Cargo volumes

[surgptr]

I'm new to Vega Strike and have a couple of questions regarding cargo hauling.

1. Is there some sort of list that defines the type of cargo needed for each type of industry and planet?
Some sort of supply and demand list to see what routes will be profitable.
What would be better is to be able to see the demand for cargo at nearby planets/industries while you are buying it from the source.

2. I can't find enough cargo to fill my LLama.
Where can I find large quantities of cargo?
What happens when I upgrade my ship and want to haul 1 million units of cargo? Are there places in the system that will buy and sell in those quantities?

Thanks
Paul

[peteyg]

Currently, the supply/demand for each base is contained in that base's unit file... which is in the units directory. You have to dig around to find the planets, but it should all be there.

Yeah, right now there isn't a lot of cargo available at each base. Right now, the Llama is probably all you'll ever need to make a fortune at being an independent merchant.

When the economy gets a much needed facelift, hopefully there will be greater volumes of cargo available, with perhaps a slimmer profit margin to make it more desirable for dedicated merchants to get ships with cavernous holds.

I actually did an experiment a few months ago... I modified the supply/demand tables for agricultural, mining, industrial, and refinery bases. Low and mid-cost items produced at each place were much more numerous, and didn't bring quite as much profit. Right now, it's hard to make a killing being a merchant, since there's so little actual cargo to be found. If you're able to easily fill your holds at every stop... then the profits are ridiculous. So I reduced the selling prices and increased the buying prices (for the player)... and I had a good old time hauling holds full of grain or iron back and forth. Had to use more strategy to decide which item would be best to fill up my hold, or bring me the most profit per credit spent, etc. No more of that 'buy all the food, take to mining base, sell, buy all metals".

[jackS]

also, cargo items will eventually not all be sold in 1x1x1 meter boxes massing exactly 100 Kilograms....

[surgptr]

It would be great to really struggle to make some money with the LLama.

Large volumes with profit margins of about 5% would get that right and would be a big incentive to upgrade to a larger hauler.
Struggling to make ends meet at the beginning would make it far more challenging and fun in my opinion.

Also a dynamic supply/demand system with fluctuating prices would be nice.
Supply too much of one commodity stuff to a single station and the prices should start dropping making a regular route less profitable.

A cargo route planner would be required to make profitable runs in a dynamic economy.

Vega Strike has a lot of potential but has a little way to go before the gameplay matches or exceeds FreeLancer.

[Major]

This will help
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/phpwi ... ikeEconomy

btw, i think that making money with trading is too easy.
I´m making a known "run" between a mining base and another object with only one type of goods.
With the llama i came quick to more than 100.000, and after buying a plowshare i soon became half a millionaire.

Maybe there should be (longer) regeneration times for selled goods.

[surgptr]

Maybe there should be (longer) regeneration times for selled goods.

Or just a reduction in the value of the sales (profitablity) when over-supplying a station/planet.

[szabo]

A dynamic economy is a major change for any game. Has anyone here been playing Hardwar? Great game, but in the first versions the economy was a bit too static. So in the last betas before what was supposed to be version 3 they tried to make it more lively, driven by supply and demand (and local accumulation of cash). However thay made it too dynamic, so it became extremely jumpy and with price variations in the millions for every little change in goods distribution. Unfortunately the company went under before they could fix that, so the fans were left with unfinished betas. OTOH these betas implemented a very clever concept - a terminal interface into the game by which the game's behavior can be altered while it's running. Maybe there are a few lessons to learn here.

Link to the biggest Hardwar fan site: http://zedo.hardwar.org.uk/ The sections on trade and economy are a worthwhile read.