Is something wrong with that elite economy?

[soprano]

Well, I'm an ex-USSR citizen and here what I say to you: Elite dangerous has a planned economy like in USSR. With its required attributes - shortage and disbalance. Yes, we are all communists.

There are more than half of goods which will not be traded ever - goods with price below ~3000. Even 20% discount will not attract any trader in its absolute value, as ship cargo capacity limited and goods supply is unlimited (compared to cargo capacity).

All above results to trader performs business only on few goods - some metals, imperial slaves, superconductors. Their high price makes any discount % absolutely attractive compared to others.

Lack of free market economy makes trading process totally boring.

What the frontier going to do with that? The obviously hardcoded goods list makes me worry this is forever.

 

[Cula-Ta]

I agree, there appears to be very little in influence on the market through supply and demand. Crikey some systems must be desperate for algae!

 

[soprano]

I think they really need to attract some economists to development process!

 

[Hilight]

If you trade with one of the bigger ships, especially at smaller stations, or if you trade at a station where there are a whole lot of other Commanders trading, you can see the markets move up and down in response to play activities. I trade in a T-9 and a Python and I have to move between several trading routes to ensure the prices remain lucrative for me. The markets are dynamic

 

[Hoagy44]

The lower price goods are useful right at the start when you don't have any money, and when you buy a new ship that you can only just afford and so have few credits left for trading. Other than that, they aren't even worth it money wise for missions although you might get some sort of promotion out of them.
Sometimes they are worth it for an out leg to cover fuel costs, while the return leg makes the main profit, but they are pretty immaterial.
The markets do move, and you can over purchase goods making your trading run less economical, particularly if you have a big ship.

 

[Defacto]

The lower price goods are useful right at the start when you don't have any money, and when you buy a new ship that you can only just afford and so have few credits left for trading. Other than that, they aren't even worth it money wise for missions although you might get some sort of promotion out of them.
Sometimes they are worth it for an out leg to cover fuel costs, while the return leg makes the main profit, but they are pretty immaterial.
The markets do move, and you can over purchase goods making your trading run less economical, particularly if you have a big ship.

There are artificial price limits, hidden taxes in some circumstances, the trade AI can trade goods that players can't from markets, and the trade AI doesn't seem to care about profit.

In a way - the economy in ED is planned, because it is designed by FD to be an enjoyable and function part of the game. At the same time, however, it's supposed to at least appear to make sense, and a lot of the enjoyment in trading (IMO) would come from seeing the market change in ways that makes sense and rewards players for being intelligent and understanding the system. Unfortunately, I think the trading in this game currently fails to achieve what it was planned to achieve during development, and in some cases did achieve in earlier versions.

 

[Brujah]

Depends where you are. In absolute terms, you're right enough, but if you're only trading whilst shipping from one place to another (for example when handing in bounties), then you're just going to take whatever's the best value at the station you're already in, as spending any more time travelling to a station with a better resource is cutting into the time you could be spending hunting pirates.

Though I appreciate that shipping the odd hundred tonnes here and there isn't going to keep a system of 4 Billion inhabitants afloat (though arguably neither would a single T9 constantly shipping in the same resource for many hours).

I don't know. It would be nice if it was more dynamic to player actions, rather than including NPCs (which often ship grain, algae, biowaste and so on). If it were, at the very least the mission system would start popping up vast rewards for shipping these low-value resources, which would improve the return dramatically.

For example, a 1000 Cr/tonne return on Gold in a T9 will net you around 450,000 Cr per run. A 500 Cr return on, say, Bioreducing Lichen, would net you 250,000, so if you had a few missions of 100,000 Cr each to deliver a decent amount (50 per mission maybe) then you'd be up on credits.

 

[dynamicbob]

The markets arent fully dynamic yet. My guess is as this so called background simulator is expanded and developed further we will hopefully see a final move twoards a fully dynamic, responsive and adaptable market ( and other stats that move ie population movements)

 

[Ben Ryder]

I dont know much about stuff like economics and markets and stuff. Is there a good reason why a space station that has thousands of tonnes if various stuff never has so much as one tonne of everything?

 

[Chaodiurn]

I dont know much about stuff like economics and markets and stuff. Is there a good reason why a space station that has thousands of tonnes if various stuff never has so much as one tonne of everything?

If you see a station with fish but no salt being available anywhere you just know stuff got to be wrong.

 

[tomalus]

Well, I'm an ex-USSR citizen and here what I say to you: Elite dangerous has a planned economy like in USSR. With its required attributes - shortage and disbalance. Yes, we are all communists.

There are more than half of goods which will not be traded ever - goods with price below ~3000. Even 20% discount will not attract any trader in its absolute value, as ship cargo capacity limited and goods supply is unlimited (compared to cargo capacity).

All above results to trader performs business only on few goods - some metals, imperial slaves, superconductors. Their high price makes any discount % absolutely attractive compared to others.

Lack of free market economy makes trading process totally boring.

What the frontier going to do with that? The obviously hardcoded goods list makes me worry this is forever.

I can save you the trouble, go to Torval space and trade imperial slaves > perf.enhancers route, you can make over 4000 roundtrips if the stations arent listed on major web trade tools.

There is no economy, there is only a system to prevent you from making over X profit per tonn, the only change to this in game from beta is the addition of powerplay price/supply change for some commodities.

You dont even have to be pledged to Torval. If youre lazy you can probably just deliver slaves from agriculture to military/service ex facece, in almost 4000 one way.

 

[Captain Torus]

We don't talk about the 'economy' here. It is what it is, and it has no relation to real world economies. The prices are just made up and have no bearing on anything anywhere, why would buying gold at one store and selling it at another store make the prices at the 2 stores so different? When gold prices go up, they go up at all the stores, not just one and lower at another. There is no galactic economy, no relationship between worlds even though inter-world trade is part of the game. It's totally backwards.

 

[Bokugo]

There would have to actually be an economy for something to be wrong with it. What we have now is procedural generation.

 

[Surly_Badger]

Lack of free market economy makes trading process totally boring.

Free market economy with an infinite means of production means inevitable hyper-inflation. Both Marx and Smith (and Hume, for that matter) pointed that out. Free market wouldn't make for a fun game. If you want to see how it plays itself out, check the prices for the crafted items on the WoW auction house: practically zero at the bottom and ridiculous at the top.

The market in games like EVE works because it's been very very carefully balanced. I.e.: controlled.

 

[soprano]

Free market economy with an infinite means of production means inevitable hyper-inflation. Both Marx and Smith (and Hume, for that matter) pointed that out. Free market wouldn't make for a fun game. If you want to see how it plays itself out, check the prices for the crafted items on the WoW auction house: practically zero at the bottom and ridiculous at the top.

The market in games like EVE works because it's been very very carefully balanced. I.e.: controlled.

Market here is almost 100% artificial. Player only supply lowest industrial resources - ore. And player only demands only highest industrial products - ships and equipment.

What happens in the middle between ore and ships? For example, why we don't manufacture Indium buying indite from miners creating natural supply and demand? The supply and demand of goods are artificial. Players don't participate in ANY manufacture and industrial activity and the hell knows who really need these atmospheric processors, how to create them and what goods needed for creation. They just exists. Reptiloids do that.

 

[Surly_Badger]

Market here is almost 100% artificial.

I understand that. I didn't say that the market in-game couldn't be a whole lot better than it is.

But "free"??? Pff. You wouldn't like a free market if you had to deal with one. Not that there has ever been anything like a free market ever anywhere in any game - especially not a game where there is an infinite supply of stuff at the bottom of the pyramid. To make it even tolerable you need to construct a Stark Fist Of Removal that takes assets off the top, otherwise everything becomes worthless.

 

[jadefriendly]

systems need to not produce their exported goods unless they are supplied first.

it's obvious.

look at X-Beyond The Frontier's economy. stupid named items but at least it works. supply and demand means something in that game.

 

[Pendra]

Is something wrong with that elite economy?
Yes, it doesn't exists.
There is no consumption or production therefore there is no demand or supply. The prices are all artificially fixed. Things you buy pop out of thin air and things you sell gets dumped into a star. Yes, it is boring and this is the main reason I play X3AP instead of ED.

 

[Parmo]

I'd like to know where they build the damn ships. What resources does it take to build a Cobra?
Not like this though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQXgcV3JMrY
I'm guessing it's just about every element in the periodic table as a starter, plus manufactured items like drives and other ship modules, and the electronic components including computers and the like.
And how many ships are blown up every 24 hours? Big, I say big demand there!
Funny, IRC there is scrap on the commodities listings but one cannot salvage blown up ship debris.
[]
FD has a paper thin economy that only has one side and that is of supply; supply which is driven by player activity, but to what extent we can only guess. There is no real demand.
Why is it there is always ships available? Never any shortages? What about blockades having an effect?
The X3 series of games has an economy that is more alive than the one ED presents to the player. In X3 ships were not always available but that may have been an arbitrary and random effect.
In X3 NPC craft took part in the economy but only ED's developers know if that is the case for ED. Unless they have told us and I missed it.
Of course, ED has large numbers of players to contend with but that may considered a good starting point for a real economy, one which is based on real people taking their own small economic decisions.
[]
In some sense the CGs can be seen to be have a 'demand' side especially the one that needed resources to build a space station.
But there does not seem to be many of these being built does there?
[]
A Sidewinder costs 32,000 credits. Where's the bill of materials? And labour costs?
[]

I think we're being conned, just a little, when it is said that players can have an effect on the economy. You may say that prices going up or down in a commodity listing is due to players' actions but I for one is not convinced: it's not immersive.

 

[IronGremlin]

I don't think we have had any indication from frontier that this part of the game is done.

Balancing market economies into sensible behaviour that wOuld be resilient to a large number of independent actors is a non-trivial design issue. Coming up with a framework and then constantly tweaking it while players found ways to break it would be full time employment for 2-3 people, easily, for say, forever.

I think that it's likely that what we'll end up with is something slightly more dynamic but with a heavy focus on manual moderation from FDev, as this seems to be their modus operandi for creating a living galaxy - not sure if that's a scalable business model for a game with no subscription and next to no DLC, but I guess we'll see. I remain hopeful.