Restoring sanity to trading - a simple proposal

[MartinSGill]

Apologies for cross-post, but I suspect this will get lost on the main forum.

The game is really growing on me, but it still needs a bit of work.

One of the biggest issues that I have with trading at the moment is that everyone in the game universe is behaving like a total idiot, they all seem to have forgotten centuries of knowledge about how you go about making a profit.

Here is my proposal, placed in the public domain for egosoft/modders to use freely, on how to fix this with a minimum of game changes.

Assumptions:

1. Communication between ships/stations is done similar to how sea-going ships communicate on Earth at the moment; there is a general channel and an emergency channel that all ships must listen to at all times. You "hail" on the general channel and negotiate a frequency for actual communication. Due to light-speed delays, communication between zones on the general channel is pointless and it's therefore limited to a zone.

2. Ship owners in X have the same motivations as shop/factory owners on Earth, they want to sell as much as possible, and buy as easily as possible.

Initial Communication

The moment a new ship enters a system every station sends a data-burst with what they are selling and buying on the general channel. Unfortunate the general channel is always clogged with traffic and noise and the signal is therefore usually lost. The stations therefore also have a continuously broadcasting data-burst.

Once a ship gets close enough to a station the signal from the station gets strong enough to drown out the others and the ship computer can show the station information (how the Trade computer works now).

Trade Computer

The trade computer is a highly specialised AI, which is why it's so bloody expensive. Using special signal processing and analysis techniques it's able to sort through the mess on the general comms channel and pick out the individual data-bursts from the stations and process them correctly. Therefore a short instant after arriving in a zone its able to add the local trading data directly to the ship database.

Unfortunately, due to how the highways work, it's not possible for the AI to also deal with interference caused by the highway and you must exit the highway, just for a couple of seconds, for the Trade Computer to do it's job.

Special Offers

The best way to get special offers is to talk to the vendor/buyer directly. Go fly to them and negotiate. Having information about the station to improve your bargaining position is always a good idea.

Missions/b]

Missions come from individuals, not the station as a whole, so you still need to find those people. Of course, you could just dock anywhere at the station and connect to the internal network and look at the bulletin board where people are offering all their missions / special offers etc.

Some missions though and some special offers can still only be found by going directly to the people.

[Jack08]

what exactly is your suggestion?? all im seeing here is an overview of exactly how the game currently works? apart from some very minor deviations on where things come from. and the range of certain things.

[MartinSGill]

That exactly is my proposal. I did say minor game changes.

My aim is not to fundamentally change this aspect of the game, but to get the "people" in it to behave in a more realistic manner.