REAL NPC trade system

[Zandraak]

Hello,

Can you implement a REAL system of NPC Trade?
Actually you generate randomly ressources.
If we sell them, they randomly decay and don't change the local prices.

Why you don't need a procurement of ressources?

A Planet produce X on this system/Region.
This station "eat" it, and produce Y (per hours) with this.
If you approve it more with X, it will produce more and local Y price (cause they'll tranport it elsewhere) will increase.

So, if you sell more X, you'll get more Y, buy it at a small price and export it far away.
A real deficiency will be catch and patch by real traders.
More gameplay, more logic, more "life" in this univers.

And why don't add a "real pirate" effect?
If players (and NPC) kill traders, the local "export-import" will be impacted and maket will be influenced.

A pirate infested system will call traders for help (due to prices) and forces.
Pirates can try to influence local market etc..


Actually we have a fake system, with no life and no effect on the univers, it's really sad.

 

[Zandraak]

Bump.

 

[Zandraak]

Well, still less player, and no improvement.

I bump again and want a real return from the team.
If you want player, you have to create an alive univers, not a theater where only Braben play alone and where we're only ghosts.

 

[Ranek Eisenkralle]

To me this sounds like a good idea, although it might need some more elaboration since it is a bit vague as it is right now. I do get the general idea and I approve of it. Basically creating more of a living economy (maybe even to the extent as EvE Online?) For traders this certainly would be a good thing. On that note I would like it if security status also influenced the probability of being intercepted by pirates. The reason why I largely stopped trading was that I kept being intercepted by pirates in a high security system on well over 85% of flights.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Why you don't need a procurement of ressources?

A Planet produce X on this system/Region.
This station "eat" it, and produce Y (per hours) with this.
If you approve it more with X, it will produce more and local Y price (cause they'll tranport it elsewhere) will increase.

So, if you sell more X, you'll get more Y, buy it at a small price and export it far away.

The question is: would you be able to tell the difference if it did work like this?

There are nowhere near enough players to carry all the cargo needed to keep the economy moving - the Sol bubble has 20,000ish systems with around 90 billion tonnes of cargo to move. So either the economy grinds to a halt as nowhere gets supplied, or almost all the economic activity is carried out by NPCs, offscreen.

If individual players do very little of the activity, should you expect your (small) delivery of X to noticeably affect production of Y? Production timescales at the moment - to restock an emptied market - are days or sometimes weeks: would you really notice if your delivery of 100t of X made production of Y 5% faster for the next few days? [1]

Rather than tracking a lot of details which 99.9% of the time would make no visible difference, I think the current way it's done through BGS states makes a lot of sense and has similar visible effects.

1) Deliver goods to a station -> Station goes into Boom state -> supply levels and restock rates increase for most goods

2) Pirate or destroy NPC traders -> System goes into Civil Unrest or Lockdown state -> supply levels and restock rates decrease significantly for most goods (or completely close, for Lockdown)

3) Build up faction -> Faction goes into Expansion -> demand and prices for many goods rise to fund the expansion

You do also get fetch cargo / donate cargo missions which have a follow-on mission to deliver some cargo produced by that mission, for a more direct "deliver X to produce Y".



Meanwhile, the galaxy is currently facing a civilisation-wide Palladium shortage, as players buy it up much faster than it can be produced, to fulfil missions generated by the high demand for Palladium. Even this abstract level of supply and demand can produce economic challenges and interesting scenarios.


[1] To add to that ... is it possible that it does already work like this, but we just don't notice because the feedback on our actions is very subtle? I'm not aware of any experiments where anyone's tried an obvious chain like "deliver Coltan, increase Tantalum production" to see what happens.