Let's fix the market (F8)
For this we'll ned to tweak shipdata. We are not going to change anything in the Sothis oxp, but let's have a quick look at its shipdata.plist just for fun. The only trace of any market definition is the commented out line saying
// market="nestmarket". That most likely means that the shipdata.plist of this OXP was originally constructed on top of another oxp by the same author: Wasps. Wasps actually has that exact same line, but active.
In the old days this (no market definition) meant that the main station market definition was copied to the secondary station. That part of the core game changed and novadays the default action is not to have market at all.
Another change from the old days is the change from a very cryptic arrays of numbers to a totally understandable market definitions. If you happen to stumble on my old conversion script from da old market definitions to new market definitions, you'll see the horror.
Let's jump back to SothisTC, our overriding oxp and to the file shipdata-overrides.plist. Oolite works so that it first reads all definitions from all shipdata.plist files around. There's one in the core game resources and up to one in every oxp. After that Oolite reads all the definitions in shipdata-overrides.plist files on top of the previously read definitions. This allows us to create overriding oxps. We can override core definitions, but also other oxps if needed.
The file shipdata-overrides.plist has definitions for "sothis_station" and "kw_buoy". These names must naturally match the ones we are overriding. The first one defines the properties of the station, the second one the buoy. We're currently defining the shipyard to be non existent, renaming the station to "Sothis Trade Center", setting docking clearance to be required, setting station roll to 0.18 to make the station feel more majestic and defining some roles for it.
To make the market work, we need to add some keys and values to "sothis_station". These should do the trick:
Code: Select all
market_capacity = 15;
market_definition = (
{
"type" = "class";
"name" = "oolite-business";
"price_multiplier" = 1.2;
"price_randomiser" = 0.3;
"quantity_multiplier" = 0.7;
"quantity_randomiser" = 0.2;
},
{
"type" = "default";
"capacity" = 0;
}
);
market_monitored = yes;
Let's go over these.
Market_capacity sets a generic quantity limit for each good. Market_monitored sets the market to follow the laws of GalCop on legality of the goods. More info on these in the wiki:
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Shipdata.plist
To understand market_definition we need to understand a bit on the market mechanic in the game. A system has a primary market and secondary markets. The primary market is set in trade-goods.plist file which can be found from the core resources. It defines all trade goods in the game and their characteristics. More info on those in the wiki
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Trade-goods.plist. The secondary market is defined with respect to the primary market.
In our market_definition we set all goods with class "oolite-business" to have a price range of 0.9-1.5 times the primary market price. The quantity is a bit more complex. First the quantity on the primary market is scaled to match to secondary market capacity. In this case the calculation would be 15/127*primary. Then that number is multiplied with 0.5-0.9 to ensure some capacity.
All other goods are set to 0 capacity.
After this the market should be "alive" and should offer some selling opportunities. The market is very limited and can naturally be tweaked in any manner. I'm happy to help in tweaking the market to better suit the narrative.
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