Oolite Bulletins

ralph_hh wrote:

... A whole industrialized planet should be able to fabricate more than this.

Yup, it just goes to show how small and insignificant the player truly is in the Ooniverse.

ralph_hh wrote:

A whole industrialized planet should be able to fabricate more than this.

It undoubtedly can - the question is whether it's there for you to buy. The market you have access to as a small independent trader is very much just the scraps from the big boys' table: most of the bulk trade is tied up by the big shipping lines, and they don't want the hassle of dealing with small-scale competition. That said, if you have the cargo space, you can take shot at a few cargo contracts, too.

ralph_hh wrote:

I was thinking about standard milk runs by trading between RI/PA systems - just to earn money as fast as possible, which is how economy in general works.

I'm not sure that's true, really. Yes, early on the milk-runs are about the only way a new trader in a smal ship can earn a living, but look at the real economy where (as Big D says) it is the big corporations doing most of the trade, mostly unseen by the masses.
In the more human-scale economy it is the entrepreneurs making the money. The Arthur Daleys, the guy with a white van and a lock-up full of stock who buys cheap and sells later at a profit. This is what the freighters are so good for - white van and lock-up rolled into one that goes wherever the money is to be had.

Well, thanks all, after reading this, I do not feel so bad anymore, blowing up innocent freighters

Another bit of handwavium sometimes offered to explain the 127TC limit is that it's not actually all that's available.. it's all that's available FOR YOU. If a single 'Conda could buy up everything available, there'd be nothing left for all the NPC traders to purchase.. so GalCop limits the amount any single Commander can buy.

ralph_hh wrote:

Well, thanks all, after reading this, I do not feel so bad anymore, blowing up innocent freighters

So vicious! Poor innocent traders!

Cody wrote:

ralph_hh wrote:

Well, thanks all, after reading this, I do not feel so bad anymore, blowing up innocent freighters

So vicious! Poor innocent traders!

Poor Arthur Daley

I made a secondary market to test legality_export and legality_import parameters. What do these do exactly? I tested all combinations with a behemoth parked next to the main station and they did not seem to do anything except filling the Legal column with Lm, Re and Ex. I was able to buy & sell whatever I wanted and launch & dock without interference. Was I just really lucky or have I misunderstood something?

Check the market_monitored property. For compatibility with 1.80 this defaults to false for non-main stations. So, it's illegal to sell X there, but it's not as if anyone actually checks.

cim wrote:

Check the market_monitored property. For compatibility with 1.80 this defaults to false for non-main stations. So, it's illegal to sell X there, but it's not as if anyone actually checks.

Now I figured it . I had the property configured to 1, but since it seemed that nothing happened, I was a bit puzzled. Actually something was happening, there just was no notification other than seeing my legal status go down. I noticed that when I docked and launched a few times and the behemoth opened fire at me .

This might need some work to be intuitive for the player. Maybe a warning report when docking for the first time letting you hand over the contraband like illegal_goods oxp does and something to warn you when you're about to launch with contraband.

Question: In 1.81, am I correct in assuming you have to use trade-goods.plist now, not commodities.plist?

Maybe some conversion script could be written to update the old plists?

Has a conversion script been written for commodities.plists?

phkb wrote:

Question: In 1.81, am I correct in assuming you have to use trade-goods.plist now, not commodities.plist?

trade-goods.plist for defining new trade goods or overriding the core definition for a trade good.

shipdata.plist (the new market_* properties) for defining secondary station markets with respect to the existing (or potentially existing) trade goods.

planetinfo.plist (the market_script property) to make JS-based market rules for the primary system market, either extending or overriding the data in trade-goods.plist

phkb wrote:

Maybe some conversion script could be written to update the old plists?

Has a conversion script been written for commodities.plists?

Not that I know of.

phkb wrote:

Maybe some conversion script could be written to update the old plists?

Has a conversion script been written for commodities.plists?

In the current Behemoth OXP I use a js script that has the old commodities.plist defined inside and uses the legacy formula to calculate the prices/quantities. You might want to check it out.

Smivs wrote:

ralph_hh wrote:

I always wonder what sense it might make to purchase a freighter ship wilst the local station supplies only a fraction of the tonnage needed to fill this ships cargo hold...

You can buy more than one commodity at once, you know. Say you're heading out from a rich industrial, buy up all the computers and luxuries and anything else that looks cheap. This can often amount to well over 100TC of cargo. If your next stop is a poor agri or similar, sell for a big fat profit. If not then hold on to some or all of it until you can show a good profit. Even buy more computers etc if your next call is another RI. In other words you have the space to hold stock for a while to maximise your profit from it.

This approach is basically how I operate Atomic Annie to build up the "Ranthe retires in luxury on Esdi" fund

Smivs wrote:

Cody wrote:

ralph_hh wrote:

Well, thanks all, after reading this, I do not feel so bad anymore, blowing up innocent freighters

So vicious! Poor innocent traders!

Poor Arthur Daley

I resemble that remark!

I've been fiddling with secondary market definitions quite a bit now and overall it's quite nice. To be able to set prices in relation to the system prices is very nice indeed. There's one thing I'm missing though. I would like to be able to set a fixed price in market_definition. I don't think that's currently possible. I know I can do it in marker_script, but then I would need to define other goods there too. Have I overlooked/misunderstood something? If not, could this be added, if possible?