Oolite Bulletins

This idea popped into my head today.

There is one OXP out there that does a random "stock rotation", changing the price of a certain item, which helps to make the market slightly dynamic.

However, the idea I had, and I have no idea if it's possible, is to make adjustments to available quantities (and possibly prices), but not at random -- rather based on the comings and goings of ships at the station. NPC ships do have a "likely cargo" setting and can have likely cargo types after all, which determine what and how much cargo is spilled when you shoot them. How about if those data were used to create likely transactions said ships would make when they dock at the station, and similarly consider likely transactions when new ships are spawned that launch from the station?

Thus the quantities of items in the station would fluctuate with the arrivals and departures of NPC ships. If that affects pricing too, then so be it.

It's possible to do - in 1.79 you can read the NPC ship cargo list by script, which might make it easier - though you'd certainly have to consider carefully what happens when a Boa with a full hold shows up.

The station is a port, not an entire economy: does the price of washing machines drop in the UK when a container shipload arrives at Dover?

All that aside, there are gameplay reasons to be very careful: for example, this could make it possible for the player to make money just by sitting in the station.

I'd agree with both of Disembodied's points here..

Yeah, that's true. So, changing prices would be out of the question, but I think the idea of quantities changing is still an interesting one.

The player arrives at a system and hopes to buy up what he sees as a good deal, only to find that someone else comes along and buys up those commodities before he gets to the main station. What's worse, a Boa full of the same thing the player was carrying has just maxed out the station's storage space for that commodity, meaning they won't buy what the player was hoping to sell! (Maybe another station in the system will take it -- a nice excuse to visit other stations, or to even have them, e.g. the Stations for Extra Planets OXP.)

Keeper wrote:

a Boa full of the same thing the player was carrying has just maxed out the station's storage space for that commodity, meaning they won't buy what the player was hoping to sell!

Good idea, and a solution is the  Alternative customer who sometimes offer half price for the unsellable cargo.