Trade Fleets

[MacThule]

I am considering a suggestion regarding trade UI and gameplay activity.

Does anyone else think that it would make a lot sense to make all trade network exchanges use an actual, iterated (not necessarily spawned, obv) trade fleet every single time an exchange occurs - including requiring player-owned trade fleets (whether that fleet is an escorted bulk hauler or a single, fast freighter) to make trades?

NPC supply already ensures that most players use trade to some extent, even in SP.

Beyond the fact that it would be fun and decorative and make the universe feel more dynamic, it would constitute a form of "vunlerable infrastructure" players could attack to cause real attrition to an enemy while profiting themselves (i.e. privateering, raiding, and blockading). Countering would involve direct military intervention, or simply piloting a good blockade runner to make your vital trades happen.

I believe that it would be easy to implement, because NPC fleet construction and control already encompass 90% of the classes and functions they would need to code it. It would be a relatively simple recycling process. Probably a few weeks (perhaps after the galaxy reboot has a couple months to stabilize).

Players could simply spawn in a freighter model, define the fleet as "shipping/trade," and station it (lock to one home station that can use it). Then whenever a trade was made, the station would actually put the cargo in the freighter's hull and send it to the location (if load exceeds capacity, then fill holds and stage additonal trips; so even a small vessel could execute trades over time at the cost of exposure and advantage of smaller losses), and the fleet would unload the cargos, actually be assigned the relevant credits (as bounty if killed), and return home for its next assignment. You could station multiple fleets at a single station to ensure availability during intense trading. If you lose a ship, just spawn a new one and station it and the beat goes on.

Or stations could be allowed to build their own traders under owner parameters, making the entire affair more hands off and a basic cost of doing business excepting active, player-guided raiding which might pose a real threat to income. NPCs already intelligently spawn fleets based on empire parameters, this is all still a case of recycling existing code!

The substantial gameplay value of implementing any viable forms of vulnerable infrastructure is a subject I have elaborated on in many past posts.

 

[NaStral]

Along with player created ships designated as traders, it would make sense to expand this to designated trade stations as well. You could do the same function from home base but with some kind of disadvantage and reciprocal advantage plus additional buff on the seperate vulnerable station to encourage spreading out.

 

[MacThule]

Along with player created ships designated as traders, it would make sense to expand this to designated trade stations as well. You could do the same function from home base but with some kind of disadvantage and reciprocal advantage plus additional buff on the seperate vulnerable station to encourage spreading out.

That would be great. Not sure what advantages would work offhand, but there ought to be something.

On a somewhat related note, I was thinking that outposts and trade stations could be encouraged by finally implementing a good fleet patrol option where you could set the sector radius of patrol and it would make random sweeps on auto so long as it was assigned to a station. It would turn outlying stations into zone control hubs, encouraging players to spawn stations for basing patrols to protect an asteroid field or patrol several sectors at once.

Stations themselves have a pretty useless range on the strategic level, but if they could support multiple fleets to patrol... passively collecting long-range scans for remote review would be a good advantage if it worked... not to mention any economic advantages like improved mining and a better trade network...

 

[GnomeKing]

I like these ideas, but;
the 'bomb' weapon (fully exploited: eg; point-blank bomb-waffle brick) ) might pose big problems to non-homebase structures, no ? :/

 

[NaStral]

I like these ideas, but;
the 'bomb' weapon (fully exploited: eg; point-blank bomb-waffle brick) ) might pose big problems to non-homebase structures, no ? :/

Currently with NPC factions, attacking a NPC station in a territory controlled by one will result in you getting swarmed by defense fleets. If players could take advantage of the same mechanic and assign fleets to patrol duty in a system they control this could give a well built station a chance of surviving. It would just have to hold out long enough for help to arrive. Another thing that could be added would be a system that would automatically ping any allied players online that an attack occurred which would allow them to send reinforcements of thier own.

As for the bomb weapons, unless Schine wants to send a message to thier players never to build stations outside of thier homebase they will need to nerf that weapon and effectively limit its use.

 

[Scypio]

- How do you make it work with a ship using cargo pods instead of direct cargo blocks ?
- How would some player start a real blockade while they need to disconnect to go to work during the day or whatever life has in store for them ? Remember, no unloaded combat will be implemented as i don't remember which Schine's member stated it quite some time ago.
- How do you prevent someone from attacking the freighter, then sending his ship via fleet order to the home and then disconnecting ? Same problem as previous question.
- Define the "need" for trading for any npc or non-npc's faction.
- How does the system choose who/what to do/choose when trading ?
- How do you protect useless big chunks of hull that can't move aka station from pirates ? When you are disconnect ?
- Be more specific. That's a general remark on your proposition though but there is lot's of stuff that is just vague when you start to look at it a little bit more and we're not in your head. So we can't tell what you think.

I believe that it would be easy to implement, because NPC fleet construction and control already encompass 90% of the classes and functions they would need to code it.

This is debatable but only Schema can answer this.

 

[MacThule]

- How do you make it work with a ship using cargo pods instead of direct cargo blocks ?

Is this necessary? Some players use cargo pods, a couple of factions in particular if I recall, but I don't see a majority of Starmadians using them. It wouldn't be impossible to code, so we could talk paths to resolve but is it even necessary? Does every little thing that some players like to do need to be accommodated in order for new features to be viable? I think this one could be addressed later if ever - nothing would prevent players from piloting pod-bearing ships, so it wouldn't be any worse than now where no ships - pod cargo or in-hull cargo - are being used in this way.

- How would some player start a real blockade while they need to disconnect to go to work during the day or whatever life has in store for them ? Remember, no unloaded combat will be implemented as i don't remember which Schine's member stated it quite some time ago.

I doubt a single player could effectively blockade another for extended periods, even with unloaded combat. Nor should they be able to. Blockades are barely workable IRL and are typically attempted by only large forces. Also - I don't see the fact that unloaded combat isn't currently implemented as relevant to designing new features that would benefit from it.

- How do you prevent someone from attacking the freighter, then sending his ship via fleet order to the home and then disconnecting ? Same problem as previous question.

Again - current non-functionality not relevant to a declared future functionality. Might as well question working on weapons because armor isn't functioning properly, or vice versa - why work on armor when weapons aren't even working properly?

- Define the "need" for trading for any npc or non-npc's faction.

Sorry - I don't think I entirely understand this point. Define the need for trading? I don't think anyone "needs" to trade, but most players who build stations seem to do at least some.

- How does the system choose who/what to do/choose when trading ?

How do the NPCs choose who/what to do/choose regarding anything right now?

- How do you protect useless big chunks of hull that can't move aka station from pirates ? When you are disconnect ?

Me? I typically add a few turrets and a squad of fighters to garrison.

- Be more specific. That's a general remark on your proposition though but there is lot's of stuff that is just vague when you start to look at it a little bit more and we're not in your head. So we can't tell what you think.

Well, it's vague because I'm soliciting input and ideas leading up to a proposition. This is just the seed of an idea. Thanks for all the input!

This is debatable but only Schema can answer this.

Agreed!
Code is code though, and code objects can be re-purposed and used in other functions much more easily than they can be written from scratch. It's not entirely speculative when analogous functions already exist in game. So I definitely don't know for certain that it would be easy, but based on available information, and experience with coding in general, I believe that it should be. If best practices have been used in all recent coding, such as the NPC fleet & economic functions. Essentially the idea is no more complex than to extend current NPC functionality to player factions, therefore the coding should be simple. Obviously there could be serious hitches though, since players are orders of magnitude more complex than the NPCs.

 

[Nosajimiki]

I expect a lot more fleets moving around post galaxy update.

You will not so much see blockades of drones as you see the occasional "pirate player" where he sees a trade line in his map and moves to intercept, since there will then be frequent enough of trade to promote this kind of "living". This would make it very interesting if you could set your own trade ship, since such a player might show up in a fighter (so as not to overkill a basic trade guild freighter and lose his spoils) only to find a heavily armed cruiser being used as a freighter. RIP.

The thing I really like about this idea is offsetting trade costs with your own investments. More trade = more player piracy = more need to protect your trade routes.

Might also be cool if a player could earn a "pirate" tag by repeatedly hitting trade routes. Maybe even unlock a darker element to the game that route like making pirates peace you so that you can trade at their bases, but all players auto hostile you unless they expressly go back an change their alignment with you.

I like these ideas, but;
the 'bomb' weapon (fully exploited: eg; point-blank bomb-waffle brick) ) might pose big problems to non-homebase structures, no ? :/

If you could set Attack all not allied on a entity basis instead of a faction basis, this could be mitigated by setting bases as such. Then Alts and Neutrals would have a harder time with ambushing your bases with bombs. Enemies will always have a hard time bombing bases as long as it has good turrets.

 

[Scypio]

Is this necessary? Some players use cargo pods, a couple of factions in particular if I recall, but I don't see a majority of Starmadians using them. It wouldn't be impossible to code, so we could talk paths to resolve but is it even necessary?

Cargo pods are really useful for trading between players. Take your pod, leave it to the destination and take the one from the other guy. That's not necessary though. Just a global remark about a system that i know lot of ppl use and myself included.

I doubt a single player could effectively blockade another for extended periods, even with unloaded combat. Nor should they be able to. Blockades are barely workable IRL and are typically attempted by only large forces

I never said that one player should be able to. But how do you allow players to do a blockade while knowing this ? I read here blockade so here is my question about it. Then it's your proposition/idea so you do the answer you want. I'm just giving random questions that pop into my mind and you give the answer you want.

Personally i am for unloaded combat but that's not me who's gonna implement it so i don't own the final decision.

I don't think I entirely understand this point. Define the need for trading? I don't think anyone "needs" to trade, but most players who build stations seem to do at least some.

Well, npc's faction need to borrow blocs to expand themselves and build stuff and they trade to get this faster by selling/buying this. So what should be the key thing for factions to trade instead of simply mining some more ? Remember, you can't force someone to do something unless you use a carrot and a stick.

 

[MacThule]

I never said that one player should be able to. But how do you allow players to do a blockade while knowing this ? I read here blockade so here is my question about it. Then it's your proposition/idea so you do the answer you want. I'm just giving random questions that pop into my mind and you give the answer you want.

It's a good question, thank you. I don't have a succinct answer ATM, but I'll get back to it when I have more time.

Well, npc's faction need to borrow blocs to expand themselves and build stuff and they trade to get this faster by selling/buying this. So what should be the key thing for factions to trade instead of simply mining some more ? Remember, you can't force someone to do something unless you use a carrot and a stick.

Oh, I don't really see a need to create need to trade. Trade fleets would inherently incentivize trade.

Every multiplayer server I've been on has players using the trade network already, and at least two factions rely heavily on trade schemes to multiply resources over time last I heard. Trade is far, far faster than mining, refining, and building factory production lines, particularly for acquiring higher tier components. Players who like to farm pirates don't want to also spend hours and hours building industry - they just set up shop and start trading for any specific components they need more of.

My intent isn't to 'push' players into doing anything new, only to elaborate on existing patterns and streamline them, so I wouldn't want to somehow create any need for trade that isn't already intrinsic (although improvements to trade network UI and streamlining trade in general would certainly help).

Trade fleets would incentivize trade slightly more, but not through carrot & stick at all - through added functionality instead. It would allow players to set up long-term trade patterns that would be carried out by automation (reducing tedium). Also, using your own trade fleets instead of relying on trade guild ships saves you a percentage on purchases across the board because of no shipping fees - in itself a huge incentive (ok, maybe that's a carrot, I don't know).

Example 1: You are buying tons of Fertikeen and the nearby trade stations never have enough, so every day you log in you check to see if they've stocked more and arrange any possible trades. Instead, with a trade fleet function, you just tell your station to purchase (e.g.) 100,000,000 units of Fertikeen ore within a set price range, and as it becomes available your trade fleet deploys to go get it. So even if it takes 5 weeks to fill the order, you are constantly getting more Fertikeen and you never have to touch it after setting the initial order. Far more convenient than current trade and far, far more convenient than all the overhead of building your own industrial complex to mine your own (though obviously some will still prefer that - they can profit from selling - yay!). So now using trade fleets is going to save you boatloads of time and tedious micro-management of resources, BUT... you will be exposed to some risk. Fortunately that risk won't take the form of your best ships getting wrecked or anything you have to waste time dealing with in most cases, it would just take the form of some resources being lost over time. Passively. But you would only need to address it if you began losing more than you were gaining.

Example 2: You already have a mining and production operation. You mostly supply your own fleet but because of your design style and the materials you use, you have a constant stream of surplus. Every day. Every week. You set a trade fleet to constantly haul this surplus out to any buyers at a markup, and attempt to buy materials you actually need while there before returning home. Once you set up the trade orders, you never need to touch it again unless your production changes. You've now converted your surplus into more needed materials. Passively, without the tedium of micro-managing every transaction, every shipment, every day, every time. You don't have to hunt through seller lists and calculate the shipping cost to see if the trade is even worth it, your fleet just does it if the price is right. Tedium gone. The cost is exposure to passive losses over time from piracy.

Seeing why most established players would use trade fleets despite any risk of occasional piracy?

 

[Scypio]

(ok, maybe that's a carrot, I don't know).

That's a carrot and i suppose you found it. ;-)

 

[Nosajimiki]

Personally i am for unloaded combat but that's not me who's gonna implement it so i don't own the final decision.

Voxel makes "unloaded" combat impossible to calculate, but the game could in theory do loaded combat that automatically
initiates between hostile AI forces. I think the concern is that this could result in massive lag spikes if players decide to send 5 mil mass fleets at each other because they are unworried about lagging out and dying themselves.

As for the carrot, the devs have already said that a major change in the Galaxy update will be redistribution of resources which will mean that trade likely will be a need, unless you are willing to explore across many star systems to find the resources your need and make much longer mining runs for them.

 

[GnomeKing]

Voxel makes "unloaded" combat impossible to calculate

why is that ?

 

[dwwojcik]

Didn't the devs say a long time ago when they first started working on AI fleets that they would do unloaded combat by abstracting it in 2D?

 

[Nosajimiki]

why is that ?

"Impossible" may be overstated, but impractical: definitely. "In a voxel game, 90% of a ship's combat abilities are determined by layout. In a game where ships are just objects with a few global values like HP, weapon stats, etc. You can pull those stats and run a simple sim off of them. In Voxel, you can't actually account design strengths for things like frontal armor vs side armor, turret positioning, timing synergy, how systems are layered etc. Basically, you could spawn a cube of random systems and have it perform the same as a well designed warship.

To make a less abstracted engine like a 2-d simulator could be a close approximation, but would take tons of extra development time and maintenance for a very small feature in comparison... not to mention the exploit features it would open up when people start designing ships specifically around 2-d abstraction.

The hardest part though about either of those solutions is combat damage. Purely abstracted combat can't create realistic damage patterns. A 2-d simulator could possible simulate realistic combat damage, but at that point you aren't really saving resources overloaded sector combat.

 

[Scypio]

Voxel makes "unloaded" combat impossible to calculate, but the game could in theory do loaded combat that automatically
initiates between hostile AI forces. I think the concern is that this could result in massive lag spikes if players decide to send 5 mil mass fleets at each other because they are unworried about lagging out and dying themselves.

And this already results in lags spike if the players are using it themselves... So, it's ok if two massive fleets/ships with at least one player involved nearby crash the server under the lags but not if there is no players involved ?

To make a less abstracted engine like a 2-d simulator could be a close approximation, but would take tons of extra development time and maintenance for a very small feature in comparison... not to mention the exploit features it would open up when people start designing ships specifically around 2-d abstraction.

Is that a problem ? I mean, you know that X is using optimized designs for 2d abstraction. So you kindly jumps in to load the ships and look at the show. And well, beside that, i am more for a much more simple system, just turn ships into bars, shields, armor, systems and then they shoot at each other with the correct rate of fire and a certain % of missing based on their thrusts. This was much more applicable to previous power system then current one though.
There is no needs to go complicated because ppl will tend to no do unloaded combat anyway. But still this is useful for lot of cases.

As for the carrot, the devs have already said that a major change in the Galaxy update will be redistribution of resources which will mean that trade likely will be a need, unless you are willing to explore across many star systems to find the resources your need and make much longer mining runs for them.

You use a warp gate ? You can even use a set of several warp gates to travel to different presets locations, just make sure your ship is small enough so you don't have to build a big warpgate again if it is destroyed by some pirates.
Also, on a side note i seriously doubt about the ability for the dev's to do something that is interesting about located resources. There is no high tier blocks that you can't have on your ship without any kind of huge drop into your ship efficiency. Remember generic chamber blocks ? Eh the only thing left is some effects on weapons and possibly different kind of weapons depending on systems but you know well like me how it will end.

 

[Nosajimiki]

And this already results in lags spike if the players are using it themselves... So, it's ok if two massive fleets/ships with at least one player involved nearby crash the server under the lags but not if there is no players involved ?

On a good server, local resource limits are more of a problem than server resource limits; so, people build to what thier computer can handle. Unloaded combat encourages building to server limits meaning there would be far more server-wide lagging engagements which effect everyone's qol.

Is that a problem ? I mean, you know that X is using optimized designs for 2d abstraction. So you kindly jumps in to load the ships and look at the show. And well, beside that, i am more for a much more simple system, just turn ships into bars, shields, armor, systems and then they shoot at each other with the correct rate of fire and a certain % of missing based on their thrusts. This was much more applicable to previous power system then current one though.
There is no needs to go complicated because ppl will tend to no do unloaded combat anyway. But still this is useful for lot of cases.

• And when the fight is over, what does the damage to these ships look like?
• What do the debris fields look like?
• And most importantly, if someone jumps in mid-simulation, where is everything and how does the engine resolve the above two questions without causing a massive lag spike as it computes 3d ships with millions of blocks worth of damage all at once?

You use a warp gate ? You can even use a set of several warp gates to travel to different presets locations, just make sure your ship is small enough so you don't have to build a big warpgate again if it is destroyed by some pirates.
Also, on a side note i seriously doubt about the ability for the dev's to do something that is interesting about located resources. There is no high tier blocks that you can't have on your ship without any kind of huge drop into your ship efficiency. Remember generic chamber blocks ? Eh the only thing left is some effects on weapons and possibly different kind of weapons depending on systems but you know well like me how it will end.

Distribution will not force trade, but it will encourage it. If you have an abundance of something other people need, it's just easier to send AI trade ships than it is to go out yourself and mine somewhere far away in a size restricted miner going through warp gates that may or may not still be intact.

 

[GnomeKing]

The hardest part though about either of those solutions is combat damage. Purely abstracted combat can't create realistic damage patterns. A 2-d simulator could possible simulate realistic combat damage, but at that point you aren't really saving resources overloaded sector combat.

...ah ha, thanks for pointing that out and insights guys.

Maybe with much simplified and unified/similar damage models across different weapons (+ less variety in weapon types) (+ random 'aim-variance' in loaded-combat anyway), then a system to simply apply some 'Random-Damage' to a ship might be achievable...but I think the joy of interesting and varied block damage is a real long-term Starmade 1.0 Asset, and should only be traded carefully :/ .

Maybe unloaded combat could be reduced to a 'simple bolt-on' stats based comparison ; but where the end result is expressed as a harsh binary Dead vs Undamaged condition...crude + raw...also could favor use of numerous smaller simple ships, rather than large/expensive/complex ones for Unloaded Combat (eg station-patrol squads etc)...good or bad thing (idk)?...

[actually, maybe a third 'Damaged Condition' is possible : ie, apply one (or several) very simple damage patterns - perhaps even 'delete-shape-type-tools' with a specific block-exclusion for ?systems/cpu/faction/ect, so that the Damaged Condition ship could not be actually made non-functional after unloaded combat, just stripped of ?hull/armor/weapons/shields via an automated 'random/special-unloaded-damage-delete-tool' ....]


[maybe more 'calculation LODs' can be added in comparable ways to Loaded Combat...(thinking hat)...unloaded turrets could be treated as part of main-ship guns for Unloaded Combat 'stat-comparisons' (with modifiers for anti-missile systems etc) > therefore, also in Loaded Combat, above certain distances from a Player, NPC/AI turrets might-as-well be treated in a similar crude+raw way, since they are not clearly perceived by the Player anyway even when 'loaded'> ie don't create move/aim turret entity calculations above ?some? distance. Instead just calculate the aim/fire from central/core position of AI-ship, as if the turrets are simply main-ship weapons...

...similarly, perhaps super-simplified 'random' damage could be applied to entities at distance, rather than calculating hits the same way as in 'Loaded-Shorter Range' combat where hits can be perceived directly by the player]

 

[Nosajimiki]

Maybe unloaded combat could be reduced to a 'simple bolt-on' stats based comparison ; but where the end result is expressed as a harsh binary Dead vs Undamaged condition...crude + raw...also could favor use of numerous smaller simple ships, rather than large/expensive/complex ones for Unloaded Combat (eg station-patrol squads etc)...good or bad thing (idk)?...

Binary dead, not dead only work with fleets of many ships. If its an unloaded fight between say, a cruiser and 6 frigates, the difference between the cruiser dying and taking down 5 frigates with it and the cruiser killing all 6 frigates unharmed is effically massive considering they are both very similar forces.

[actually, maybe a third 'Damaged Condition' is possible : ie, apply one (or several) very simple damage patterns - perhaps even 'delete-shape-type-tools' with a specific block-exclusion for ?systems/cpu/faction/ect, so that the Damaged Condition ship could not be actually made non-functional after unloaded combat, just stripped of ?hull/armor/weapons/shields via an automated 'random/special-unloaded-damage-delete-tool' ....]

[maybe more 'calculation LODs' can be added in comparable ways to Loaded Combat...(thinking hat)...unloaded turrets could be treated as part of main-ship guns for Unloaded Combat 'stat-comparisons' (with modifiers for anti-missile systems etc) > therefore, also in Loaded Combat, above certain distances from a Player, NPC/AI turrets might-as-well be treated in a similar crude+raw way, since they are not clearly perceived by the Player anyway even when 'loaded'> ie don't create move/aim turret entity calculations above ?some? distance. Instead just calculate the aim/fire from central/core position of AI-ship, as if the turrets are simply main-ship weapons...

You still need to load all the models to apply the damage at which point you might as well do a real simulation.

...similarly, perhaps super-simplified 'random' damage could be applied to entities at distance, rather than calculating hits the same way as in 'Loaded-Shorter Range' combat where hits can be perceived directly by the player]

Sounds good on paper, but very bad in practice. Any weapon system that relies on damage patterns to optimize damage done would be rendered f'ed over based arbitrarily if you are more than a certain distance.

 

[dwwojcik]

You're forgetting that there has to be unloaded combat in Starmade. There are NPC factions, and these factions will go to war. They can't not fight, and they can't fight only when a player is there. Unloaded combat will obviously be a worse simulation than loaded combat since it is an abstraction, but it will have to do. After all, resolving NPC wars without simulating combat in any sense would be an even worse simulation.