Defining a new economic system for future versions

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javier
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Defining a new economic system for future versions

Post by javier »

There has been some threads about economy in VS during the last days, so this new one could seem reiterative. But I'm opening it for having a place to discuss the mechanics of a new system for the future, built from the ground. Some valuables ideas has been presented in this thread, http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... hp?t=10605, but seems to me there has been some confusion about what has been the original topic, so we could follow from here.

I'd like we don't distract ourselves here with ideas trying to balance or fix the actual system. The thread mentioned should be the right place. This is all about replacing it with something maybe more realistic but mainly more varied and entertaining.
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Post by safemode »

the only thing i would suggest as missing and being important in the current economy is the lack of generation and consumption dynamics.

Places would need to consume certain quantities of goods to stay functional and produce whatever they are supposed to produce. This would require trade to exist. If that trade stopped, the base would stop producing, price may go up to a point, then collapse as the "economy" died. We'd then have a long period where trade would net little money, but if it continued, things would return to normal.

As a side-note. Prices should not only depend on the quantity at a base, but in the system supply-demand. In system trade should be much more rampant than inter-system trade. Bringing in goods to a system, even if the base doesn't necessarily use the goods, should net a high profit if that good is rare in that system, because the resell value to in-system traders would be high.

We should really fake a good deal of in-system trade based on actual in system trading, like some higher multiple after an actual trade is made. This would mean a single ship would represent many more for in-system trading. The multiple would be lower for intersystem trading. This way blockades would work, but you wouldn't have bases starving everywhere because they'd need far more goods than the number of ships in a system could supply.
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Post by Breakable »

I am still proposing to add a link to
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... tem_Design
in the first post. It could be - as some people pointed out - premature, but IMHO it could lead to designing a system wikipedia style.

Nothing very important there for now, but i think anyone could comment on the current contents.


Regards,
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Post by javier »

safemode wrote: the only thing i would suggest as missing and being important in the current economy is the lack of generation and consumption dynamics.
But this is the core of the system. A proper dynamic production/consumption model is way more important than any other thing in this issue. This concept should be the starting design point.
safemode wrote: Places would need to consume certain quantities of goods to stay functional and produce whatever they are supposed to produce. This would require trade to exist. If that trade stopped, the base would stop producing, price may go up to a point, then collapse as the "economy" died. We'd then have a long period where trade would net little money, but if it continued, things would return to normal.
Nothing to say at this, I agree with you. The only concern is if there should be a link between incoming goods and outgoing production or if it complicates things more than we desire them to be. Don't overlook this is not an economy simulation game. We need it mainly to support back stories, and player growing.
safemode wrote: As a side-note. Prices should not only depend on the quantity at a base, but in the system supply-demand. In system trade should be much more rampant than inter-system trade. Bringing in goods to a system, even if the base doesn't necessarily use the goods, should net a high profit if that good is rare in that system, because the resell value to in-system traders would be high.
That has been talked in the thread mentioned at the head of the thread. One factor when computing the resources prices should be accessibility. Same conditions as production output, the nearer a supply origin is, the cheaper.
I suggested having a system wide import/export list to make inter-systems calculations, and shadow_slicer came with a nice idea about a resistor network to simulate supplying difficulty.
safemode wrote: We should really fake a good deal of in-system trade based on actual in system trading, like some higher multiple after an actual trade is made. This would mean a single ship would represent many more for in-system trading. The multiple would be lower for intersystem trading. This way blockades would work, but you wouldn't have bases starving everywhere because they'd need far more goods than the number of ships in a system could supply.
At the moment, I like shadow_slicer idea more. :wink: But we are only starting with this.
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Post by Breakable »

Regarding a new economy system, i would love to see one that is totally dynamic and does not have any hard coded values. EDIT:And not cheating as well!

The maximum production capacity depends on base development level.
The cost in resources of one item depends on faction science level.
The amount of resources available comes from traders delivering them.
The global scarcity of resources depends on planet/base types in the galaxy.
The science level depends on how many science bases were able to achieve.
The number of ships spawned depends on number ships produced and pilots trained.
The price of a good depends on how much (and how long) it is needed on a specific location. This would automatically include scarcity and distance.
The type of good produced depends on facilities build.

I think for a first implementation all those numbers should be harcoded. Actually i think we mostly have a working system that simulates this, just not on the correct level.

Only after a fully working system with hardcoded constants is implemented, debugged and balanced, one by one they could be released, and become dynamic.
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Post by Breakable »

The minimum amount of predefined - harcoded things i see is:

How much the price goes up if resource is not available for x time. This could depend on resource type, and location (base/planet/faction/conditions). For example a planet under a blocade that is affected by plague for a long time should fetch quite a fortune for a small delivery of medicaments. Something that would be worth running away from a whole faction for half of a galaxy.

The initial value of how much resources you need to produce a different resource.

How much science level affects resource efficiency.

How much each building (or just a planet/base) has capacity.

Then there is number and location of bases/planets which is currently randomly generated - good enough.
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Post by javier »

Not really, IMHO. To me, the main trait of a viable model lays in its ability to react to stimuli.
It doesn't really matter if they are balanced or not, because this could be done later with relative ease. The real problem with the actual system is not the coherency of goods assignments, nor the costs balance between types of bases, but its inflexibility. It doesn't really react to anything, and this is why I think is not fixable.

The main problem is to define what are the stimulus the system reacts to and what is its response.
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Post by safemode »

I'm more concerned with using the economy to influence the power balance among factions. Making the economy responsible for the new creation of ships in a faction, making those bases that produce ships be the sole spawning location of new ships, and making material trading the sole way ships can be built (shipyards would consume resources in order to build X number of ships and the cost would depend on the ship built).

Thus there are two ways to cripple a faction, remove the ability to create new ships by destroying the ship yards, or remove the ability for for the shipyards to procure materials needed to build ships.

The micro-managing is all done by the faction AI, not the player, but the player and ship ai's can influence the economy by blockades, destroying bases and by general trade. General resources levels of the locations of bases would have certain goods auto-regenerate at a certain interval, depending on what we decide would be naturally available, but anything else would have to be traded in, or ship production could stop, and the faction would be unable to cope with losses.

I really dont care about the details of prices from one place to the other, or of supply and demand in any level other than in the consumption production sense i've described. I want to make ships numbers finite in the game, in the sense that in order to build more than what we start out with, it's going to cost the ship-yard, and thus it's in the faction's interest to make sure the shipyard (and thus those that trade to it) have a healthy amount of trade and stay out of enemy hands, and to procure more bases so that trade can increase.

edit:
this would have the added benefit of making factions with shipyards more powerful, than those that dont, simply by effect of being able to build more ships. Giving a more realistic dynamic between the different factions (many small factions and a few powerful ones).

You'd still be able to buy ships at places other than shipyards, but the total number of ships is dictated by the production of the shipyards, and selling your ship to a base could allow an ai to buy the ship and it would be added to the faction that that particular base belongs to. You may find that spare ships in certain systems are scarce, or completely sold out, due to low production of that faction's shipyard and thus the high demand for ships.

If we want to get more complicated, we can have the AI take spare non-military ships (in a time of distress) and recycle them to military ones. Becoming a privateer in a system with that occuring would be very lucrative.
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Post by javier »

What you're talking about is a supply/manufacturing chain. The shipyard demand parts and produce ships who are on demand on another places. That parts, in turn are supplied from factories who demand raw materials from planets and mining bases. This can be very well represented by the resistor network model proposed. What are needed is some way to represent variations of resistances because events like the presence of hostile forces in your supply systems.

By the way, the simulation of the active system should be richer than the background, taking into account more local events than systems, let's call inactive. A blockade could be affecting only a concrete station, base or planet in the system you are, but in the background simulations of another systems it's more affordable to affect the total balance of them.

Once this is in place, the factions AI must consider some places more valuable and worth to be defended.
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Post by safemode »

simulations are already richer in the current system compared to other systems, though, we run detailed simulations in adjacent systems to the current one dependent on the config variable for the number of adjacent systems.

variations in the supply and demand should be handled by making production/consumption finite, and having renewable resources, renew in the areas that they would logically renew.

It's not complicated. But to keep the vast economies of whole systems active without simulating the number of supply ships needed to maintain that system we'd have to use fudge values when a simulated ship actually trades.

So say, we trade ore with a manufacturing base, we only carry a miniscule amount compared to what a base would require. We cant actually expect the required amount of ore to be traded via simulated ships. We just dont simulate that many ships. The entire game would be dedicated to micromanaging trade. So we use a multiplier when a ship makes a trade, simulating many ships making a trade. Since this is initiated only when an actual ship makes a trade, it's possible to blockade and possible to alter the supply and thus demand of planets/systems and factions.

This would make it plausible to have finite levels of production and consumption without all the bases falling on their faces. We want to take away the micromanaging pitfalls while still allowing micro-managing to be effective. I dont see any other way of doing that other than that described above.

We do the renewable resources correctly, we set the items that can be produced and the cost of them. Then we set initial values for when we create a new universe. Allow the (not yet coded) faction AI to see goods levels across it's bases, and the price will auto adjust to the supply and demand. End of story. No need to know about other faction's resources or resources in other systems. We use a multiplier for when a trade is made and make trade a heavy priority for AI ships not in the military.
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Post by bgaskey »

Dynamic pricing is the main thing missing from our current 'economy'. If dynamic pricing is added to the engine, modders/community members/me can add features like this instead of just hacking units.csv. I like safemode's trade multiplier to reduce traffic too. Less ships=less crashing and less mad n00b laggzorz :wink:

If unavailability can become an issue, there would be an advantage to raiding an enemy by blasting mining bases/gasmines etc.

However, to simulate the entire universe's dynamic economics, we need to add threading and everyone needs to get new computers :wink:
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Post by safemode »

my multiplier idea isn't to reduce the current number of ships, but rather to not have to have the tens of hundreds of thousands of ships that you'd need to keep up the economy of supply and demand. Right now we do about 5000 units. We have plans to scale to at least 10,000
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Post by javier »

Not really, because you don't need to store all data in memory. That's what databases are made for. If we could store economic data in the form of tables, we could have a database associated to the file save and a lightweight background process taking care of everything. There should be no shipping routes more than three or four jumps away.
After all, in a whole star system with significant population, the most of its needs should be covered intra system, and you always can estimate the import/export balance without the need of that scaled units. After all, commerce tends to be produced naturally without the constant vigilance of a superior entity.
The only explanation for larger shipping routes must be putting some scarce resources of some kind in the supply chain, and this also create the opportunity to affect the economic stability of the system. And there is where units fits.

An example, if you have an acuatic planet and a mining base in the same system, you could make an estimation of the food produced by the former, and from this stock, you could subtract the needed by the mining facility, having a remainder to export. You have no need to simulate a unit for that, it's only an update operation at database level. On the other hand, such mining base needs to be supplied with mining drills to produce ore. You don't really need hundreds of vessels carrying drills, only a mule from time to time. So, you plan a cargo run from the nearest factory to the mining base. This unit could be hunting down, creating a temporal scarcity who can make prices up. Keep blocking imports, and you could shut production down.

But again, such an unit it's only really needed if you can interact with it, and this means in farther systems it's not really needed also, and could be managed estimating lead time and probability to reach destination based in factors like distance and hostile presence.

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Post by chuck_starchaser »

I think what you guys are neglecting to discuss is the most crucial issue here: Implementation. It's all fine to talk about planetary microeconomics and transportation costs. The big question is will we need to buy Cray computers to run the game?

Consider this:

You got an agricultural base. It's got food and wine an bevers to export.
Whom does it export to? Are you going to do a graph search to make a list of all planets and bases reachable within say 4 jumps, to see which are the highest bidders, as well as a list of producers of the products your agri base needs?

Then, so, for each product in question you add estimated transportation costs and then sort the list in descending or ascending order for each of 100 or so items, to pick the winners. Do this again for each of the 10 thousand or so bases in the universe, then apply the trading rules, recalculate prices; consider modifier events, and now you're ready for the next frame. Repeat it all over.

Well, someone is going to say "hey, we can just keep those tables so the next frame is easier to compute!". Unfortunately, the tables don't fit in memory. Or do they? Heck, even keeping the prices of items for each planet is probably a memory guzzler as is, never mind having a list of planets withing jump fuel reach with one sorting index for every tradeable item.

And never ming the time it would take to simulate all this in python. Someone should be thinking of writing it in MMX/XMM assembler...

For one thing, I think a simulated economy will have to be written as a co-routine that can divide the work of one simulation step across multiple frames.
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Post by Xit »

I would say that it doesn't have to update every single time, we might establish that a particular trade route for one cargo item is good today, and so we'd expect to try it maybe 5, 10, 20 times. It might be bad next time, but routes will naturally fluctuate if things are happening between systems. So I'd say it doesn't have to do it perfectly for all concerned to make the maximum profit on every journey.
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Post by javier »

chuck_starchaser wrote:I think what you guys are neglecting to discuss is the most crucial issue here: Implementation. It's all fine to talk about planetary microeconomics and transportation costs. The big question is will we need to buy Cray computers to run the game?

Consider this:

You got an agricultural base. It's got food and wine an bevers to export.
Whom does it export to? Are you going to do a graph search to make a list of all planets and bases reachable within say 4 jumps, to see which are the highest bidders, as well as a list of producers of the products your agri base needs?
Taking this example, first you look for consumption within the system. The remainder quantities could be distributed between jump nodes factoring a resistance factor, initially equal. Then put a high resistance to imports of such goods at the jump point.
When evaluating a surrounding system, this stock is taken into account as a secondary origin, with a price factor correction. You cover needs from the supply points by best price available, first in system production, then jump points. If you have to consume from a jump point, make the resistance to this good lower, what will affect next distribution run in the former system. After the consumption phase is completed, put the remainders at the jump points again and iterate. The advantage of such a system is that it tends to balance itself. Think about it as some kind of electric distribution grid with dynamic resistances between nodes.
chuck_starchaser wrote: Well, someone is going to say "hey, we can just keep those tables so the next frame is easier to compute!". Unfortunately, the tables don't fit in memory. Or do they? Heck, even keeping the prices of items for each planet is probably a memory guzzler as is, never mind having a list of planets withing jump fuel reach with one sorting index for every tradeable item.

And never ming the time it would take to simulate all this in python. Someone should be thinking of writing it in MMX/XMM assembler...
I'm for using a database. By example, sqlite is free, usable from C++ or Python and should be able to manage the information volume.
chuck_starchaser wrote: For one thing, I think a simulated economy will have to be written as a co-routine that can divide the work of one simulation step across multiple frames.
Yes. The farther the system are, the lesser the frequency to be updated.

One point not mentioned before, the production shouldn't be lineal, but a curve, increasing at a lower rate after reaching a saturation point.
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More resistor networks

Post by shadow_slicer »

I put together a pdf describing my nodal analysis idea in more detail. I think that this method will result in better results than a graph search. While using it you can even split the universe up in to pieces or arbitrary size and simulate them separately. You can even simulate these parts at different frequencies (though dt would need to be set appropriately for each part, so we would need to solve the problem again if we changed frequencies).


http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~bhamilton3 ... oposal.pdf

So feel free to discuss.
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Post by javier »

Great! Thanks.
I've just read it, and can only say it seems a sound proposal.

Do you think we could think about building a test case with three or four systems and a bunch of goods?
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Post by safemode »

i dont see the need to know what the values of goods are across planets. for the purposes of trade. We let the AI traders function on the idea of wanting the most profit. Then we work on each base individually, altering prices on a supply and demand _for that base only_. We dont need to keep track of anyone's prices.

We let the ai loose to decide for themselves what to buy and where to sell. They'll pick the correct items by simply following the capatalistic nature of supply and demand. We can reduce the wandering around looking for a buyer or a seller by having a single lookup table of wants/haves; When we have a surplus at a base of an item, we push our name into the row for that tiem under the have column. If we need an item, we push our name into the row of that item and under the column for need. When our state changes, we pop our name.

Every base gets a reference to this map (universal stock market, trade is canon-compliant). We then allow the unit making the trade decision to decide if which base to goto based on location and profit.

That's not cpu intensive, not ram intensive and doesn't require a magic hand doing things behind the back of the game.

basically, the ai will come to a planet and see what they have to sell. They then start looking at who wants to buy it and if they're close. We rate who we want to trade to based on heirarchy. Shipyard is top. Manufacturer is second. Miner is third. Agricultural is 4th and the rest are last. We buy goods that are needed by the top base in our list. Working our way down. If we have a choice of goods, we pick the cheaper one.

Prices are determined when a trader accesses the base for buying/selling. that particular base looks at what it needs the most and increases the value paid above base based on it's need and other bases needing that item. If a base has surplus of resources other bases needs, selling cost is increased. If it hat a surplus and nobody needs it, selling cost is decreased.

In this way, we dont need to keep track of values. we just need to know if a base wants something or has something extra. Prices are calculated on a per base setup when a trade is being initiated, since it only has to deal with itself, this is acceptable.

I dont see why that method isn't superior to others.
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Post by safemode »

the key with the above suggestion is the heirarchy. ai units will be compelled to supply the upper level bases with their needs first, then work their way down. In this way we can handle supply and demand inherently.

Prices would per base would be easily handled with the lookup table (only one) where our calulation of price increase,decrease would be weighted based on the locality of the bases wanting/having an item. Our own base being the biggest weight, in-system bases being the second, and other bases being third. We can ignore the actual distance, we only need to care about in-system or out of system.


This should result in a fair price for goods across a system and intersystem. We could also make ai ships of a faction, only patron bases of that faction, privateers would just choose the most profit.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

The problem is the same, whether you call it "trade" or "ai".
To simulate a trader's ai, you have to give that trader ai information on which to base its decisions. That information must necessarily include, if not actual prices, at least the types of bases that can be reached within jump fuel distance. That's a lot of processing to do for every trader.

Perhaps one possible solution would be to have two types of traders: "Syndicated" and "independent", we could call them.

Syndicated traders would follow fixed trading circuits that would be computed and optimized once, and baked into the universe at generation time. They'd constitute the majority of ships, and carry the bulk of goods.

Independent traders would use a different, more sophisticated kind of ai that looks for niches and opportunities, but be much fewer in numbers.
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Post by Xit »

I disagree, the "syndicated", otherwise known as faction trade routes, need to be dynamic too, but just as I pointed out, they don't need to be updated for every single journey, just for major events and maybe every 20 journeys.

"Independent" would just be refering to the privateers already described by safemode.
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Post by shadow_slicer »

@safemode: We calculate the values of goods across planets for the purpose of knowing the value of goods at the planets. Knowing the quantity of commodities traded between systems is extra, allowing the trade ships to follow sane routes. Its a little difficult to determine the actual routes in this method because it doesn't describe where the individual commodities -- it just says something along the lines of "120 of you go that way" at each node.

The fact is we need to know the prices of goods at at the player's current location. The price of goods at any point in the economy depends on the prices everywhere, so it is almost as simple to calculate the prices everywhere at once.

As you mentioned earlier, it is impractical to have vegastrike simulate all of the trade traffic that passes through the universe. In my method we can calculate the prices at each base and then allow simulated ships to run deliver some portion of the goods.

Your method is interesting and avoids some of the problems with my method. I really need to think about it further. The major problem I see with it now is that it treats all out-system bases equally. I don't think this would adequately take into account certain factors. If a system that is a key trade route is put under siege, adjacent systems should feel a squeeze. In your system, these bases would adjust their prices based on an average which includes all the nodes in the universe not suffering from a siege.

I think that if you were to try to simulate capitalism correctly on that scale, you need to take into account the costs incurred by global conditions. This means you need to take into the account the cost due to risk of crossing faction lines, asteroid fields, pirates, sieges, and all other kinds of conditions which my nodal analysis method approximates with some calculated 'resistance'. If you simulate that, you end up with something significantly more complicated than the nodal analysis method.
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Post by safemode »

i really dont see where all this cpu requirement is coming from. If we stay away from having to traverse a list of units each time a single unit wants to buy/sell an item, we dont see any crazy amount of cpu usage. When you do traverse the list, we have scaling issues.

My method allows you to not traverse a list. All you need to do is worry about your own base, your own unit and that's it. The game wont care about the particulars of each base, each base derives it's own price based on the want/need table, and the want/have table is referenced in every base, which the ai player looks at when they decide what to buy/sell.

There is no need to know the price on another base. No need to know the number of items on another base. All we do is indicate what bases want and what bases have certain items, the type of base and faction. We Then know what bases are within the sytem and what bases we prefer to fullfill the needs of and how to do it, all inherently within the system i described. No special hardcore cpu involved.

AI players are the means by which a base gets what it wants, but no specific orders are given. The ai trader is coded to need to fullfill wants to bases of it's faction or to it's profit in a heirarchal way. Thus the supply and demand chain is fullfilled automatically. Price is handled automatically. This method should have no problem scaling if we had 10 bases or 1000 bases.
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Post by javier »

@safemode
The problem I see with your proposal is that even with a scaling factor, you could end needing thousand of units to cover the trading needs of the whole universe. In shadow_slicer's proposal, as I understand it, the existence of units driven by some AI, covering profitable trade routes is only one more of the inputs, thus less units are going to be needed. I don't think the two visions are opposite, but let his to be the base layer of the economic system and yours act as one modifying factor, altering resistance levels.
With more than five thousand systems, any viable mechanism hasn't simply the time to take too many decisions, so you need systematic calculations like he is proposing. What I like more is that any event could at the end be reduced to a number in the matrix, and this is only what is needed to make an estimation run.
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