Suggested Market System/Automated Shops

[Durendal5150]

While the shop system as is is fairly functional, I feel like a separate system using linked cargo and indefinite buy/sell orders could create opportunities for more trade gameplay and even ease player interactions to some degree.

A market, as opposed to a shop, is linked to physical cargo blocks and can only hold what it has space for.
Within its interface, the owner can set up an order to buy or sell specific items at specific costs. As well, a limit can be set on the 'buy' side. So long as there are products to be sold, or less than the set amount of products to hold in stock, the order will be 'active.' (the space for all buy orders should be 'reserved' to prevent a situation where products clog and prevent purchases)

In such a way, stations could be set to buy resources, have them pulled from the market, processed, and resold as products. By supplying the market block with starting credits, a player could both provide a service not requiring their personal intervention, and generating them a passive income.

Such market orders should probably be linked to a menu with some sort of range (perhaps tied to a sensor/broadcast mechanic sometime down the road?) so prospective traders can examine a local market and make decisions about trade routes. By replacing many of the existing 'trade stations' that randomly spawn with factories producing specific products and requiring specific resources, an entire 'trade with environment' layer of the game is created without too much fuss.

Could be improved even further by having trade guild or other future NPC faction ships perform such trades, or even allow player vessels AIs to be set to 'trade' mode and left to fetch resources, make sales, and generate revenue for the player.

This actually gets me thinking about a whole other layer, where certain productions receive bonuses or maluses based on local conditions, making the construction of a dispersed industry attractive as opposed to making one megafactory, but maybe save that for a separate suggestion.

 

[Madman198237]

Interesting idea.

Perhaps this can be added to shops as a functionality, instead of making a new block. Although....depending on how it all ends up UI-wise, it might simplify things to add another block with simplified function....Anyway.

 

[Reilly Reese]

So EVE Market system?

 

[Durendal5150]

Interesting idea.

Perhaps this can be added to shops as a functionality, instead of making a new block. Although....depending on how it all ends up UI-wise, it might simplify things to add another block with simplified function....Anyway.

My first thought had indeed been to just modify the existing shop. Then I considered it may make the UI a mess, and make the existing trade guild shops a pain to reorganize. I like the idea of them having a constantly shuffling stock as things are bought and sold, but that'd be hell for new players just trying to buy a couple of item X. That said, maybe the menu for the shop can simply be tabbed?

So EVE Market system?

A pared down one yes, with bits of inspiration from the X series games thrown in. Basically anything to allow both:
1:An understandable framework for NPC elements to move goods around without shielding them from non-violent player interaction via locked 'trade routes'

2: A method for players to interact with the NPC economy and each other's industry outside the bounds of any rigid traderoute/faction diplomacy arrangements.

Part of the reasoning was also to keep goods 'physical.' Ideally I'd like to see ships physically dock or use transporters to load/unload goods, or transfer them via drones with a later version of the carrier mechanics, but that's just a huge personal bias towards keeping things 'in universe,' which is another thing that peeves me slightly about the current system of magical shop storage.

Honestly, i'd even like to see a system where these markets could accept specified goods in exchange, and/or a method to create credits from existing resources, rather than rely entirely on NPC sources of currency. That reliance I feel could make running a server with no NPCs a complete fiasco since there's no generation of credits, but that's another huge tangent. :p

 

[Madman198237]

Perhaps in order to implement bartering instead of paying, you could (As the shop owner) assign a value to everything you're willing to accept, and a value to everything you're willing to sell.

 

[Durendal5150]

Perhaps in order to implement bartering instead of paying, you could (As the shop owner) assign a value to everything you're willing to accept, and a value to everything you're willing to sell.

That'd probably be an easy way to go about it yeah. if we want to go absolutely bonkers, you could also tickbox accepted goods and have the market system take the mean price from recent global transactions.

Ah, another trick to steal from the X games, the ability to make the price flexible, so your market block/future NPC shopkeep will raise the price you're willing to pay for resources if your factory is running low, or put products on sale if you're overflowing with them. (Or hike the price if you're the only one with a stock of it for systems around. )

 

[Madman198237]

That'd be an interesting algorithm to write, I'd think. You'd have to set a threshold for running low, one for running high....Many, many variables. All of which must be adjustable by the market owner.

 

[Durendal5150]

That'd be an interesting algorithm to write, I'd think. You'd have to set a threshold for running low, one for running high....Many, many variables. All of which must be adjustable by the market owner.

X basically just gave you a 'highest price to accept' and 'lowest price to accept' variable and swung between them based on stock levels. It worked for the most part.

 

[Madman198237]

OK, but then you need to define your own status for "Running low" and "Running high" in inventories....or you could just set 1 value as your midline and have default percentage-based increments for "Low" and "Really low" and so on.

 

[Durendal5150]

OK, but then you need to define your own status for "Running low" and "Running high" in inventories....or you could just set 1 value as your midline and have default percentage-based increments for "Low" and "Really low" and so on.

Yup, that's more or less how it did it for you there. For the purposes of Starmade, it may be more intuitive to have the effectiveness of the settings worked into the skill of the hired NPC, if the crew system gets that complicated. Otherwise probably best to leave it sit, rather than put in a lot of variables. I know I'd enjoy tweaking them, but probably not the sort of gameplay most are looking for.

 

[kiraen]

This is all very interesting, but

1. Shops are already planned to be linked to cargo
2. You can already adjust buy and sell prices

Just have a 'pull' to remove blocks that are bought, run them thru factories, and then 'push' them back into the store cargo.
Hopefully you will be able to set up multiple slaved cargoes for one shop for the sales, and then you just need one cargo that is mastered off the shop for the purchases. Limits will then be defined by space and credits available.

 

[Durendal5150]

This is all very interesting, but

1. Shops are already planned to be linked to cargo
2. You can already adjust buy and sell prices

Just have a 'pull' to remove blocks that are bought, run them thru factories, and then 'push' them back into the store cargo.
Hopefully you will be able to set up multiple slaved cargoes for one shop for the sales, and then you just need one cargo that is mastered off the shop for the purchases. Limits will then be defined by space and credits available.

Good to know. Though my main concern with that system would be needing to manually adjust the prices of everything you don't want to buy to zero, if nothing else was changed. Though making it so the shop only offered to buy items that were actively being pulled from it by a linked storage might be the more intuitive solution.

While that works out, a system of orders would at least provide a framework for listing them to prospective buyers and sellers, wheras needing to physically visit every shop to see what it's buying and selling, and for how much, would make trader-oriented play untenable. Orders would likewise provide easy hooks for NPC/AI traders to use.

 

[cyberus111]

I like the checkbox idea, add a column to the shop inventory menu with buy/sell check boxes, check items to that you need as BUY and things you want to get rid of as SELL.

If implemented a "Clear all BUYS" and "Clear all SELLS" would be a HUGE QOL bonus IMHO.

 

[Durendal5150]

I like the checkbox idea, add a column to the shop inventory menu with buy/sell check boxes, check items to that you need as BUY and things you want to get rid of as SELL.

If implemented a "Clear all BUYS" and "Clear all SELLS" would be a HUGE QOL bonus IMHO.

Actually that's a good point too. Couple that with the to-be-implemented shop cargo linkage, and a shop tab to find the best price to buy or sell at, (or a list of all buyers/sellers of a given item) and specific buy orders or an additional shop type aren't at all necessary.

 

[kiraen]

, wheras needing to physically visit every shop to see what it's buying and selling, and for how much, would make trader-oriented play untenable.

There was talk of a Grand Exchange for listing shop prices. It wasn't confirmed or anything, but Bench had some interesting things to say in the second page.

 

[Durendal5150]

Does look like it yeah, and they've largely covered much of what I put out here. I suppose the only remaining component of my suggestion is a system for AI/NPC traders. I wouldn't want to see there be points during the shipment of things that they're magi-ported outside the reach of pirates, as that'd make that aspect of gameplay impossible, and traders lives too easy.

 

[HolyCookie]

There was talk of a Grand Exchange for listing shop prices. It wasn't confirmed or anything, but Bench had some interesting things to say in the second page.

And again, thanks for getting the link though I did know the name of that thread as it is one of my favourite suggestions :P

For anything you want to read about an economy system and or market, read that thread it has a really long conversation with quite some dev replies.

 

[RogueXenoRenegade]

Durendal5150 AWESOME IDEA.
-support

 

[Durendal5150]

Durendal5150 AWESOME IDEA.
-support

Thank you! Though apparently a lot of what I've touched on has been discussed already. Really probably should have done a closer reading of the 'commonly suggested' thread.