

Off the top of my head, I have to say that that Hathor rejig looks pretty good to me!

Well done, Sir!

[Switeck]

As you can see, bargain basement prices on food, with lots available, some tempting prices on textiles, as well as on Liquor/Wines. And nothing else for sale at the moment, with all the other prices matching the main station. We can look at those items next time.

Some other items that could be for sale is mining stuff -- Minerals, Gold, Platinum, and Gemstones.
But not as much as at the main station and maybe even considerably less due to being variable.
Miners may be dropping off what they mined, although they'd mostly just be dumping Minerals there and holding onto the Gold/Plat/Gems due to better prices in other more industrial systems.

Small amounts of Radioactives and Alloys might also be for sale for similar reasons...

If we assume pirates and bounty hunters (who looted off pirates) drop by sometimes, even other items may be for sale but at very low quantities.
It's because this station is HUGE that I think we can justify it having a little of everything, at least sometimes.
But maybe not have any restricted items (Slaves, Narcotics, Firearms)?

All told, this should give players sufficient reason to visit but not be hugely profitable doing so.

Code: Select all

		{
			"type" = "good";
			"name" = "radioactives";
			"quantity_multiplier" = 0.2;
			"quantity_randomiser" = 0.2;
		},
		{
			"type" = "good";
			"name" = "alloys";
			"quantity_multiplier" = 0.3;
			"quantity_randomiser" = 0.4;
		},
		{
			"type" = "good";
			"name" = "minerals";
			"quantity_multiplier" = 0.4;
			"quantity_randomiser" = 0.5;
		},
		{
			"type" = "good";
			"name" = "gold";
			"quantity_multiplier" = 0.3;
			"quantity_randomiser" = 0.4;
		},
		{
			"type" = "good";
			"name" = "platinum";
			"quantity_multiplier" = 0.25;
			"quantity_randomiser" = 0.3;
		},
		{
			"type" = "good";
			"name" = "gem_stones";
			"quantity_multiplier" = 0.2;
			"quantity_randomiser" = 0.2;
		},
		{
			// fencing stolen goods?
			"type" = "default";
			"quantity_multiplier" = 0.1;
			"quantity_randomiser" = 0.2;
		}