Trading: Profit-Density

[snow_Cat]

As in many games where players trade commodities it's not the size of your hold that matters, but what you move it. Without investing in a larger ship a player could easily make a fortune shuttling around goods selected for maximum profit-density.

Most people find one inexpensive item that they can trade at a profit from A to B never risking the college fund to move platinum instead of wooden nickels. The usual explanation I get is "Why should I move something more expensive when the price difference is the same?" My answer is that that you can move more dollars to make those cents carrying more potent stuff than junk.

For example Crucible_17 contains Atlantis (an Oceanic world), Ataraxia (Fighter Barracks), Plainfield (Relay), Serenity (MiningBase) with the odd peppering of Clydesdale, Ox and Mule. Flying the Llama, which is, well... a shuttle; a player could make the short trip between Atlantis and Ataraxia to build up some money for upgrades.

Looking at our Cargo table (attach) we can see that the best return-on dollar goods are Mining equipment with 30 cents so we see what is available in this category and buy the most expensive item we can, starting with 16000 that would be (Explosives/Hull Patches/Laser Drills) and at $95 we could buy 168 if supplies ere not limited. So stocking up on what's we can from this category, we have about 15050 left over.

Looking at our table again the next price-return break is at 20 cents on the dollar with Industrial Electronics, Industrial Manufacturing, Raw Gasses, and Specialty Entertainment. And the most expensive item we can afford is one PAI Wetware leaving us with roughly 2550, enough to get threesome of the principal export of Atlantis, Erotica. Being in constant demand from all bases in system keeps these units at 650 a head. With our remaining 600 we should grab a Pleasure Borg for 530 and put our remaining money getting Noble Gasses like [nvm.] for 65.

With our last 5 tip Skycap and head for Ataraxia to dump this load for a tidy 3294 in profit for the princely sum of 19294, less than if we'd done a mission but instead of splurging on that roll of duct-tape to mount a hand-laser lets stock up and make a return trip. At .53 cents on the dollar Raw Metals seems a promising start, but is out of stock -- in fact there would seem to be a shortage of everything that can be sold at Atlantis at a profit. So lets pull all the Raw Materials not Gasses, Refined Radioactive and Precious Metals, Industrial Agricultural and Power Utilities, Consumer Domestic and Electronics, Natural Plant Products and Life-Form - buh... Are they breeding these things? ... and head back to Atlantis.

So with 19000 still in our pockets try heading to that mining base, Serenity. Hmm...
one PAI Wetware unit and ten heads of Erotica,
or ten assorted Industrial Mining units, one PAI Wetware, eight heads of entertainment Erotica, a manufacturing Welding Laser, and two Halogen globes?

At any rate Serenity has much more to offer in return, at 53 cents on the dollar we can have our slice of refined Radioactive and Precious metals, and old fashioned Raw Metals. And later we can empty the good base of Raw Materials (minus gasses), consumer Domestic and Electronics, industrial Agricultural units, natural Plant Products and Life-Forms... ^ o • ^ ...
at 42 cents on the dollar.

After a few trips we will have $100k but instead of delivering Material Processors, Waste Recyclers and Atmospheric Scrubbers at ten-grand a trip with a full hold and wallet, buy compact and lightweight Factory Workers and Construction Vehicles at thirty-grand a round trip with only a dozen units of cargo rattling in our holds and a threadbare pocket for any would be robber.

The Llama's limited hold means that we must weigh the profit of an item against its volume if each trip is to be more profitable than the last. By using the formula (return/volume) we arrive at the profit-density of an item and we can continue to make our maximum return on each trip and in a dozen trips (1.2*1.42)^6 we have $386k +/- upgrades.

(In conclusion,) instead of going broke buying a larger ship go for broke selling smaller cargo. ^ - - ^


[attachment in buggy Excell 10 format, problems with exporting to html and saving formulas.... dunno why but deleting formulas reduced the sheet size by eleven megabytes. ]

[Shissui]

Your logic is great. I agree completely with your central point. And, in my own implementation of it, I (additionally) purchased as much extra cargo space for my Llama as the game would let me. Later, I sold those off as I ran out of upgrade space for real performance improvements. Sure, there is a small loss on the used upgrade, but it had long ago paid for itself with the extra freight that I hauled.

But, three small points on the implementation of it --

1) In due course, you will no longer be able to buy everything at Atlantis. Ocean planets *currently* sell everything for the purpose of playtesting. (Which you are doing -- thank you!) But, eventually, you will need to more carefully consider what cargoes can be bought there.

2) When building your trade route, you need to look at what you can buy at each stop. The real goal is not to get the most proffit possible out of a given cargo, but to bootstrap your cash supply in as little TIME as possible. Since most of your trade time is consumed by travel between locations, you should be looking at maximising proffit/port, as a proxy for proffit/time. SO, since there is very little high proffit cargo available for purchase at a Fighter Barracks, that cuts your proffit/port in half. It may be more efficient to cut that stop out of your route -- Serenity will also buy mining equipment, but has resources available that are marketable when you return to Atlantis.

3) Your 380k of capital is not really enough for upgrades yet (if it were me). You need to subtract from that the cost of filling your cargo hold with the most expensive cargo that your trade route demands. Or else you end up back in the early phases of your bootstrap problem again.

[snow_Cat]

In due course, you will no longer be able to buy everything at Atlantis.

instead of going broke buying a larger ship go for broke selling smaller cargo. ^ - - ^

^- - ^ Merely an example.

It may be more efficient to cut that stop out of your route -- Serenity will also buy mining equipment, but has resources available that are marketable when you return to Atlantis.

. At .53 cents on the dollar Raw Metals seems a promising start, but is out of stock -- in fact there would seem to be a shortage of everything that can be sold at Atlantis at a profit.

So with 19000 still in our pockets try heading to that mining base, Serenity.

At any given time, I currently have 5 million to 10 million in cargo on my Clydesdale. (& it would be a lot more if I could find enough resources for sale to actually make a noticeable dent in my cargo space.)

^ - -^ Funny, I have the same problem with my Llama.

The real purpose of this post was not to describe a trade route but a trading strategy. I've had argumetns with my peers on this subject over the years and believe that this strategy is sound.

[peter]

yeah, once you have enough money to fill your hold with cheap cargo, the only interesting cargo becomes industrially manufactured good/construction, mining, and electronics. All of them are cheap at commerce centers, and medium priced at ocean planets. All of them are bought for high prices at mining bases. Ice planets and bio:simple are useful, too. There are some big profit margins for some medical equipment, too.

There's a bug in the economy: ocean planets sell research for ~1x their base price. Everywhere else that trades in them does so at ~10x their base price. (places that aren't interested at all, like a mining base, will buy them for 1x, which is I guess the reason behind the 10x price). So if you buy some research at an ocean planet, you can make 10x your money at a research or medical station, and some other places.

Once you're rich, you can quite quickly become filthy rich trading AI cores from commerce centers to relay stations, mining bases, or ice planets. Ocean planets are ok for buying them, but the profit margin is lower. The supply is larger, though. A fast light ship is ideal for the job, e.g. a hyena (200 cargo) or franklin.blank (400 cargo).

There's a java program for comparing prices, where you can e.g. sort by profit per unit (useful if you're limited by hold size), or by percent profit (useful if you're limited by investment capital). See http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/OOG_Tools for a link to the forum thread. The latest alpha version that GoldenGnu and I are collaborating on can read the files from SVN.

[Shissui]

There's a bug in the economy: ocean planets sell research for ~1x their base price. Everywhere else that trades in them does so at ~10x their base price.

Ocean planets currently sell everything (in SVN) to make it easy to play test the economy, not because anybody believes that they should actually manufacture everything.

SO, that is not a bug, but a tweak for the purpose of making it easy to do lots of trading & hence to inspire threads like this one for feedback. However, if it were any other planet type that was offering an unbalanced cargo deal, then the matter probably should be discussed.

[peter]

Ocean planets currently sell everything (in SVN) to make it easy to play test the economy, not because anybody believes that they should actually manufacture everything.

I know they sell everything for economy testing. I still think it's a bug, because they should be selling all cargo at medium prices, not 1/10th their normal value. Is this somehow hard to change? i.e. something hard-coded to override units.csv and master_parts_list.csv for ocean planets. I don't think so, because vstrade has no problem with ocean planets.

Ocean planets selling everything actually makes sense to me: They're very heavily populated because they have three dimensions to build in, not just the surface of solid ground. And I think oceans are very biologically productive, at least on earth.

Being able to make 10x your money _is_ a bug. To fix it, you don't have to stop ocean planets from selling everything, you just have to adjust the price of research goods.

[Shissui]

Ocean planets selling everything actually makes sense to me: They're very heavily populated because they have three dimensions to build in, not just the surface of solid ground. And I think oceans are very biologically productive, at least on earth.

In a balanced economy, I think that no place should make everything. Everywhere should have stuff they produce cheaply & stuff they need (& probably most stuff would be in between).

For an ocean planet, I would suspect that "lumber" might be hard to come by, for lack of open ground in which to grow it. Or nano-whatever, because zero gravity is hard to manufacture under water. I would expect that AI Cores might be produced, but in much smaller quantities than a factory. Or, research, but far more rarely than at a university or research station. And when research does spawn, it should cost much more than at the specialty sites, but still low enough to make a proffit. And, of course, nowhere else should the fish be so cheap or plentiful as on an ocean planet.

Being able to make 10x your money _is_ a bug. To fix it, you don't have to stop ocean planets from selling everything, you just have to adjust the price of research goods.

Agreed, 10x is too much proffit for *that item*. But, I would not offer much research at all on an ocean planet. On the other hand, 10x seems like a very reasonable proffit margin if I am delivering a ship load of AdvTorpedoes, Duranium Armour & Cloaking Devices to fighter base in a system under siege by Aerans. But, the game system is not in any position to offer THAT contract for a long time to come.

[snow_Cat]

This discussion of balancing trade our model is slightly off topic...

Anyways I think that modeling items by supply -[dependancy]> demand might yield some usable results.

Also, could someone could dig up the old documentaion...

exerpts from Master_Parts_List.xml

Code: Select all

<!--Last Edited by: JackS -->
<!--<Cargo file="cargo_pod" price="20000" quantity="1" mass=".1" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo_hud.png@Some pieces of cargo won't fit in many ships, especially, many ships." />--> <!-- only in data3.x -->
<!-- Begin cargo -->
<!-- price these at 1/10 their normal price...-->
<Category file="Research/Industrial">
<Cargo file="Nano_Constructors" price="250" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@While the devices themselves, due to the Nano-plague, are decidedly macro-scale, they are capable of constructing nearly anything with atomic precision."/>
<Cargo file="Self_Repairing_Metal" price="220" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@By embedding sensor nets and electrical delivery systems, sheets of metal can be produced that will compensate for any cracking or deformation by selectively heating portions of themselves with exceptional precision."/>
<Cargo file="Automated_Factories" price="2700" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1500" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@As expensive as AI cores are, sets of orbiting factories tend to be even more expensive. The trick, and gist of many a grant proposal, is to figure out how to convince an AI to do something as boring as operate a holovid factory..."/>
<Category file="Research/Environmental">
<!-- price these at 1/10 their normal price...-->
<Cargo file="Atmospheric_Rejuvinator" price="400" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@Whether it be because of overindustrialization or innate unpleasantness, if a planetary atmosphere is not to one's liking, deploying a few million of these (or a few dozen for a domed community)can do wonders."/>
<Cargo file="Ozone_Healer" price="330" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/ozone_replacement.png@Many electronic devices naturally produce ozone. However, as most of these devices tend to be grounded, they do not contribute to the accretion of an ozone layer at high altitude. A recently arrived at solution: move lots of electronic devices out to the ozone layer on high efficiency flying platforms. These are the platforms."/>
<Cargo file="Forest_Regenerator" price="520" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/forest_generators.png@While many civilized races, with the notable exception of the Aera, would love to see their ancestral forests of old regrown, nearly all are uninclined to do much work towards this goal. Therefore, some effort has been made into producing autonomous forest tending units that can oversee the regrowth of an ecosystem without anyone having to get their manipulator appendages dirty."/>
<Cargo file="(Xeno)forming_Units" price="8342" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1600" description="@cargo/terraforming_units.png@For humans, terraformers, for every other species, something else - for the targeted planet underneath them, truly an alien transformation. Incorporating atmospheric processing, development of a viable biosphere, and creation of potable liquids, xenoforming units are automated monstrocities that can be landed on a hostile planet surface. Given enough time, any airless desert of sufficient size can be made into a golf-course and a strip mall."/>
<Category file="Research/Electronics">
<Cargo file="Quantum_Deductor" price="420" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/quantum_deductor.png@The ever so polite name for the class of devices used to attack quantum cryptosystems."/>
<Cargo file="Virtual_Tunneling_Terminal" price="240" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@A device used for viewing and traversing the internals of macro-scale objects via tunneling effects."/>
<!-- price these at 1/10 their normal price...-->

<!-- cargo below is senselessly banned by 1 race alone -->
<Category file="Contraband/Confed">
<Cargo file="ISO_Propaganda" price="100" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@A fair portion of it's true a fair portion of the time, but all of it's illegal all of the time."/>
<Cargo file="ISO_Party_Member" price="800" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/iso_member.png@Anyone in Confederation space willing to openly declare their membership in the ISO either has great fortitude or suffers from great idiocy. The same however, must be said of those willing to transport them through said space."/>
<Cargo file="Socialist_Worker_Journal" price="35" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/swj.png@The Socialist Worker Journal is a bi-monthly electronic publication believed to have its origins on Berkeley in the Trotsky system. The SWJ highlights the importance of advancing socialism, and features artwork and music produced by workers, for workers. This product has been officially deemed 'unworthy for use even in the task of wiping one's rear.'"/>
<Cargo file="Luddite_Religious_Tracts" price="100" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/luddite_tracts.png@Carrying ISO propaganda will get one arrested.  Carrying luddite propaganda, outside of the more sympathetic Purist regions, is likely to get one summarily shot."/>
<Cargo file="Escaped_Political_Prisoners" price="920" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/political_prisoners.png@Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the ISO?"/>
<Cargo file="Overeager_Immigrants" price="160" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@With the passing of the Confederation's so called 'Enough is Enough' legislation, it is illegal to transport individuals whose stated purpose is to settle on a planet deemed to have already reached its maximum desired population. While many decried the legislative package as both idiotic and unenforceable and hearings on the act dragged on for years, the coalition of Purists, High Born, Shapers, and various minor factions prevailed over the opposition of the Andolians and the Merchants, with the Unadorned not deigning to participate in the discussion."/>
</Category>
<Category file="Contraband/Rlaan">
<Cargo file="ICBINF" price="80" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@Originally designed as a cheap, renewable, and environmentally friendly refrigerant, it was found to induce exceptionally terminal cancers in Rlaan."/>
<Cargo file="Zhollus" price="80" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@A plant-like lifeform that, while exceptionally tasty to a Rlaan, is exceptionally devestating to a Rlaan friendly ecosystem."/>
</Category>
<Category file="Contraband/Aera">
<Cargo file="RetrifiedSalt" price="80" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@Salted crematory remains. Illegal in Aera space due to the combination of a cultural disdain for such and an unwillingness to remove an ancient law from the books."/>
<Cargo file="AeraNerveStimuli" price="80" quantity="1" mass=".01" volume="1" description="@cargo/cargo-hud.png@Ever watched an Aera spasm in something that looks like a cross between an epileptic fit and an orgasm?  Give them some of this and sit back. Way back. Preferably behind a barrier, because when the Aera in question starts to go into withdrawl induced fits of berserker rage, you might live to tell the tale."/>
</Category>
<Category file="Contraband/Retro">
</Category>

<!-- aera notes
Aera_Medical_Supplies.... 1.0 -> 1.8   (-.8 elsewhere)
Aera_Alloys  1.0->0.8  (+.2 elsewhere)
Entertainment/Aera 1.6 (-.8 everywhere... rlaan no entertainment)
Aera_Refined 1.0->0.8
Aera_Food 1.0->1.8  (-.8 elsewhere)
upgrades/Miscellaneous/Aera_Milspec
Research/Aera_Medical
contraband/Aera 1.0->1.2
Electronics/Bionics (Rlaan equiv)
Research/Aera_Medical
Supplies/Rlaan_Construction_Supplies 1.0 -> 1.4
-->

[Shissui]

exerpts from Master_Parts_List.xml

Also off topic -- It seems that I don't yet have a full set of contraband. Will need to do some more work on. "Gotta get them all!"

Back *on* topic --

The easiest way to model oversupply & dependency cargoes is to put a comment in the cargo availability file for a given type of world or base. This should then be used to remind any human who is changing that file why the previous person set the "supply" cargoes down in price & "dependent" cargoes up in price.

Since the universe is so big, we are currently (& may never be) in a position to accommodate dynamic pricing.