The Oolite NPC ecosystem (and other questions)

[Commander McLane]

the main station market is preserved across save/load.

Oh, good. That's what I get for working with knowledge that is two years and two version numbers out-of-date.

As far as I know, the main station market was always preserved across save/load. It was already written into the save-file in Oolite 1.65.

[CheeseRedux]

As far as I know, the main station market was always preserved across save/load. It was already written into the save-file in Oolite 1.65.

Ah, yes. The version-number bit was a horrible choice of words on my part; a bit of fluff tucked onto the end of the sentence.

I invariably play with more than the core game dockables, so I've encountered the save/reload issue numerous times. Reading up on OXPs, the MarketRestore fixes that.
Meanwhile, my muddled memory managed to transform a mainly OXP issue into something also occurring at the main station. Let's just forget I ever mentioned it.

[Diziet Sma]

I think there is a way to achieve a better "realism" to the trade system without rewriting the current procedure: By putting a Recent Player Actions filter on top of it.

<snip of well stated idea>

The main problem, as I see it, is that it is arguably very player-centric.
However, I don't think it's a deal-breaker. The Ooniverse exists in a state of near equilibrium; within a certain range, each system always has the same goods available at the same price. Conceptually, it can be argued that this equilibrium is the combined results of all NPC actions. Traders and pirates and bounty hunters and police and Thargoids all have an influence on the market, an influence that is simulated by the current pricing algorithm. The player currently has no such influence, but could be given one by allowing him/her to disturb the equilibrium on a short-time basis.

Obviously it would need balancing. Too much influence, and you pretty much kill milk run trading with one stroke, as you would only get two, maybe three runs done before having to move on to let things recover. One run if you are flying something bigger than the Cobby. Too little influence, and there would be no point in doing the work to begin with.

The problem, from a logical point of view is that, given how much trader traffic there is in most systems, the impact on supply of any single trader, such as the player, ought to be negligible.. for one person, trading such small quantities, to have as much influence on a planetary market as you're suggesting is unrealistic.

[metatheurgist]

One of my friends had a pirated version of FOFT (Federation of Free Traders). He didn't have the instructions and he didn't know how to play the game so the only thing he had access to was the stock market. I noticed when I watched him playing around that virtually every transaction he made on the stock market influenced the market - since he couldn't do anything else with the game I pointed that out and suggested he could make some money anyway (I actually had to teach him to buy low and sell high, start with crap profits and move up the food chain). Next time I saw him he had the best ship in the game with all the weapons and defences and a cargo hold full of wine (the most expensive item in the market)...but he still couldn't take off from the planet without crashing.

I hope Oolite doesn't fall into that trap.

[JazHaz]

One of my friends had a pirated version of FOFT (Federation of Free Traders). He didn't have the instructions and he didn't know how to play the game so the only thing he had access to was the stock market.

I hope Oolite doesn't fall into that trap.

It won't, the installer automatically copies the manual into the game directory!

[cim]

Well ... that depends on how the odds assessment calculates "outclassed".

After a bit of experimentation, the following seems to work quite well:
- excellent odds if outclass 3:1
- good odds if outclass 3:2
- bad odds if outclassed 4:3
- immediate flee/surrender if outclassed 8:3

Here's a few sample scores for "ship class", with in-combat assessments usually being +/- 1 point for most core NPCs.

Shuttle: 0.5
Mamba: 2.1
Viper: 2.2
Moray: 2.4
Cobra III: 2.6
Asp: 2.7
Python: 2.7 (so ~7 with escorts)
Anaconda: 2.5 (so ~15 with escorts)
Thargoid Warship: 3.2 (~11 with all drones active)

An iron-ass Cobra III comes in at about 8-9 points on the in-combat assessment.

But the code already exists, does it not? Clearly the thankyou messages you receive when you decide to join an ongoing fight depend on the sender recognizing that someone else is shooting at the ship that is shooting at them.

This (plus a little bit of extension for cases where a thankyou message wouldn't be sent) worked, by the way: a Thargoid turns up and everyone drops what they were doing fairly quickly. Thanks.

[Disembodied]

Thargoid Warship: 3.2 (~11 with all drones active)

Should at least some of the (probably eventual) presence of the drones not be factored in to the initial odds calculation? People will know they're going to pop out, sooner or later.

[cim]

Obviously it would need balancing

I think the wide variety in jump times makes this impossible to balance. A 1LY jump takes about 40x less time than a 7LY jump. If you balance it for the short one, the long one is unaffected. If you balance it for the long one, the short one you probably get just one use out of.

Should at least some of the (probably eventual) presence of the drones not be factored in to the initial odds calculation? People will know they're going to pop out, sooner or later.

Once it starts being hostile (which with Thargoids is effectively "when you see it") the rating goes up to 5.5 anyway. That means for a proactive attack you'd want at least 3:1 odds, maybe 4:1, which means you can probably destroy it before the drones it hasn't yet launched have much time to make a difference.

Thinking about it, I should just tweak it so that they get 5.5 in non-combat assessments too.

[CheeseRedux]

But the code already exists, does it not? Clearly the thankyou messages you receive when you decide to join an ongoing fight depend on the sender recognizing that someone else is shooting at the ship that is shooting at them.

This (plus a little bit of extension for cases where a thankyou message wouldn't be sent) worked, by the way: a Thargoid turns up and everyone drops what they were doing fairly quickly. Thanks.

Nonono, thank you.
(Though, just for the record: I was advocating that they make a decision, including having the option of carrying on with what they were doing at the time.)

---

As for the other thing: Yeah, I figured it was a bit of stretch.
I'm not a fan of prolonged milk runs, preferring instead to take up semi-random (parcel) deliveries and then trade en-route. Making the effect noticeable enough that players would seek greener pastures as availability and profits dropped would probably, as Dizzy said, stretch believability too far. Though it would never descend into stock market territory, since the effect would only kick in on system entry, and all changes would be of the wrong kind to make money from.

[cim]

(Though, just for the record: I was advocating that they make a decision, including having the option of carrying on with what they were doing at the time.)

I did some testing with that way of doing things.
Boa trader + escorts, with boosted accuracy
7-strong pirate pack (+escorts for their pythons)
3 police vipers

I let them start fighting each other, then dropped 3 warships on to them.

If they united and fought the Thargoids fairly quickly (and it does take some of them a little while to realise) then the warships were destroyed. If they were a bit less coordinated about it, then the warships generally wiped them out.

So I think most standard role/AI ships would go for uniting in a desperate attempt to survive. There's an AI setting to turn that behaviour off and just react to the Thargoids as they would to any other hostile ship, for the cases where it's appropriate.

[Cody]

So I think most standard role/AI ships would go for uniting in a desperate attempt to survive.

Would that be the same if the player is involved? Let's say I've got a couple of Vipers and a bounty-hunter trying to atomise me, then a warship comes along - would the NPCs break-off and fight the warship instead? If so, would they resume hammering me once I've splashed the warship for them?

[cim]

So I think most standard role/AI ships would go for uniting in a desperate attempt to survive.

Would that be the same if the player is involved? Let's say I've got a couple of Vipers and a bounty-hunter trying to atomise me, then a warship comes along - would the NPCs break-off and fight the warship instead? If so, would they resume hammering me once I've splashed the warship for them?

If either the warship shoots them, or you lock your targeting system onto the warship, they'll notice it and break off, bringing any other ships in their group with them. If the warship ignores them, and you fire at it without locking on, then they'll keep on at you. (Detecting whether the player is intentionally shooting at something they haven't targeted is very tricky: minimising exploitable conditions is the best I can do here)

The break-off routine clears their target memory of all non-Thargoid ships, so they wouldn't go back to fighting you once the warship was dead. However, the conditions which caused them to attack the first time might recur later. If you had a fugitive status, they'd re-scan and attack you. If you had a low offender status, and the original hostility had come about because the police had seen you attacking the bounty hunter, they'd probably ignore or fine you and move on.

[CheeseRedux]

Sounds like things are working pretty much as you'd expect them to work in a similar real-life situation. (Though with only one Thargoid (and a rather peaceful one at that) we don't have all that much to compare with.)

[cim]

On trading, thinking about it, perhaps we should be looking at it from the other side: how long, approximately, should it take the player to get the ~100,000 credits profit needed to fully equip the Cobra III with all publicly-available equipment?

At the moment, after the first few trips to buy the large cargo bay and build up a few thousand credits of ready cash, that's about 100 jumps of optimal safe trading, perhaps 200 if they're not just hopping back and forth on a safe route, and allowing some cash for maintenance overhauls and repairs. Depending on just how much combat they do, that probably puts them somewhere between early Competent and early Dangerous, possibly with Constrictor Hunt completed, possibly not.

If that's about how long it should take, then the trading model is fine (if a bit too simple). If it should take longer, then there's room to reduce profitability (in various ways), provided doing so doesn't make the first few thousand credits needed to buy the essentials (and make some mistakes about what the essentials are!) too hard to get through.

[Disembodied]

There are other factors at work, too ... changes to pirate AI (and pirate locations) should make the early game more survivable, so there's some justification in stretching out the "learning and growing" process: it's not quite so vital to get an iron ass as absolutely soon as possible.

That's a good thing, I think: having the Next Cool Thing to work towards is a plus. Those who want to get there as soon as possible can take the more profitable, and more dangerous, routes of smuggling, piracy and bounty-hunting, whereas those who want to be a trader (albeit one who can tussle when required) can pursue that model and steer clear of the troublesome systems.

I think there's merit in making different systems feel different - in extending, where possible, the sense that a Rich Ag Democracy is not the same as a Rich Ag Dictatorship with fewer pirates. Of course, this has to be balanced against not disrupting core gameplay, or dragging out the new player's first steps for too long. But the more I think about it, the more I think that restricting commodity quantities (at least of Computers, Luxuries and Machinery on Industrial worlds, and Furs and Liquor & Wines on Agricultural worlds) is potentially the best way to go. It encourages the player to expand their manifest, and to see a difference between different political systems inside the station as well as outside. The very first few trade runs are made with small handfuls of cargo anyway, so this won't affect the very new player. If it does seem to slow things down too much, then perhaps there could be small tweaks applied to e.g. the profit margins of Radioactives or Alloys.

I admit I haven't actually sat down and worked out what this would do to the margin on a run, but here's a quick off-the-cuff calculation - if instead of 35T of Computers bought on a Rich Ind and taken to a Poor Ag, a player carried 10T of Computers, 10T of Luxuries, 10T of Machinery and 5T of Alloys. It might reduce the profit margin from Cr1400 per trip to something closer to Cr1000, which is a drop of around 30%. If that sort of reduction was applied across the board, then it pushes the number of jumps required to earn the cash from 100 to 130, or from 200 to 260 (maybe a few more, because of extra maintenance, etc.). Whether that's too much is something else again!