Disembodied wrote: it's certainly not very realistic, and would bring a very rapid full stop to the fun of working your way up the ladder.
Nope, absolutely not! I fully disagree. But now I understand why you creators designed the game in regards to trade and industry how it is! I need to talk about this with you. For the "fun of working the ladder up" you guys have a wrong concept running in this game. "The first million is the hardest" - this is the truth. There must be bigger goals in this game moneywise. FAR BIGGER. This is why I am bringing up the Political Career section and the factoryship ideas. You must be able to invest huge amounts of money into the BIG ships, the effective über-weapons (that still need to be developed) that must be far more expensive than it is today.
---> if you have to spend 10 Million $ for bribing your cooperate senior to get up in the rankings of the company to get granted the privileges to trade in restricted goods you can't even see before, there is some need for huge amounts of money. There are COUNTLESS of trading games having exactly my concept of making huge amounts of money if you are very skilled, lucky and smart. There must be Objects on the other hand that DEMAND huge amounts of money. Worth it.
-- > I said it must be POSSIBLE to make 1 million in one very, very risky, maybe even very tricky hard to time and hard to find trade.
Let me go into the real world: cocaine trade from Colombia to the USA. At Every step of the trade route - and we have about 20 steps, the price of the cocaine doubles or 10folds. You can, if you dare, go into the Columbian jungle, buy one ton of Cocaine raw mass for 10.000US.
Your problem then is to get it somehow to the coast of Columbia, get the big mass into some sort of ship or plane and fly it into the USA, find the selling spots and sell it. You would make 10.000.000US$ out of the prior 10.000US$ in that case. Which is nearly impossible if you are not very experienced, have the airplanes, connections etc. at hand. You can TRY it as a noob, but you will most likely be killed right away in the jungle.
What you guys created now is a trading system where you are doomed to trade for peanuts. Day in and out. Peanuts. There are some routes you can make money but the fun in endlessly trading for so little profit is very dull. And in addition we only have a handful of goods anyway, almost available everywhere for almost the same price you can only deal in small amounts.
Yes, you can trade up by dealing in peanuts. Or let's say Computers: -23% here and +20% there to put it into oolite perspective. On top of that you can maximum buy 127 tons = units of it. This is not realistic and not fun. Lets say there are Microchips in one system, metal alloys of good quality in another, small energy capacitors in a third. You buy them, supply your space factory and you produce computers. With computers and chips and metal plates you can produce robots. Sounds better? Why not having different types of robots you can trade? This all needs huge investments to run your own space factory. You need to hire WORKERS (new oxp needed) and even defense weapons for your space factory against pirates. And then, of course, you want to produce the really valuable goods but for that you need a high ranking and standing in the Corp - you need to BUY that license, bribe yourself in a high position for the privilege to produce illegal weapons or goods.
Lets take a look in the real world: you start with 1000 US$ and want to establish a multi Billion Empire. So you start with 1000US and small car for trading. You have a hard time starting your business. You cant deal in Quantum Computers at first nor do you have a supertanker to deal in oil. I am talking about real life. You need to trade your way up. Later you have a huge truck, or even 10 trucks, you know where to buy valuable goods in South America and how to sell them in the USA. The profit margins get bigger and the also the volume of trade rises. You need the money to invest more...later your produce yourself, you move into politics...This is all a question of delivering a balanced economy, scenario. I agree that it is completely silly to offer 1 million $ trade routes to noobs they can easily spot, exploit and handle. This is not what I have in mind.
tl,dr: Make the high profitable runs RARE and Risky. One system in one galaxy produces one certain product in high amounts, let that galaxy and system be very risky. You have a chance to survive the run at 30% if your ship is too weak or your skills are low better not try it at all.
The demand for that product is put in another galaxy where they pay you 10x the amount.
1) you have to FIND OUT about both the supply and demand first of all which makes exploration far more fun. You need to keep track on lets say 300 different main goods while you can only see the goods on the f8 that are available at the station or you own n your ship. So you do not know what might be available somewhere. You better make lists of all prices. I also do not like the "average price" help on the f8. This also ruins the fun of needing to look for the fair or cheap price yourself.
Maximum risk, maximum profit. And you can only deal with the risk if you are equipped sufficiently. You need the personal connection, the information, the skill the gear. If you read my previous post I made clear that such maximum profitable routes must be very risky if you are poor, have a small ship, no sufficient "Smuggling cargo cloaking generator", if you did not bribe the Police and so on. The source of the good you want to trade must either be placed in a very dangerous zone - and I am talking about a VERY dangerous zone we yet don't have in the oolite universe, or the chance to find the person willing to sell those goods on the Bulletin Board must be hard to find.
I need to give you an detailed example via a game story soon.
Risk-based economy
Seriously, you're not talking about Elite/Oolite here. Not to say that the ideas presented would not achievable. Price tweaks would actually be dead easy. This is serious oxp material. Pacifistic oxp with zero fighting and 100% trading/gambling would be interesting.
) and let the player buy tickets.
.