Merchants' needs and Dynamic economy

K

klauss

Spaceman
We need notepads.
At least I do.

A nice feature to add to us merchant boys.

The commodity exchange could feature a notepad where one may add notes about prices and where they are. (maually, just typing text - that way we would keep the need to pay attention to prices).

Perhaps, if the developers have time for it, grouping could be added so that notes can be grouped together (for instance, prices and location for billiance and furs would be on different groups).

Notes could also be used to note interesting news, so that you don't forget later. For instance, a button in the news window (Take note) to copy the news item into the notepad. The same Take Note button could apply to the commodity exchange, for ease of usage.

I grant that all this could realistically be done in reality (I mean, I could grab a notepad and a pencil and start writing), but it is time consuming and some of us (I hope most) do not devote our lives at playing some game (although we do spend a significant amount of time in it). Some (hail them) even spend more time developing them than playing them.

I realize that it will be a low-priority task, since fixing bugs and making AI better (not harder) or other features are certainly more important. But, anyhow, I've found myself wishing for an embedded notepad more than once.

The thread is open for comments about this and any related feature. For instance, ideas for a dynamic economy. I've downloaded the code and I'll be trying to accomplish such things myself, so I will appreciate comments on that - also, If I find out how to add the notepad, I might do it myself. But if any developer sees this, I'll need some guide as to how code works.

I'll post any doubts here too.

I'm quite slow working (I have lots of other work), so patience is a must.
 
There's a workaround that I've been using for a while called Pen and Paper. Unfortunately not freeware, but there are enough people with a copy that you should be able to borrow one, or if everyone you know is stingy the licensing is only a few dollars, often less if you get a student edition.
 
Chernikov said:
or if everyone you know is stingy the licensing is only a few dollars, often less if you get a student edition.
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Bah. Forget that. Just donate a few dollars to a charity or two and they'll be falling over themselves to send you free pens and notepads. Local banks tend to be nice too.
 
Chernikov said:
There's a workaround that I've been using for a while called Pen and Paper. Unfortunately not freeware
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It is fully Open Source, however - and remarkably free from security bugs.

Not completely immune to homework-consuming canines, sadly...
 
Come on people!
You don't need all the sarcasm.

You know what I mean. Having lots of papers on the desktop about prices is messy.
Also, it takes a lot of time to note all prices, how handy would be a button "Note Price".

Do you all really think it's so useless?

If you do, I'll just try to implement it for myself.
If you change your mind, anytime, come back (crawling and begging if possible), since I'll have it.
 
Expanding on the previous post, remember Freelancer. Wasn't it a lot easier to find profitable routes if Freelancer? Just because the computer did the work of keeping track of prices.

Now, I don't want exactly that because it doesn't account for the possibility that you don't care about prices. What I mean, Freelancer made it too easy. But, if instead of noting all prices automatically, one had a button to note a specific (or a set of) prices, and a notepad to note other stuff (like news, interesting bits, you know), but in a quick way (not having to retype everything or, as you say in paper, rewrite).

This way, if you neglect price watching, you won't have the best routes. But if you do your homework, you will.

I KNOW ALL THAT CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED WITH PEN AND PAPER.

But, think of it as the Nav Map. You can also draw your own maps, find your own routes. Why would you need a map in the computer?
Take out the nav map now, since it's redundant.

Well, I think not.

That's the idea I was trying to convey on notepads.

If you still don't get it, forget about whether the idea suits you or not. I just need some help in implementing it myself.
 
Oh, and don't forget: This thread is also about dynamic economy. Besides being sarcastic about the notepad, comment on dynamic economy too and be useful.
 
klauss said:
But, think of it as the Nav Map. You can also draw your own maps, find your own routes. Why would you need a map in the computer?
Take out the nav map now, since it's redundant.
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I still haven't gotten the nav map to work in Privateer Remake. If I need to go somewhere, I grab a printed out map of the Gemini sector and plot a course by hand. I haven't worried about it, because the paper map is far more userfriendly. I can glance at it at any time, without interrupting my flight.

That's the idea I was trying to convey on notepads.
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FWIW, the original Privateer didn't even tell you how much you purchased cargo for. Remake is already a leap over that.
 
AKAImBatman said:
FWIW, the original Privateer didn't even tell you how much you purchased cargo for. Remake is already a leap over that.
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Yes, I grant you that.

AKAImBatman said:
I still haven't gotten the nav map to work in Privateer Remake. If I need to go somewhere, I grab a printed out map of the Gemini sector and plot a course by hand. I haven't worried about it, because the paper map is far more userfriendly. I can glance at it at any time, without interrupting my flight.
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And that too.

But you have been blessed with a printed out, already fully explored map.

With prices, I don't have the luxury of knowing every price everywhere. Otherwise, I would print out a list and use it.

If you feel it's easier to do that, then that list could be included in the manual.

But I think the need to explore for prices is part of the game. Don't you think?

Besides, that list would keep changing if someday the dynamic economy kicked in. (I had written some thoughts about that but an error made me loose them, I'll have to rewrite them)
 
I think your thread is somewhat contradictory - if I manually keep track of prices (computer-aided or not), but at the same time live in a universe with a dynamic economy, you'll quickly get on the wrong track.

Something will happen (political change, natural desaster, hype), and prices will change.Then you're either screwed, because your notepad does not get automatic updates, or you have to think about something else.

To find a good trading route in a dynamic economy should be something that requires know-how as well as instinct. If you guess right at the informations you've got (maybe from the bartender, maybe from the news, maybe looking at the missions the merchant's guild offers), you should be able to make a more profitable cargo run than usual. But if you try that stunt more than a few times, the contenders should have picked up at that time, and the margin may level out again.

So, yes, I'm all for the dynamic economy - but I really doubt the usefulness of a notepad function if it is implemented.
 
Perhaps you're right about the notepad not being as useful in a dynamic economy. Of course, if that happens, the notepad goes down. I prefer the dynamic economy.

But I often found myself forgetting what a bartender said, and not being able to make it say that again. Really, if it's not obstrusive and does not take too much to get functional, I think in general it would be a nice thing to have.

As I said in my first post: very low priority.

Anyway, let's forget the notepad. If I can, I'll try to implement it and see if it's useful. If not, sad. If yes, good.
But, let's from now on concentrate on dynamic economy.

PS: Any idea on how it should behave, what kind of things should be modelled, please, I'm listening (reading)
 
You know, it doesn't have to be all number. I mean, 20 credits more over here, or 15 less over there... it's all so black and white. There's no intrigue, no mystery.
IMO, words are mutch more powerfull when it comes to trading.

Phrases like; "this item is priceless over at Troy" or "it's worth its weight in diamonds in Oxford" they give you a hint at what the economy is like, but still leave you a little in the dark- inticing you to explore, learn and remenber.
Beside, specifics is something that you remember in your HEAD, not on paper.

I've attached a little visual humor -THIS IS NOT SARCASM TOWARDS THE THREAD- if anything, I'm laughing at myself.
 

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You know, it doesn't have to be all number. I mean, 20 credits more over here, or 15 less over there... it's all so black and white. There's no intrigue, no mystery.
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Well, that's why I was thinking about adding dynamic economy. To boost the mystery, the exploring. As was said already, perhaps the notepad idea falls short of handy in a dynamic economy. In that regard, the thread already paid off. Some thoughts about dynamic economy:

  1. Every base should have its production/demand with its own custom fluctuation model. That is, new detroit will not evolve the same as a drayman does.
  2. War affairs, and system security, should matter a lot in a base's economy. For instance, New Detroit may be unable to produce Advanced Fuels (let's take just as an example, for the sake of argument) because of retro attacks at every convoy that tries to bring in the machinery and raw materials (suppose it cannot produce them by itself). If you set out at making New Detroit more safe, by taking lots of patrol missions and killing lots of retros and pirates, after a while you may find that New Detroit started selling Advanced Fuels at a low price, one that allows you to make a profit by transporting it somewhere else.
  3. You should be able to impact on some bases economy, even if not on all of them. You can't be important enough to make a whole planet change its demand or production, but you may do that to small bases (like refineries or even draymans acting as temporary bases). Also, you can indirectly influence the economy of some sectors as in 2. Imagine you're a hunter, and you set out at making New Detroit safe. It's kind of rewarding to see news about "Increasing safety promotes the industry".
  4. As a consequence of you being able to influence things, one can develop new techniques to make profit. This adds to variety and would make the remake even better than it actually is right now.

Of course, these are just a general idea of what I would like it to be. No idea of how to implement it. I would like comments in order to make the ideas grow and evolve before trying to think how to implement them. Once I know what we want, we can think about how to implement it and where would we need to compromise in order to make it possible.
 
My last post of the day (I have to go to class, you know):

I second the previous post: don't expect dynamic economy soon.

But, since I have the intention of adding dynamic economy to privateer (and hence vegastrike - or perhaps the other way), It's a necessary step to gather ideas so that I know what to do. Otherwise, I could end up doing something that nobody likes.

Take the notepad as an example: it turned out (rather quickly and sadly) that I hadn't realized that it won't be as useful under dynamic economy. I wouldn't like that to happen after I started coding it.

Well, I'm off to class. But feel free to fill the thread with ideas. I will revise them later. And if anyone can point me towards any tutorial or documentation on the basic structure of both vegastrike and privateer remake 's code, I'll thank him/her a lot.

PS: Do I talk (write) too much?
 
Yup, I totally agree.

A more visibly dynamic economy is something I was thinking of working on, although I have to warn you that it will not be well-received by the majority of the community here (too divergent to be included in a 'proper' remake).

Nonetheless, I did want to work on it and had some ideas about tying it to the news generator and that sort of thing. Unfortunately I've been busy lately (was working on another project for submission to hellcatv but have had to put that off for the past week) so I don't expect to even look into it for at least another week or so.

Still, if you think you can wait that long to get started and would like to talk to me, I'll give you my contact info.

AIM: sadp182
ICQ: 158910393
MSN: saapad@hotmail.com
Y!: Paradoxical_Postulate
 
Admiral DeRuyter said:
A more visibly dynamic economy is something I was thinking of working on, although I have to warn you that it will not be well-received by the majority of the community here (too divergent to be included in a 'proper' remake).
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Of course, there's always WCU which would lap up any such work.
 
A true dynamic economy would be a bitch and a half to implement, even if you just do gemini sector instead of the whole universe (around 1000 systems). You would have to keep track of cargo quantities, price fluctuations, production etc. for EVERY base out there as well as EVERY cargo ship. In addition, unless this is all done PERFECTLY, small imbalances in the economy model will break the entire universe over time. In other words: If someone's up to doing it, have fun, not me tho.

Localized things such as "if more than X cargo-bearing ships have blown up in a system, mining bases will pay more for food, etc." are doable, though.

In fact, why don't you give use a sample set of rules like this one? Implementing at least some of them should be feasible.
 
I was thinking more on the line:

Base A needs X amount of cargo K. Until now, got Y. Price of K="base price * F(X/Y,KK)", with F being some "modelling" function and KK being the number of cargo ships killed in the sector (some sort of risk value), and with some other details added like maximum and minimum prices and some randomization.

But, I totally agree with the bitching part: details like ¿Where does Y come from for, say, a planet where there are not enough cargo ships in the universe (the engine) to supply them? can get in the way.

In addition, unless this is all done PERFECTLY, small imbalances in the economy model will break the entire universe over time.
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Since the model will not be perfect, nothing is, we can (artificially) make it self-stabilizing or self-centering, around the values we consider normal. Like the original privateer values. That's not hard, depending on the artificiality of the self-centering algorithm (the more artificial, the easier but the uglier, it's all about balancing). The simplest form of self-stabilization would be tight MAX and MIN values for the above formula (but it's ugly, it would limit the player too much).

As I said earlier, solutions to such problems will come in time. Probably by simplifying the model. I'm working on a set of (more specific) rules. Once I have them, I'll post them. Meanwhile, perhaps Admiral DeRuyter (and charleig) are right about the Privateer comunity not wanting something like this.
I always thought the goal with Privateer was to make an open ended universe. I never paid too much attention (although it was great) to the campaign. It was, is and always shall be my opinion that if Origin's developers had the resources to do such a dynamic universe at the time, they would have. For for every angle you look at it from, it screams Privateer. For me, privateer was the ultimate freedom. I could do anything, and the game would let me. The universe itself was quite interactive, although with severe limitations which, at the time, didn't seem much. But now, with the increased power of today's computers, I think we would be approaching the ideal Privateer by making the universe more interactive, the privateer that the original developers would have wanted. I don't know, I didn't talk to the original developers, but it gave me that impression.
Even, if people don't like that, there can always be a switch in the config file to turn that off.

Anyway, if people in the Remake do think that it would be a step in the wrong direction, perhaps I should listen to charleig and move the discussion to WCU.
¿What do you say?

Also,

A true dynamic economy would be a bitch and a half to implement, even if you just do gemini sector instead of the whole universe (around 1000 systems). You would have to keep track of cargo quantities, price fluctuations, production etc. for EVERY base out there as well as EVERY cargo ship.
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Not that true. It would be true if I had to model each sector and each base by hand. But the idea is not that. The idea is to have a handful of different models (to account for possibly different characteristics in certain sectors), all of them parameterized, so that I only have to modify the parameters. Once that's done, the models (which would be based on generic principles) would work by their own, and the computer (and not me) would be keeping track of all systems and all traffic (what I mean is, today computers can handle that if sufficiently simplified). Of course, for the traffic, even the computer will have to minimize the problem. Perhaps by doing stats with ships coming/going when the engine is simulating the sectors, and extrapolate and/or make up the data when the engine is not.

Also,

Still, if you think you can wait that long to get started and would like to talk to me, I'll give you my contact info.
Click to expand...
I can wait, and I'll give you my contact info:

ICQ: 323084354 (although this is at work, but I quite often have free time)
e-Mail: klaussfreire@gmail.com
 
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