Oolite Bulletins

Hoopy Casino changes: The original attempted to be 10% less than the main station for Gold/Plat/Gems, but I figure why bother because otherwise you'd never visit it besides playing the casino maybe once.

It doesn't want to handle mass quantities of kg-amounts of Gold and Platinum (limit 10 kg each there), but 100 grams of Gem-Stones is no big deal.

So, where did we leave this? Do we consider Hathor a completed tweak? Was there any other suggestions we haven't put in yet?

phkb wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 1:12 pm

So, where did we leave this? Do we consider Hathor a completed tweak? Were there any other suggestions we haven't put in yet?

Umm. Well, the market seemed to work, looking cursorily at the F4 Commodity Markets screen. When I whizzed over to have a nose about, I crashed, docking with the Hathor. "Press 'Space' Commander", et cetera, et cetera.

Close inspection showed that the dock was somehow missing. Looked fine from a distance, but close up it was a rather different story. Ended up comparing the shipdata.plist and the javascript with the originals and seeing no obvious problems (but I wouldn't, would I?). I obviously did something utterly horrendous when I tweaked the markets. Ended up being blessedly distracted by DGill, his crucial revision to Feudal States - and the dynamic destiny of my dynastic disasters.

I dearly love KW's Hathor, but my experiences with it in-game have been miserable to say the least.

I have been leafing through this: Proposal for 1.82: support for economic changes. Can't pretend to understand it all, but it is really quite fascinating.

So, no idea at the moment, sorry! There are some ideas out there, but the current state of hebetation of my intellect precludes any sensible comment.

Reference: Erstwhile Whine at Wildeblood

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 7:17 pm

Reference: Erstwhile Whine at Wildeblood

What's it got to do with me!?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 7:17 pm

I have been leafing through this: Proposal for 1.82: support for economic changes. Can't pretend to understand it all, but it is really quite fascinating.

I didn't need to re-read that; I remember it like it was yesterday. But, I re-read it anyway. Now give me my hour back. 1.82 was a disaster that should have been strangled at birth. Brought to you by the same devs that claimed an anti-clockwise gal-drive was too hard, and more than 8 charts was too hard.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 7:17 pm

I dearly love KW's Hathor, but my experiences with it in-game have been miserable to say the least.

I'll upload what I've got currently somewhere you can get to it.

Here's the promised tweaked version. Hathor_Tweaked.oxz

Note: if you're using the version of Hathor that is combined with Nephthys, you'll need to remove that one so there's no conflict with this tweaked version. I can post a separate version of Nephthys that has it's own spawning routine, if you need it.

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 8:50 pm

1.82 was a disaster that should have been strangled at birth.

Why? Coming into Oolite at v.1.88 I see 1.80 and 1.82 as major improvements over a less exciting 1.77.1. I suppose that my major interest is realism, and I see both as making major steps in that direction. Granted, the realism of Frontier does not impress (too much of a good thing?). But the better combat AI and the more realistic piracy, combined with the tutorial and the Expansions Manager all struck me as major improvements, even if I can't shoot for toffee.

The various economics OXPs which v.1.82 made possible make my game much more enjoyable.

Now I fully understand that from the viewpoint of such as yourself, v.1.80 & 1.82 introduced a lot more hassle. Publishing OXZs became a chore. Even more JS changes which were poorly documented and lacked worthy examples must have generated a substantial pain in the unmentionables. The ability to easily faff about adding new Galaxies became a chore involving scenario.plists and a possible need to spell out every system in the planetinfo.plist (but I suspect that the galaxy seeds can be still made to work if one knows how). And the two SOTL scenarios are refreshingly different, even if incomplete.

But from a dumb pilot's perspective we've gone from 550 OXPs to 1,100 combined with major improvements to the vanilla game along the way. I see the real losses as BGS X-mapping, Alternative Ooniverses, Yoda's trade tips and Svengali's Missions. (Phkb has resuscitated the other loss - the Cataclysm mission).

Well then. The ball is now in your court!

phkb wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 12:11 am

Here's the promised tweaked version. Hathor_Tweaked.oxz

Note: if you're using the version of Hathor that is combined with Nephthys, you'll need to remove that one so there's no conflict with this tweaked version. I can post a separate version of Nephthys that has it's own spawning routine, if you need it.

Thank you for this! I already have a working independent Nephthys, so I should be fine.

I will put my thinking cap on and see what I can come up with for the Trade programming tutorial. It will probably involve just explaining stuff which you have previously done.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 12:21 am

I suppose that my major interest is realism.

Then explain a universe in which you can jump around the galaxy/galaxies clockwise, but not anti-clockwise? Seriously. This isn't too hard to do, and we knew it. We knew it because lots of us had it working in our own builds of Oolite.

That, and other small changes to the code that make a practical difference within the game, were what we wanted/expected from 1.80 &1.82. Not a wholesale butchering of the market system, because someone thought he had a theory of how markets (should) work. As I wrote in that thread you linked to, anyone who thinks he has a theory of markets is wrong.

And the defence of this irrational exuberance went along the lines of, "Well ,it's a game, not real life markets, so we have to make sure there's always a way for the player to trade profitably."

Pardon? A game that lets you win?

Wildeblood, it is good to see you back.
A few thoughts about this.

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 8:50 pm

1.82 was a disaster that should have been strangled at birth. Brought to you by the same devs that claimed an anti-clockwise gal-drive was too hard, and more than 8 charts was too hard.

Also the same devs that managed to distribute new versions of Oolite, not only for windows, but dozens of linux platforms, for more than a decade. This is no longer the case. I am not trying to criticize the current developers, just pointing out that those devs did a pretty good job of maintaining the game overall.

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 1:33 am

Then explain a universe in which you can jump around the galaxy/galaxies clockwise, but not anti-clockwise? Seriously. This isn't too hard to do, and we knew it. We knew it because lots of us had it working in our own builds of Oolite.

It is open source so there was nothing to prevent you from uploading your own working version of this code.

Wildeblood wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 1:33 am

Not a wholesale butchering of the market system, because someone thought he had a theory of how markets (should) work. As I wrote in that thread you linked to, anyone who thinks he has a theory of markets is wrong.


And the defence of this irrational exuberance went along the lines of, "Well ,it's a game, not real life markets, so we have to make sure there's always a way for the player to trade profitably."

Pardon? A game that lets you win?

If nobody 's theory of how markets work is correct then what difference does it make? One system is just as incorrect as any other so making markets easier to manipulate by expansion authors is better so they can more easily implement their incorrect version of a market.
I would agree that more should have been done to ensure backwards compatibility with legacy markets for expansions and I've seem cim admit this as well. I believe almost all of the issues with that have been dealt with within the expansions themselves at this point so it doesn't seem to be a big deal really.
Sure you may believe I am biased because I have an expansion that takes advantage of the new system and introduced a custom commodity, but I had already been experimenting with custom commodities with the legacy code based on cim's New Cargos oxp. I had to rewrite quite a bit of stuff to take advantage of the new market system but I did because I felt that the new system was better and would allow more nuanced control of commodities. This includes creating markets that don't always allow the player to make a profit.

I could go on but I have a theory about markets that suggests that if I don't go to work, next time I go to the market I won't be able to purchase the items I require to continue my current comfortable existence. Regardless of your theory about the validity of my theory I have actually tested this theory and have found it to be reasonably accurate for me.
Have to go out of town and I won't have internet til I get back on Friday.

Stormrider wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 7:42 pm

a theory about markets that suggests that if I don't go to work, next time I go to the market I won't be able to purchase the items I require to continue my current comfortable existence

Me too damnit!

Stormrider wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2024 7:42 pm

I believe almost all of the issues with that have been dealt with within the expansions themselves at this point so it doesn't seem to be a big deal really.

If it's not a big deal then please help get markets working on all the broken-market stations spawned by every possible OXP/OXZ.

And by "working" I don't mean just giving them a market and done...they all need markets that don't cause "unique profit opportunities" where 2 nearby stations are 20+ credits apart in prices for the same trade goods.

phkb wrote: ↑Sun Feb 18, 2024 1:12 pm

So, where did we leave this?

With the Witchspace Lobster's mauling of Aegidian's BB, we seem to have lost your most recent post asking what might be moved onto next.

I realise that until we are all happy that this BB is working the way that it should, that other matters currently take priority. And your fixing New Cargoes is for me more important than what is below!


There are four OXPs which concern me.


1) Darkside Moonshine Distillery - the proof of concept for distance affecting price
I've not done much with this (not into whisky!). But I noticed a post on Roolite saying that it didn't work. If it really doesn't, then should it not be fixed as it is the only OXP I know of which does this - and will be the template for others. (new BB's thread)


2) SW Economy - introducing a new Economy (Mining Worlds with high prices for food/liquors)
This is an important move away from the Ag<>Ind bipolar model. There are others (eg.: Redspear's Demand based Economy), but SW Economy introduces a 9th economy with quite different pricing. I know that you worked on it only recently, but a true mining world as envisaged by Stranger (too small and low tech to grow much food, and thus needing to import them) with totally different markets from the Agricultural Economies would be a useful template for those wishing to come up with more radical rejigs of the Economy. (new BB's thread)


3) New Deal - introducing a 4-polar economy
This might be too much! But I find the concept fascinating and dearly wish I had the skills to complete it. And we would presumably need to rejig every single jolly economy throughout the 8! (new BB's thread)


4) Real Life Economics - introducing a dynamic economy
You did come up with a partial fix for this two years ago. This one is buggy (prices fluctuate and eventually drop to 0) - and only the prices fluctuate, not the quantities (bizarre!). This would be a really valuable addition to the Expansions Manager in my humble opinion. There is also a complicated Local Economic Balance Calculator (my last 2021 post claims it too is kaput). (new BB's thread)



But this is only my two penny's worth. Switeck probably has a deeper understanding of what is really needed.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 4:08 pm

1) Darkside Moonshine Distillery - the proof of concept for distance affecting price. I've not done much with this (not into whisky!). But I noticed a post on Roolite saying that it didn't work. If it really doesn't, then should it not be fixed as it is the only OXP I know of which does this - and will be the template for others. (new BB's thread)

There is Another. The Spara Method of dealing with Secondary Markets comes in two flavors.

The First is the Standard Method which takes all of the Vanilla commodities from the trade-goods.plist and redefines them. An example of this can be found in the WILDSHIPS OXZ.

The Second is similar to the Standard Method but without the trade-goods.plist definitions. It is based solely on a Station's distance from the Main Station. This method's use is only for calculating Secondary Market prices and quantities within a single system. An example of this can be found in STATIONS FOR EXTRA PLANETS.

While this Second Method differs from what Stormbrewer's Distillery script does (multiple systems versus a single system) there might be the possibility of one or the other gleaming something from the former.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 4:08 pm

2) SW Economy - introducing a new Economy (Mining Worlds with high prices for food/liquors)

Here's something I prepared earlier.
SWEconomy_3.9.oxz

I don't have scope to properly test this at the moment, but maybe it will work first try? Worth a shot, anyway.

So, this is a re-work of SW Economy so that it uses the new Market Script Interface OXP. I also put all the customisations into Library Config, so you can tweak it from there. Note, though, that if you tweak settings that would apply to the current system, you won't see the impact until the system is regenerated (ie jump out and then back).

The final tweak was for mining worlds. They should have a bump in prices for agricultural products. As well, I've added an indicator to the chart screens so its now possible to quickly see which systems are mining worlds. This does nothing in the vanilla game, because no systems mean Stranger's criteria for a mining world (TL < 4, planet radius < 54250), at least in chart 1. I suppose one of his other OXP's must tweak the planet sizes.

As I said, I haven't fully tested this, as I'd need to set up an environment with a SW config, and I don't really have time for that. But hopefully everything will work first time. Let me know if it goes OK. I do have Stranger's permission to update this in the DM if we're comfortable with the changes.