Midway step in refactoring trade

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Deus Siddis
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by Deus Siddis »

Sorry, real life distractions. But I think I'm going to have to bow out of this discussion anyway, since my thinking on this is looking a bit too divergent from yours and pheonix' vision. It comes down to:
  • Simpler economy, focus on polishing trade gameplay, realism from perspective of difficulties of space travel.

    Vs.

    Existing economy, focus on incremental improvements, realism from perspective of today's world set in space.
The two don't combine well and I don't have many ideas on how to implement the latter vision.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by pheonixstorm »

too divergent? never.

As long as its on the same concept ideas are welcome, even if they don't fit the norm. Even if the ideas clash on some level they are still ideas and carry weight. To bow out would be giving up on making the trade system better :(

Ideas drive the universe, even when no one can agree on them ;)
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

Deus Siddis wrote:Sorry, real life distractions. But I think I'm going to have to bow out of this discussion anyway, since my thinking on this is looking a bit too divergent from yours and pheonix' vision. It comes down to:
  • Simpler economy, focus on polishing trade gameplay, realism from perspective of difficulties of space travel.

    Vs.

    Existing economy, focus on incremental improvements, realism from perspective of today's world set in space.
The two don't combine well and I don't have many ideas on how to implement the latter vision.
Nothing to be sorry about, life comes first! I find your views quite relevant, and an opposing viewpoint is good for checking one's thinking. Many of the current difficulties of space travel have been solved in the VS universe, so the economic principles of the last thousand years should well continue. We do not need fewer voices, if anything we need more. So, while the views on simpler vs. current economy are difficult to mesh, we can hit on some of your other thoughts.

What needs to be polished in trade game play?
I see supply and demand being needed and cargo missions need to be redone. One of the divergence points I see is related to scope. Your scope seems to be primarily large scale, where I see the need to include everything from driving a local delivery van to running a container ship.

What are the difficulties of Space travel in VS?
Distance, radiation, and launch costs seem to be minimal thoughts, but what else is encountered?

I'd love to implement a sweeping change, but the programmer shortage leads to a more conservative approach of playing with items and their availability and base cost. I can go over my grand vision in detail here if you would like, but I covered it here already.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by Deus Siddis »

travists wrote: What needs to be polished in trade game play?
Every flavor of trade location and trade item needs to have unique advantages and disadvantages to dealing with/in it from the perspective of the trader. If you have dozens of types of locations and hundreds of commodities but many make little difference to how you play, the trading game play is watered down and poor.

Also qualities of all these options has to be reasonably intuitive or transparent to the player. There needs to be some general rules without endless exceptions or big surprises like forest worlds consume housing despite being covered in housing material.
One of the divergence points I see is related to scope. Your scope seems to be primarily large scale, where I see the need to include everything from driving a local delivery van to running a container ship.
Just as delivery vans can't follow container ships into the ocean a shuttle isn't necessarily going to follow an Ox into deep space. Yet at present the game only works if the player has SPEC and Jump drives, so the player can only play from the perspective of a container ship captain. Lowly work is beyond the present scope of the game and the capabilities of its engine.
What are the difficulties of Space travel in VS?
Distance, radiation, and launch costs seem to be minimal thoughts, but what else is encountered?
Intense piracy and openly violent factions. This isn't a big problem in today's commerce but it is in VS, in space.

Not running out of reaction mass, not overheating, having reasonable mobility. Pick any two.

Navigational hazards- asteroid belts, nebulae, solar storms, etc.

Space travel is fundamentally more expensive than older less advanced and energy intensive technologies and always will be. Just as air freight is after all these years still a much more expensive form of transportation than rails, let alone ocean going transportation.

Tremendous energy for FTL. If FTL was easy and cheap, we'd have discovered it in today's world either through technology or observation of a natural phenomenon. For it to be possible the way it is in VS but not yet evident, it must be beyond our reach in big ways, especially its hunger for energy.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by pheonixstorm »

as I see it FTL travel is more hampered by a physics and technological bottleneck rather than in how or why it works. Look at how computers started out. Once upon a time computers were the size of a small warehouse, now they are small enough to fit in our pocket (if you consider todays cell phones to be in essence a computer).

If you look at the tech of say Battletech, the jumpships jump drive takes up about 90% of its interior and takes weeks to recharge (if I remember my tech correctly) while military ships (which up until the finding or the grey death legion memory core didnt exist anymore) used jump drives that only took up I think half of the ships space, maybe less.

Cool Star Trek quote I found
When Stephen Hawking guest starred on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Descent", he was taken on a guided tour of the set. Pausing in front of the warp core set piece, he remarked, "I'm working on that".
Another good item on a warp drive
BBC wrote:Alcubierre's idea was a good one, but his work seemed to suggest that building a warp bubble would be impossible in practice. More energy than the entire universe could supply would be needed to create the spacetime distortions.

However, Dr Van Den Broeck's analysis suggests a far lower amount of energy is required, reduced by a factor of one followed by 62 zeros.

This is not to say that it is time to go out and start building a warp drive. As Dr Van Den Broeck says in his forthcoming paper in General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology: "This does not mean that the proposal is realistic."

Building a warp drive is currently far beyond our technological abilities and there are severe theoretical arguments that say it may never be possible.

But it just might be. Dr Van Den Broeck concludes his analysis by saying, "The first warp drive is still a long way off but maybe it has now become slightly less improbable."
Fun tips, who knows... maybe FTL travel will be possible within the lifespan of our grandchildren. Though I say possible, not that it will be.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by Hicks »

Just as delivery vans can't follow container ships into the ocean a shuttle isn't necessarily going to follow an Ox into deep space. Yet at present the game only works if the player has SPEC and Jump drives, so the player can only play from the perspective of a container ship captain. Lowly work is beyond the present scope of the game and the capabilities of its engine.
BEZ_BASHNI is currently trying to implement gravity into the game, and with the new ogre engine, seemless flight will be possible and we can have bases on planets(i think it will be possible). At the moment, the max acceleration for the ox is .1g, which means that it has a snowballs chance in hell of landing on earth, or taking off from earth (it can't even come too close to the moon). So we might have all the small craft flying supplies from orbiting space stations down to planet surfaces, while the larger craft flying from station to station across space.

I am also currently reworking the SPEC drives, and it will cost more energy to go at the speed we currently do.to travel at 93c you will need either a really large reactor or really large SPEC capacitor. So the smaller ships will be travelling a lot slower, and would make planetary runs worthwile for them.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by pheonixstorm »

The problem with slowing down game speeds is two fold. First, realism is nice, but not FUN. Second, with the addition (once I get it figured out) of privateer style autopilots, the need for increased or decreased SPEC speeds/energy consumption goes out the window. Plus, even if the OX had enough thrust it is not designed as a planetary spacecraft. It would be worse than trying to land the space shuttle which is lovingly referred to as a flying brick.

Having planetary gravity though would be fun to have a non atmo enemy chase you into the upper atmosphere causing them to crash into the planet.. but on the flip side, don't go back to said planet. You might be wanted for mass murder if said space craft crashes into a major city or the local school hehe
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

Wow, Deus, ask and ye shall receive. Lots of fertile discussion material there.

"(U)nique advantages and disadvantages to dealing with/in it from the perspective of the trader." This is not just cost and availability of goods. Each port, or port type could add a time lag of varying amounts. Just numbers now, but suppose you are on a time critical mission. Or you are trying to fill an unexpected shortfall in supplies somewhere? Also, at least to my mind, your crew should be paid by either sortie or time. Let's not forget something that is badly needed: docking fees. I'm not talking Privateer style 50cr but can drop if you can't pay, I'm talking you pay by the time you are taking up a berth, and you can't launch until you settle up! Now a good quartermaster can help with the speed of loading and unloading, which is currently instant but should not be, as well as the effective size of your hold. Repairs should take time too. Bases with good turnaround times would be great places, while others one would dread. Player would have the two options that a real captain would have: learn by experience or do your homework. Time dirtside is money out of your pocket. Consumption/production should be logical, but not necessarily obvious. Both Agricultural_planet.large and Agricultural_planet.small produce agricultural products, but not as obvious would be the drug problems and housing demand on a large one.


“Just as delivery vans can't follow container ships into the ocean a shuttle isn't necessarily going to follow an Ox into deep space.” This is a mission option: ferry. There are bush pilots and small boats that fill the delivery van role for places not accessible by car, which are closer to the similar job in VS, but your point is valid. This is ships, not cargo, but worth discussing anyway. Reducing the fuel capacity of smaller ships and upping jump costs should help separate the local and long-range craft. Also a new “planetary shuttle” may be needed (a good starting craft if Deucalion is dropped) by the time you outfit it with hull reinforcement, a better SPEC drive and a jump drive it will have little room left for a cargo bay. Without those it will handle the 50 or 100 m^3 in-system runs just fine. “Lowly work is beyond the present scope of the game and the capabilities of its engine.” As mentioned, spec is being reworked, and you start out without a jump drive. What is needed is not a change of the engine, but in-system cargo/passenger runs. Don’t forget even after we are done with the revamp, let alone just playing with prices and availability, a small amount of profit can be made moving goods from one base to another without a jump drive. Pay is better if you get a contract moving resources for a local company, but either way jump is beneficial, but not necessary.

“Space travel is fundamentally more expensive than older less advanced and energy intensive technologies and always will be. Just as air freight is after all these years still a much more expensive form of transportation than rails, let alone ocean going transportation.” I agree, but without a new engine to handle dynamic pricing I’m not sure how this can be modeled. Hostile attacks exist, but hard to quantify monetarily. Navigational hazards could be implemented better, but is the manpower available to handle this, and what work is already being done in this regard? “Not running out of reaction mass, not overheating, having reasonable mobility. Pick any two.” I like these, especially overheating: under drawing your reactor is not a problem it just ramps down. On the other hand overdraw and you produce extra heat, if you overheat to long you start taking damage.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by Deus Siddis »

pheonixstorm wrote:The problem with slowing down game speeds is two fold. First, realism is nice, but not FUN.
At least when it comes to small fighter-craft-like ships in the game, the insanely fast speeds they move is both extremely unrealistic and extremely not fun.

But please recognize I'm talking about non-SPEC travel here. You can make SPEC as fast or slow as you want and it has absolutely no effect on realism.
pheonixstorm wrote:Second, with the addition (once I get it figured out) of privateer style autopilots, the need for increased or decreased SPEC speeds/energy consumption goes out the window.
That strategy of skipping over long voyages can't work with multiplayer though, which was why it was originally ruled out for use in VS, according to jackS. If player1 skips past 5 minutes of game time to cross the system in 5 seconds, he becomes out of sync with player2 who was flying around in realtime during a dogfight.

travists wrote: "(U)nique advantages and disadvantages to dealing with/in it from the perspective of the trader." This is not just cost and availability of goods. Each port, or port type could add a time lag of varying amounts.
Well that could be a good new feature but it might or might not be enough to justify the current number of location types in game from a purely gameplay-based perspective.

That's mainly what I meant with that statement-- would the different types of locations feel more different if there were fewer of them versus the number of gameplay features that distinguish them.

The same applies to the number of commodity types.
travists wrote: “Space travel is fundamentally more expensive than older less advanced and energy intensive technologies and always will be. Just as air freight is after all these years still a much more expensive form of transportation than rails, let alone ocean going transportation.” I agree, but without a new engine to handle dynamic pricing I’m not sure how this can be modeled.
But you don't need a new engine to focus the scope of the game. If the engine can't handle the difference in prices based on inter-planetary versus intra-planetary transportation costs, then you just get rid of intra-planetary transportation and all the commodity categories that would mostly be traded at that level.

Focus the game purely on space trade for now and only have commodities that would make sense realism-wise given that space travel is inherently relatively very expensive and also makes sense gameplay-wise given the limited features the engine has to distinguish the different commodities.

Then in the future when and if you have a new engine with many more economic simulation features, you can add back in the 200+ commodities, many of which might only be worth enough to trade on an intra-solar-system or only intra-planetary basis.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

I'm seeing another misunderstanding. I do not see any intra-planetary trade. A planet or base functions as one instance. Even with a new engine, all it would do is look at production vs. consumption and report the difference. What I'm not seeing is how to handle price difference if say a mining base is one jump vs. six jumps from a food source. Clearly six jumps should cost more than one jump, but now we only have base/planet type to alter price. As I do not think that limiting VS to one system a good idea, the cost of space travel is hard to quantify.

What is "inherently relatively very expensive"? Are we talking 5B Cr a ton? As the main factor currently driving the cost of space travel is launch cost, I don't see in-system cost being significantly higher than shipping from one side of a planet to the other (not cheep, but not prohibitive.) Part of why we need an engine for trade is to determine not only the length of the rout, but how dangerous is it?

I don't think that fewer base types inherently feels more different than many. Privateer had Ag planet, pleasure planet, mining base, and refinery base plus single instance New Constanople, Perry, and Oxford. The types looked different, some had different availability of shops, but they where very homogeneous. So, more fundamental than number is "what makes a base feel different?"
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by Deus Siddis »

travists wrote: What is "inherently relatively very expensive"? Are we talking 5B Cr a ton? As the main factor currently driving the cost of space travel is launch cost, I don't see in-system cost being significantly higher than shipping from one side of a planet to the other (not cheep, but not prohibitive.)
This might be a critical point where we have very different ideas. My thinking is unlike today's space travel, launch costs would be only one of several big costs of space travel in VS.

In the VS universe you have huge payloads being sent huge distances, through much more varied environments, with lawless hostile activity. But then what sends costs through the roof is that all of this is expected to happen extremely quickly.

So in today's world very little payload goes anywhere beyond orbit and has to drift for several years to reach other planets that are still in this solar system. And that drifting goes through simple vacuum with no space pirates or hostile aliens.

In VS you have much more payload that has to be accelerated, it must go orders of magnitude farther on average, dealing with many more hazards along the way, and it must all get there astronomically faster. Getting there so incredible fast means in smaller part energy and reaction mass hungry thrusters. But in larger part it means SPEC, which is so far beyond anything that exists today that it would have to be relatively very expensive to manufacture and very energy hungry to run. Relative to a modern drifting spacecraft or oceanic container ship that's hugely more expensive transportation. But an Ox with SPEC can work so much faster than without, that you'd need a train of maybe a million SPEC-less Oxen to do the same work over an averaged period of time, just for a short in system job.
Part of why we need an engine for trade is to determine not only the length of the rout, but how dangerous is it?
Without such an engine you have to average it all into one price. The average distance would be interstellar and the average danger would be extreme given the rate at which ships get murdered in game. So working with the current engine the costs on all commodities traded over space are very big for both distance and travel.
I don't think that fewer base types inherently feels more different than many. Privateer had Ag planet, pleasure planet, mining base, and refinery base plus single instance New Constanople, Perry, and Oxford. The types looked different, some had different availability of shops, but they where very homogeneous. So, more fundamental than number is "what makes a base feel different?"
It's not an either or situation, but a ratio between the amount of repetition and differentiating features. Privateer had few base types but even fewer differences. VS has more of each, but the same or worse ratio as Privateer had.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by klauss »

Didn't read this all, but I see people talking about what the economic engine can or cannot do. Probably without much understanding of the innards (though maybe with).

So let me shed some light on what can or cannot be done right now.

The economic system is being handled by a background-running python script. As such, it's extremely extensible.

Right now, this script has a lot of info available, even if it's not using it already:
  • Dynamic universe data present in the savegame, like:
    • Number and type of flightgroups in systems
    • System ownership, base allegiance, faction relations
    • Number and kind of skirmishes occurring due to warring factions
  • Base prices of commodity items (master parts list IIRC)
  • Read/Write access to base catalogs.
  • System list and jump network graph
And probably more.

I reckon it's not simple, but with all that information a lot of the things discussed can be done. Like accounting for environment hostility and source distance in prices.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

Well I was hoping for a simple cost refactoring for quick implementation, but it seems not to be…

Supply and demand is king. If you absolutely must have it cost is nothing. Excess or shortage of something significantly drives prices appropriately.

Costs feed each other. It takes labor and equipment for everything, and manufactured goods take resources. As such, a shortage or surplus of anything will ripple across most everything.

How much work would it be to implement new data points, likely in units.csv, or perhaps a separate economy table or two? Bases need data points for import, export, consumption, and production rates, distance and hostility are already handled. Goods need: required resources list and general overhead. Should labor be a commodity (average of robot workers, slaves, etc. modified by housing and food) or a wage set in the base data?

If each base has it’s import rate partially set by the danger and distance, prices will naturally reflect.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

I see Siddis is back to being here somewhat regularly, Hope to see others too! How does this sound fore some basic tables and rules for doing an economy?

---Commodity Lookup table---
Item name|{componant1 name, % of 1 unit needed to make}, {componant1 name, % of 1 unit needed to make}, etc| Manufacturer Markup

---Per-instillation data--- (Initially derived from type, but recorded individually for dynamics)
Instillation ID| Name|{commodity name, import rate, export rate, import modifier, export modifier, Production rate, consumption rate, production modifier, consumption modifier, quantity}, Repeat for each comodity| Planetary markup


Markup per jump (safe): +2%
Markup per jump (hostile): +4%
Markup per jump (dangerous): +8%

Manufacture Cost = ((component 1 * %)+(component 2 * %)+...)* markup
Net Production = ((import rate*import modifier)+(production rate*production modifier))-((export rate*export modifier)+ consumption rate*consumption modifier))
S&D modifier = ((quantity + net production)/(4*consumption rate))/2
Transport markup = avg. of total /jump markup to 4 best prices within 6 jumps

Final cost = (((manufacture cost * instillation markup)*transport markup)*S&D modifier
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by pheonixstorm »

There are a lot of files floating in data that have various trade information. Several xml files located in /data/units/factions/planets/planet_type/ holds ones such file, though I do not see it bing referenced anywhere (maybe it is and I just havent found it yet). The trading py script is rather basic so far. It doesn't account for much so it deffinately needs an overhaul. The frist problem I see overall is that it only looks at planet types and lums them all together, no distance, no location or location factors, and generally doesn't even account for if it may be a struggling colony.

So we could try to have each planet/base listed by system instead but that would take up a lot of power to calculate everything. Probably not something best suited to leave to a python script. But then again, would could design this to be a standalone script, kinda like an econ server. Let it run in the background and have the clinet request information from it whenever a player docks with a given station.

Something like...
request data, market base x supply/demand
request data, total capital

Would need to be more involved but that should be a good start of an idea. So we know the problems we just have to hash out the solutions, both coded and data.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

I have thought from time to time about the amount of processing required to crunch all of the numbers that a dynamic economy would create. I think once a "day" (as determined by the stardate in a saved game) would be enough. What rules do we want an overhull to follow?
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by klauss »

pheonixstorm wrote:So we could try to have each planet/base listed by system instead but that would take up a lot of power to calculate everything. Probably not something best suited to leave to a python script. But then again, would could design this to be a standalone script, kinda like an econ server. Let it run in the background and have the clinet request information from it whenever a player docks with a given station.
It doesn't take that many cycles if done properly.

Furthermore, python has support for coroutines. Yes, it's not just stackless. Which means we could only perform a tiny bit of the computation each frame, and when we get the full results we apply them, and that's it.

Further-even-further, if everything's done in pure python, without any kind of interaction with VS API, it can run on its own thread. This means precomputing distances and everything, because it's the VS API the one that handles galaxy xml stuff.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

It has been over a month, anybody still interested in this other than me?
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by klauss »

Is there a ticket with this on the tracker?

Because as time goes by, we'll forget. The tracker reminds us.

I am interested. I don't have the time yet, I'm mostly polishing for the beta2, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

Tracker? I don't think so. Guess I'll add one, but I didn't think it was near enough for anything like that. Might see about some pseudo-code for calculating price too.
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

Sorry for the double ticket. Hit refresh and it posted another one. :oops:
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

Preliminary pseudo code: (It's been a while since I have done such for anybody but me, so not professional by any stretch)

Code: Select all

Pick a planet/station (loop until all planets used)
	Pick a good (loop until all goods used)
		-establish base price-
			Find average cost of each component good on nearest six planets
			Add average import cost to each component
			Modify each component by local supply/demand values
			Add planet/station overhead [labor, utilities, rent, etc.]
			Add processing cost
			Modify price by profit value
		-/establish-
		Modify base price by local supply demand values
		Modify new price by inflation suppression figure
		Record new price
		Pick new good
	/pick good
	pick new planet/station
/pick planet
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by Blackbeard »

travists wrote:Preliminary pseudo code: (It's been a while since I have done such for anybody but me, so not professional by any stretch)

Code: Select all

Pick a planet/station (loop until all planets used)
	Pick a good (loop until all goods used)
		-establish base price-
			Find average cost of each component good on nearest six planets
			Add average import cost to each component
			Modify each component by local supply/demand values
			Add planet/station overhead [labor, utilities, rent, etc.]
			Add processing cost
			Modify price by profit value
		-/establish-
		Modify base price by local supply demand values
		Modify new price by inflation suppression figure
		Record new price
		Pick new good
	/pick good
	pick new planet/station
/pick planet
Looks pretty logical to me. :D

I assume that every planet/base type would have to have their own production/consumption specs?
And another question, how often would the economy update? Don't know about latest SVN, but as of my current VS 0.5.0 game, I have to exit the game everytime I run the commerce centre or whatever out of goods, which doesn't take long with 4.9M credits and a Plowshare. :D It'll take even less once I can afford AI cores.

But anyway I wish you the best of success with your project, I think it will really improve the game.

Regards Blackbeard 8)
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by travists »

As there has been the introduction of "star date" to keep the news on track, I think that should be used to determine when one "day" has passed in game time and recalculate. I would also like to go further than just base/planet type, each base/planets should have an entry for every item. Fairly large CSV file, but it would produce the most realistic results. A lone ag station at the edge of economically feasible is going to have far different prices than one in a system with every type of base.
klauss
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Re: Midway step in refactoring trade

Post by klauss »

Agree with all.

The stardate thingy is the simplest of all, which can go on its own ticket :)
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