Trade incentive, as accomplished through modular creatures

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    Jun 23, 2013
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    This is legit all I have wanted out of this game forever, please make a little boy's Christmas dream come true.

    Imagine a system in which planets are assigned values both randomly and based on their physical qualities, and these values correspond to certain traits on modular flora and fauna. The more closely the traits of these animals and plants are matched to the those corresponding to the values of the planets, the better the life will thrive and the more it will breed on the planet. Not all planets will contain life and not all life will be the perfect match for its planet.

    Each planet value will have a gradient of traits well-suited to it, so while there may be one or two perfect traits for a planetary value, other options will not cripple the lifeform's success, allowing for more variety.

    Now, these traits also correspond to certain types of goods unavailable from trade guild shops, i.e. chitins, fluids, hides, etc. These could be used to make goods also unavailable from trade guild shops, such as (When they come) astronaut armor/equipment things, decorations, special hulls, and generally tons of unique items. Useful but nonessential ship systems could also require some of these goods simply as a greater incentive to use this system.

    As these raw materials and their products are not available on the trading guild market, players will have to go through the labor of finding a planet suitable to sustain life capable of producing the goods they want, engineering or capturing life perfect for both living on that planet and producing that good, building a plantation capable of efficiently farming them, and then actually making the item. OR, a minority of people could do that, and the rest could simply trade for those goods. This creates a legitimate incentive for trade, which I find is currently nonexistent. Modular creatures are coming anyways so a system encouraging trade like this would be cool. Also, it might actually make cargo companies kinda useful.

    Also, after-note: Instead of planets, plantation-stations with environmental control systems could also be a thing.
     
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    I can subscribe to most of what you said.

    Not all planets will contain life and not all life will be the perfect match for its planet.
    Absolutely, and not at all.

    There should be life only on some planets; ideally the chances would be configurable per server/universe. But if life "evolves" on a planet, it wouldn't make sense if it weren't adapted as close to perfect to the conditions as possible - unless it is imported, which should be made obvious and connected to some kind of background story in some way (which is hard to do procedurally and therefore rather unlikely to happen); or maybe if it is still in a very early stage (which most likely wouldn't warrant simulating anyway, except maybe in a very generic way as 'biomass').