Does the dynamic economy simulation reallyexist in the game?

[CommanderFredo]

I've read reports saying the dynamic economy system does exist so for example you can make trade blockades to influence prices, as per David Braben's Dev Diaries.

But I have also reports that the dynamic economy system is a sham. It does not exist, the variation is due to a random number generator at each station, and the map trade route indicators are junk. Also I just read

Given that theres none of that in there except for mission matching and overspill of influence longer term

So I am asking the experts. Is there proof either way?

 

[Mrjupp]

For influence the number of TRADES (Import vs Export) affects the influence of a minor faction. For reputation, the actual sales value (Import vs Export) I can confirm by testing directly determines the speed of a reputation increase.

I can also confirm on certain highly popular trade routes that high volume trading of specific commodities by large numbers of players will affect purchase pricing. I can also confirm that civil unrest or lockdown does affect pricing and even availability to an extent too.

 

[the100thmonkey]

In short, yes.

If it's just you on your own in your T6, don't expect to make a dent in a system with a huge population - population seems to be the modifier on how much commodity supply and demand is refilled by.

Commodities markets update on a roughly 10 minute cycle.

Try this experiment:

1. Find a tiny population refinery economy.
2. Land at the outpost in your T6/Python (the Python will be better for this.)
3. Fill your hold with their best-deal valuable metal (beryllium, palladium, gold all work well.)
4. Sell it somewhere else nearby.
5. Travel back.
6. Check the prices for the commodities you just bought.

The prices will have gotten worse, and the supply should not have recovered.

 

[Miklos Atreides]

I've read reports saying the dynamic economy system does exist so for example you can make trade blockades to influence prices, as per David Braben's Dev Diaries.

But I have also reports that the dynamic economy system is a sham. It does not exist, the variation is due to a random number generator at each station, and the map trade route indicators are junk. Also I just read

Given that theres none of that in there except for mission matching and overspill of influence longer term

So I am asking the experts. Is there proof either way?

Yes, there is some kind of dynamic in this economy, but don't expect too much from it. This is because there are no interdependencies of economies.
So prices are based on a small range of supply and demand. NPCs do not count because the fact NPCs appear and vanish but if a NPC Anaconda full
of gold jumps out of system it is arriving nowhere. Supply doens't pile up the way the NPCs and players are delivering goods and you almost cannot
dry out the market by buying all stuff. You cannot stop production of Commodity A by stopping delivery of raw material B. Its not in yet.

There is lots of stuff to do and needs to be tight to systems around and NPCs flying goods from A to B; being priated and blown up like Players by NPCs.
to become believable dynamic. Today its pseudo-dynamic because complexity will explode if you encourage AI to do the advanced things.

Regards,
Miklos

 

[the100thmonkey]

Yes, there is some kind of dynamic in this economy, but don't expect too much from it. This is because there are no interdependencies of economies.
So prices are based on a small range of supply and demand. NPCs do not count because the fact NPCs appear and vanish but if a NPC Anaconda full
of gold jumps out of system it is arriving nowhere. Supply doens't pile up the way the NPCs and players are delivering goods and you almost cannot
dry out the market by buying all stuff. You cannot stop production of Commodity A by stopping delivery of raw material B. Its not in yet.

There is lots of stuff to do and needs to be tight to systems around and NPCs flying goods from A to B; being priated and blown up like Players by NPCs.
to become believable dynamic. Today its pseudo-dynamic because complexity will explode if you encourage AI to do the advanced things.

Regards,
Miklos

There is, in fact, virtual trade between systems. The reason that you can't dry a market up is that there are always other systems producing the same commodity. Supply is essentially infinite in the E|D universe, which is as it should be. The economics of E|D is screwed up, but not in the way it's largely (and incorrectly) portrayed - the premise of supply determining prices is meaningless in what would be, were it not for the way the game is coded, a fundamentally post-scarcity economy. (hat-tip to CMDR Kristov)

From an RP perspective , we in Communism Interstellar view it as the ultimate (and therefore final) triumph of capital over labour - we're paying for, buying and selling commodities whose value is entirely artificial and not actually linked to anything. Meta-alloys and rare goods are the only commodities whose prices could be said to have any connection to the world rather than being a construct based on a lie.

 

[Thetele]

I have done imperial slave trading on good rout. The profit per ton was over 4000 Cr then some one mentioned same rout that i used on these forums and the profit for that rout have dropped to 3500 cr per ton and it seems that it will go even lower. Now back trip to station i buy those slaves isn't profitable any more (profit under 100 cr per ton). I will probably go do something else for couple weeks and see if players forget that trade rout or i have to find new one.

 

[bamber]

It does work in that I have a 6 station T9 route that I can only really run twice before the profit drops away - if I go away for three or 4 days and return the market has recovered
.
the profit drop can be quite significant on some legs of the route
.
a couple of weeks ago I noticed a cutter listed as 8 times in the last 24 hrs at one of the systems and that commodity had taken a hell of a hit and still hasn't properly recovered
.
if you are going to intensely farm a route you need to let it recover and use rotational farming - something this cutter commander obviously hadn't learnt and he had decided to wreck the soil that was feeding him.

 

[Anson22]

Commodity prices definitely fluctuate - If you regularly trade in the same stations you notice it. I've got in the habit of varying my cargoes to spread the load between commodities taking some lower profit items on each delivery to maintain profit margins overall.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

It's essentially a fake rubber-band pseudo economy.

"Play" it and you can temporarily affect prices within a singular Station. Stop it and see everything revert back to its default parameters.

And there's no connection between commodities or any type of production logic, neither any effect on System Wealth (outside of eventually triggering Boom state, which is quite digital in nature) or production/comsumption behaviour.
So no matter how much Minerals you dump into a Refinery - it will not ramp production of the resulting (acc. Commodity Descriptions) end Products. In fact doesn't affect them at all.
It doesn't matter if you empty a certain Commodity every day - again the Economy will not react accordingly and ramp its production to better satisfy the enourmous demand you represent.
Ls Distance even for ultra-uncompetitive Outposts noone ever Trades into/out of doesn't matter one bit - it being treated just like that nice Trade Hub 15Ls from the Sun.
Thus it's neither possible to boost, nor to blockade production of any product - and no Commodity has any actual dependency upon any other.

Nothing is connected, apart from what the Galaxy Map believes are trade routes. But these "NPC trade links" are merely used to assess the local Supply/Demand levels.
Often enough, certain Systems are fogotten within that Trade Grid, producing surprisingly profitable trades even over very short range.

So in short : there presently is no Economy in the Game, as it lacks the most fundamental basics (Input -> Output, chains of production and Resources vs. End Products).
But what we do have is a highly predictable opportunity to earn Credits. And that it does, serves that role fairly well.

The dynamic part is limited to that rubber-band stretching and a few select Faction states - all of which will trend & revert back to the 100% static "System Default".
Everything else is fixed or subject to changes only after Patches (new Commodities and other manual changes to the System).

PS.
Would be interesting to see how it all would work in an actual Sandbox if we had one.
Persistent growing/shrinking of population, affecting consumption and production...
Actual chains of production that lead to a boom or bust of individual Commodities...
Losses of NPC Traders being applied to the Supply Chain, affecting both production/comsumption in unison with System Security and Mission Generation...
Dynamic changes occuring in Systems experiencing prolonged War (with repeated/long wars slowly transforming its Economy more into a Military one)...

Lots of potential lies in having an actual Sandbox economy, would open up an entirely new field of Gameplay and change existing one with realistic causes vs. consequences; everything the Players did would leave a permanent mark.

 

[Ian Skippy]

It's essentially a fake rubber-band pseudo economy.

"Play" it and you can temporarily affect prices within a singular Station. Stop it and see everything revert back to its default parameters.

And there's no connection between commodities or any type of production logic, neither any effect on System Wealth (outside of eventually triggering Boom state, which is quite digital in nature) or production/comsumption behaviour.
So no matter how much Minerals you dump into a Refinery - it will not ramp production of the resulting (acc. Commodity Descriptions) end Products. In fact doesn't affect them at all.
It doesn't matter if you empty a certain Commodity every day - again the Economy will not react accordingly and ramp its production to better satisfy the enourmous demand you represent.
Ls Distance even for ultra-uncompetitive Outposts noone ever Trades into/out of doesn't matter one bit - it being treated just like that nice Trade Hub 15Ls from the Sun.
Thus it's neither possible to boost, nor to blockade production of any product - and no Commodity has any actual dependency upon any other.

Nothing is connected, apart from what the Galaxy Map believes are trade routes. But these "NPC trade links" are merely used to assess the local Supply/Demand levels.
Often enough, certain Systems are fogotten within that Trade Grid, producing surprisingly profitable trades even over very short range.

So in short : there presently is no Economy in the Game, as it lacks the most fundamental basics (Input -> Output, chains of production and Resources vs. End Products).
But what we do have is a highly predictable opportunity to earn Credits. And that it does, serves that role fairly well.

The dynamic part is limited to that rubber-band stretching and a few select Faction states - all of which will trend & revert back to the 100% static "System Default".
Everything else is fixed or subject to changes only after Patches (new Commodities and other manual changes to the System).

PS.
Would be interesting to see how it all would work in an actual Sandbox if we had one.
Persistent growing/shrinking of population, affecting consumption and production...
Actual chains of production that lead to a boom or bust of individual Commodities...
Losses of NPC Traders being applied to the Supply Chain, affecting both production/comsumption in unison with System Security and Mission Generation...
Dynamic changes occuring in Systems experiencing prolonged War (with repeated/long wars slowly transforming its Economy more into a Military one)...

Lots of potential lies in having an actual Sandbox economy, would open up an entirely new field of Gameplay and change existing one with realistic causes vs. consequences; everything the Players did would leave a permanent mark.

Basically x3 in a shared universe is what you seem to want. This would lead to either minimal influence of player activity or galaxy-wide poverty in a few days.

The current 'locked' system allows for dynamic prices (see the area around trade CG) and trade/blockade gameplay that influences who owns what in a system, with individual players making visible dents, while preventibg player groups from completely crashing the econony of entire sectors.

See x:r for an example of how an unstable dynamic economy is.

 

[goemon]

I've read reports saying the dynamic economy system does exist so for example you can make trade blockades to influence prices.

many great and correct answers above.

trade blockades don't work in that way, though. if you want to damage player trade, you can't set up a blockade with combat ships -> no effect. you could a) flip system or station to a goverment making a special good illegal. b) bring in your trutters, t9's etc. and ruin demand or price of that good constantly.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

A true economic sim of that size might just be too much calculation requirement for current economic video game businesses. I liked X3, though.

Playing it long enough showed some shortcomings:
High profit goods became over-fished, supply ran dry for many goods. Even with the basic commodity (energy) being free of cost (and more importantly: rare resources) from AI factories stops and supply overflow happened.
I ran some scripts for automated AI traders that would jump around looking for profitable trades and I think with 5 of them there weren't many lucrative routes left. I made probably most by feeding missiles to equipment docks whose demand never dried up - at some point my weed and booze factories seemed to have saturated the market, too.

 

[Miklos Atreides]

If FD would start to limit specific resources there would be a start for a living economy.

Limiting resources would mean just to end infinite supply of a commodity from a defined location.
So in a specific pristine metallic ring are not long n+1 tonnes of Commodity x but maybe 1000000t. Once it
is exploited no more Commodity x can be farmed from that location.

and then expand it from there....
As far as I know this isn't the case today.

Miklos

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

If FD would start to limit specific resources there would be a start for a living economy.

Limiting resources would mean just to end infinite supply of a commodity from a defined location.
So in a specific pristine metallic ring are not long n+1 tonnes of Commodity x but maybe 1000000t. Once it
is exploited no more Commodity x can be farmed from that location.

and then expand it from there....
As far as I know this isn't the case today.

Miklos

No, I think it would be the start of a dying economy, unless AI traders are able to ship endless supply.

 

[Conaven]

As already mentioned there is some fluctuation in the prices. This fluctuation can be influenced by the players activity of trading this commodity.

The problem (at least for me) however is, that each commodity is restricted by a price range which it will not exceed. So lets assume you would blockade a high population station (with many players shooting everything that arrives at this port 24/7) and lets further assume that also no player in solo or private delivers goods. Lets now further assume that this station does not produce food but requires traders to deliver food (of any kind). It would still not result in the station raising the price for the food commodities to e.g. 20k in desperation to get some people to deliver the required commodity.

Each commodity as said is restricted to (personal assumption) a +-20% fluctuation which therefore makes the market feel static.

EDIT:
Also from some personal test the supply you encounter seems also be to a degree bound to your current session. A simple test sell 500 of any commodity to a low population station and remember the current supply. Restarting the client has for me many times proven that what I sold just disappeared (while the price seems to be a bit slower in adjusting on some occasions).

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Basically x3 in a shared universe is what you seem to want. This would lead to either minimal influence of player activity or galaxy-wide poverty in a few days.

The current 'locked' system allows for dynamic prices (see the area around trade CG) and trade/blockade gameplay that influences who owns what in a system, with individual players making visible dents, while preventibg player groups from completely crashing the econony of entire sectors.

See x:r for an example of how an unstable dynamic economy is.

I don't argue against a "Minimum Supply" and background NPC traffic to provide some positive stability.
They're clearly needed to some extent, but prevent the needed "Wealthy or Poor by location or events" effect - and provide no incentive nor opportunity to the Player to actually work and influence that.
It also prevents "misc. Commodities" to carry any Importance to Gameplay or Faction support, as they're never really needed - nothing depends on them, they're factually irrelevant.

The "dynamic" prices are just the rubber-bands being temporarily extended to the extremes - but will auto-return to their 100% fixed Standard Defaults... and most importantly, will have zero/NIL/ N/A effect even on the Systems the massive Player masses hit to safisfy their needs i.e. during a CG.
After even a huge CG is over, insane profits/trades ran through an entire Sector of Systems... a few days after they leave, everything will be again like nothing ever happened. Like the events that took place never even existed.
It's actually the polar opposite of "dynamic", it's merely a cheap illusion of it. And very easily spotted as such. It's too obvious.

I'd rather call it "temporarily flexible", that kinda describes it best.

For as long as there's no lasting effect even from massive influx of Trade, we don't have an Economy. Merely the abovementioned illusion which doesn't last long.
Everything I see concerning Trade basically is this : a Utility to create Profits (Credits) and work in terms of Faction Influence/Status

And in effect, that's the reason why :
- even extremely remote Systems don't need nor benefit from Commodities that are >50LY away, not even Foods or Basic Meds (which in this constellation would be Demand Level : Extreme, carry high profits and have a high Influence impact)
- regardless of Population, no System actually needs stuff like Hydrogen Fuel, Clothing or Food. They automatically just "have it", regardless of location.

TL : DR
Kinda does the job on a basic level and we're all used to it.
I just miss all the small trickle-down effects and persistent consequences. You know, "blaze your own Trail".
When I look at a System's Economy all by itself - I just always know there's nothing I could really ever do for them, no way to supplement, improve or even expand it and no consequences ever arise from it.

 

[Derath]

Its less dynamic and more like an in/out system that gradually reaches equilibrium, players can impact that equilibrium so that little ripples occur but it always goes back to how it was. Somebody earlier called it rubber banding thats probably a fair description too.

Is that dynamic? I guess in one way of using the word it is, but to me it would actually have to have traffic delivering things to systems to be dynamic as there are too many invisible cogs currently.

 

[Miklos Atreides]

OK AI traders are to be doomed to deal with limited resources too.
Any other thing wouldn't obviously make sense. In general AI should be tight closer to the
rules players have.

Miklos

 

[Hellhawk666]

The short answer is that the background economy is not a "real" simulation, but rather a simulation of a simulation.

Every commodity exchange has it's default price points, and left to itself with no player activity the prices will always settle back towards those defaults. This is inbuilt and automatic and was outlined by one of the technical developers in an industry video a while back.

EDIT - The video CaptainKremmen posts below is the one in question.

Al that players can do is temporarily change the buying or selling prices by the volume of cargo they trade. There is no true supply and demand dynamic for goods and no integration of the commodity prices with the cost of anything else.

In a real economic simulation a change such as a civil war in a system would impact production. Quantities for sale would fall (probably - depends on the commodity) and prices to buy the goods would increase. If the scarcity was widespread and lasted long enough this would eventually have a roll-on effect as demand was not satisfied in neighbouring markets, and so their selling price would increase there. A scarcity of some goods would also affect both the availability and price of modules and ships. At the same time the civil war would increase demand for some cargoes such as personal weapons, and eventually maybe even food and basic supplies, even if the system was an agricultural.

The various interlocking markets constantly fluctuate in a "real" economy in response to a myriad of factors. In the long run they fluctuate around hypothetical "average" prices, so what FD has done is taken a short-cut and said "OK, we'll simply assume that all of this complex stuff is happening and being driven largely by NPCs, so instead of actually modelling it we'll set prices at default levels and allow player trade to affect them within a defined range so it feels like a real economy".

It's a perfectly valid approach to simulating a trading game, and I'm not criticizing it, but it's not a true economic simulation. The big downside that I see is that it leaves no scope for emergent gameplay. The closest it ever gets to that is when there is a run on a commodity in response to a CG, but a few days later the whole sector is back to normal. It's a bit simplistic and bland.

 

[CaptainKremmen]

I've read reports saying the dynamic economy system does exist so for example you can make trade blockades to influence prices, as per David Braben's Dev Diaries.

But I have also reports that the dynamic economy system is a sham. It does not exist, the variation is due to a random number generator at each station, and the map trade route indicators are junk. Also I just read



So I am asking the experts. Is there proof either way?

Here is a video of a presentation FD tech staff gave, laying out how their back end processes what it does. One part of this talks about how the goods, prices, etc. get handled.

It's quite long, and quite detailed. Enjoy!

[video=youtube;EvJPyjmfdz0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvJPyjmfdz0[/video]