Base Computer Interface

Development directions, tasks, and features being actively implemented or pursued by the development team.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by klauss »

Neskiairti wrote:capping small ships to 1 g is a bit odd i think.. capping at say 5Gs (but penalties for long distance over say 2G) would be more realistic.
That's not a bad idea....

Consider this: normal thrusters have a maximum 1g. Afterburners, though, get you to 5g (or so), but with an insanely inefficient fuel usage. So you can't use it indiscriminately.

Normal navigation would have to be limited to <1g accelerations, but dogfighting could resort to afterburner and such.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Deus Siddis »

Methinks a 3G cap would be better and more realistic than a 5G cap, actually.

But whatever the reduced cap is for starters, we should begin putting it into effect for either this or the next stable release.

Same thing for rotation accelerations. And governors-- speed governors should be lowered with movement thrusters, though not nearly as much for rotation governor if at all, because currently the rotation governors are set so low relative to accelerations that they totally ruin the experience and would get you killed in any real fight.

In short there needs to be a lot more "drift" when you turn; you shouldn't start and stop rotating instantly or else it feel like an FPS, not anything even close to a flight sim.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Neskiairti wrote:capping small ships to 1 g is a bit odd i think.. capping at say 5Gs (but penalties for long distance over say 2G) would be more realistic.
Why is that odd?
Can you tell me about ONE fighter plane that can accelerate at over 1 G?
No trick question, there is ONE such plane, in fact.
Thing is, achieving the same in space is probably impossible, due to the difficulty with getting rid of excess heat.
And please don't argue against realism, as you just said
...would be more realistic.
Secondly, why do so many people WANT high accelerations? They do NOTHING for you or for the game.
All they achieve is making everything seem small, --toy-size.
You'll notice the same thing in any other kind of 3D games. Cheap, arcade style car racing games, which often exaggerate
typical car acceleration rates, *feel* like you're driving a small toy-car in a simulated course. Realistic car racing games make
you feel like you're in a real car.
5G's, or even 3G's, are completely outside our daily experience. We can't even imagine such accelerations. Few of us have ever
experienced 1G, even, except for the everpresent gravity, which we are used to ignoring.
Fighter plane pilots only experience high G's during brief turns.
If you haven't experienced it, your brain won't make the effort to imagine it. Instead, it will automatically scale down the
perceived *size* of everything in the game; and you will NOT be able to convince yourself that the size of this or that ship
or station is so many kilometers, just because the documentation says so.
High accels also lead to dog-fights where you always pass the enemy at such high speed you never get to see the ship you're fighting.

There is nothing to gain, and everything to lose, from having high g accelerations.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by klauss »

We'll need some limited form of high-G propulsion if gravity is enabled, though - otherwise going too deep within a gravitational well would be lethal and unrecoverable, which isn't fun.

We'll also need some navigational helpers on the HUD, to let people know what IS too deep.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

klauss wrote:We'll need some limited form of high-G propulsion if gravity is enabled, though - otherwise going too deep within a gravitational well would be lethal and unrecoverable, which isn't fun.
Sure it's fun! :D
Seriously. That's THE DEFINITION of fun.
Something new to worry about, for a change. What makes a game engaging and immersive is having multiple paradigms. Right now in VS the ONLY paradigms are money and pirates. Having to be careful about gravity is an enormously engaging new spin.
We'll also need some navigational helpers on the HUD, to let people know what IS too deep.
Very true; we absolutely need a good autopilot. Lucky for us, Errol is looking into it. But yeah, even when you turn autopilot off, it should be active in the background, and warn you if you're slowing yourself down too much such that it won't be able to escape the gravity well. There's also issues of fuel, which Errol is looking into as well. Your autopilot could give you a range of choices on how to get from A to B, from very fast (consuming most of your propellant) to very conservative (consuming, say, only 20%, which would allow you to go elsewhere if when you get to your destination there happens to be trouble around there, and you decide to bail and go elsewhere).
But yeah, Errol wants to make fuel consumption an issue; yet another core paradigm; and I totally agree.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by klauss »

Agreed - what isn't fun is when you can easily and unknowingly stray into an unescapeable situation.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Eventually, even if you do go too deep into a gravity well, the autopilot should give you choices, if there are any,
given your available fuel and thrusting limits, such as landing at the nearest spaceport; or even an emergency
landing on some very flat salt plain; and then you'd have to walk for weeks; but we need 3D roaming for that :D
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by klauss »

chuck_starchaser wrote:even an emergency
landing on some very flat salt plain; and then you'd have to walk for weeks
You'd die.

I tried crossing a salt plain near Tucuman/Catamarca in a bike, a mere 20km stretch - I thought it would be a piece of cake. 20km on a bike is like an hour ride, no big deal. Right?

The... police (don't know the english term - Gendarmería) stopped us (me and my pal), they said you get blinded by the sun, dehydrated, soon you wander off the road without noticing :-o and loose your way :-o :-o , nobody finds you until you're very dead.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Ouch.
Never been to a salt plain.
The closest I got was when I saw them from a plane during a flight from Buenos Aires to Catamarca, in fact.
They can't be brighter than snow, though; can they?
Neskiairti
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 334
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:10 am

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Neskiairti »

chuck, I dont know about fighterplanes, but the shuttle reaches a maximum of 3Gs on launch. in space without the friction of an atmosphere 5Gs max burn would be realistic for high fuel consumption burns. Likely would be achieved using solid fuel boosters that are consumed on firing, the heat of them trapped in their own housing until you release them.

Drag racers go up to around 4Gs, the Luge up to around 5.
Turning those fighter jets can get up to 10Gs the actual straight on burn of course is much lower :P
However we are not discussing fighter planes, we are discussing space vehicles. even at 2G acceleration the distance between the earth and moon is still a LONG trip. Between other planets? far too much time.

You shouldn't worry about 2Gs making the game too small. its things like SPEC that make the game small.
Now, the reason I do say more than 1g, is for that thing that pulls at every sci-fi novice; in the future everything will be faster. its not a truth, but its something that will effect immersion. HOWEVER the cavet is we need the player to have a sense of this speed, a feeling that they ARE going faster than they ever could now, that this really is the future. Otherwise its just a number and it means diddly whether its .2 or 60. even at 60G the distance between earth and mars will take a while to cross :P (dont have real numbers) but projected .5g journey is supposed to take 2 years right? something like that.. thats still going to be a 2 week journey.. far longer than any player wants to sit drifting through void.

by saying 2G common 5G max im trying to balance between realism and immersion/fun.

the realism comment was meaning, more realistic than 40Gs... and more realistic in the sense that it gives the player options with consequences.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Deus Siddis »

Neskiairti wrote:chuck, I dont know about fighterplanes, but the shuttle reaches a maximum of 3Gs on launch. in space without the friction of an atmosphere 5Gs max burn would be realistic for high fuel consumption burns.
Drag isn't a problem for the space shuttle at launch, only once it gets some speed going. (The faster you go, the more drag works against you.) So 3Gs is still all that you would get if you 'launched' the shuttle from space, and that's still for a ship that's almost entirely fuel tank and engine and even then the fuel runs out fairly fast. So anything above 3Gs is just insane, realistically speaking.

More than 3Gs wouldn't be needed either, I don't think there are any rocky planets with more than 2 or 2.5 Gs of gravity. So landings shouldn't be an issue for light craft like shuttles.
Drag racers go up to around 4Gs, the Luge up to around 5.
Turning those fighter jets can get up to 10Gs the actual straight on burn of course is much lower :P
Drag racers have no longevity and they have contact with the ground. The luge and fighters aren't achieving those Gs through their own power, they are being resisted by matter, ice and air respectively, and you have neither in a vacuum.
even at 2G acceleration the distance between the earth and moon is still a LONG trip. Between other planets? far too much time.
No amount of acceleration can solve this problem, you need FTL for it to be playable. So there's no point in having insane accelerations if they can do nothing to help you anyway.
You shouldn't worry about 2Gs making the game too small. its things like SPEC that make the game small.
Not really, SPEC has no affect when you are in close proximity to something, and you only get a sense of scale when you are near something. SPEC could be slower though, to enhance the feeling of the vastness of space, but that's another issue.
Now, the reason I do say more than 1g, is for that thing that pulls at every sci-fi novice; in the future everything will be faster. its not a truth, but its something that will effect immersion. HOWEVER the cavet is we need the player to have a sense of this speed, a feeling that they ARE going faster than they ever could now, that this really is the future. Otherwise its just a number and it means diddly whether its .2 or 60. even at 60G the distance between earth and mars will take a while to cross :P (dont have real numbers) but projected .5g journey is supposed to take 2 years right? something like that.. thats still going to be a 2 week journey.. far longer than any player wants to sit drifting through void.
Earth to Mars makes no difference, this is a space (star?) opera where the game world is lightyears across. No amount of insane conventional acceleration levels can make your game playable. You have to have FTL handwavium like SPEC and JUMP. So you could have 0.01 G acceleration maximum and still be able to get places. The amount of Gs you can pull is more about how the game plays when you get to where you are going.
by saying 2G common 5G max im trying to balance between realism and immersion/fun.
But you won't be able to have realism, immersion or fun with anything over about 1G normal max, 3G afterburner max.

Jet fighter sims max out at about 1G, and they have drag which reduces that further when at combat speeds, and they push the limits of what is fun, let alone accessible.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

100% exactly. I couldn't have wrote it better.
Nothing to add, but I got some vague recollection of figures from when nphillips and I were doing back of envelope calculations for Tadpole. With Tadpole (a small cargo ship with 0.3 G constant accel), at 0.3 acceleration for half the trip, turnaround, and 0.3 G deceleration for the second half of the trip, we calculated roughly 5 days from Earth to Mars; and I think it was about a month to Pluto. So, not "years", but pretty long, anyways.
Distance to Pluto is I think about 40 AU's, and each AU is about 500 light-seconds.
40 x 500 = 20,000
20000 / 60 = 333 light minutes.
333 / 60 = 5.55 light hours
So, even without FTL, just some way to get close to the speed of light, and without time-compression, the game could be playable if we'd simply got a display of how long a trip would take, shown on the MFD, so that we can avoid trips to Pluto and the like, if we want to.
Also, as you approach the speed of light, time slows down for you, so from your own perspective you ARE going at a multiple of the speed of light, even if a stationary observer sees you taking 5.55 hours to reach Pluto.
Neskiairti
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 334
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:10 am

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Neskiairti »

wait.. 5 days to reach mars at 0.3g acceleration? O.o you sure about that?

I did miss speak about something though, I meant a maximum burn of 0.5g, the ship to mars could never hold enough fuel to burn half way there, then decelerate a constant burn the other half :P

I decided to break down and do the math...
at its closest, mars is roughly 55million kilometers away.
maybe my math is rusty but to burn a constant 3 m/s^2 until say 27.5million kilometers takes 5.25 days... so close to 11 day trip with fully mirrored deceleration.

I was however not referring to some constant acceleration, but maximum accelerations. From the way I see it, most trips in space will consist of an acceleration phase, a cruising phases, then deceleration phase.. and possibly some turning phases during cruising to avoid gravity wells and what not.

Now an acceleration phase with a peak of 2G is not impossible, nor is it unreasonable. I used the shuttle as an example, because that is a great example of acceleration phase followed by cruising phase. Once its boosters break off, its mostly down to maneuvering.

the actual numbers really mean diddly squat anyway, its about how the game feels. the numbers just 'look' good to players. I already went on about that though.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Deus Siddis »

The problem with the numbers is simply that they are in G's instead of meters per second, per second. Switching down to m/s^2 makes your numbers look 10 fold as big, and will look plenty fast to players.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Neskiairti wrote:wait.. 5 days to reach mars at 0.3g acceleration? O.o you sure about that?
Pretty sure.
I did miss speak about something though, I meant a maximum burn of 0.5g, the ship to mars could never hold enough fuel to burn half way there, then decelerate a constant burn the other half :P
If we take fuel into consideration, matters get a lot more complicated. In Tadpole, the ship can maintain 0.3 G's continuously, day and night, for long trips. This is the basic assumption, which simplifies the math. In fact, you could say that the acceleration near the middle of the trip is "wasted", since the ship will soon turn around to decelerate; BUT, in any real trip there's a curve to follow, due to the velocity of the base you leave from, and having to match velocity with the base you're going to; so it's possible to use the region of the middle of the trip to make course adjustment; so the turn-around can be gradual and useful.
I decided to break down and do the math...
at its closest, mars is roughly 55million kilometers away.
maybe my math is rusty but to burn a constant 3 m/s^2 until say 27.5million kilometers takes 5.25 days... so close to 11 day trip with fully mirrored deceleration.
Let's see...
S = 1/2 a t^2, so
t^2 = 2 S / a
t = sqrt( 2 S / a ) = sqrt( 2 * 27.5Gm / 3m/s^2 ) = sqrt( 18.333Gs^2 ) = 135.4ks = 2.2566 kilo-minutes = 37.6 hours for the acceleration phase, and another 37.6 hours for deceleration, for a total of 75.22 hours.
75.22 / 24 = 3.134 days.
I think the reason we came up with 5 days was that originally we were going to use 0.25G as the maximum acceleration, and then we changed our minds but forgot to recalculate.
I was however not referring to some constant acceleration, but maximum accelerations. From the way I see it, most trips in space will consist of an acceleration phase, a cruising phases, then deceleration phase.. and possibly some turning phases during cruising to avoid gravity wells and what not.
That is indeed the current paradigm; but if energy was plentiful (helium 3 fusion), but thrust limited by thruster technology and strength of materials, you might want to spread the acceleration in time, rather than accelerate at 40G's for a few minutes, then coast, then decelerate at 40G's for a few minutes.
Constant acceleration has another advantage: It creates artificial gravity for the crew.
Now an acceleration phase with a peak of 2G is not impossible, nor is it unreasonable. I used the shuttle as an example, because that is a great example of acceleration phase followed by cruising phase. Once its boosters break off, its mostly down to maneuvering.
Sure. 2 G is not impossible; but it probably will always take chemical fuel to do that, where fuel and propellant are one and the same. The propellant generates its own energy by burning. In a paradigm where you are accelerating propellant using a separate energy source, such as a fusion power plant, that's a whole different ball game. Secondly, even with chemical propulsion, you have a maximum temperature the burn chamber can take, which limits your efficiency, and dictates that you cannot expel tiny amounts of that propellant at near the speed of light; you've got a limit for that speed, dictated by temperature limit, and the only way you can produce high thrust is by increasing the mass of propellant you expel per unit of time. So you go through your propellant pretty quickly.
With an ion engine or vasimr, you have a different situation, where the limit is in the watts of throughput, but you can hike the propellant efficiency a lot, because you can expel it up to potentially near c, at a low mass rate. So you'd probably want to use constant accel, or much closer to constan than with chemical thrusters, anyways.
the actual numbers really mean diddly squat anyway, its about how the game feels. the numbers just 'look' good to players. I already went on about that though.
False.
This is no way to address any subject, --to base things on "feelings".
Everyone's feelings are different. 'Numbers' is the name of the game.
Well, eventually yes, there's a 'feelings factor', but that should be the consideration at the highest levels of game design.
You cannot work under the premise of 'feelings rule' at every low level step of the way; such a policy ruins everything.
As I said many times, a space game needs some kind of handwavium technology to shorten trip times. That's a given.
However, what you REALLY DON'T want to do is fudge things and mess with everything. Keep the handwavium well
encapsulated. Let everything in the game be realistic and consistent with physics and the natural limits of technology;
and then introduce JUST ONE THING, such as SPEC, that solves the problem of time, as elegantly as possible. But you'd
end up with total crap if you a) make interplanetary distances shorter, b) allow huge accelerations, c) secretly compress
time, AND d) add SPEC. Then you've got a cacophony; an incomprehensible mess nobody can understand and work with.
RedAdder
Bounty Hunter
Bounty Hunter
Posts: 149
Joined: Sat Jan 03, 2009 8:11 pm
Location: Germany, Munich
Contact:

Trading Interface

Post by RedAdder »

It would be a waste if the trading interface gets redesigned, only to need a major rework later:

When Vegastrike gets a more advanced market, this would mean that the more you buy, the more it costs, as you are consuming the cheap sell orders first, leaving only the costly ones. Such a market could also support player to player transactions.

To support this, the trading interface would need to show the minimum and maximum prices that would result from buying e.g. 100 units.

I made a mockup how this could look(where the sell 1-1000 and buy 1-1000 boxes are buttons too):
VegaStrike_trading_mockup.gif
As long as vegastrike has no advanced market and fixed prices, it would simply read, for example:
Buy 1000 @ 101 to 101, average 101
Buy 100 @ 101 to 101, average 101
Buy 10 @ 101 to 101, average 101
Buy 1 @ 101 to 101, average 101

This would leave some weirdness in the dialog, but it would make it easy to expand on.
(Instead of average, it might be better at this stage to list the total to avoid some weirdness).
The dialog would need to work with a function check_buy(n) which would return 4 values: the max number of goods that can be bought, the min price, the max price, and the total price. (These would be displayed in the dialog in this order).

I know this post is not as helpfull as if I had coded all this, but I hope it is still usefull.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

That's a lot of weirdness, methinks.
If you're a Masters of Orion fan, I'd invite you to think about all that made MOO2 so good and MOO3 so bad.
MOO3 was *work*; not play. Too much info, nothing left to the imagination. The *work* was cut out for you.
Good games hide information. You buy 100 items for one price. If you buy another 100 you get a different,
higher price. That's good; let the player wonder why. What made MOO2 so good was that its mathematical
models were incredibly complex (if you look up the formulas (they've been reverse-engineered) they use
exponentials, logarithms, tons of math), but at the interface it seemed all very simple.

By the way, one thing I liked about Privateer 2 was that there was a diagram of your ship showing the
fill of the cargo area. Right now, it's not visually intuitive that the right side of the screen is your ship
and the left side is the commodities exchange. You have to *read* to know that. That's another thing that
made MOO3 the failure that it was: A lot of it was pretty much like a windows application you'd use at
work, rather than a game. Our interfaces need to be more visual; --up the eye-candy factor.
Ditto for upgrades.
Ditto for missions, news and info.
Info... Why can't we have a Love column, a Hate column, a Neutral colum, with images denoting love,
hatred and neutrality as backgrounds; and then a special area for bounties outstanding on you? And icons
for all the races. Right now it's just a column of text data. Not fun.
Neskiairti
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 334
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:10 am

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Neskiairti »

very good point chuck. but i wouldn't say keep it from the player so much as obfuscate it. Stick it behind a menu and keep the user friendly information up front. if they WANT the raw math and what not.. they have to find it. :p
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Neskiairti wrote:very good point chuck. but i wouldn't say keep it from the player so much as obfuscate it.
Depends what you mean by "it"... The algorithm you will use is probably some statistical approximation of market dynamics. How much the price goes up with quantity of purchase wouldn't be known to the computer terminal in the first place.
Stick it behind a menu and keep the user friendly information up front. if they WANT the raw math and what not.. they have to find it. :p
Yep, but ditto: What exactly would you put in that screen behind the button? Realistically, it should show a long list of sell orders with individual quantity and price.
Just like when you want to buy some equity in the stock market, there's a bid and an ask, defining a "spread", but if you wanted to buy or sell 10 million shares at once the price would be different. So, if you have a level 2 trading service, you can click on a button and see the bid/ask stacks, where the quantities for purchase sale are listed for each price; but you won't find a terminal that tells you exactly how much you're going to have to pay for each quantity, because the bid and ask stacks are changing constantly in real-time, so any calculation would be obsolete by the time you enter your transaction.
So, having the computer tell you exactly how much you pay for a given quantity would *feel* weird, for good reasons.
And if you did the full stack thing, then you'd have to give the player a chance to enter a bid or an ask and wait for it to fill, or partially fill, like you can do when trading stocks, and like the very presence of such a stack implies other traders are able to do, such that it would feel weird if you, the player, were not allowed to.
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

(Continuing from my previous post):
Let me pose this as a "some day feature", and I promise I'll get back to reality soon:

If you wanted to model a realistic marketplace at bases, you would indeed need to model multiple trades in real time.
To really make it tick, you'd need to do this within a framework of full economics modeling, because price is a function
of offer and demand, but also a function of seller and buyer "elasticities", as well as of "liquidity".
The latter term would take a 1500 page book to fairly define and describe.
Markets in which you trade actual objects are horribly iliquid, and they basically don't exist in the real world, except
at the retail level.
So, we'd have to model not only the physical commodities market, but also a "futures" market.
This could be totally transparent to the player, as it is to stock traders in the real world.
Basically, there'd be dozens upon dozens of AI's buying and selling "futures" representing the actual commodities,
causing the prices to fluctuate before your very eyes, but few of those AI's would be actual merchants or shippers
interested in buying or selling actual cargo. Most of the AI's would be "speculator AI's".
There would also be options trading: call options and put options.
You, the player, would also be able to enter speculative trades; or buy options as insurance; or sell options to boost
your profit.
So, for instance, you read in the news that two cargo ships carrying iron to shipyard X have been attacked, and that
the price of iron at X is skyrocketing. But you may be concerned that 7 other merchants have probably read the same
news and headed there with full cargoes of iron; and if you get there too late you might find shipyard X in a glut of
iron; and its price near zero. So, what to do? You can load up on iron AND buy a put option on an equivalent amount
of iron, which put option will appreciate if its value goes down, so as to lock your selling price.
But then again, you might find, upon inspection, that the premium you have to pay for put options on that iron is
very high. If so, it means that many other traders have been buying those put options, which means you are indeed
too late, probably.
Buying and selling items, as I said, would internally be modeled as buying and selling "futures"; --for immediate
delivery, but futures anyhow; and after you are done buying and selling, you'd have to press on a button that
indicates to the market AI that you want delivery to/from your ship, which would probably be acted upon while
you walk to the docks.
But, to be fair, it should be possible, though highly infrequent, that delivery can't be completed, and some party
offers to settle in cash, in which occasion you'd probably get more cash than you paid; so no big deal; but it
might cause you to have to buy something else to fill your cargo space.
Even with futures and derivatives, such a market would still, from time to time, be prone to liquidity crashes
or fleeting bubbles; so we'd also have to model the "market maker" (MM)'s role; which role is to buy and sell
equities (naked selling allowed), to serve as the immediate counterparty to every transaction that doesn't, at the
moment, have a natural counterparty. That is, one AI might want to buy 10000 metric tons of sugar, but there
might be nobody selling 10000 metric tons at this very moment (though perhaps there will be, 5 seconds later),
so the MM sells those 10000 tons of sugar to the buyer speculatively, and buys them back when a seller shows
up 5 seconds later. The MM's role would be a non-for-profit role, at least theoretically; and for that gets an
almost unlimited, though largely fictitious budget, and the permission to enter naked shorting and selling
trades.
Finally, there'd be no liquidity without credit; so we'd have to model lending, credit lines, interest rates, the
bond market, a central bank, overnight lending rate policy, and yield curve effects.
I repeat, all this would be transparent to the player; but would have to be modeled in detail to produce market
dynamics that really feel familiar and believable. Otherwise the economic system would be hacked, rather than
modeled. And among the myriads of advantages of modeling versus hacking, one that really stands out is the
aspect of maintainability: If the system is not working, you can look for where THE ERROR is... Whereas, a hack
being just a hack, if it doesn't work you don't know what to look for.

Now, as a new player, you'd have a level 1 trading pass. If you're in good stand with the merchant faction, and
for a few thousand credits, you could later get a level 2 trading pass.
When you do, you'd be able to see the full bid stack and ask stack at trading terminals. This would allow you
to size your purchases or sales to get a comfortable quantity versus price break.
Once you get good at it, you might be able to tell whether you should buy or sell now, or whether to wait...
The bid and ask stacks should normally be shaped like pyramids. At the official bid, there might be only orders
to buy totalling a few hundred. One cent of a credit down, there might be orders to buy 1000. Two cents down
from the current bid, there might be orders to buy totalling 5000 units of a given commodity. And so on.
If the shape is not pyramidal, but like a mushroom, it indicates indecisiveness on the part of buyers. Some
think that the price will go down, while others fear it might go up and are desperate to buy now, so they bid
up. Indecisiveness on the bid, coupled to decisiveness in the ask stack probably indicates that price will
indeed go up --in the short term at least. In which case, if you are buying, you might care to sell put options,
to buy them back shortly at a lower price than you sold them for, and make some extra money; though, to do
so, you'd either have to have collateral, or a credit line; --speaking of which, I don't know why we don't have
the ability to borrow money, currently.

Last but not least, it makes no sense that bases would not have communications with other bases. One should
be able to browse the exchanges at other bases from any base, whether in the same system or a few jumps
away. In my example of delivering iron to shipyard X, you'd buy a put option to lock in price, but that would
be an option of shipyard X's exchange; NOT a put option of the local exchange.

Back to reality, as promised:

The reality is that the above will be a huge amount of work to implement. In the meantime, simply having
price calculated as an ad-hoc function of quantity is probably good enough as an incremental improvement
over the status quo; but going even a bit further in terms of the interface begins to raise questions we might
not want to be raised.

But wouldn't it be nice? With full modeling, we'd have something to do at bases, which goes with the plan to
have more things to do in space. Right now, players are in a hurry at bases, because of boredom, anxious to
get back to space. Then in space they are bored, anxious to get to a base, and complaining that travel takes
too long. The problem is that there's nothing to do, whether in space or at bases. We need things to do at
both; --interesting, engaging, immersive, addictive things.
Neskiairti
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 334
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:10 am

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Neskiairti »

mm very well thought out.
and by 'it' I meant anything we didnt feel the player needed up front.
you buy 10 tonnes of iron.. stuff it on your ship, all you need to know is how you're ship will turn; quick, average, slow, ox in a rowboat. How much cargo space it takes up.. a slider or fill bar would work just fine for that.. i cant for the life of me remember how privateer 2 did it. How much its going to cost.

anything else, like the individual weight, volume, and how many have been buying and selling.. is hidden

for weapons, all you need to know is if the average damage is better, if the range is better, and if the damage per second is better.. and maybe a % of change from how much energy it uses. Oh as well as if you can equip it on your ship, but the buy button should be grayed out or some such if you cant equip it.
behind the screen.. fire rate, damage range, weapon range, type of damage, type of weapon and actual energy cost. Whatever else is needed, too. :p
chuck_starchaser
Elite
Elite
Posts: 8014
Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 4:03 am
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Yep; that's exactly it. The best games are those that feature a lot of complexity under the hood, but present a simple interface
to the player. MOO2 is a perfect example. Another is SimCity2000, not sure if you played it, but its economics and social
modeling were pretty neat. If you didn't pay your police well, over time crime blossomed precisely around police stations,
as the police became corrupt; and then, to clean up the corruption was extremely costly; you were better off cutting the
police budget to zero for a while, closing all stations, then starting again from scratch. Also taxes: Neither high nor low nor
in-between was best; what was best was cycling taxation with periods of high taxation, letting a lot of business go belly
up, then lower the taxes again. But all the modeling was hidden from the player; it was your job to discover how the models
worked, or at least how to exploit them. And you could say the same goes for graphics: The more sophisticated the lighting
model, and the material optics, the better; but when game companies overuse their own features to show them off, they
end up making a mistake. The best idea is to have excellent algorithms, but to pretend you don't. "Keep it simple" is a bad
motto for the substance; but always a good motto for the interfaces.
Neskiairti
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 334
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:10 am

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Neskiairti »

i loved sim city 2000.. was never able to get in to the games after it though.. ;.;

as to the interfaces.. yes.. simplicity is best, just look at google. its so popular because its so simple, put in your phrase, hit enter, get your results.. but behind it, its so very complex, and you can even put complex searches in, if you figure out how.
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Deus Siddis »

Neskiairti wrote: for weapons, all you need to know is if the average damage is better, if the range is better, and if the damage per second is better.. and maybe a % of change from how much energy it uses. Oh as well as if you can equip it on your ship, but the buy button should be grayed out or some such if you cant equip it.
behind the screen.. fire rate, damage range, weapon range, type of damage, type of weapon and actual energy cost. Whatever else is needed, too. :p
Actually I really do need to know all these things to buy the right weapons and use them effectively.

What the interface should do is just allow me to see what I want to see and hide what I want it to hide. And then maybe have some graphics that summarize what I have got in general, like what kind of firepower I have at different ranges and angles using color coded rings, and the same for thrusters and armor, plus how much the current reactor and radiators will be tapped by the current configurations, etc.
Neskiairti
Confed Special Operative
Confed Special Operative
Posts: 334
Joined: Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:10 am

Re: Base Computer Interface

Post by Neskiairti »

no, you really don't need to know all that.. all you need to know "is it better?" "can i aford it?" the question of how much better may come up, and you may want to know that, but you don't need it.
games these days love to bombard you with information, spreadsheets and number crunching.. being 'good' at world of warcraft for instance.. is a nightmare of spreadsheets.. you need to know exactly the mechanics behind each stat and balance your spread across them... OR you need to have some one who figured it out, tell you the secret build... and then the creators decide to change the rules on you every patch and only tell you 'this rule has changed' but not necessarily tell you how..

and I wont even get in to EVE :p

what this produces is alot of really bad players, who either just started, or never learned that they need to know which is better. if the game told them out and out "this is better" or at the very least, taught them how to learn their mechanics instead of just leaving it a mire of confusion.. the game wouldnt be filled with as many fucking idiots :p
Post Reply