Oolite Bulletins

ok bad pun...but i found a convenence store in diso system. the food and textiles there sell for 101 creds a ton...now i have seen high food but thats really high! the thing is diso is a ag planet...is this happening for anyone else... i know i am loveing it right now i have made 30k in like 30 mins or so...and thats without jumping much.. i just had to post this and see if this is just me or anyone else.

It's all down to the credit crunch and the high price of Quirium!....
Maybe we need an organic spacefarmers market?

I've had a similar experience, dealing with a little trouble around Zaria a while back... I wondered if the prices were built-in the that particular OXP, or if it were just random. The gemstone/casino bonus (see my post on mining) feels like a bit of a windfall, but the high-priced food *does* make it seem a bit too easy!

well the 101 price food was nice while it lasted...but the moment i loaded my game back up it was gone however i did make enough to buy my python and iron ass it out....now only if i could find one >.<

It would have been quicker to edit your save game and give yourself a million credits.

yea but thats cheating.....i dont see what i was doing as anything wrong at all...its not like i couldnt have made the money doing narc runs....this just didint give me a wanted level...and its not like it happens all the time i have yet to see it sence. and i played for like 8 hours after descorvering it

double post

Neo_Jesus wrote:

yea but thats cheating.....

And taking advantage of a program glitch that does not recur isn't?
(I'm guessing this behaviour is not what the OXP writer intended)

Of course this behaviour is scripted. All commodities-prices have to be scripted. I guess, though, that this might be an example of faulty scripting.

The price-range that can be displayed by Oolite is from 0.0 to 102.0 credits, in steps of 0.4. Commodities.plist determines which part of the scale is used for each of the commodities on a specific station. The scripter's task is to limit the existing range to something sensible for his purpose.

The problem is that the formula that is used to calculate the prices is a little bit complicated, so it takes some understanding of math to provide the engine with sensible values for the different variables which are used in the formula. If you're up for a full and lengthy explanation, then you're welcome to dig into the Understanding commodities.plist-thread.

The issue you stumbled across in that Convenience Store is that prices can and will roll over. That means that if the scripter - on purpose or accidentally - has scripted a price range which crosses the usable 0.0 - 102.0 scale, the price range will leave the scale and re-enter again at the opposite end. Example: 102.4 credits will appear as 0.4 credits. -0.8 credits will appear as 101.2 credits. So if the price range for food is calculated in a way that it will allow anything between -2 and 10, then what you will see are prices between 0 and 10, and between 100 and 102.

(In the game's commodities.plist itself, and therefore regularly on main stations, this roll-over effect is present for Narcotics. That's the reason why they usually are at the upper limit of the scale, but sometimes dead cheap. I am not sure whether this is intended behaviour or itself a bug.)

Commander McLane is spot-on (and he helped me a lot in working out the Commodities script in the Free Trade Zone OXP ... the OXP as it stands could use a lot more work but I think I managed to get the Commodities prices right in the end: they should be essentially an inverse of the prices in the main station, since they mostly sell goods stolen from inbound traders. Gems and precious metals are always usually expensive on FTZs, though, because the criminal community tends to use them for their own internal currencies.). I found all the binary guddling mind-bending, but fortunately My Mate George can do sums and, at least as far as I know, all the prices behave as intended with no roll-overs.

You can get similar rollovers in Furs prices on Imperial Astrofactories: sometimes you could buy them up for just a few Creds per ton. I don't think this is cheating, as long as you can rationalise it: personally I'm convinced that these Dictatorship Astrofactories are often corrupt and sometimes act as fences for pirate loot...

As for the occasional huge food prices on Con Stores... probably they've just received a whopping shipment of slaves who have eaten the Con Store's entire supply of Whootsits and Poot Noddle. Nobody's going to pay top whack for an emaciated slave, so the Con Store is desperate to get whatever food it can to feed its stock.

Frankly I enjoy these little bonanzas now and again. So far I've never felt tempted to make multiple trips in the same system, though. Mind you, until now I hadn't actually thought of doing that... But what the hell, by now I'm rich, rich, rich and flying my souped-up Wolf II SE.

Thank you Disembodied, you made my exact point. there could be so many reasons. like there normal shipper died by pirates and they havent found one for a few days. and desperatly need some food stock. so they will buy anything at anyprice. random extreams once agian makes the trading intresting. if it was the same small price range everywhere i went tradeing would get dull in time.

As far as narcotics go glitch or not, the way the function makes sense. in a system were there legal and there is tons of them there dirt cheep but were there not legal, there extreamly expensive. which is why bringing them out or into a system is illegal at least thats my 2 cr

Even if you look at it from a RP stand point.....if a trader in real life found prices that good for food...you dont think he wouldnt make second trips? i know i sure would and did

Meh but of course thats anouther thing i love so much about this game. there are so many ways to play it.....i was just telling my friend the other day......"there is no wrong way to play oolite"

Would be interesting to hear how the pricing structure was intended to work by the creator of this OXP. Who did the Constores originally? aegidian?

Can't say I get too worked up about making dough... as long as I can keep up with repairs and cruise about roasting some sorry ass!
(what did they say about trusting hippies)

Convenience Stores are part of Dr Nil's Your Ad Here OXP.