I think its time that we though about how trading can be made a proper simulation with variety, depth and challenge rather than the extremely simplistic and gamey mechanics that we currently have.
I can only imagine that the inhabitants of the elite galaxy build everything from gold and palladium and eat proginator cells and slaves since the vast majority of trading activity seems to involve moving these high value cargos around often in poorly armed civilian ships. Meanwhile the essentials like food medicines and fuel seem to be magically available to the galaxies populous despite the fact that seems to be largely uneconomical for anyone to actually move them. I mean every station and outpost has fuel available but according the games mechanics in many ships it cost you more in fuel to move it than the profit you make from doing so.
So in order to have something that we can call a trading simulator with a straight face I suggest that we need to do two things:
1) Remove the "hidden magic hand of the curator" and let true supply and demand loose on the galaxy.
Simply put if noone trades in fuel because there is not enough profit then demand will simply rise until there is. Yes there are NPCs supposedly trading but who exactly are these NPCs who are ferrying fuel around the galaxy at a loss ?.
Now some might counter with "but doesnt this mean that profits will be the same for all types of cargo" possibly - but even if this were true is it really any worse that 90% of the commodities being pointless. However I believe this will not happen and this is where the second part of my suggestion comes in:
2) Commodity types have characteristics that impact trading.
I propose to give most of the tradable commodities a set of characteristics that introduce various challenges to moving them around:
I think its fairly obvious how these can applied but an examples would be proginator cells needing super stringent enviroment controllers which cannot cope with high temperaures, computer components being fragile, fuel and munitions being volatile (take a few hits to you cargo hold and ... boooom) etc.
Traders can pick cargo with a set of characteristics that appeal to them e.g. those whole like a race against the clock can go for perishables, those that like to fly slow steady and bump free: fragile, those who like to dice with death: volatile etc.
It should be noted that there can probably be a bigger and better thought out set of characteristics than I've come up with here so please refrain from nit-picking on technicalities of those, I'm more interested in peoples reactions to the general concept I have outlined.
I can only imagine that the inhabitants of the elite galaxy build everything from gold and palladium and eat proginator cells and slaves since the vast majority of trading activity seems to involve moving these high value cargos around often in poorly armed civilian ships. Meanwhile the essentials like food medicines and fuel seem to be magically available to the galaxies populous despite the fact that seems to be largely uneconomical for anyone to actually move them. I mean every station and outpost has fuel available but according the games mechanics in many ships it cost you more in fuel to move it than the profit you make from doing so.
So in order to have something that we can call a trading simulator with a straight face I suggest that we need to do two things:
1) Remove the "hidden magic hand of the curator" and let true supply and demand loose on the galaxy.
Simply put if noone trades in fuel because there is not enough profit then demand will simply rise until there is. Yes there are NPCs supposedly trading but who exactly are these NPCs who are ferrying fuel around the galaxy at a loss ?.
Now some might counter with "but doesnt this mean that profits will be the same for all types of cargo" possibly - but even if this were true is it really any worse that 90% of the commodities being pointless. However I believe this will not happen and this is where the second part of my suggestion comes in:
2) Commodity types have characteristics that impact trading.
I propose to give most of the tradable commodities a set of characteristics that introduce various challenges to moving them around:
- Temperature sensitive - degraded when ship temp exceeds a certain limit.
- Fragile - damaged by excessive g-forces applied to ship (e.g. impacts).
- Perishable - degraded by time out of station. Either gradual (e.g. food), abrupt after a certain time (e.g. slaves).
- Volatile - will explode/burn causing additional damage when taking cargo hatch damage or significant hull damage.
I think its fairly obvious how these can applied but an examples would be proginator cells needing super stringent enviroment controllers which cannot cope with high temperaures, computer components being fragile, fuel and munitions being volatile (take a few hits to you cargo hold and ... boooom) etc.
Traders can pick cargo with a set of characteristics that appeal to them e.g. those whole like a race against the clock can go for perishables, those that like to fly slow steady and bump free: fragile, those who like to dice with death: volatile etc.
It should be noted that there can probably be a bigger and better thought out set of characteristics than I've come up with here so please refrain from nit-picking on technicalities of those, I'm more interested in peoples reactions to the general concept I have outlined.
