Defining a new economic system for future versions

[javier]

No, please. Empire building is a fully different animal I don't think it belongs here.

[Deus Siddis]

No, please. Empire building is a fully different animal I don't think it belongs here.

Like it or not, it seems that is where vega strike is already heading.

The foundation of the game is built around dynamic empires, which already do or will factor in complex infrastructure in the form of asteroid mining, agricultural, factory, commerce, medical and probably other types of stations and planetary colony equivalents in addition to various forms and classes of transports to circulate the products of these various stations AND complex military in the form of fighters, interceptors, assault, bombers, corvettes, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships, dreadnaughts, carriers and other logistic craft. And then with seamless planetary flight, planetside combat, with craft specialized for this task, opens up to the dynamic universe.

Plus you as the player can already buy a freighter or cruiser and stock it with your own personal armada of smaller vessels. The next step will be buying other capital ships for your fleet and the step after that will be buying and deploying station constructors, then planetary colony constructors.

Hopefully when (and if I suppose) VS gets to this point, things like this can be handled in the most micromanagment-light way possible for the player.

But if this sort of gameplay bothers you, remember this is all many years away, so don't worry, be happy.

[bgaskey]

I don't think VS is heading toward empire building, and I don't want it to head there. The point of the game is freelancing in an economy too big for you to effect. Problems of balance etc. will only be expounded if the player becomes part of the hopefully-soon-to-be dynamic economy. The game should be foremost a combat sim, imho, with the trading/economy there to add interest and give a backstory to the fighting.

Well maybe thats a bit overboard. Trading should be fun in its own right, with riskier missions/cargo runs and higher payoffs for them. But empire building is vehemently not where VS needs to be headed. If it ends up there in the end, so be it, but I don't think its gonna happen.

[Deus Siddis]

I think maybe when I use the term 'empire' in this circumstance it can seem misleading.

What I mean is you could (after many, many hours of gameplay) become dominant in a region of no more than about a half or whole dozen systems, harvesting income from the infrastructure you have set up or captured there to maintain small militias and your own small fleet that you'd personally command from a Clydesdale or something smaller. You'd also want to maintain a clean record with your neighbors, as you could easily fall to even an uplift species if you didn't really know what you were doing.

You would not really be an emperor, but something more like a lord. You hold on to your turf through skills in direct combat and tactics rather than strategy and micro-ing tons of crap. That's what I meant.

So in the grand scheme of things, the gist would be this-- the Vega Strike Universe is alot bigger than you, but if you play your cards right, you might some day be big enough to be a visible part of it, perhaps even throwing its tides into an alternate direction.

(Not that you have to do any of this, but the option is there depending on how you want to play the game.)

Having followed this project for some years now, that is the personal impression I have absorbed of what it will probably eventually include (read: around 1.0). I'm happy enough with just a fleet though.

[bgaskey]

Yeah I understood what you meant. Like in the X series. However, VS is more personal than that. I don't want my AI minions trading and making junk for me. I want to do all of that myself. And I play VS to relax (although I haven't really played in several weeks now (or relaxed for that matter )) and cruising through an overwhelmingly huge universe where you are an insignificant spec is more relaxing than running an empire. I can see why some people would want running a corporation as an option, I wouldn't use it if it was available. Although I guess I shouldn't begrudge others their fun Sorry about that. Being selfish...as usual. Stressful week. Exams
My life will be alot more fun in two weeks or so. Peace out

[Deus Siddis]

I know the feeling. Life is so damn complex, it'd be nice if at least games could be a break from it. I guess that's why I like the idea of eventually being able to get to a point in a game where the nitty gritty details of earning credits are taken care of by automated stations or other infrastructure, and I can just worry about defending these assets, protecting friendly transport routes between them and using the funding to support my own robin-hood style war against whichever factions I'm opposed to, starting with those six limbed cowards.

Guess I could always be a pirate though, living off the cargo plunder.

[javier]

Well, I think good ideas are often born from constructive discussion from people with opposite views. There's nothing wrong in it.
I, for one, stand now in a very different position I was at the starting of the thread. And there is nothing bad in it. Maybe I don't like some of the solutions given here, but this is more a personal preferences question than flaws in those solutions.

[DangerousDave]

Hey, noob here. Stumbled on this project and thought it is a fantastic concept with real potential!

First question I had before I even played the game was 'how is the economy handled?', so I scoured the wiki and forums to end up in this thread.

I've read through most of this thread and the one preceding it, a lot of random ideas of varying complexity and focus.

I just wanted to propose to try and format these ideas somehow, cause it's all rather jumbled. I notice the wiki page is a placeholder right now at best. It would just be nice to see the list of ideas in some sort of order from highest complexity to lowest.

For example, at the top end there is 'physically simulate every single ship in the universe and have them make independent intelligent trading decisions'; then at the bottom end there is 'choose a random price for every resource on a station every time the player checks it'.

Obviously neither of those will do, but the ideas mentioned above fit somewhere in the middle, leaning towards one or the other extreme (e.g. 'supertankers' -> 'nodal analysis').


LOL, thinking about it, I dont see any of this happening, but I would be lax in my nagging if I didn't mention it.

Definately gonna be a regular around here from now on! Awesome project, truly awesome.

[pyramid]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

Please feel free to organize the design information in the mentioned wiki page. Documentation help is badly required and highly appreciated.

[safemode]

I still like my idea of having huge transport ships utilizing shuttles to do the bulk of inter and intra system trading, with single individual players (npc and real) relegated to special trading. Like, transporting goods for corporations that are too small to maintain their own ships. This could reduce the randomness of trading goods.

edit: Think firefly type trading model. /edit


The security of those massive transports can be central to pirate and inter-species conflicts too. They'd be as big as a base but be mostly autonomous. Holding hundreds of cargo shuttles. God i wish i was an artist and could whip up meshes and crap. I just want to blow one of those things up all luke skywalker like.

[Breakable]

I still like my idea of having huge transport ships utilizing shuttles to do the bulk of inter and intra system trading, with single individual players (npc and real) relegated to special trading. Like, transporting goods for corporations that are too small to maintain their own ships. This could reduce the randomness of trading goods.

edit: Think firefly type trading model. /edit


The security of those massive transports can be central to pirate and inter-species conflicts too. They'd be as big as a base but be mostly autonomous. Holding hundreds of cargo shuttles. God i wish i was an artist and could whip up meshes and crap. I just want to blow one of those things up all luke skywalker like.

This seems like a really good idea.
Those huge tankers would be extremely vulnerable to pirates and enemy warships, allowing the player to reap profits in unsecured territories.

I would love to see this model implemented

[DangerousDave]

Supertanker idea is also the common sense method of haulage you would imagine for an interstellar commerce network. Especially for large industrual complexes like factories hauling their goods to other factories or distribution points.

Realistically you have a series of distribution points: each point along the chain trading less bulk but more variety of commodities, for greater per-unit price, until finally you have your local corner shop at the leaf nodes of this network...

Just thought I would confuse matters a bit more.

[Deus Siddis]

Well I vote for Safemode's idea too, it is the most simple and realistic. Usually, in any given time period, you end up with one most efficient class of freighter which does all the heavy lifting, like the container vessels of today or the galleons of yesterday.

But I kind of thought this was already implemented, with the Ox being the super-freighter that you see everywhere? After all what ship could fit the role better than a large freighter built by the merchant faction using their naming convention?

[safemode]

except that's not how it works. The ship may exist, albeit on a smaller scale than was fantasizing, but the game does not utilize it any different than any other ship.

Why would a llama even think to care about trading goods that get traded on a huge scale by the Ox and other massive freighters? The cost would be extremely high per unit for the llama compared to the Ox. Why would anyone buy such items in such small quantities when it's obviously they would either not need it at all or need massive amounts of it?.

Not even to mention that we dont use shuttles to transport between ships that are obviously too big to dock directly or land on a planet.


I'm not saying that such items shouldn't be available for trade. Maybe one day you'll own an Ox and want to be a trader.
What i'm saying is that we should implement a way of purchasing items for a lower amount based on quantity and that means that places you go to sell such items should expect to buy the items at a small upcharge over the value of the item at the quantity they want it. They aren't going to buy your 100 units of Iron ore for the price you paid. They want the price per unit for a hundred thousand units of Iron ore, with maybe a slight markup.

We need to make trading items that only make sense to be done in bulk, unprofitable in non-bulk amounts. And we need to make the AI aware of this, and we need to make items that get traded in a much smaller quantity more important and specifically directed.
Basically, the news should be flooded with data about so and so base wants so and so items and an acceptable quantity, they're willing to pay X amount. That amount can go up the longer they wait, but you have a higher chance of the AI getting that stuff to them before you do if you wait too long.


That is the kind of trading that would be fun. Shuffling along grain and iron ore and plastics and crap at 100 units at a time is rediculous.

[Breakable]

That is the kind of trading that would be fun. Shuffling along grain and iron ore and plastics and crap at 100 units at a time is rediculous.

Well on a dynamic universe I would expect you can make a profit even from trading basic goods. At least when you don't have money to buy more expensive specialty goods.

For example:
A price of a basic commodity where OX is doing the trade would be: 1.05 times higher for sale than for buy order. So you could trade there:
50x100 = 5000 credits total amount fitted
5000x1.05 = 5250 profit
5250-5000 = 250 net profit. Which is a ridiculous amount, but maybe not for a beginner.

Now if the location is not accessible by OX the price could grow up to 10 times higher like food in a starving station. But this opportunity would not stand for long, as residents need those goods to survive (oxygen, food, water), so after some time if nobody helps them they would die and the station would become abandoned.

Those situations should not often happen in a dynamic universe so you would need to search for them, take the risks of accessing a protected location and maybe even take a relationship penalty for breaking blockade/selling at inflated prices. Maybe it would be a good idea to add some 100 blockade breaker AI ships so you would have concurrents.

So even if the items are large and cheap you can still make an opportunity profit. Of course this would be limited by your cargo space. Because for example you can fit only 50 items of goods each costing 100 credits is:
50x100 = 5000 credits total amount fitted
5000x10 = 50000 profit
50000-5000 = 45000 net profit.

And how would those 50 items help? Well it could help the station not to die for a while, and this gives them chance to bring in the allied forces to break the barricade, or maybe they just would run out of credits by paying your inflated prices and die anyways.

I really like your supertanker idea, but i don't think it makes small-cheap trading obsolete, maybe just more opportunistic.

[deadliestidiot]

Hey all, just had an idea that might simplify making a dynamic economy...it very well may have been mentioned already (I skimmed through the previous posts...but very well might have missed it).

Why not base the economy off of a predator prey relationship (or at least an approximation to the solution of the differential equation). The predator side would be demand and the prey side would be supply. Each aspect would be based on a number of things:

Demand could be based on:
1) mainly what good are consumed on planet
2) possibly also on how many trading ship (or mayhap large trading ships) are moving away from the planet/station/etc
3) possibly also on what the nearby stations are consuming (having the planet or commerce station or whatever act as a middle man of sorts for the nearby stations)
4) how many enemy vessels are located in-system (representing raids on traders by pirates/enemy factions which would cause goods to be harder to get. As a side note, here enemy factions refer to enemies of the faction in control of the planet/station/etc)

Supply could be based on:
1) mainly what the planet produces
2) how many trading vessels (or large trading vessels) are in system. This could also be changed to be how many trading vessels are moving toward the planet/station/etc.
3) as with demand it could also be based off of the nearby stations' economies.

Of course the general economic situation of the surrounding systems could be factored in, although this might not be necessary. The demand would increase if the neighboring system is in enemy hands as the enemy would have an increased presence in-system. Systems in unknown space would have huge demands due to almost no traffic (at least that's been my observation).

The benefit of this system is that it would not rely on individual ships delivering their individual cargo to individual planets/stations/etc but would model what would happen if they went about their work trading where goods were needed and whatnot. There's probably a good deal of tweaking that would need to be done to make this system more representative of the economy. Maybe making a 'trade pool' of sorts for the entire system from which each planet/station/etc would draw from, competing against one another for these limited resources.

[safemode]

I'm not saying it's not the better way to go. What i do ask is that any possible solution attempt to solve the dynamic universe aspects. That is, how can dynamic universe use this solution to enrich the game experience for the user. I dont want to see a bunch of hand written missions related to different scenarios with maybe a random modifier thrown in to give the user the false impression that there's an economy that is responding to the universe. What i'd like to see is a way for the universe to directly affect economy and a way for the economy to in return directly effect the universe, using a single script (dynamic_economy) maybe... This may be presented as ships in the universe, or some other method.

in any method people come up with, you should ask yourself a few things.

1. Will we need to write scripts case by case or use randomness to appear dynamic?

2. Will this enrich the game experience for the player ?

3. Can this solution balance itself without the human player's interaction?

4. Can the human or NPC player put the system in unbalance, affecting changes in missions/campaigns/dyanmic_universe ?

I really think the best solution would say yes to all of these questions but #1 and do so in an efficient manner.

[deadliestidiot]

I see what you're saying. I think the method I outlined is significantly impacted by the universe...I'm not sure how much it would, in return, impact the universe as a whole. As for the points you make I'd say it touches on each of them.

1. Will we need to write scripts case by case or use randomness to appear dynamic?

The predator-prey relationship would work off of a single set of equations. The aspects of each planet/station/etc would be plugged into these equation and the result would be the new prices (for clarity's sake it's worth noting that these prices would still be based of the base prices)

2. Will this enrich the game experience for the player ?

I think it would improve the benefit of traveling long distances to get large profits. Buying in a system located deep within friendly territory and selling on the frontiers would probably be the best way to earn money. I run version 4.3 (lasted in the ubuntu repository...yes...I'm lazy...) and I usually search for Trantor class planets with bio-diverse planets in system and trade specialty wines to get money...this tactic would still work I guess...but it'd probably not be as profitable as making runs to the frontier and back. of course that's just my opinion.

3. Can this solution balance itself without the human player's interaction?

Assuming you found a stable solution to the equations, then supply and demand would rise and fall in tandem (with a slight delay on the fluctuations of supply, representative of the response time of the universal economy to the demand, and a result of the supply being the prey side of the coin...although I might have that backwards...it's been awhile since I had differential equations)

4. Can the human or NPC player put the system in unbalance, affecting changes in missions/campaigns/dyanmic_universe ?

Using this model on its own as I outlined...I'd say it probably wouldn't, nor should it...(one ship dictating the economy is a bit unreasonable)...although being that this is a game...and that it's always a good feeling to be able to impact the universe in some meaningful way...I think it wouldn't be too hard to overlay the current supply/demand player based model ontop of this model. (I'm going off of what I've seen in assuming that there is in fact a player impact on the economy beyond just running out of goods on a planet)

As for impacting the universe as a whole, if there is someway to make ships favor trade routes from high demand locations to high supply locations, then that might work. of course this also means that the relatively underpopulated unknown space would become highly populated...which I don't think would be too far out of the question...except that you'd quickly run out of underpopulated unknown space, which I always find to be kind of cool personally.

Finding these equation is going to be the challenging part of course. We would need to first decide what the inputs will be and then how much they should impact the outputs. But if we have the equations I don't think there would be too much trouble in making them mesh with the current vs universe.

[safemode]

A single ship can impact the economic system of an entire star system, and thus even the sector. That is, if that ship is big enough and strong enough to meet the resistance it'll come up against for a long enough time.

If i'm in a tricked out clydesdale and i take out a base's turrets, then proceed to patrol around that base and destroy any ship trying to come near it. I've effectively blockaded the base from trade. Eventually, as long as i'm there, this will drastically effect the economy of that particular base. Say, that particular base is the sole provider of a good in a system. Now i've effectively altered the economic system of the entire star system. If it's integral enough, I can effectively cripple the economies of every other planet and base in the system (and thus maybe start effecting surrounding ones).

Now, this should create a reaction from those factions running the bases effected, and i should be summarily destroyed by an ever increasing fleat of angry ships.

Or, maybe i'll have made my point and decide to stop blockading the base, of course, that's long after i've loaded up on the now very rare good and take it to the nearest base that will have me and sell it for a massive profit.


Much more likely than a single large ship holding out for long enough to start effecting economies is a small flightgroup of ships that decide to do it.

Blockading is an effective and likely scenario in war.

[lee]

What i do ask is that any possible solution attempt to solve the dynamic universe aspects.

A dynamic universe would solve this best --- the fully working simulation of production from available resources and the consumption of resources and products.

That is, how can dynamic universe use this solution to enrich the game experience for the user.

It makes it "more realistic" --- in the sense that it creates possibilities for players to have influence on the economy, with the economy automatically reacting to that influence because it functions by the given rules. A further step would be that the very rules change as needed, but that might be demanding too much from a game.

Maybe this issue is the very reason why a dynamic universe is in high demand: It would enrich the gaming experience.

It can also mean that this is the wrong question, or that this question needs to be asked in a different way.

What i'd like to see is a way for the universe to directly affect economy and a way for the economy to in return directly effect the universe, using a single script (dynamic_economy) maybe... This may be presented as ships in the universe, or some other method.

Look at this description of "economy":

Code: Select all

"An economy is the realized system of human activities related to the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services of a country or other area."[1]

The part I would underline is "production, distribution, exchange and consumption". If you don't have that, you don't have an economy. Distribution and exchange are already in the game; production and consumption are missing.

It won't matter if you use a single script or an object orientated approach for the implementation of production and consumption. The latter would probably be an easier way to program it.

1. Will we need to write scripts case by case or use randomness to appear dynamic?

No --- and it won't only appear dynamic, it would be dynamic.

2. Will this enrich the game experience for the player ?

Yes, that's why you want to have it in the first place.

3. Can this solution balance itself without the human player's interaction?

Look again at the above description: "An economy is the realized system of human activities"[1]. Therefore, expecting it to function without human influence is pointless

However, I wouldn't worry about it at all before it shows up as a serious problem in practice after it has been implemented.

And then, what exactly does "balance itself" mean? You might have inflation, you might have shortages in some/many places, you might have huge stockpiles of products in other places. These things provide opportunities for making profits.

In the average, throughout the whole economy/universe, you have what you have, and that's all there is to it.

If you still want or need to have a means to prevent it from becoming totally whacky, control the total amount of money that's available throughout the universe. Prices will automatically adjust to that.

4. Can the human or NPC player put the system in unbalance, affecting changes in missions/campaigns/dyanmic_universe ?

You've given the answer to that yourself:

A single ship can impact the economic system of an entire star system, and thus even the sector. That is, if that ship is big enough and strong enough to meet the resistance it'll come up against for a long enough time.

I really think the best solution would say yes to all of these questions but #1 and do so in an efficient manner.

How efficient would a full simulation be? It would be ultimately efficient in the sense of fulfilling the purpose.

If it takes too much processing power, we'll just have to figure out a better way to make it work. If players are playing online, have the clients do the work. Since people have multiple (core) CPUs, utilize those cores. Suspend the simulation for objects that are dormant and record the time that has passed since the last update to update accordingly whenever it becomes necessary. It might take a database backend to keep track of things, but database software is already available. For production, consumption and determining prices, use very simple rules which compute fast.

Give the distributing/exchanging elements (ships) the advantage of in-system communication so that they can get an overview of the prices in the current system. Maybe give them communication at a wider range, like one or two systems around the current one. Let AI ships be directed by profit opportunities. It would work.


[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy

[Fade]

Hello guys. I like programming. I like economics. What I see is that we need... a opensource economic simulator.

Let's go very simplistic to make my point, wich is not about what but how.

VS=VegaStrike
ES=Economic Simulator

ES need to know about where are :
- resources
- manifacturing facilities
- workers
- consumers

After processing data, which could be once a hour, the ES gives VS, wich run "real" universe, missions like "transport 100T of food from X to Y by the safest way".

VS "runs" the mission, this can be done by simulation (for exemple, roll a dice) or by realy creating a cargo ship. This choice could be serverload dependent. Or "number of player visibility" dependent. For exemple, if a group of players wait a cargo to destroy it and affect economy, VS should detect them, at least on the starting or ending point, and put the cargo in the real space.

Then VS tells ES about the succes (or the failure) about the mission.

Stocks changed, price changed. ES compute again.

My point is that having a separate ES means that you can use it for other games, and have a team entirly commited on this project. You can run the program on separate dedicated servers (for MMO). At anytime, price are computed in background and available to VS server with a db request.

[loki1950]

Welcome Fade good idea but may not be practical for single player.

Enjoy the Choice

[Fade]

You're right. For a single player this is too much. But once the work done for MMO universe (you know that VS/Elite/Spacetrader games players like MMO space opera), some lightweight mecanims would be easy to adapt for the solo player.

[Breakable]

Or just have a smaller universe for sanity sake!
Why we need thousands of stars for single player if hundreds are hard to comprehend.

I partially agree with you Fade - there should an economic simulator, that interfaces with vegastrike.

However missions most likely will be generated from within vegastrike,
or maybe not - it depends how you implement it.

If missions define need, the can be given by simulator, and considered by vs faction ai.

If missions define work, then of course they should be done by faction ai directly.

Anyway I think we need an economy simulator.

[lee]

Simulating economy seems more needed than an economy simulator: Simulating the production and consumption of an economy is pretty simple; simulating transportation is a bit more difficult. All of the aspects are specific to a specific application (game): They need to work with the available goods, the available places of production and consumption and have to use the available means of transportation.

Simulating production and consumption is simple because it's like saying "places of type T produce this much of the cargo types A, B and C, using that much of the cargo types D, E and F. Then it's integer math, like 5D+6E+3F=2A, 5B, 6C --- and 1F is already consumed in the process, like energy/fuel. If you assume "population" and "ship building" (which again is specific to the particular application/game) as factors that consume, you explain why there is consumption --- and you can do some integer math like "1000 people consume this much of that at places of this type", and so on. That's really simple.

What's harder is is keeping track of all the goods and places and the transportation, but that's what databases like mysql are for.

With that, what would there be left to do for an unspecific economy simulator?