Nice effort, OP!
The Static Galaxy, the Background Sim, and the Economy: Why Player-Owned Stations is not the sole answer
- Thread starter LittleJP
- Start date
The problem is not that we want to have more influence than the NPC over the Galaxy, we know that FD can tweak the ratio, they've already done it a few times since beta.What makes you think it is static?? It's a game world with billions (trillions?) of NPCs running their businesses. Why would the ruminations of a few players have a drastic influence on that? Or is it that you (like so many others) want a game that revolves around you? Also, you must not have looked at the forum much, as historically there has been a lot of threads about trade routes drying up and/or reappearing.
Patch 1.4 appear to come with the possibility for players to influence the expansion of minor factions into Powers. Hopefully that will help to give a feeling of influence.
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The problem is that your "trillions" of simulated NPCs also have a very limited effect on the galaxy, even less than players I suppose.
What I'd like to know is how much of the simulation is actually disabled (because of bugs or lack of implementation of following mechanisms like building station after expension) and what they plan to add.
What I fear is that something as basic as production chains was never planned and can't be easily added at this point of the development.
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Thanks LittleJP- agree with everything.
Imo, this is the NUMBER 1 issue for ED to get right, as it ties directly into player motivation and believability. It's about the longterm... the Galaxy just won't feel believable and hence deserving as a place to hang around in, until these issues are addressed. When all purpose feels arbitrary and hugely faked, even contradictory and nonsensical, that's a problem, and no amount of bolted on extras will help.
It's foundational- game making or game breaking. People say the foundations are good, but they are not good. We're far away from the dynamic Galaxy concepted in the Kickstarter, it's obvious.
Imo, this is the NUMBER 1 issue for ED to get right, as it ties directly into player motivation and believability. It's about the longterm... the Galaxy just won't feel believable and hence deserving as a place to hang around in, until these issues are addressed. When all purpose feels arbitrary and hugely faked, even contradictory and nonsensical, that's a problem, and no amount of bolted on extras will help.
It's foundational- game making or game breaking. People say the foundations are good, but they are not good. We're far away from the dynamic Galaxy concepted in the Kickstarter, it's obvious.
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The BGS is the fundament of the gameplay and it's so underdevelopment that I have to question FD's qualities of making a game in this scale. Improving it has been a continuous request since Alphas but it hasn't changet a bit since.
What ED would purely benefit of:
- properly configured supply chain so mining and trade could be dynamic and meaningful
- properly configured political background and persistent responses from the system authorities and other NPCs according to the current states
- reflective mission system working along the simulated needs and the local supply/demand situations
- BSG which takes the pilot rankings into consideration and offers scaled content of gameplay according to the levels
Why it's not possible:
- lack of server support and the limits of the current instancing system
- the emptiness of 400 billion rather than a more detailed fewer (PP is like a try to trade in size to density but it is not supported by any better BSG than we are talking about anyway)
- manually curated universe - is ED a tabletop RPG with game masters?
- FD's business model with the contstant need of finding new playerbase to get cash from
So where's ED's potential?
What ED would purely benefit of:
- properly configured supply chain so mining and trade could be dynamic and meaningful
- properly configured political background and persistent responses from the system authorities and other NPCs according to the current states
- reflective mission system working along the simulated needs and the local supply/demand situations
- BSG which takes the pilot rankings into consideration and offers scaled content of gameplay according to the levels
Why it's not possible:
- lack of server support and the limits of the current instancing system
- the emptiness of 400 billion rather than a more detailed fewer (PP is like a try to trade in size to density but it is not supported by any better BSG than we are talking about anyway)
- manually curated universe - is ED a tabletop RPG with game masters?
- FD's business model with the contstant need of finding new playerbase to get cash from
So where's ED's potential?
What makes you think it is static?? It's a game world with billions (trillions?) of NPCs running their businesses. Why would the ruminations of a few players have a drastic influence on that? Or is it that you (like so many others) want a game that revolves around you? Also, you must not have looked at the forum much, as historically there has been a lot of threads about trade routes drying up and/or reappearing.
Patch 1.4 appear to come with the possibility for players to influence the expansion of minor factions into Powers. Hopefully that will help to give a feeling of influence.
I see people saying 'but you're small fry with no relevance' all the time, and the simple fact of the matter is that it isn't true. You, as a player, can determine who rules star systems, can avert diseases or famines singlehandedly and can collapse systems into civil war or catapult them into economic boom, assuming you're willing to put in the work to do so.
If players were actually irrelevant, the BG sim would be an entirely one way interaction; it'd be something that happened to you, and your actions wouldn't affect it in any way whatsoever. This is clearly not the case, as player actions - especially the actions of organised groups of players - can have a significant local impact on the BG sim.
The issue is that whatever happens in the background, it doesn't actually change anything, beyond changing the legality of some goods. All the minor factions behave in pretty much the same way, all the major factions do as well. They all give you the same missions, they never build new stations or colonise new systems, nothing. Nobody outside of those players or groups ever notices anything has changed, not because those players had no impact, but because currently, the changes themselves are little more than cosmetic and have little practical impact.
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No, I think most people completely fail to understand how hard this is to program, how long it would take, and how hard it is to accurately simulate. Additionally if people are expecting this to happen in something approaching real-time and not a weekly tick over (ie you're blindly doing stuff without knowing the immediate results which in itself is incredibly complex) then you're dealing with a massive, no gigantic increased load on servers. You'd need more of them, and more powerful ones. Go take a look at how long it takes to sell data from a long trip exploring.
That's without mentioning the fact we're only up to month 8 since release and everyone has something 'they should have already included, patches, fixed, developed'.
Something Frontier could do is to have someone on the community side who does some explanation of ideas, from development through to completion, complete with some basic descriptions of the problems in getting it done. That way people would have a better understanding of the challenges Dev face.
Just because it is difficult to implement does not mean that we should not demand this as an immense improvement on the current sim, especially as this was what was originally promised in the kickstarter.
I did write a long post, but then thought 'meh, it boils down to the above'. I'd love to see the background sim become more dynamic and provide more events even outside of player interaction.
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I'd love to see more linkage from the background sim to the AI traffic generated in system (e.g. in a 'boom' generate rich freighter traffic and escorts, in 'expansion' generate cap ship movements, troop transports, colony ships, marshalling areas etc., in 'epidemic' generate hospital transports etc.), but the sheer number of possible events means that things will probably be a long while coming, if at all.
I don't think that's really the case. I think most people understand that what was described originally and what players expect for the game, is ambitious, yet that's what we all signed up for. To leave things in the state they are in now would be really unfortunate, disappointing to say the least. If all this dynamic gameplay is still on the cards, then great- i can be as patient as you like... reset my credit balance, delete my CMDR profile, do whatever it takes to get the game up to scratch, I don't care. Break all the eggs. I'm worried that at this point things are too far along, we've been locked into a shadow of the original conception of the game and it's going to be really hard to go forwards or backwards because any slight change ends up annoying someone... so the foundations aren't really improving, because everything of course rests on top of that.
In a video last year DB laid out a scenario whereby a policy change to pay miners more for their ore led to higher ship costs in associated systems. Have you ever seen ship prices change? Could you even imagine that the price of ore could have anything to do with ship prices in the current game? You would never think that. In the scenario given everything is connected. In the game we're playing now, very little is connected and that's the reason people are crying out about puddle like depth, boredom, lack of immersion, etc. Those aren't descriptors for successful, long-term games.
What this game needs is a *procedurally generated method of expansion, colonization and development*. A faction rich in capital should look at controlling nearby systems (already in game) OR developing their current system if this is impractical or impossible (ex. Past range limit), based on exploration data sold to them. I want to see factions building new in-system stations to fill holes in their economy if local resources support it. They should begin terraforming where possible in controlled space and create agricultural stations.
Obviously, this cannot be done by any old faction. This can only happen through concentrated efforts of players, either over a long period of time or through intense activity to increase available capital for these very expensive investments.
Think about it. You jump into a system, see that they have a station under construction *without a community goal* You know that this means prices for metals and machinery will go through the roof due to high demand. For combat pilots this means they can get contracts to protect the vulnerable and uncompleted station from attack from hostile factions or from pirates (think of bridge thieves). Imagine fighting through the gut of an unfinished station. Consequently, the reverse should be possible. A faction should abandon unprofitable stations should they enter a state where they cannot maintain it. Another faction can move in and take the station, should they be able to afford it, or perhaps let it sit mothballed until someone can claim ownership of it.
The same goes for terraforming a planet. A faction gains enough capital to develop a planet, and therefore begins the process. You enter a system with terraforming in progress, and sell the needed products to aid this process.
This brings me to my second main point. Why do we have limits on commodity prices? This leads to simple A to B trading, or possible *gasp* A to B to C to A trading!
I propose we let prices rise/fall freely without a cap. If a station is experiencing a chronic food/medicine shortage, I damn well should see prices/profit rising to above 1k a ton, depending how severe it is. A faction building a new station should be paying a King’s ransom for needed goods *if this is not adequately supplied*. This should limit straight A to B trading and encourage traders to explore different stations and routes to earn the most profit. Sure, CR/Ton/H won’t be constant, but it will vary, and the old average should remain the same. Untrafficked areas should damn well be paying a premium for much needed supplies, and even more if they are experiencing a state, either existing or proposed in this post. *There should not be a situation where there are only 6 different goods traded by any trader worth their salt*
Additionally, why do we not have proper supply chains? A lack in say, explosives needed for the production of the extraction of metals should bottleneck it badly. A station should pay a premium for explosives until this is resolved, so long as there are buyers for metals. If not, production should drop, and therefore the need for explosives. Consequently, oft fulfilled supply chains could drive a station to invest in increased production and vice versa (imperial slaves for Empire, slaves where it’s allowed, robotics for feds, mineral extractors to increase metals, agricultural cultivators for food, etc).
My next point is population. Population change is not currently modelled at all. We do have a population number on systems, but this does not change at all. Population serves very little purpose save to determine supply/demand on goods.
Population should change freely as well. War refugees should flee to neighboring systems. Outbreak and famine should cause population decrease and emigration (it’s stated that this is modelled, but I personally have not observed it; correct me if I’m wrong). Bust should cause working age population to leave emigrate. Consequently, boom should cause an influx of population rushing to fulfil jobs. Cheap food should encourage population growth. A newly terraformed planet should increase a total population capacity and attract migrants.
TL
BGS and Economy are static, build them properly and the galaxy will feel dynamic.
Nice ideas OP, but I am affraid that it is simply IMPOSSIBLE from technical point of view.
We are using words like "Background simulation". But there is NO background simulation at all. There are no servers constantly chewing data and running economy/supply/demand calculations based on input from players. There are no background running processes for building something etc.
If you will examine the whole mechanism of the so-called BGS for some time, you will see how all thing works now. If absolutely no player is in the star system ExampleSystem, instance is deleted and does not exist at all. Maybe for hours, maybe for weeks real time, the whole ExampleSystem is not in memory of any computer on Earth.
As soon as first player log into (or fly into) star system, the instance is created and filled with objects (planets, stations etc.) from procedurally generated database. So called "Comodity market" in filled with default values of amounts, prices etc. NPC ships are generated in system. As long as you are the only player in this system, you cannot see any other player in Open. When you buy for example full T9 of some commodity, the amount available on market is substracted and cargo is added to your T9. If you left the system and fly to sell the cargo somewhere, the instance wait for timeout (I tried to measure it and it seems that it is something like 10 minutes) and if there is nobody in the system, the system is deleted and again non existent. If you or some other player come into the ExampleSystem before the timer run out, timer is resetted. If there is more CMDRs in the ExampleSystem instance, they can see each other in Open. If there is more than 32 CMDRs, a new instance is opened, filled with values COPIED from previous, already existing instance.
Of course, if you are in Solo/Group, you cannot see other players in the instance and in any mode you can see players from other instances. But you can see for example that some commodities has lower amount on market, maybe they vanish from market at all. Commodities are refilled either if some player bring cargo to sell or automatically in 10 minutes interval. I did not measured it, but I suppose that those automatic intervals are the same intervals when for example the Bulletin boars missions are refreshed.
But after all players from ExampleSystem will go to sleep and you as a last one switche the game off, the ExampleSystem instance is deleted when the timer expires and tomorrow, when you log in, the system will be fresh, resupplied etc.
Under those conditions of fundamental design (no simulation, but only underlying database) you cannot have dynamic systems, slowly building stations, dynamic trading prices, emigrations to neighbour systems etc. There are no mechanisms for such kind of interaction and system development. And I am almost sure that it is either impossible or too expensive develop some other mechanisms for sheer amout of systems which forms the ED galaxy. Dynamical system with real and continually running simulation is possible for couple hundreds of systems, maybe couple of thousands of systems. But not for tens of thousands or millions.
If this is correct (and I am afraid it maybe right), that there is nothing about any kind of "simulation" at all.
The space trucking is probably not a simulation of any kind of spaceship or space combat and the so-called BGS seem to be so static and controlled from the devs, that the word "simulation"
is not true here either. Very sad.
They have "restored order" in Power Play already.
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Well done. This is a single player game, as far as the background simulation goes, and you have defined why it will stay that way.
Anybody have a few dozen Cray (or equivalent) super-computers handy?
This is why the background sim won out as first choice in a poll of things to get done- and it is one that Frontier probably knows it can't fix.
Insert One Trillion USD, please. Bitcoin not accepted.
This is why the background sim won out as first choice in a poll of things to get done- and it is one that Frontier probably knows it can't fix.
Insert One Trillion USD, please.
Bitcoin not accepted.I am affraid that Cray X-MP is a famous name, but really obsolete hardware. If you dig the historical Cray XMP parameters, I am affraid that today's top graphic cards like GTX Titan has far more computational capacity than bunch of Crays.Anybody have a few dozen Cray (or equivalent) super-computers handy?
This is why the background sim won out as first choice in a poll of things to get done- and it is one that Frontier probably knows it can't fix.
Insert One Trillion USD, please.
BTW, I bet a dime against bean that even the background database is not fully existing since the beginning. I am my whole life (50 y.o.) in IT bussiness of various kind and I am former programmer, so I have a bit of knowledge how things works.
I bet that for systems that are yet "Unexplored", there is nothing in database. As soon as the first explorer "come" to the new system, game ask the database and if answer is "Unexplored - nil", new random procedurally generated system is created locally in the machine of this explorer after he makes a scan. So far, so good.
When the explorer is selling data back home, only at this moment, there is database write and under the system name, there is added a record with something like K type star, six planets, two gas giants, two ice planets etc. Plus the name of the explorer. Nothing more, nothing less. The system is still non existent, until some another CMDR will enter it. When he will enter, the system is locally generated in his computer, using data from shared background database.
I bet that for systems that are yet "Unexplored", there is nothing in database. As soon as the first explorer "come" to the new system, game ask the database and if answer is "Unexplored - nil", new random procedurally generated system is created locally in the machine of this explorer after he makes a scan. So far, so good.
When the explorer is selling data back home, only at this moment, there is database write and under the system name, there is added a record with something like K type star, six planets, two gas giants, two ice planets etc. Plus the name of the explorer. Nothing more, nothing less. The system is still non existent, until some another CMDR will enter it. When he will enter, the system is locally generated in his computer, using data from shared background database.
I believe what you say is partially correct, that there isn't a global database full of records for *every* system in-game, but there must be databases full of info for the *inhabited* systems, that exist irrespective of whether any players are present in an instance there, keeping track of things like the statuses of factions, whether they are expanding, in civil war etc. There are back-end, abstract simulation systems that periodically run on those databases to update system statuses. Hence, given these status flags, context-sensitive AI traffic and signal sources can be generated when a player is present (e.g. 'Seeking weapons'. 'Combat zones' etc.) It's not a much bigger step to imagine 'station under construction' zones being added when certain criteria in the local or adjacent systems are met is it?
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There was also an early newsletter that shows a 'mini-Elite' AI trading program in action - with AI trading between systems - now whether that program ever successfully worked, and was rolled out across the entire database is another matter. Likewise keeping track of all commodities values and levels in all inhabited systems might be off the cards as it is much easier to generate such things on the fly, and reset the system regularly when things go out-of-whack.
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Saying there's no simulation, and there can never be one, is a little disingenuous. There is definitely some simulation going on - else minor factions would never change state at all. Likewise, the simulation doesn't have to continually update in real-time to be a simulation. OK, the depth and persistence of the simulation might not be what people want, and the influence people have on systems may be a little too abstract, not well explained, and be unresponsive to immediate updates, for people's tastes, and I'm not going to argue that there aren't many nasty bugs and weaknesses in the whole thing but... at the end of the day it's all 'smoke and mirrors' to provide a backdrop for flying a ship in space. Is anything more really necessary?
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*Edit* - Link to newsletter 20 featuring 'Mini Elite' doing AI trades in a limited number of systems. http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=ee05d74c71
Hard to imagine how many trades you'd need to simulate on an individual basis in the entire galaxy.
On, and I wonder what happened to 'Crisis Gas Grenades' as a commodity?
I'd imagine that, as the content of systems is dependent on the seed used to generate the system, that not even the types of planets need to be sent - just the commander id, seed value for the system and some form of bit-stream/hash of the planet(s) explored.
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I agree with what the OP is saying, as a trader the galaxy is empty of any real economy.
I can't even remember the last time i traded anything other than high end goods, such as Imp slaves, gold, platinum, superconductors, ect, and why would i, you take what gives the most profit.
You might as well just call them A,B,C ect, A-F good profit, never touch the rest of the alphabet.
All the goods are to me, is a name on a list. I never see them, bring more of one rather than the other has no effect anywhere in the game. All i get is a higher number for one than the other.
Apart from a little pew pew now and again, that is this game's total worth, PP added nothing to this, only another commodity name, merits.
Really hoping for more coming, and not more pew,pew in an Arena either. Just more to put in the sand. More depth of game play.
Edit: If i don't trade food, populations should decrease as they are starved and died.
If i don't trade metals, stations don't get built, ships don't get built either.
ect, ect, ect, this is how it should work in a real economy.
I can't even remember the last time i traded anything other than high end goods, such as Imp slaves, gold, platinum, superconductors, ect, and why would i, you take what gives the most profit.
You might as well just call them A,B,C ect, A-F good profit, never touch the rest of the alphabet.
All the goods are to me, is a name on a list. I never see them, bring more of one rather than the other has no effect anywhere in the game. All i get is a higher number for one than the other.
Apart from a little pew pew now and again, that is this game's total worth, PP added nothing to this, only another commodity name, merits.
Really hoping for more coming, and not more pew,pew in an Arena either. Just more to put in the sand. More depth of game play.
Edit: If i don't trade food, populations should decrease as they are starved and died.
If i don't trade metals, stations don't get built, ships don't get built either.
ect, ect, ect, this is how it should work in a real economy.
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