I'm new to the game, so i might have missed the thread where this information was discussed. I have read (some of) the DDA threads and it appears that what i'm about to ask should be possible, but i'm not sure if it will be implemented that way.
So, my question is how extensive is or will be the simulation of the economy AND how much of it is visible to the player?
I think this more general question can be answered by answering a couple of simple specific questions, e.g.
- How many ships can be bought in one a station at a specific time? (not necessarily by the same player)
I believe the station should have a finite amount of available ships. When they ran out, new ships have be ordered and delivered to the station.
- What is the price of the ships? Is it always the same?
If there is only one ship left in the station and the next batch is to be delivered in a week or so, then the price should be higher than for the first of e.g. 10 ships.
- Assuming a station can only hold and sell a fixed amount of ships, how do the ships get to the station? Do they just appear over time or is there actually a large transporter that delivers ordered ships from a producing shipyard to multiple stations?
- How are these ships produced? Is there a fixed amount of base materials that are required to build a ship? Do all of these base materials have to be mined and transported to the shipyard?
- Assuming there is a large shipyard that is producing ships. It probably will have long standing contracts with large factions, e.g. deliver 500 ships of class X to faction Y over the time of a month or year or whatever. If the shipyard can produce 600 ships, i.e. 100 more then required to satisfy the contract, then the superflous ships can be sold to the players.
What if the players want to buy more ships, e.g. because the suck at docking? They should be able to buy a ship to a higher price, so that the shipyard can pay the fees for beeing unable to deliver enough ships to faction Y.
- How would this system interact with the player's death?
It appears that when a player dies and gets his ship back via insurance, that this ship if created out of thin air, thus ignoring the producing and delivering steps. A player could also decimate a NPC faction by destroying its ships that have to be produced again and always keep his own ship by paying the insurance. This might unbalance the economy, but it doesn't have to be this way. When a player dies and appears at the last station, he might get a message, e.g. : "sorry, this station doesn't have your type of ship. do you want a ship of a different class? or do you want to be transported to the nearest station that have your type of ship? (which might be 100 LY away). I.e. all player ships have to be produced too.
- If a new station is built in a new (or old) system, do all base components have to be transported to that place? This might require e.g. 50000 roundtrips from different locations until all components for the construction of the station are delivered. Obviously, there will be large transportation companies that will do most of the work, but they might hire players via missions to do the delivery. The player can then decide if he delivers the goods or steel it to sell it to a different company or faction.
- If everything has to be mined and transported and produced and then transported again and then sold to NPCs (or players), who again transport it to a different place to produce a new product and so on and so on, how much of it will be visible in he world? Will it just be invisible transports? Or will there be actual ships that transport all the goods and with which the player can interact, e.g. pirate or destroy or protect them. This would also make the galaxy more crowded and interesting.
If there is a performance problem, then only a part of the process can be exposed to the players and the rest can be handled invisibly in the background (of course under the same conditions, e.g. it will still take a realtime month to produce and to transport all components for a station).
Of course, if everything is "fully simulated", then it is easy to create a system that will collapse within a month or a year. So, it may be that a full simulation would be too complex and to unstable, but it sure would be a nice thing to have.
So, i guess my question is, if all of the above will be possible in ED?
So, my question is how extensive is or will be the simulation of the economy AND how much of it is visible to the player?
I think this more general question can be answered by answering a couple of simple specific questions, e.g.
- How many ships can be bought in one a station at a specific time? (not necessarily by the same player)
I believe the station should have a finite amount of available ships. When they ran out, new ships have be ordered and delivered to the station.
- What is the price of the ships? Is it always the same?
If there is only one ship left in the station and the next batch is to be delivered in a week or so, then the price should be higher than for the first of e.g. 10 ships.
- Assuming a station can only hold and sell a fixed amount of ships, how do the ships get to the station? Do they just appear over time or is there actually a large transporter that delivers ordered ships from a producing shipyard to multiple stations?
- How are these ships produced? Is there a fixed amount of base materials that are required to build a ship? Do all of these base materials have to be mined and transported to the shipyard?
- Assuming there is a large shipyard that is producing ships. It probably will have long standing contracts with large factions, e.g. deliver 500 ships of class X to faction Y over the time of a month or year or whatever. If the shipyard can produce 600 ships, i.e. 100 more then required to satisfy the contract, then the superflous ships can be sold to the players.
What if the players want to buy more ships, e.g. because the suck at docking? They should be able to buy a ship to a higher price, so that the shipyard can pay the fees for beeing unable to deliver enough ships to faction Y.
- How would this system interact with the player's death?
It appears that when a player dies and gets his ship back via insurance, that this ship if created out of thin air, thus ignoring the producing and delivering steps. A player could also decimate a NPC faction by destroying its ships that have to be produced again and always keep his own ship by paying the insurance. This might unbalance the economy, but it doesn't have to be this way. When a player dies and appears at the last station, he might get a message, e.g. : "sorry, this station doesn't have your type of ship. do you want a ship of a different class? or do you want to be transported to the nearest station that have your type of ship? (which might be 100 LY away). I.e. all player ships have to be produced too.
- If a new station is built in a new (or old) system, do all base components have to be transported to that place? This might require e.g. 50000 roundtrips from different locations until all components for the construction of the station are delivered. Obviously, there will be large transportation companies that will do most of the work, but they might hire players via missions to do the delivery. The player can then decide if he delivers the goods or steel it to sell it to a different company or faction.
- If everything has to be mined and transported and produced and then transported again and then sold to NPCs (or players), who again transport it to a different place to produce a new product and so on and so on, how much of it will be visible in he world? Will it just be invisible transports? Or will there be actual ships that transport all the goods and with which the player can interact, e.g. pirate or destroy or protect them. This would also make the galaxy more crowded and interesting.
If there is a performance problem, then only a part of the process can be exposed to the players and the rest can be handled invisibly in the background (of course under the same conditions, e.g. it will still take a realtime month to produce and to transport all components for a station).
Of course, if everything is "fully simulated", then it is easy to create a system that will collapse within a month or a year. So, it may be that a full simulation would be too complex and to unstable, but it sure would be a nice thing to have.
So, i guess my question is, if all of the above will be possible in ED?
