Realistic Economies

Ender · Post by **Ender** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:47 pm

The PalmOS game Space Trader has a system where if you keep supplying a planet with a commodity it has a high price for, the price drops over time. You might think that one ship can't affect a whole planet's market, but you wouldn't be the only one doing it if it were that profitable. Thus if you arrive in an area of the galaxy with an opportunity to exploit, it doesn't last for ever, and you're forced to move on after a while.

I'd love to see an OXP that took this idea and expanded it to include other more realistic economics. Primary/secondary/tertiary/quaternary economies (if my GCSE geography serves me well...), quality goods (wines on one planet that sell for 30% above market value on some planets), political markets (you can't sell those computers here in this progressive democracy, they don't come from an approved slave-free planet), the Black Monks could over-extend themselves in sub-prime planetoid mortgages causing all the economies in an area to crash for a period... you get the idea.

Thing is I know next to nothing about economics... I don't suppose anyone out these knows both economics and coding? Please?

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 7:13 am

Hi, Ender, and first of all welcome to the boards and of course to this great game!

Ideas about improving the trading system in Oolite have been discussed a couple of times. And we always love good ideas that can be put into an OXP. So be welcome to spend more thought on it.

One issue is, however, that Oolite's market is meant to be a replica of how the market in Elite worked. And there is sort of an agreement that this basic functionality should not be changed into something else. This limits the possibilities for radical changes.

Another issue is how the game engine handles the market. This can't be changed by any OXP. So you won't be able to introduce new commodities, or replace the existing ones temporarily. (In the new version 1.71 you can rename the commodities, so for instance display "Wine" or "Vodka" instead of "Liquor/Wines", but this would be once and for all, so the new word would be shown always and everywhere, without the basic routine changing.)

For a general information on how pricing of commodities works in Oolite, read the thread on Understanding Commodities.plist. If you want to script anything in relation to economics you have to understand this thoroughly, I am afraid. Some more ideas on what could be implemented to make the economies more interesting can be found in the Special Events thread.

But please, fear not! Each and everyone of us has started with some small first steps of understanding how things work.

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 7:17 am

Hi!

Good idea. Why not attempt it yourself?

There is this excellent page on the wiki:

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_howto

... and you can look into other people`s OXPs and copy & paste at will ... it`s Creative Commons License!

I also started with no knowledge of scripting at all and got somewhere in no time. It really is worth a try.

Economy models (simple enough ones) are also available on the internet. One thing: Shouldn`t an originally rather cheap commodity get more and more expensive if people start buying it, too? And then, over time, level out (the special expensive/cheap stuff)?

Have fun

L

Erai · Post by **Erai** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 12:42 pm

I am still making an attempt at "something" (passengers), but have not had a tremendous lot of time to really dig into the whole scripting thing.

But this idea sounds fun to do a bit of dabbling with as well... not totally sure about how an economic model could work: the game would have to remember where you bought and sold which commodities over an x amount of time. Probably possible to cook up something for, but question is how to do it neatly.

but what I COULD imagine -and I bet that would be relatively easy to script for us novices- is triggering "missions" that would consist of nothing more then little news flashes, loosely indicating where specific goods would fetch a higher (or cost a lower) amount of credits. Actually, wasn't there something like this in Frontier? Haven't played that one long enough for the memory to really stick, I'm afraid- but if it wasn't in that game it should have been anyway

Cmdr. Maegil · Post by **Cmdr. Maegil** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 1:32 pm

Erai wrote:
but what I COULD imagine -and I bet that would be relatively easy to script for us novices- is triggering "missions" that would consist of nothing more then little news flashes, loosely indicating where specific goods would fetch a higher (or cost a lower) amount of credits. Actually, wasn't there something like this in Frontier?

These trading opportunities have been discussed on the board, but I can't remember why it finally didn't go ahead...

BTW, it did happen near the beginning with an epidemic in Soholia, where they payed way over the top limit per tonne - DB used it as an 'earn money fast' gimmick to offset the starting difficultie$, but didn't take the idea any further.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 1:47 pm

Drug Wars style "Lave is buying Firearms at high prices" missions sound good - maybe with the bonus paid as a separate trigger, rather than trying to affect market values (especially as you can't push values over 102.4).

However... they look very similar to the cargo missions on the Carrier Market screen. Maybe I should look into making cargo missions that don't require hundreds of tonnes of cargo space.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:44 am

Are you aware of U.P.S. Courier OXP? Or you could escort a transport with Oo-Haul OXP.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 11:13 am

That UPS OXP sounds interesting, I'll give it a try. So far I've just been adding ships and toys with OXPs, guess it's time to see what new missions add to the game

bulrush · Post by **bulrush** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:27 pm

Ender, Oolite already does this. I have 1.65 on the PC and this is what I noticed.

As I buy cheap computers on planet A, their price slowly goes up because they are more in demand. As I sell computers on planet B, the price slowly goes down because I'm dumping more and more of them there. If I trade in something else, the price of computers on planet A slowly goes down, and the price on planet B slowly goes back up.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 5:24 am

I think what you observed here is just a random pattern. As I explained elsewhere, the prices are dependent only on two variables: economy and random. There is no dependency whatsoever on past deals in the price-calculation-code.