The static galaxy

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
We all have read the story about the living and breathing galaxy we call Elite Dangerous.

We have NPCs going on about their business, weddings happening and funerals being joined by gun toting maniacs adding to the body count because we can blaze our own way.

However the galaxy is static.
Nothing ever changes.
An Agri planet will always produce the same amount of fruit and veg, regardless of fertiliser or crop harvesters)
A refinery will always produce aluminium (regardless of bauxite present)
And a High tech will always produce the same amount of high tech commodities, regardless if their resources are present or not.

Where am I going with this?
The economy is static.
Goods are generated until a limit is reached and then go idle.
Demand is always the same, except for a few money making ones, and never gets filled. And even then the proportions are not accurate. Example: Demand is 20000 platinum. I park my carrier right at the door and start ferrying. After selling 15000t of Platnium, the demand should be down to 5000t. However it is not. It is down to 18000 platinum. Inconsistency.
Supply is 30000 fruit and veg. I buy 12000. Supply goes down to 28000. Again, doesn't make sense.

looking at the refinery again, where Aluminium is produced. Raw material for that is Bauxite. There is no chance of starving the station of Bauxite, and it will ALWAYS produce aluminium. (I'm picking this good because it's not something people mine to start with, thus eliminating the "but they are just supplied in solo mode" argument).

What is lacking is a proper production chain.
Aluminium gets produced with bauxite present.
Fruit and veg is produced with biowaste present. output is amplified by consuming crop harvesters. Example: Use 10t of biowaste to generate 80t of fruit and veg. If crop harvesters are present, use 10t of harvesters and double the output to 160t of fruit and veg.

This is what a BGS would look like to me.
This is what a living galaxy looks like to me.

What are your thoughts on this commanders?
Should the stations have a production chain?
Would it add more life to the populated area?
 

ADAMtheWELSHMANz

ADAMtheWELSHMANz
This is the sort of thing that needs to be designed into the game before release.

Trying to shoehorn it in 7+ years later would be a monumental task and likely have numerous issues.

Would I like it, yes, but lets be honest it's never going to happen this late into the games life.

Particularly when there are far more pressing issues to solve in the form of EDO which is still far from ideal for those that have it, and also unavailable to a large portion of the community at present.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
varonica said:
This again, there is no economy, everything is set manually by FDEV, it's a huge task to create a virtual economy and no game has really done this successfully! I can't imagine, well I can I suppose, the problems FDEV would have trying to implement a real virtual economy!
Click to expand...
The initial setup is big. I am well aware of that.
And yes, other games have done it before. Look at all the X series. Living economy. You can starve an entire sector by blockading it. no power cells? No production. no production, no goods. There is no magical "oh, can't produce because no resources, POP and here are now 50t of goods".

The hard part would be to create the production chains that also make sense.
Some are simple, like the bauxite to aluminium, others not so much, like what would create insulating membrane?
 

Andro

Andro
Having played Starbase for a bit, the player economy is fun but extremely volatile. It's also orders of magnitude smaller than what would be needed in Elite.
 

Kestrel1

Kestrel1
It would be a monumental amount of work for virtually no gain. Systems in Elite have billions of people. There are not enough CMDRs in the entire player base to even put a dent in an economies that large.

Think of it another way...

Yes, the systems are static/unrealistic. But they're static so they can look/feel somewhat realistic for anyone who's not looking very closely. Even if you modeled a "realistic" economy at the lowest level, you would have to introduce static/unrealistic systems somewhere in the chain so that CMDRs can have an impact on it.

Imagine wanting to create a blockade for the system I'm in right now, GD 140. It's relatively small with a population of 87 million. That's roughly the population of Germany today. How could you possibly design a system where 1-10 CMDRs (not 50 CMDRs, most people don't have friends lists that large) are able to influence the economy that large for more than 5 minutes? It just doesn't make sense. You'd need to introduce some force multiplier or other unrealistic component to the system.

Here's my point. If they designed a realistic economy then it would look like a lot like it does now. The "guts" underneath would be a realistic simulation but in the end it would feel static and boring... because huge systems are static and boring. And if they make any mistakes in the simulation (they would; it's a monumental task) then the whole simulation would go completely bonkers and need to be repaired in some way.
 

Danieros

D
Would I love to see this? Of course, this was one of the first things I wanted to find out when starting out - alongside if system populations were dynamic in someway. It would give purpose in supplying lower-value goods so that higher production ones get produced.

Realistically? This would be a whole new layer of trading/BGS and in a stable game it would be a very welcome addition to increase its depth. However we've had a big expansion recently released, and it's still getting patched, then it's going to have the console release... I wouldn't see anything like this being considered for a long time.
 

CMDR Saigon

CMDR Saigon
What % of inhabited space has PMF, I seem too see at least one in every other system and sometimes more and whilst many are dormant many also take control of systems...so I think they can affect the economy but like CMDR Tikanderoga pointed out, how realistic & how dynamic this economy really is...this can only truly be answered if FDEV brave enough to reduce "state-owned" subsidies/intervention and allow greater player economy to kick in.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
Kestrel1 said:
Yes, the systems are static/unrealistic. But they're static so they can look/feel somewhat realistic for anyone who's not looking very closely. Even if you modeled a "realistic" economy at the lowest level, you would have to introduce static/unrealistic systems somewhere in the chain so that CMDRs can have an impact on it.

Imagine wanting to create a blockade for the system I'm in right now, GD 140. It's relatively small with a population of 87 million. That's roughly the population of Germany today. How could you possibly design a system where 1-10 CMDRs (not 50 CMDRs, most people don't have friends lists that large) are able to influence the economy that large for more than 5 minutes? It just doesn't make sense. You'd need to introduce some force multiplier or other unrealistic component to the system.

Here's my point. If they designed a realistic economy then it would look like a lot like it does now. The "guts" underneath would be a realistic simulation but in the end it would feel static and boring... because huge systems are static and boring. And if they make any mistakes in the simulation (they would; it's a monumental task) then the whole simulation would go completely bonkers and need to be repaired in some way.
Click to expand...
Ok, let's take your example.
87m people would be consuming 2kg of food per day. Or 174000t of food per day. (please let me use a round number here). Some of it generated by the planet, and some needs importing. Germany imported 8.6% of their food in 2020. so 15000t of food is needed to meet the consumption, based on the numbers above.
15000t is not that much if you think about it. 20 cutters full.
10 commander (or even ONE) camping outside your starport and blowing up one freighter after the other, you would be looking at a food shortage.
I agree with you, it seems insignificant to mention ONE commander, but looking at the numbers, it's absolutely feasible and plausible.

Danieros said:
Would I love to see this? Of course, this was one of the first things I wanted to find out when starting out - alongside if system populations were dynamic in someway. It would give purpose in supplying lower-value goods so that higher production ones get produced.

Realistically? This would be a whole new layer of trading/BGS and in a stable game it would be a very welcome addition to increase its depth. However we've had a big expansion recently released, and it's still getting patched, then it's going to have the console release... I wouldn't see anything like this being considered for a long time.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying I would love to see that now (sure would be nice) but as a concept, food for thought.
 

Tikanderoga

Tikanderoga
metatheurgist said:
While I think the galaxy would be better with dynamic changes in the economy, security and politics. The sum total of players actions should add up to as much as a fart in a hurricane to influence this.
Click to expand...
Yes and no. Look at the amount of wealth the player base has accumulated. In some cases people like Cmdr MARZ who owns over 1trillion credits could make some of the powerplay people look like poor paupers.
A fleet carrier costs as we know 5b credits. Even if we up the numbers, how much could a coriolis cost? 50b? 100b?
And how many of the mega rich names do own a station? none!
The guy who built the station on top of the galaxy, he was named a billionaire. Many, if not most of the players are billionaires. Can I build my station too now please?

With a proper economy, as stated in my other post above, players could have an actual influence on the galaxy. Want to starve a system? Now you could!
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Tikanderoga said:
Yes and no. Look at the amount of wealth the player base has accumulated. In some cases people like Cmdr MARZ who owns over 1trillion credits could make some of the powerplay people look like poor paupers.
A fleet carrier costs as we know 5b credits. Even if we up the numbers, how much could a coriolis cost? 50b? 100b?
And how many of the mega rich names do own a station? none!
The guy who built the station on top of the galaxy, he was named a billionaire. Many, if not most of the players are billionaires. Can I build my station too now please?

With a proper economy, as stated in my other post above, players could have an actual influence on the galaxy. Want to starve a system? Now you could!
Click to expand...
Yes, and the game has been made poorer by catering to player demands.
 

Rainbro

Rainbro
Its a facade, like a lot of things in Elite. Looks great from the outside, hundreds of commodities and economies and booms and busts and supply and demand. But if you look too deeply, it's just a very simple system at its core. Mindless bulk hauling of the most expensive good rather than trading to an intelligent market. It's a placeholder system that cannot be replaced at this stage in the game, even if Frontier wanted to.

But that's fine, I'm not a trader anyway. But maybe I would have been if it had been more like Lord Braben's original videos...
 

Deleted member 182079

D
Having seen how an interconnected, realistic economy can look like (in X4) it's even more painful now to go back to Elite's version of it, where it's merely a basic tool to generate credits and an excuse to fly a spaceship from A to B unfortunately.
 

TiberiusDuval

T
Well even if economics were dynamic lets think about what that would realistically look like for most of products, and for systems where most "people" of the universe live. Even biggest player ships are basically glorified container trucks when it comes to cargo capacity. Not at all like irl cargo ships. Whats the maximum? Some 700 tonnes? About same as twenty truckloads of stuff. How much you think twenty truckloads of stuff will effect on economy having billions of people, unless it is something extremely rare, extremely needed and extremely expensive stuff? So basically you would not see remarkable difference unless you transport stuff to very lightly populated pioneer systems. Even multitude of players could barely transport as much as modern big container ship on one load.
 
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