Oolite Bulletins

I'm just going to assume this question was in fact too broad for Tinker's Workshop so instead I'm just making a new thread and will reframe/expand the question.

QUESTION:
Is there any combination of OXPs/tweaks that any of you veteran commanders have found to balance the Oolite Economics and/or the most common/popular/standard mods, to your satisfaction? Specifically, which not only balances trade, but solves the problems I list below.

To be satisfactory to my humble gamer's opinion, a "balanced economy" must solve ALL of the following issues inherent both to Elite and Oolite (and to every combination of mods I've found so far):

1. No reliable easy jackpots (my #1 pet hate since forever)
Eg: the ever reliable Computers->Ag. Finding high value in trades and contracts is fine, but (imho) it should always include at least one of the following:
--a. risk (danger), for example trading to dangerous planets, or through or around pirates or GalCop basically
--b. effort: such as travel distance, multiple hyperspace jumps between worlds, etc
--c. chance (luck): such as random or probabilistic appearance of, or encounters with, lucrative markets or items or scores
--d. wheeling and dealing, for example, a lot of things introduced by the amazing  Smugglers mod
--e. cost, such as the offender/credits option of  Free_Trade_Zones, or general smuggling under the  Bounty_System
--f. acknowledge market difference in at least one of: Government, Tech, Ag/Ind. ( Risk_Based_Economy_OXP and  Demand_Driven_Economy felt generally on the right track with this... (except despite downloading it first, I don't think I was able to get DDE to work)).
2. No completely neglected commodities.
3. Compatible with all our favourite addons generally, but ...
4. ...not necessarily require players to commit to non-economics based Oolite mods or radical overhauls

Basically one should be able to earn a stable income, risk/effort/wheeling should be more lucrative, but traders should not be able to hit "free easy money" nor should commodities be sitting there unbought and unsold forever.

Money should come low and easy, or high and hard.

I am well versed of most of the various market issues and critiques https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Economics, and I have sampled every economics-affecting based OXP I could find. Excellent ideas and noble attempts have been thrown at this over the years, I am truly impressed, but I just can't find the sweet spot balance that solves the "easy jackpot" problem, let alone all the others combined. Most solve some of these issues sometimes. I've already started to modify code for my own game and working to solve the issues I listed myself, but I don't want to get lost in yet another never ending mod-for-myself project and I'm really hoping you guys know something I don't lol.

Have any of you achieved such a setup?

szaum-ix wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 8:41 am

I'm just going to assume this question was in fact too broad for Tinker's Workshop so instead I'm just making a new thread and will reframe/expand the question.

QUESTION:
Is there any combination of OXPs/tweaks that any of you veteran commanders have found to balance the Oolite Economics and/or the most common/popular/standard mods, to your satisfaction? Specifically, which not only balances trade, but solves the problems I list below.

To be satisfactory to my humble gamer's opinion, a "balanced economy" must solve ALL of the following issues inherent both to Elite and Oolite (and to every combination of mods I've found so far):

1. No reliable easy jackpots (my #1 pet hate since forever)
Eg: the ever reliable Computers->Ag. Finding high value in trades and contracts is fine, but (imho) it should always include at least one of the following:
--a. risk (danger), for example trading to dangerous planets, or through or around pirates or GalCop basically
--b. effort: such as travel distance, multiple hyperspace jumps between worlds, etc
--c. chance (luck): such as random or probabilistic appearance of, or encounters with, lucrative markets or items or scores
--d. wheeling and dealing, for example, a lot of things introduced by the amazing  Smugglers mod
--e. cost, such as the offender/credits option of  Free_Trade_Zones, or general smuggling under the  Bounty_System
--f. acknowledge market difference in at least one of: Government, Tech, Ag/Ind. ( Risk_Based_Economy_OXP and  Demand_Driven_Economy felt generally on the right track with this... (except despite downloading it first, I don't think I was able to get DDE to work)).
2. No completely neglected commodities.
3. Compatible with all our favourite addons generally, but ...
4. ...not necessarily require players to commit to non-economics based Oolite mods or radical overhauls

Basically one should be able to earn a stable income, risk/effort/wheeling should be more lucrative, but traders should not be able to hit "free easy money" nor should commodities be sitting there unbought and unsold forever.

Money should come low and easy, or high and hard.

I am well versed of most of the various market issues and critiques https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Economics, and I have sampled every economics-affecting based OXP I could find. Excellent ideas and noble attempts have been thrown at this over the years, I am truly impressed, but I just can't find the sweet spot balance that solves the "easy jackpot" problem, let alone all the others combined. Most solve some of these issues sometimes. I've already started to modify code for my own game and working to solve the issues I listed myself, but I don't want to get lost in yet another never ending mod-for-myself project and I'm really hoping you guys know something I don't lol.

Have any of you achieved such a setup?

I find that I'm reasonably happy with the economics system. I combine Phkb's newest version of Risky Business (see the Wiki page - it's not yet on the Expansions Manager), but which incorporates cim's Risk Based Economy together with SWEconomy (independant of the rest of the Stranger's World suite, but is affected by Habitable Planets which changes the size of the main planet which then affects the commodities available). This means I get superb prices for computers in dangerous anarchies, but that not all industrials have computers for sale. I also use a (tweaked) Weapon Laws & Diplomancy which give more meaning - and complexity - to the geography.

If I had the programming skills I'd finish off Vincentz's New Deal (which would probably need to exclude all the other oxp's based on the bi-polar system), but frankly I can't even work out how to stop slaves being sold in the Digebiti markets.

Did you try cim's New Cargoes? I understand that it is supposed to address a-d in your list. Cim never updated it to work properly with his changes in v.1.91

The only oxp's which seem to give relevance to all of the commodities are Demand Driven Economy and Smugglers.

And have you tried cim's SOTL Altmap, just to see how much can now be changed?

Your excess profits seem reasonable to me for the following reasons. I'm very lucky in having a free Cobra Mk3 - most other pilots would start off in an adder or with a loan. And the piracy is a big deal for me - especially with my lousy combat skills.

OK well first of all, thanks for the thoughtful and thorough response. It answers my questions perfectly.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:00 am

I combine Phkb's newest version of Risky Business (see the Wiki page - it's not yet on the Expansions Manager), but which incorporates cim's Risk Based Economy together with SWEconomy (independant of the rest of the Stranger's World suite, but is affected by Habitable Planets which changes the size of the main planet which then affects the commodities available). This means I get superb prices for computers in dangerous anarchies, but that not all industrials have computers for sale.

Can't believe I missed Risky Business and SW_Economy. I was already considering tweaking commodities manually to limit availability and base prices since I didn't see an OXP for it, so I'll be adding these.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:00 am

I also use a (tweaked) Weapon Laws & Diplomancy which give more meaning - and complexity - to the geography.

I have Weapon Laws and I'll definitely have a look at getting Diplomancy. (I am fussy on what I add/try). May I ask what your WL tweak entails?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:00 am

Did you try cim's New Cargoes? I understand that it is supposed to address a-d in your list. Cim never updated it to work properly with his changes in v.1.91

I looked at and liked, but still rejected New Cargoes for I forget what reason, so I haven't tried it.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:00 am

And have you tried cim's SOTL Altmap, just to see how much can now be changed?

I have not. I tend to reject total overhauls at this stage. Maybe it's not an overhaul, I'll have a look later.

Again, thank you for the reply, it was exactly what I was hoping for. I know me with obsessive modding of games I like but wish were better balanced and you've saved me potentially hours of tinkering, testing, and frustration etc as I fuss over getting balances and exploit elimination exactly right all on my own.

szaum-ix wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:04 pm

Maybe it's not an overhaul, I'll have a look later.

Song of the Labyrinth is a "scenario" - in effect a completely different game, but using Oolite's resources. Well worth a look!

A perfect economy?

If you wanna get realistic about it, there's no such beastie. Once the robber barons and banksters get involved, it goes right out the aft airlock, and we're lucky the market works at all.

But in our game, we can happily chuck the above mentioned crooks out the airlock, and good riddance to em! Pour on the buying power.

Weapon Laws

szaum-ix wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:04 pm

May I ask what your WL tweak entails?

I merely added in the extra weapons from my favourite relevant oxp's (Vimana HUD & SniperLock):
VimanaHUD: Vimana Beam Laser (multi-governments); TFS/Target Filtering System (communists), Target Module (confederacies)
SniperLock: (confederacies)
Code for WL v.1.4
Since the Vimana "Beam" outclasses the Military Laser, perhaps it should be further restricted.

New Cargoes

szaum-ix wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:04 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:00 am

Did you try cim's New Cargoes? I understand that it is supposed to address "a"-"d" in your list. Cim never updated it to work properly with his changes in v.1.91

I looked at and liked, but still rejected New Cargoes for I forget what reason, so I haven't tried it.

New Cargoes is brilliant.
The F4 interface is clunky, the non-labelling of the specialist commodities on the F8 screen makes them easy to sell by mistake, the issues with the modern versions of Oolite (also developed by cim) a crying shame, the conflicts with Smugglers a tragedy. But it is still brilliant!

SOTL Altmap

szaum-ix wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 1:04 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 7:00 am

And have you tried cim's SOTL Altmap, just to see how much can now be changed?

I have not. I tend to reject total overhauls at this stage. Maybe it's not an overhaul, I'll have a look later.

It just adds a new choice to your New Commanders screen when you start a new game - which then transports you to a new Ooniverse. It does not change any of your saved games.

If you do try it out, you will probably want to have Spara's Market Observer added. This will require a tweak: cim's notes on it
I think that this is the tag for Market Observer: oolite.oxp.spara.market_observer

Cmdr Wyvern wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 5:55 pm

A perfect economy?

If you wanna get realistic about it, there's no such beastie. Once the robber barons and banksters get involved, it goes right out the aft airlock, and we're lucky the market works at all.

I'm going to advocate for the devil here and argue this on principle.

I get the feeling that most of us are old men here that like Elite/Oolite because of "how games used to be/feel". So most of us would have been through home loans, watched rates rise and fall, watch politics affect markets, and I have little doubt some of you would have or have had or considered investments which implies enough knowledge of markets to at least attempt success. I'm a stock, warrants, options and commodities contracts trader in real life. I think everyone here understands basic market logic, which includes basic supply/demand, term risk, etc. And basically, all the functions that define real life market behavior mostly exist in Oolite as well and there is nothing stopping a dedicated tweak that would match real life behavior -- in fact I doubt it would need to be that elaborate.

To prove it, I'll use real life examples:
1. Trade routes between systems are conceptually no different to Airports between cities and countries
2. The trip to and from your nearest Hermit/Bar/FTZ/Sun,mission checkpoint, etc is no different to a trucker's route to and from cities or locations. In the case of Hermits, it's more like driving to a quarry or a farmer's market.
3. Smuggling is self-evident, the effects of prohibition are self-evident
4. The ease or difficulty of bribing cops or customs obviously effects trade mass. My boss from China compares bribing cops in China to business taxes, it's that common and run-of-the-mill.
5. Piracy still happens not just on african seas but along highways against convoys. No so much in the west but definitely all over the place (I've visited SE Asia, and I have personally run into gangsters there, and personally known a reformed Nepalese pirate -- actual highway pirates, long story). Any route considered "dangerous" (gangster ridden) would immediately see less traffic, more armed and paranoid truckers seeking higher commissions, and a subsequent market effect. Just like in Oolite, it does correlate neatly with government -- maybe not type, but the effects and policing of governments etc.
6. The cost or difficulty or moral conundrum(blood diamonds etc) of producing or procuring any given commodity does affect prices.
7. Just like in real life, people ask, "If it's so easy and lucrative, why doesn't everyone do it?" and if they're right, everyone does until it stops being easy or lucrative. As a real life market guy, I can tell you that EASY + LUCRATIVE is rare, and whenever/wherever EASY + LUCRATIVE pops up it stays that way about five minutes.

So with only those said -- and that's hardly an exhaustive list of easy comparisons, there is nothing stopping the following tweaks/rebalances, which any of you that have tweaked Oolite will instantly recognize as achievable with .plist's and game code.
a. reprice any commodity you like at its base, economy or fluctuation range
b. reprice ships or any given piece of useful equipment until it more realistically reflects market value
--- example: I've repriced fuel and docking fees to more accurately reflect trade cost decision making. Imagine if flying a jet from LA to NY cost like $500? Markets would be affected.
--- example: I have repriced a lot of equipment. Imagine if buying a new fishing trawler catch setup cost $500 instead of $20,000?
--- example: I am in the process of repricing weapons. Imagine if the trucker's Uzi in the case of a mexican heist cost him $10? Everyone would have uzis instead of shotguns, six-shooters or baseball bats
--- I may consider tweaking ship prices, but there's no hurry since I am a while off my next ship anyway
c. Introduce tariffs on commodities and watch all your trading habits change on a dime, it works in real life politics/economics.
--- I do consider this conceptually solved at least in part by increased Docking Fees, Diplomancy, and a few other oxps though..
d. Distance-based trading could be covered, at the very least, by contracts. I have watched you all argue over this in at least one thread and there is an argument for it since it certainly affects real life contract commissions.
e. Smugglers has purchasable ASC beacons for hermits, as soon as I figure out how I'll extend that to -- or simply remove beacons for -- Bars/Liners(markets)/FTZ/etc and reduce some of their appearance probabilities to much less than half at least, and/or, make their locations jump around.
f. UNPOPULAR/CONTROVERSIAL OPTION INCOMING: replace(remove) Torus use with injector use generally, tweak jump costs vs injector costs so that the one does not affect the other, and watch your trading decisions suddenly change as racing to GalCop for help, or the Cori, suddenly costs more. I already do this (Sun/boring trips excepted) and with my fuel price hike it massively affects my decisions.

I didn't mention Agr/Ind and tech, both covered by Risky Business which I am still sampling and yet to form an opinion on. Probably looking for less fluctuation variance regardless, but that's probably just me.

Notice that none of these would require any dramatic coding, except tariffs I guess, just tweaking of existing values. None of them would result in an overly complicated market either. Also keep in mind these are off-the-top-of-my-head ideas, and I was inspired by real life markets not because I'm an ideas man.

szaum-ix wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 10:27 am

Cmdr Wyvern wrote: ↑Tue Apr 26, 2022 5:55 pm

A perfect economy?

If you wanna get realistic about it, there's no such beastie. Once the robber barons and banksters get involved, it goes right out the aft airlock, and we're lucky the market works at all.

I'm going to advocate for the devil here and argue this on principle.

...

To prove it, I'll use real life examples:
1. Trade routes between systems are conceptually no different to Airports between cities and countries
2. The trip to and from your nearest Hermit/Bar/FTZ/Sun,mission checkpoint, etc is no different to a trucker's route to and from cities or locations. In the case of Hermits, it's more like driving to a quarry or a farmer's market.
3. Smuggling is self-evident, the effects of prohibition are self-evident
4. The ease or difficulty of bribing cops or customs obviously effects trade mass. My boss from China compares bribing cops in China to business taxes, it's that common and run-of-the-mill.
5. Piracy still happens not just on african seas but along highways against convoys. No so much in the west but definitely all over the place (I've visited SE Asia, and I have personally run into gangsters there, and personally known a reformed Nepalese pirate -- actual highway pirates, long story). Any route considered "dangerous" (gangster ridden) would immediately see less traffic, more armed and paranoid truckers seeking higher commissions, and a subsequent market effect. Just like in Oolite, it does correlate neatly with government -- maybe not type, but the effects and policing of governments etc.
6. The cost or difficulty or moral conundrum(blood diamonds etc) of producing or procuring any given commodity does affect prices.
7. Just like in real life, people ask, "If it's so easy and lucrative, why doesn't everyone do it?" and if they're right, everyone does until it stops being easy or lucrative. As a real life market guy, I can tell you that EASY + LUCRATIVE is rare, and whenever/wherever EASY + LUCRATIVE pops up it stays that way about five minutes.
...

Introduction to Oolite from Oolite.org

Among the seven trillion people who are - at least officially - Cooperative citizens, you are nobody. So far, anyway. You've got a ship, some weapons, and enough spare cash to get started - and one day, you might get the fame, wealth or glory you want. Perhaps one day, everyone might know your name. If, that is, you can survive that long.

The two thousand star systems of the Cooperative once enjoyed a golden age of peace and prosperity, and perhaps the wealthiest of them can still pretend to. The trade ships that once safely travelled between planets now have to be well armed and escorted to fend off pirate attacks, from small-time criminals desperate for their next meal, to powerful robber barons extracting tithes from everyone who passes through their space.

The Cooperative's police force, concentrated near a few influential planets, can no longer maintain order. The mercenaries they hire for a few credits a kill are too few, too unreliable to do so either. And in the darkness between the stars, an old enemy lurks, fearless, perhaps waiting for order to collapse entirely.

Good luck, Commander.

1) Do we know what affect piracy had on prices in the Carribean in the Georgian period?

The trip to and from your nearest Hermit/Bar/FTZ/Sun,mission checkpoint, etc is no different to a trucker's route to and from cities or locations. In the case of Hermits, it's more like driving to a quarry or a farmer's market.

2) I remember nattering with a South African farmer shortly after the fall of apartheid. With the collapse of law and order, he and his wife had bought a Rottweiler, armoured their bedroom door and had the Rottweiler sleeping in the corridor outside and had guns under their pillows. They had had a truck which was held up by bandits at a "police roadblock" and then stolen with everything on board. I forget whether they ever saw their employees again.

Capture of the Pirate, Blackbeard, 1718 depicting the battle between Blackbeard the Pirate and Lieutenant Maynard in Ocracoke Bay

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 11:48 am

Capture of the Pirate, Blackbeard, 1718 depicting the battle between Blackbeard the Pirate and Lieutenant Maynard in Ocracoke Bay

The prize money for capturing Teach was to have been about £400 (£64,000 in 2022), but it was split between the crews of HMS Lyme and HMS Pearl. As Captain Brand and his troops had not been the ones fighting for their lives, Maynard thought this extremely unfair. He lost much of any support he may have had though when it was discovered that he and his crew had helped themselves to about £90 of Teach's booty. The two companies did not receive their prize money for another four years, and despite his bravery Maynard was not promoted, and faded into obscurity.

Poor Lieutenant Maynard (with whom I share a surname)!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 11:48 am

1) Do we know what affect piracy had on prices in the Carribean in the Georgian period?

We know that european navies couldn't keep up with piracy so privateers were essentially bounty hunters and that such contracts were extremely common. I like books about economics. I vaguely remember reading about the Dutch East India Trading Company's calculations for oceanic travel needing a complicated assumed loss for piracy, the chance of encountering it was so high, and that contracting escorts would sometimes make less economic sense than just accepting the risk of piracy. (That's an oversimplification of a complex book but yeah). I read another book about opium trade around the world and it roundly demonstrated that large volume smuggling is an unstoppable force despite governments' best intentions to stop it, essentially controls have no effect. Tariffs, hilariously, affect trade volume more than legality, but legality/smuggling is the king of trading lucre. I also read a little about period whaling, extremely risky and something like 20% of expeditions made money. I also remember an interesting historical note, that all the great empires that became world dominant were able to tame the seas, and those that didn't or couldn't never made it to empire status. Piracy is important. I didn't think about it before now but Elite/Oolite already simulates this pretty well off the bat.

Also don't misunderstand me, that post was not a series of specific recommendations, I'm just saying that conceptually everything needed to simulate market behavior is there if one considers all options on the table.

Trade in the Oolite/Elite universe can be considered repeated games of the Prisoner's Dilemma

...piracy may ebb-and-flow, most traders may give anarchies a wide berth, but after centuries there's probably going to be a steady-state condition which hammers out both trade profits, fuel/consumables, and price of ships.
It won't be a perfect market or even a single fully-connected market...but it will have a LOT of chances to quit being dysfunctional.

Lots of government subsidies would be built into the markets, consumables, and ship costs...which would be slowly paid back in reduced but often standardized profits.

Traders would be insulated from some of the expenses -- such as hauling fuel to the stations for them to quickly buy-and-leave.
Supply and Demand dictates that if the costs go up considerably, trade would drop immensely.

I would expect most freighter-type ships would be owned by shipping companies piloted by those with reliable contracts (both in pay and duration) and decent enough loyalty to not steal the ship and disappear.
There would be little personal loot and buying-and-selling because every TC of the cargo bays of these freighters already has planned cargo for them years in advance of their arrival.
...But they might be able to deal a little with Gold/Platinum/Gems, assuming they could afford to.

szaum-ix wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 12:56 pm

I read another book about opium trade around the world and it roundly demonstrated that large volume smuggling is an unstoppable force despite governments' best intentions to stop it...

At one time, didn't the British empire control the opium trade, rather than trying to stop it.
Perhaps that's what western governments should be doing now. Legalise it!

The standard salary for a job in the UK would be multiplied by 3 for those expats willing to serve in West African countries such as Nigeria. That was before the fun and games with Boko Haram. Flying a Cobra Mk3 in Galaxy 1 is much more dangerous, I would argue.

I wonder how unrealistic the economics really is. What % of Lave graduates die within a year of graduation? How many pilots die every year?
Stranger addressed aspects of this in his (second) essay on Economics & Trade: see Volume of Trade in the first post, Who are the Elite in the second.

And if it is there would seem to be two approaches: either add anti-cheating.oxp's and/or others which tweak the prevalence of piracy (eg Configurable populator) or reduce the profits somewhat.

But it would be interesting to know (i) what % of the early Georgian Caribbean trade was affected by piracy & (ii) the effects on prices

Switeck wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 1:09 pm

Supply and Demand dictates that if the costs go up considerably, trade would drop immensely.

Costs going up usually results in inflation, not trade drops. Trade only drops if it viability of trade (per se) drops -- in other words the trader says "I can't make money off that", and if those negative costs can't be solved by passing on (inflating) his resale prices because of regulations or his buyers balking at his prices. Usually, if his costs go up so his clients' costs go up. Incidentally this is actually happening -- to my surprise -- in the real world in real time right now thanks to Rus/Ukr et al. Food poor countries in Africa/ME are so short on food commodities (wheat and barley especially) that they could literally find their citizens starving within six months, but despite what should be high demand their leaders are balking at historically insane prices hoping the war will end, and hoping to control the shortages by forceful means like banning exports etc. Only China was sensible enough to buy a year's worth of wheat despite high prices. China won't starve.

What Elite/Oolite simulates is spot markets -- spot markets and prices specifically. Delivery contracts are like futures, in real life commodities contracts delivery is indeed usually part of it (although speculators like myself don't want delivery, we just want to resell it to someone who does). This is a good thing: it means that if we know the things that make commodities rise and fall in real markets (we do) and we can find the code and manipulate input values for those things (we can) we can adjust prices and price behaviors until it simulates real markets. And if we can control the prices of the trader's means/equipment (we can), we can improve simulation of realistic trading decisionmaking for the player as well.

Cody wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 1:47 pm

At one time, didn't the British empire control the opium trade, rather than trying to stop it.

They did worse than that. The emperor of China tried to back out of trading for opium with the British Empire, because the chinese were terribly addicted and afflicted etc. The British had no intention of letting that cash cow go so they said no, and went to war essentially to force the trade to continue.

Also I had to check, but that book is called Opium: Uncovering the Politics of the Poppy - by Pierre-Arnoud Chouvy. I read a lot when I'm bored so I couldn't source the other books for the life of me.

szaum-ix wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 12:56 pm

Also don't misunderstand me, that post was not a series of specific recommendations, I'm just saying that conceptually everything needed to simulate market behavior is there if one considers all options on the table.

Who cares if they are recommendations or not? It is well worth thinking about and investigating!

And did you come across Cim's thought experiment: Space-sim simulator (bottom of the page).