Oolite Bulletins

Assuming that base ship price is effectively arbitrary and up to the designer, based only on what they feel based on similar ships, I wonder if a way to calculate a base ship price fairly could be generated, based on starting stats (roll/pitch, speed, cargo, hyperspace capability, energy banks, recharge, missile slots, gun mounts, etc). Find a formula that results in something approximately accurate for the core ships and work with that?

More ambitious idea, work it out and code it so ship designers don't even need to add price to the stats when designing. It's done in-game?

I assume a way to work out the prices is possible - I recall a few discussions on pricing the ships vs. a Cobra Mk III or other core ships and increasing/decreasing it accordingly.

Quickest way to see it would be comparing numerous Cobra variants (Clipped/Courier/Rapier/SuperCobra)

Zireael wrote:

I recall a few discussions on pricing the ships vs. a Cobra Mk III or other core ships...

...and this is where it all fell apart! The core ship pricing is as crazy as most other aspects of Oolite, and there have been many attempts to make sense of it and come up with a formula for pricing OXP ships. All have failed.
The only way to do this is to relate your new ship to the nearest equivalent core ship (and mark it up a bit as your ship is bound to be better ), and if it is markedly 'better' than a core ship, just hike the price even further. Anything that seems considerably more desirable than a BoaCC should probably start in the Cr 1M price range.

It means we need a formula such as mossfoot has suggested. I'll take a look at the ship tables in the Wiki...

Lestradae did come up with a formula, which you can find here:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4329

There are of course issues with trying to price ships by formula, and even more with forcing that formula on people via an in-game mechanism, not least because it's very difficult to make valid comparisons between very different types of ships, and take in factors like premium pricing. Compare the stats of a VW Beetle, a BMW F30, a Transit van, a Ferrari 458, and a Scania R800, and imagine trying to devise a formula which could generate accurate prices for them all. Which is not to say that Lestradae's formula, or a similar venture, wouldn't be useful in providing a rough baseline for ship designers to use as a starting point for setting their own prices.

Basically, though, like Smivs says, ship pricing is crazy. And price isn't really the best factor to use in "balancing" a ship anyway, because the internal game economy is also crazy. If it was ever to be stripped back down and rebuilt - ideally in a way which would put starting players in an Adder, as the smallest jump-capable independent trader, to greatly extend the whole career-path aspect of the game - I think it would have to be built around some system of debt. It could allow a bit of flexibility, a bit of balancing of pro and con (e.g. do I go deeper into the hole, to give me a shot at making a bigger score? Or do I just keep nickel-and-diming the existing debt away and hope nothing bad happens?).

There could be different forms of debt, from established bank to loan-shark; you could have shareholders who want you to do things you'd perhaps rather not, until you can afford to buy them out; and as your reputation grew more people would be willing to take a chance on you with larger sums of money. The aim would be to create a system that gave players the chance to advance up the kit-and-ship-and-capability ladders, whilst keeping them on or at least near the edge of serious trouble. Debt seems to me to be the best mechanism for this kind of thing: it's possible to increase it, or renegotiate it (for some other cost), or find some other, less ideal, ways of paying it off if simple cash is proving to be a problem ("You do me a little favour, and we'll overlook this month's payment ...").

But that's a biiiig redesign, and ideally would have to incorporate things like additional running costs, crew costs, docking fees, etc., which again would have to offer players the choice of tradeoffs between price and quality, as well as the occasional chance to earn a Big Score which might either get them out of a current hole, or bump them up to the next rung. And somewhat off-topic, too!

Disembodied wrote:

If it was ever to be stripped back down and rebuilt - ideally in a way which would put starting players in an Adder, as the smallest jump-capable independent trader, to greatly extend the whole career-path aspect of the game - I think it would have to be built around some system of debt. It could allow a bit of flexibility, a bit of balancing of pro and con (e.g. do I go deeper into the hole, to give me a shot at making a bigger score? Or do I just keep nickel-and-diming the existing debt away and hope nothing bad happens?).

[...]

But that's a biiiig redesign, and ideally would have to incorporate things like additional running costs, crew costs, docking fees, etc., which again would have to offer players the choice of tradeoffs between price and quality, as well as the occasional chance to earn a Big Score which might either get them out of a current hole, or bump them up to the next rung. And somewhat off-topic, too!

I like the idea!

Disembodied, a pricing overhaul similar to what Lestradae suggested (I was right that there was some discussion based on Cobra MK III) would be a first step.

There's already talk in other threads of changing the way the maintenance works or allowing upgrades. Let's just stick to one idea.

I like Lestradae's formula, any objections?

EDIT EDIT: As for premium pricing, we could always leave a +x in the formula where the x would be the price set in a ship's plist.

I don't like the idea of an in-game formula, even if there is a +x option.

If I recall previous discussions correctly, then there is no way you can shoehorn a formula on the current core ship prices, so you would need to change a core aspect of the game. At the moment, nothing makes really a lot of sense when you look at oolite from a mathematical point of view, but it is still well enough balanced. If you try to make sense out of ship pricing now then you would probably have to play with a lot of other variables (commodity prices, ship sizes vs. storage space etc.) as well to regain at least the same balance. Probably an excercise in futility, but who knows

Also, a fixed formular prevents authors from introducing major technological breakthroughs that have an impact on prices. Take a look at our semiconductor industry: if you try to find a formula for pricing chips today relative to each other based on chip performance, size, etc. it will be obsolete a year or two later.

Umm, what prevents us from adjusting the formulae later if needed? Or having +x +y+z whatever so that prices could be adjusted more for core/OXP ships (FdL, Adder, Med Moray).

And the core ships are currently silly. I recall an Anaconda having an excess 600 TC due to a typo, and some other ship being similarly overpriced due to a typo... etc. etc.

Zireael wrote:

Umm, what prevents us from adjusting the formulae later if needed?

I understood that the proposal is to have it coded in Oolite--that would mean you always need some consensus as to what it should be in the first place, how it should be changed, then you need to wait for the next release (most people don't use nightlies),... that wouldn't be practical.

I think offering a formula is fine, on the wiki, as part of the guidelines for ship creation: "This formula can suggest a base price for your ship. Feel free, though, to set your own price if you want to." An OXP that uses such a formula to change the existing prices of ships in the shipyard is not something I'd install, personally.

Zireael wrote:

And the core ships are currently silly. I recall an Anaconda having an excess 600 TC due to a typo, and some other ship being similarly overpriced due to a typo... etc. etc.

Yes, that has been discussed already a lot of times, and it was always the impetus for trying to overhaul the game to make things more plausible. So far, it hasn't succeeded yet. But, as I mentioned earlier, who knows, there might be a way to achieve that and still keep it Oolite-y. Good luck

Disembodied wrote:

I think offering a formula is fine, on the wiki, as part of the guidelines for ship creation: "This formula can suggest a base price for your ship. Feel free, though, to set your own price if you want to." An OXP that uses such a formula to change the existing prices of ships in the shipyard is not something I'd install, personally.

Yep. As a guideline it makes sense.

Uh, isn't the point of an OXP that some people can install it, if they want?

The only question is how to make such an OXP...

What about making an online "calculator"? Where we can input the ships stats (or better yet, just cut and paste the shipdata.plist) and it would then spit out an MSRP (Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price) That we could then use as a guideline for pricing.

I have a hard time deciding on prices for my ships, and like the idea of something we could use to at least give us a starting point. But I do not like the idea of it being hard coded into the game.