Does Elite Need a Market Reform?

[Darkfyre99]

I'm more fussed that there is no particularly sensible consistency between the cost of things, a hand gun for Odyssey on foot gameplay sets you back more than an interstellar starship. I mean, really. That makes no sense. You can pick up a canister of personal weapons for a few thousand... I kind of imagined these had guns in before, I have to assume they have sticks or something in now. Personal armour canisters presumable contain old dustbin lids or something.

Also, so much this! Nothing breaks verisimilitude like this and “you can buy your own ship for that” rewards, especially for on-foot fetch missions!

 

[Stelar 7]

I am not talking about hard limits, but to give ships an actual purpose. Your argument for small ships is especially funny because it essentially says "small ships are better if you plan to not use ships". In the early days pricing of the ships was an actual factor to consider, an interesting choice. This is mostly gone now as profits of all activities have gone through the roof. So much, it damages the integrity of the game world and the game design, making most module classes irrelevant and making (trade) missions paying more than a (small) ship costs illogical.

Lol, transport to ground isn't a purpose? I suppose you ignored the part about small ship combat niche and look you did. I also see you ignored shuttling...

So very clearly. Landing on bodies is a ship activity. Small ships can land almost anywhere so they are best for activities where you don't know what sort of LZ you will have.

Your argument is that the integrity of the game requires that money be scarce. I'd like to see that supported, it looks like knee jerk conservatism to me. Old = better kind of nonsense.

The exxonomy diversified with engineering. Now instead of fighting for ever credit they can be an easy dopamine hit while the engineering mats and unlocks serve the role of long term goal.

I see no problem with a cargo of stuff being worth more than the ship that moves it. That happens all the time in reality. Not wirh groceries, but certainly with computer parts or heavy metals. You think a train boxcar costs more than a box car worth of satellite parts?

Canyon running, racing, landing, combat, there are plenty of things to do with small ships where they excell.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I agree with this, except perhaps with some simulated RNG events that might cause fluctuations in NPC markets (pirate activity, wars, outbreaks, etc). Like you say elsewhere, the BGS does this already to some extent.


I'm sometimes tempted to write my own space economy simulator (from a purely numbers perspective) just as a fun programming project. The way I would approach it is to assign a realistic NPC traffic flow, modelling certain specifics like travel time, net volume (ship cargo), etc. The "traffic flow" would be trade routes, kinda like ED has on the galaxy map, these routes being program objects with multiple attributes that can be affected by things like supply and demand. So far, very similar to the BGS, but I would carefully consider what commodities are in demand and why, and I would model things like station capacity, factory output, pirate activity, and RNG events like wars, pandemics, etc. This could all be done at a relatively "high level" without needing to create individual ship AIs for all the NPCs, though I would attempt to replicate realistic ship traffic patterns (how many ships can come and go from a station an hour, for example). Again, similar to ED's BGS while borrowing some of the more specific realistic aspects from X4.

As for player intervention, I would use this not only as a direct input (CMDR Duck delivered 100 tons of iron when he landed), but I would also use this as a modifier to the NPC algorithm. Is CMDR Duck getting rich selling iron? If for some reason the NPCs aren't smart enough to have figured this out on their own because of their simplistic (and thus efficient) AI, the simulation could learn from a real person's behaviors and have a random percent of the NPCs copy that same action, thus balancing the market over time. In fact, in a well-balanced economy should only have short-lived gold rushes, because like all economic bubbles, these things collapse as everyone gets in the action.

FWIW, I'm not insisting that Elite's economy needs an entire rewrite (except perhaps the actual commodities themselves), but just some tweaking to make it feel more real. I think the things I'm interested in could be implemented by some tweaks to the current BGS algorithms. As it stands now, I'm just not interested in trading because Elite's economy feels like NMS's version of space. Thankfully I find my enough entertainment in combat and exploration, so I can just ignore trading in Elite, but it's still a bit of a shame since I actually enjoy trading in games like X4 because of its depth.

I would be far more interested in the BGS if it were possible to manipulate the economy and therefore trade routes is such a way as to force trade though a bottleneck anarchy where there would be rich pickings for the pirates ;-)

 

[AdmiralDoughnutz]

interested to know if they have employed someone in consumer economics to actually do something about this in the game.

I would assume that a player driven - live real working dynamic commodity environment - would take a huge amount of processing power. On a single player single machine with one person effecting the market, is indeed a simple game machinic that has been around for some time - but on large open scale, would be open to more exploits so they'd have there work cut out that's for sure....really do like this idea though.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I see no reason Elite couldn't have a more advanced economic BGS that took things like supply chains into account, had the developers wanted to put the same effort into the economy simulation as they put into the stellar forge.

Elite had something like that, and technically still does, though you’d never know it these days. Sadly, due to players complaining about the inevitable results of exclusively trading high-value goods without trading the medium- and- low ones, Frontier basically turned up baseline production levels to 11 and called it good.

The sad thing is, this was during the original Alpha Four, and they never thought that maybe their stress test scenario of six systems might improve things when there are 50,000 to choose from.

 

[TNTDany]

Not necessarily a reform (how would they even do that? Big event that "explodes" everyone and resets progress?"

It needs to give more incentives to spend credits in credible and sensible ways. Rally the community under common goal etc

World Building, Ship Yard, buying and grinding mats etc

 

[Manticore]

interested to know if they have employed someone in consumer economics to actually do something about this in the game.

1. Why would they?
2. It's none of my business who FD decides to employ.
3. It's actually called behavioural economics. I took a good look at that system of analysis in 2021. (Nothing to do with Elite, I'm talking real world).

 

[Manticore]

Sorry about the double post. Hit the reply button for some reason and I've never been able to find a way on these boards to delete a post.

 

[AdmiralDoughnutz]

1. Why would they?
2. It's none of my business who FD decides to employ.
3. It's actually called behavioural economics. I took a good look at that system of analysis in 2021. (Nothing to do with Elite, I'm talking real world).

apples and oranges - point being the commodity market feels fake, possibly because it is fake. I make no claim to be an expert but it reminds me of bitcoin and how scammy that market can be. Digital asset, digital commodity. Correct me if I'm wrong but the current ED market is not dynamic, just timed static algos that tick over right giving the impression of activity - no actual consumer of these in game commodities. Meh perhaps I underestimated what this is game entirely...

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I would be far more interested in the BGS if it were possible to manipulate the economy and therefore trade routes is such a way as to force trade though a bottleneck anarchy where there would be rich pickings for the pirates ;-)

The big problem with bottlenecks isn't the economy or the BGS but the jump ranges - they'd need to be capped to around 10 LY max to get reasonable bottlenecks appearing in the bubble.

Fixed low jump ranges and no ability to refuel immediately on system arrival - as in the original Elite - is my choice for "the game would be much better with this feature which everyone else would hate".

 

[Jmanis]

1. Why would they?
2. It's none of my business who FD decides to employ.
3. It's actually called behavioural economics. I took a good look at that system of analysis in 2021. (Nothing to do with Elite, I'm talking real world).

Ever since EVE did it, people tend to think that you hire an economist, et voila you get a better game economy. But that's a special case because the markets in EVE feature no consequential[1] NPC supply or demand of goods; all trade is between players, and goods "created" by players[2]. As such, since it's entirely human-driven, it behaves according to normal market rules[3]. Conversely, all item destruction is likewise player-initiated. As a contrast, supply and consumption in Elite is simply by "magic".

Fact of the matter is markets like Elite's (and many other games) do not behave in a "traditional" market sense even remotely, so it's very unlikely to have any practical application. It's a bit like suggesting Bethesda could improve it's crafting system by recruiting a carpenter.... it just wouldn't make sense short of a complete overhaul of their crafting system to actually represent real-world carpentry.

The other thing is that the economist EVE hired didn't "make the market better"... rather, they analyse the market trends and statistics and generally provide information (not advice) to the player base. For example, EVE's October 2021 economic report features a mapping of player losses to regions of space. That is really useful in EVE, since it highlights regions where market activity would be higher. But in Elite, players only lose credits, not equipment. So that sort of information is useless to Elite.... and you don't need an economist to say "Everyone mines <high end ores>, nobody mines <low end ores>" because low-end ores are the chaff to the wheat in the current implementation of ED's market. Contrast again against EVE, where mining low end ores in bulk is just as profitable as mining high-end ores, because the products are actually consumed.

So, an "economist", it wouldn't have any effect, because ED's market's aren't actually markets, they're just a game mechanism made to look like one.

[1] There are some exceptions like blueprints, which are required to do manufacturing, but even then blueprints can then be researched to higher grades and traded among players.
[2] "created" in the loosest sense. Whether it's mining asteroids, destroying ships for loot, or PI which is just "wait", there is a measurable amount of "effort" that everything takes to acquire.
[3] EVE's market has often been described as "hyper-capitalistic" which is true enough.

 

[Tividar]

I agree with this, except perhaps with some simulated RNG events that might cause fluctuations in NPC markets (pirate activity, wars, outbreaks, etc). Like you say elsewhere, the BGS does this already to some extent.


I'm sometimes tempted to write my own space economy simulator (from a purely numbers perspective) just as a fun programming project. The way I would approach it is to assign a realistic NPC traffic flow, modelling certain specifics like travel time, net volume (ship cargo), etc. The "traffic flow" would be trade routes, kinda like ED has on the galaxy map, these routes being program objects with multiple attributes that can be affected by things like supply and demand. So far, very similar to the BGS, but I would carefully consider what commodities are in demand and why, and I would model things like station capacity, factory output, pirate activity, and RNG events like wars, pandemics, etc. This could all be done at a relatively "high level" without needing to create individual ship AIs for all the NPCs, though I would attempt to replicate realistic ship traffic patterns (how many ships can come and go from a station an hour, for example). Again, similar to ED's BGS while borrowing some of the more specific realistic aspects from X4.

As for player intervention, I would use this not only as a direct input (CMDR Duck delivered 100 tons of iron when he landed), but I would also use this as a modifier to the NPC algorithm. Is CMDR Duck getting rich selling iron? If for some reason the NPCs aren't smart enough to have figured this out on their own because of their simplistic (and thus efficient) AI, the simulation could learn from a real person's behaviors and have a random percent of the NPCs copy that same action, thus balancing the market over time. In fact, in a well-balanced economy should only have short-lived gold rushes, because like all economic bubbles, these things collapse as everyone gets in the action.

FWIW, I'm not insisting that Elite's economy needs an entire rewrite (except perhaps the actual commodities themselves), but just some tweaking to make it feel more real. I think the things I'm interested in could be implemented by some tweaks to the current BGS algorithms. As it stands now, I'm just not interested in trading because Elite's economy feels like NMS's version of space. Thankfully I find my enough entertainment in combat and exploration, so I can just ignore trading in Elite, but it's still a bit of a shame since I actually enjoy trading in games like X4 because of its depth.

While I have some serious issues at the micro level, the biggest issue I have with the ED economy is informational. Give me the ability to accurately filter on the Galaxy map level and I'll eat the micro issues.

 

[AdmiralDoughnutz]

ouch okay, a tad snotty "It's a bit like suggesting Bethesda could improve it's crafting system by recruiting a carpenter" and somewhat narrow minded, because I'll have you know game designers do refer to engineers and real life examples, made by carpenters and such engineers to make things look and feel functional in the game - so what your saying is irrelevant .

Examples of consumer economics, any tangible commodity produced and subsequently purchased to satisfy the current wants and perceived needs of the buyer. ... Common examples of consumer durable goods are automobiles, furniture, household appliances, and mobile homes.

Apply this to a digital game world and ED might have a digital market. Lets not split hairs and agree its rubbish...

The point I was making is that I I agree with the OP, it is trash, but if they were to make it better, like EVE for example, wouldn't that lead to opening up game exploits, market crashes ect

 

[Stelar 7]

Ever since EVE did it, people tend to think that you hire an economist, et voila you get a better game economy. But that's a special case because the markets in EVE feature no consequential[1] NPC supply or demand of goods; all trade is between players, and goods "created" by players[2]. As such, since it's entirely human-driven, it behaves according to normal market rules[3]. Conversely, all item destruction is likewise player-initiated. As a contrast, supply and consumption in Elite is simply by "magic".

Fact of the matter is markets like Elite's (and many other games) do not behave in a "traditional" market sense even remotely, so it's very unlikely to have any practical application. It's a bit like suggesting Bethesda could improve it's crafting system by recruiting a carpenter.... it just wouldn't make sense short of a complete overhaul of their crafting system to actually represent real-world carpentry.

The other thing is that the economist EVE hired didn't "make the market better"... rather, they analyse the market trends and statistics and generally provide information (not advice) to the player base. For example, EVE's October 2021 economic report features a mapping of player losses to regions of space. That is really useful in EVE, since it highlights regions where market activity would be higher. But in Elite, players only lose credits, not equipment. So that sort of information is useless to Elite.... and you don't need an economist to say "Everyone mines <high end ores>, nobody mines <low end ores>" because low-end ores are the chaff to the wheat in the current implementation of ED's market. Contrast again against EVE, where mining low end ores in bulk is just as profitable as mining high-end ores, because the products are actually consumed.

So, an "economist", it wouldn't have any effect, because ED's market's aren't actually markets, they're just a game mechanism made to look like one.

[1] There are some exceptions like blueprints, which are required to do manufacturing, but even then blueprints can then be researched to higher grades and traded among players.
[2] "created" in the loosest sense. Whether it's mining asteroids, destroying ships for loot, or PI which is just "wait", there is a measurable amount of "effort" that everything takes to acquire.
[3] EVE's market has often been described as "hyper-capitalistic" which is true enough.

All good points. One additional one affecting every game.

Money isn't printed or issued by a government. Its pulled from the either by certain activities. This means EVE for all its vaunted market epicness suffers near uncontrollable inflation because there is no control on how much money enters the system.

Elite also has money from the heavens but with set prices and everything else also created from the either there is no inflation.

 

[Jmanis]

ouch okay, a tad snotty "It's a bit like suggesting Bethesda could improve it's crafting system by recruiting a carpenter" and somewhat narrow minded, because I'll have you know game designers do refer to engineers and real life examples, made by carpenters and such engineers to make things look and feel functional in the game - so what your saying is irrelevant .

Right, but that misses the nuance of what I'm saying.... granted I did mistype that bit where I meant to say "Bethesda could improve Skyrim's crafting...". But the point I'm getting at is that the crafting system isn't actually crafting. It's "get two things, press a button and get something else". It's just called "crafting" because it's a relatable term for a system which purports to present crafting, but functionally, is nothing like it. If the process of crafting in Skyrim actually involved simulated cutting of things to-length, fastening things together, material stressors/malleability and such, then sure, a carpenter/other skilled craftsman could help. But building those mechanics is a game design/development concern.

The same applies to Elite's market. Sure, there's familiar terms like "Supply", "Demand", "Profit", and they respond to player interactions. But that's all window dressing for something which behaves nothing like a proper market. Sure, I agree it's rubbish, but an economist is not going to fix that; that's a game design issue. Once the game has a functional market, that's when an economist could help.

So still, hiring an economist wouldn't "fix" the economy; games where such skilled advice is retained rely on the game having mechanics which are seeking to emulate a realistic feature of a game. Elite's economy is not attempting to do that.

 

[AdmiralDoughnutz]

Right, but that misses the nuance of what I'm saying.... granted I did mistype that bit where I meant to say "Bethesda could improve Skyrim's crafting...". But the point I'm getting at is that the crafting system isn't actually crafting. It's "get two things, press a button and get something else". It's just called "crafting" because it's a relatable term for a system which purports to present crafting, but functionally, is nothing like it. If the process of crafting in Skyrim actually involved simulated cutting of things to-length, fastening things together, material stressors/malleability and such, then sure, a carpenter/other skilled craftsman could help. But building those mechanics is a game design/development concern.

The same applies to Elite's market. Sure, there's familiar terms like "Supply", "Demand", "Profit", and they respond to player interactions. But that's all window dressing for something which behaves nothing like a proper market. Sure, I agree it's rubbish, but an economist is not going to fix that; that's a game design issue. Once the game has a functional market, that's when an economist could help.

So still, hiring an economist wouldn't "fix" the economy; games where such skilled advice is retained rely on the game having mechanics which are seeking to emulate a realistic feature of a game. Elite's economy is not attempting to do that.

So are ED's markets are static and not dynamic? You are saying there are no systems that consume commodities? The same way countries consume resources? Is the ED market actively fluctuating with supply and demand that need 24/7 oversight? Much like the real life stock market??

 

[Jmanis]

So are ED's markets are static and not dynamic?

No, though they are barely dynamic.

Actually, yes, they are static, in the sense that all market (re)actions are completely predictable.

You are saying there are no systems that consume commodities?

Correct. There is no consumption represented in Elite's mechanics.

The same way countries consume resources?

Definitely not.

Is the ED market actively fluctuating with supply and demand that need 24/7 oversight? Much like the real life stock market??

Definitely not.

When you sell commodities to a market, just because the demand figure goes down and the price goes up slightly, this does not make it comparable at all to real world markets.

Borann is a perfect example of this. The sheer volume of LTDs being dumped during it's heyday should've bankrupted those factions. But all that happened was it went "Thing sold for profit. Faction get +econ, +influence.". Likewise, if there was any "economy" to ED's markets, then Methanol Monohydrate Crystals should outstrip Gold, LTDs, Void Opals, all the high-end minerals in value. Why?

• It's not market sourcable; the only source of the commodity in game is player mining, just like high-end minerals, so difficulty to source is identical.
• There is substantially higher demand for Methanol Monohydrate Crystals than there is high-end minerals[1]. Higher demand becomes higher value.
• There is substantially less satisfaction of market demand for MMCs than there is of high-value minerals. Less demand satisfaction becomes more stable, high prices.

But that doesn't happen, because Elite's markets do not remotely simulate a proper economy.

The markets absolutely do not need 24/7 monitoring. When I used to run industrial manufacturing in EVE, that did need 24/7 monitoring. If the source materials I use for production were suddenly bought up, market demand would drive the price of those materials up by an order of magnitude or more, almost instantly. This would correlate to a similar increase in products using those materials, thus, if I was too slow, I wouldn't adjust my product prices in time and end up I'd selling for far less than they were worth.

In Elite, Uranium comes from Uranitite.
You know what happens to the price of Uranium if you buy up all the Uranitite? Nothing.
You know what happens to the supply of Uranium if the demand for Uranitite at a refinery isn't met? Nothing. More Uranium supply will just appear at the next 10m refresh regardless.
What happens if the demand of any market commodity isn't met? Nothing.

This is because there is no "consumption" save what players purchase, and any market in the game left without player interaction will reach an entirely static point and never change.

All commodities in the game have a maximum and minimum value, given a set of BGS conditions. Commodity prices will never go outside those bounds. That is not how a true, dynamic market functions. All commodities have a fixed amount of supply and demand that will exist for them, given the population of the system. That is not how a true, dynamic market functions.

Do market values change if a new BGS state comes into effect? Sure, but that's a change that happens once a day, at roughly the same time, every day. An outbreak can occur, which will cause medical supplies to go up. But for a population of 1,000, it doesn't matter if you deliver medicines to just meet that 1,000, or you deliver enough for a billion people. Market prices will stay within the bounds for that outbreak, for the length of time that the outbreak lasts which will be any number of days.

The "market" in Elite does not represent any normal, functional economy. It's just some basic mechanic dressed to look like a market.

EDIT: Case in point, the Galactic Average is not the actual Galactic Average; it's a static figure set by FD which is used in a number of calculations.

[1] Because FD's game mechanic is basic; higher value = lower overall demand. That is not how demand works.

 

[DemiserofD]

I feel like Elite could benefit from a market system with two separate levels. The first level would basically be the current one, where all demand and Supply is shared, and the first person to get there gets the rewards.

The second level could be the low level fluctuations; for example, if there is a public holiday that dramatically increases the prices for diamonds, and someone comes in and fills all demand for diamonds, you are still going to have the occasional customer who needs them and can't find them for some reason.

This secondary level could offer each player a unique and small amount of demand or Supply, mitigating the first-come-first-serve nature of the current model. The first player into the system could sell their 5000 ltd's or whatever; everyone after that could sell 100 or 200 at the full price, regardless of how many more were sold.

The current Elite Market model is a bizarre combination of fake and real. It fixed the problem of endless LTD demand from back in the days, but at the cost of making the market serve only the 1%. Personally, I can't see that as a good compromise.

 

[Jmanis]

Elite also has money from the heavens but with set prices and everything else also created from the either there is no inflation.

Just inflating wallets XD

 

[DemiserofD]

Although, now that I think about it, we already basically do have low-level stuff; it's just not at all based on the current market conditions. Missions, to be precise.

It would be neat if they would tweak missions to account for current market conditions; if the local markets are paying a boatload for low temperature diamonds, there should sensibly be missions asking for the same thing. And yet, you never see such missions. This seems like it would be a simple tweak that could improve the realism of the game.