Trading aids

[Disembodied]

@ Ebi: don't worry about raising up ideas that someone might have mentioned before (with the possible exception of a laser cooling system... ) -- apart from anything else it gives the whole thing a useful nudge!

A dynamic (or even pseudo-dynamic) economy would be a great boon. Unfortunately I think that to institute even a basic functional economic system would require an enormous rewrite. However, I like your idea of prices dropping or going up in response to activities in nearby systems. If a Special Events OXP could be made which can cause an occasional dip or spike in the prices of certain commodities on certain worlds, then it might be possible to mirror that effect, slightly, in all the planets in the surrounding 7-light-year volume -- i.e. if there's a twenty-credit drop in the price of computers in system A, all systems within one jump experience a 5-credit drop (or some such similar formula). That should persist between restarts, given that it would be based on a stored variable in the OXP.

There are some other tweaks that could happen. Griff's made a beautiful model of a trading post; Commander McLane has made Anarchies.oxp which contains some code for a bit of basic bargaining... I'd really like to see these put together to create non-CoOp trading posts somewhere inside certain systems, a bit away from the planet maybe where you can actually haggle for stuff, perhaps with some adjustment being made to the possible final acceptance prices being based on the quantity of the commodity in the system (the total tonnage in both Trading Post and main station). So if there are a lot of computers in a certain system, regardless of its own economy, then the price in the Trading Post would go down. Players could actively alter this by shipping in a big load of stuff into a system and selling it at the main station, causing the offer price in the Trading Post to fall.

How doable any of this is, I don't know!

[tinker]

I have been thinking about trading in general for a while, and the one thing that is missing at the moment that would make trading more 'real' is that stations and other tradestores have a buy price and a sell price, they have to make a profit as well. So stations buy goods and stick on a margin before they sell them.

The difference would only be small, say 5% on average, but could also be randomised as well as differing by political system and station type. FTZ buy prices are always low as they know the goods only cost a few laser shots, their markup is high even though they still sell cheaper due to their risky legal position.

Someone was talking about some super carrier that shifted 100's or was it 1000's tons at a time. These ships arriving in a system would produce trade effects. These traders would have the ability to buy everything under market price so these goods would not be available to players or other Jamesons and because they just delivered tons of shiny new stuff the stations buy price for most things would drop dramatically.

Some of this is I think doable as oxp, the super carrier affecting local prices should be OK, but having a buy and sell price for every trade item would I think require game engine recoding.

[Dr Beeb]

Its kind of curious to be discussing (robust) trading systems compared to what is going on in the real world at the moment ... Anyway I am sure that the GalCop folks figured out their own central bank/treasury system to ensure stability between their wildly disparate members' economies. For instance, if major shortages, excesses, occurred major fleets of ships would be engaged by big Corporations/Governments to deal with it (think Berlin airlift). I don't see a role here for a small independent trader in such a major event and we are essentially shielded by GalCop from such major turmoil. OXPs for the small independent trader that present local, short-term, opportunities that are not too excessive to attract the attention of bigger trading entities seem to be the most realistic to me.

If you really want to make big bucks (in strict mode) you just find a Rich Ind and poor Agr very close to each other and just shuttle inbetween, even witchspacing in several times, until the random number generator gives you the prices you want. I think we all go through that phase when needing to build up cash for the next purchase, but its not particularly fun.

[ClymAngus]

@ ClymAngus: There seems to be one mistake on your cheat sheet. It is hardcoded that no commodity price can ever exceed 102.0 Cr, so 114.8 for Narcotics seems strange. It seems that the error was already present in the Oolite Reference Sheet.

I need to pick peoples brains, I know that narcos are way off on the crib sheet, is there anything else that's a bit hinky? I'm upgrading and republishing and I'd like to avoid any more probs.

[CptnEcho]

Planetary productions number in the thousands, millions and billions of units. A single trading ship isn't going to affect the overall flow of marketable products or their prices.

The buy/sell prices found at orbital stations may already include applicable taxes and tarrifs. But traders who do wonder about such things are at least served a chewy helping of food for thought.

Buy/Transport/Sell Cargo contracts can be negotiated for short term or long term durations of time for any number of goods. Perhaps established transportation companies are already handling the majority of available cargo. The cargoes that are made available to the open market could be there for any number of reasons.

Since there's a "real time" communications system utilized for financial transactions and combat kills, it could be postulated that more goes on behind the scenes than simple game play might convey.


I think there are a number of overlapping concepts between Elite/Oolite cargo haulers and a series authored by Elizabeth Moon, beginning with the book Trading in Danger (Vatta's War Series #1).
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Tradin ... 616/?itm=8

[ZygoUgo]

Although surely prices on orbitals are more affected by the stations capacity for stock, and for a large ship to arrive and sell in bulk, there's always a reduction in bulk. It is also not possible for such a large ship to bring up stock from the atmosphere in these vast amounts (would take a couple of days back and forth?), so the trader will be buying as much in bulk from these visitors as they have room or can afford, surely that would affect prices for a few days?
There (I beleive) should most definately be a size/weight restriction on what vessels can lift their own bulk out of gravity)

[Eric Walch]

Planetary productions number in the thousands, millions and billions of units. A single trading ship isn't going to affect the overall flow of marketable products or their prices.

I agree on this. When a large shipment arrives it won't influence prices. It only could influence the transport costs. When there is to much stock on a station they just offer a higher transport fee to get more shuttles to the station. But when you look well, you'll see that when you bring a very large freight to the station with a contract, those goods don't show up on the market. There were already buyers for it and they have the shuttles are already present at the station to fly the cargo down.

One aspect that is missing is long term prise fluctuation. e.g. last spring platinum was twice as expensive as gold. But platinum is heavily used as catalyst in chemical industry and automotive exhausts. Both brake down the past half year and prices of platinum are now about the same as gold. (remind me that I need to buy large quantities in platinum in RL as when auto sales start again, platinum will rise again and than I should have some quantities in stock to sell.)
These large fluctuations are missing. It would be nice to have large price changes of the kg and grs materials. Than pilots could speculate and they could invest their credits in gold when prises are low and sell it a few years later when prices are high again. I think currently most players keep their asset in credits rather than gold/platinum. They have an infinite thrust in the intergalactic financial system to keep the value of a credit intact. I would prefer gold above credits. ( But than I earn my living by trading gold and diamonds in RL)

[ClymAngus]

OK so having looked at this, the main issues I've got are:
Narcotics at 114.8 (which is impossible, and appears to be quite random across the ooniverse. So I was going to put in "random".

also 8 cr for minerals? The only place I've seen prices that low are on rock hermits, I tend to find they are up around the 9.5-10 mark.

Does this sound right to people?

[Eric Walch]

also 8 cr for minerals? The only place I've seen prices that low are on rock hermits, I tend to find they are up around the 9.5-10 mark.

Does this sound right to people?

In the wiki you can find a formula for calculating prices. I put everything once in a spreadsheet. With this I calculated 4 prices for a main station. high/low for a poor agricultural and high/low for a rich industrial.Than I took the average number out of the four giving my average list:

Code: Select all

5	7,2	23,2	15,2	29,2	90,2	56,7	81,8	56,6	38,8	69,2	70,4	12	38,8	71,8	19,6	43,6

I also wrote down the difference between overall high and low. The larger this number the more profit there is to gain in trading:

Code: Select all

6	4	11,2	26,4	20	23,6	73,6	40,4	19,6	15,2	39,2	50,4	4	5,6	18	8,8	44,8

All values are in the order of the inventory list.

I only had to treat narcotics special. This is somehow an exception. All calculated values are first calculated according to the wiki commodity page. The wiki says to multiply than with 0.4 but it is actually multiplication with 4, than AND 3FF and than dividing by 10. For all this it is the same as x0.4 but narcotic prices are cropped by the AND 3FF resulting that the high low calculation does not find the highest possible value. I could not find the AND 3FF in the code but that seems the only explanation for the maximum value of 102.4

I did not look at rock hermit prices nor at the frequency of high/low economies in a galaxy.

[ZygoUgo]

@Eric Walch, yes such a large vehicle with pre-arranged deals would be sidelining the station to an extent that their prices would not affect each other. There is however the inevitable over buying and under buying that goes on through natural error, overstock and clearance are symptons of market estimation.
It's just that this would reduce the super freighter to a novelty that turns up now and then with cheap prices rather than a moving influential element of game play.
Seems a bit dull, if someone wants to incorporate one it would be far better off stealing space based trade from all surrounding systems, like a giant 'off the back of a lorry' that randomly rolls up and everyone flocks to.

Also from your point of veiw surely if the world trades in billions of units why would they waste expensive fuel shuttling back and forth into space unless the super freighter is bringing them something specific that they struggle to produce themselves? this in itself tells of the super freighter having an elaborate trade route that gradually collects stock from stations as it goes, clearing that stock out from the stations it buys from and temporarily pushing those prices up under the unspoken trade rule of 'there's only a couple left, you want it desperately you pay for it'.

Really I'm saying this because others seem to think a fully dynamic structure can't be done, so I say the SF would be a good part of a Special Events OXP.
I suppose for that possible 'off the back of a lorry' incarnation of the super freighter perhaps it is only possible to buy in set bulks? This is often a method of clearance between wharehouse traders to move as much as possible as quickly as possible, the side effect of which is that usually some of the stock (if not on occaision all) is dud, non returnable and all that.
Maybe even some of the better stock is set up under a script that simulates a small auction of those goods for you to partake in.

Edit; Really like your gold/assets idea, I hope there CAN be some kind of shifting market

[ClymAngus]

Excellent. I shapp update with these figures in mind.

also 8 cr for minerals? The only place I've seen prices that low are on rock hermits, I tend to find they are up around the 9.5-10 mark.

Does this sound right to people?

In the wiki you can find a formula for calculating prices. I put everything once in a spreadsheet. With this I calculated 4 prices for a main station. high/low for a poor agricultural and high/low for a rich industrial.Than I took the average number out of the four giving my average list:

Code: Select all

5	7,2	23,2	15,2	29,2	90,2	56,7	81,8	56,6	38,8	69,2	70,4	12	38,8	71,8	19,6	22,6

I also wrote down the difference between overall high and low. The larger this number the more profit there is to gain in trading:

Code: Select all

6	4	11,2	26,4	20	23,6	73,6	40,4	19,6	15,2	39,2	50,4	4	5,6	18	8,8	2,8

All values are in the order of the inventory list.

I only had to treat narcotics special. This is somehow an exception. All calculated values are first calculated according to the wiki commodity page. The wiki says to multiply than with 0.4 but it is actually multiplication with 4, than AND 3FF and than dividing by 10. For all this it is the same as x0.4 but narcotic prices are cropped by the AND 3FF resulting that the high low calculation does not find the highest possible value. I could not find the AND 3FF in the code but that seems the only explanation for the maximum value of 102.4

I did not look at rock hermit prices nor at the frequency of high/low economies in a galaxy.

[Eric Walch]

Excellent. I shapp update with these figures in mind.

There was just one mistake in my figures. All looked correct except those for aliens. They looked to low for me. Re-looking my data I notice I used the value for quantity adjustment instead price adjustment. I corrected it in my original posting. (Only the value for alien items was not correct)

[ClymAngus]

OK, this has been updated. Should be a4 size and I've left the fold marks on it so it should sit snugly above the F-keys in between the keys and the casing on a mac and easily altered to fit a PC.

www.crimsonforge.co.uk/cloister/cheatsheet.jpg

I've updated the trading prices (thank you Eric and Mclane for pointing out the discrepancies and providing me with correct information) I've added High\low values for each commodity (thanks again Eric). Any other probs with it, or if you want to upgrade it yourself, I can make the photoshop file available.