How would you do a civilian economy?

UberWaffe · Post by **UberWaffe** » Wed, 20. Jun 12, 13:39

For fear of derailing the X-Timelines thread entirely, I'm starting this new thread.

What this is:
Forget about how the X3 economy works at the moment. Define how you would do a civilian economy.

Definitions, Scope, Limitations, Freedoms
Scope:
The purpose here is to say how you think an X3 economy should work like, if the main aim of the economy was not to produce weapons or ship equipment, but to supply the invisible consumers on the planets with goods.

Definitions:
Civilian economy: No ship equipment being created.

Economy: Remebering that money (credits) is merely a means to fascilitate trade, an economy refers to the supply (producers) and demand (consumers) of various items and wares. There is no, or little, circular cycles. (I.e. crystals -> e-cells -> crystals)

Tiers: Simply a way to indicate how 'advanced' a ware is. I.e. how many other factory types you will need to make this factory work.

Limitations:
(Note: I'm flexible on these, but please just give a reason why you feel they shouldn't apply)
1. Demand in the economy is purely driven by trade stations. No secondary resource requirements on stations that magically waste wares to create demand.

2. AI factories have the same resource requirements as player owned.

3. Avoid creating weapons and ship equipment as end products. The idea is for a civilian economy.

Freedoms:
1. Wares can be entirely redefined, or old ones can be reused. You can define prices, sizes, volume, etc.

2. Assume you can directly define station cycle times, resources used as well as their quantities used per cycle, as well as product produced along with how much is produced per cycle.
(No hardcoded calculation limit. So you can make a factory that always suffers a loss, but make some rare ware not otherwise avaiable, etc.
As will be in X-Timelines)

3. You can redefine how traders and complexes, and pretty much anything to do with hauling stuff about works.

Various User Ideas so far:
TouchMyNipple
1. Limit hauling wares to simple between point A and B loops only.
2. Make traders more expensive to make armed escorts make more economic sense.
3. Trade leases. Player pays fraction of ship cost every so often.
4. Government contracts of wares on a larger scale than just single mission. (I.e. provide 500,000 E-Cells over the next 32 hour period.)

Honved
1. Secondary resources increase production.
2. 'Non-standard' wares for low but steady trader profit.

X2-Illuminatus
1. Get rid of all non-end-consumer ware sinks.
2. Improve NPC logistics (moving stuff) efficiency
3. Improve NPC production (making stuff) capabilities
4. Restrict player production

s9ilent
1. Increase demand dynamically
2. Add non-resource factors to player production (running costs, etc.)

[Will try to keep updated as ideas roll in]

UberWaffe · Post by **UberWaffe** » Wed, 20. Jun 12, 13:39

Personal take on economy:

Broken into 4 tiers, 0 to 3. Tiers 1 to 3 use products of lower tier to produce products.
Tier 0 creates products out of nothing (ECells) but is then high investment cost, or requires the user to have mining ships that gather resources (Ores and water), or creates product via large quantities of ecells (very low profit).

One trade station per sector will be spawned, called planetary dock. Planetary docks demand various products, but not all. WIll demand all tier 3 products.
A script will set the rate at which the planetary dock 'consumes' stocks, simulating civilian consumption. Rate will increase (slightly) for all planetary docks of a race if they capture more sectors, and less of they lose territory.

As for wares, they will be the same for all races, even food. Different races will simply have different looks and feels, and perhaps slightly different station cost prices.

Illegal wares will exist. Alcohol, Narcotics, Slaves. (So far)

Stations will usually take about 30 hours to repay their capital cost at average profit rates (All resources bought for average price, all products sold at average price).

Player stations will have a hourly running cost, so you best ensure you don't let stations sit around idle.

[Probably more stuff I can't think of right now]

Here is a spreadsheet that explains it better than I can, which with you can also play around if you are like me.

Timelines_CivEconomy.xlsx
Above is a 90day active WikiSend upload of the spreadsheet. Done with LibreOffice, but saved in xlsx format for use with Excel.

This PC has Symantec Endpoint protection installed, so should be clean. Can't speak for WikiSend though, but I'm guessing they are okay.

[EDIT]Spreadsheet might be wrong. Just found Economy discussion and haven't yet fully checked this out myself, so might need to redo Excel sheet, or at least the wares prices section of it.[/EDIT]

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Wed, 20. Jun 12, 15:05

Forget about how the X3 economy works at the moment. Define how you would do a civilian economy.

So this is just a theoretical discussion ?

Honved · Post by **Honved** » Wed, 20. Jun 12, 15:08

My suggestion would be to make Secondary Resources a modifier to production output, both for NPC and Player stations: if you have a couple of units of the secondary resource, your production output value would increase by about 1.2 x the value of the secondary resources. It should only use a couple of units of secondary resources per cycle. They wouldn't be absolutely necessary to run, and wouldn't generate all that much profit, but could still utilize a wider variety of odd resources from the economy, without bringing everything to a screeching halt for lack of something that's not available locally.

SPPs in particular could benefit from a "modified" secondary resource: the output could be considerably higher with them than without, but you'd still generate a few E-cells regardless, so the economy wouldn't stop dead in its tracks if you or the NPC traders failed to supply enough Crystals. Make the output without the Crytals fairly low, but allow it to "eat" a moderate number of them in order to boost the E-Cell output to the equivalent of vanilla levels. Yes, it's "free money" if you run it without Crystals, but at a rate so low it'd take a week or more to pay back the high initial investment.

Basic food sources like Wheat, Soya, or Sunflower Farms, Chelt Aquariums, and BioGas facilities could all use secondary resources of Ore, as well as another biological "fertilizer" to bring output to optimal levels. This would divert a lot of Ore from weapons facilities, and potential food from being dumped into the Trade Stations directly. Teladianium should require at least Ore and Energy as primaries, perhaps Silicon as a secondary.

As in vanilla, asteroids and SPPs would be the root "sources" of nearly all products, and Trade Stations (and the planets they serve) would be the main "sinks". The Trade Stations, with their fixed intermediate buy/sell prices, would also serve as "regulators". When resources are in short supply, the factories will pay more than the Trade Stations, and NPC traders should tend to send most of their goods to the factories; when the resources are plentiful and the factories are well-supplied, more would go to the Trade Stations, ideally maintaining some sort of equilibrium.

Ultimately, materials should end up needing to be moved around even more than in "vanilla" in order to generate full economic output, before eventually being dumped into Trade Stations anyway in some form or other. The amount of movement should strongly influence the strength and vitality of the economy, moreso than in vanilla, but it might suffer less that way from total shutdown at times.

UberWaffe · Post by **UberWaffe** » Wed, 20. Jun 12, 15:43

Killjaeden wrote:So this is just a theoretical discussion ?

Theoretical in the sense that I'm not sure if I will be able to make it work in the XTimelines mod. (I am planning a mod for a mod, yes.)

At the moment, as I do not have XTimelines mod yet, I cannot see how much it will affect the performance by.

So for now, yes. Theoretical.

I'm also relatively new to modding on such a scale, having mostly mucked about with small script changes.
So until XTimelines comes out, I want to get some ideas, and play around with their feasibilty in the scripting engine.
(The actual unhardcoded production cycles I will need XTimelines for, and the work Jack08 did in his dll.)

[EDIT]I do plan to post back on sucess/failure I had in attempting certain ideas. Hence why I assumed this is Scripts and Modding forum applicable. If not, please move it.[/EDIT]

[EDIT]@Honved:
Funnily enough, I had a similar suggestion in 'Things I want to see in Rebirth'.

The secondary resource idea for increasing production should be possible once I get the XTimelines mod. Jack08 wrote a X3:AP dll plugin that allows you to specify resource consumption per cycle as well as product production per cycle, as opposed to the normal hardcoded engine method.

He also added tie-ins via script, so theoretically a script could run to up the production output while secondary resources are in play. The rate of secondary resource consumption will be fixed though, even his dll has some limits.

I'll see what I can do to implement this once XTimelines is out.
Might not sync well between script time and engine cycle times, or alternatively eat too much processing power.

@everyone
I'm a bit stuck on how make the economy more agressive against the player.
I'm thinking, for instance, once demand is being mostly met (competitive market, player probably involved) I could do something similar to the 'station camper' script, making AI freighters load up on product, and then camp the planetary docks, essentially trying to muscle the player out of business by hogging all sales.
[/EDIT]

Jack08 · Post by **Jack08** » Wed, 20. Jun 12, 17:26

This file may help you in your design process.

as it stands all values in this file are highly experimental, they can and do change on a weekly basis as tests are performed.

http://download.xtimelines.net/XTimelin ... ublic.xlsx

Post by **X2-Illuminatus** » Wed, 20. Jun 12, 17:57

UberWaffe wrote:I'm a bit stuck on how make the economy more agressive against the player.

1. Remove all the jobs, which simply buy wares from player stations as long as the price is low enough and don't supply other factories with the bought wares. In the Vanilla game certain wares (such as Space Fuel, Space Weed or Microchips) are bought by free traders once the selling price is one credit under the normal price. Most of these traders are simply destroyed, because they enter a Xenon or pirate sector. That way they do create a demand that is useless for the overall economy.

2. Improve the distribution way of wares by adding jobs, which distribute all wares to all stations and/or give the stations own trade ships again. Due to missing own ships and free traders, which only trade specific wares, in the Vanilla game wares are not optimal distributed in the same or neighboring sectors. This makes earning money for the player (for his MK3-traders or in general automatic traders) pretty easy.

3. Let NPC-traders use jumpdrives, so they don't have to fly the whole way from (e.g.) Teladi Gain to Duke's Domain just to get a bit of Teladianium.

4. Create competitors. Companies that build own stations, have own traders and create own distribution chains. It doesn't have to be globally, limited to certain sector clusters would also be okay. Just so the player can't build a station anywhere and still make profit from it.

5. Create more restrictions for producing wares. In the New Dimensions mod we allowed producing wares only in certain sectors dependent on "tertiary planetary resources". The aim was to make it harder or even impossible for the player to create selfsustaining complexes. Thus requiring more logistical efforts.

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Thu, 21. Jun 12, 02:42

That way they do create a demand that is useless for the overall economy.

You need these traders, otherwise there will be no ware sink. There has to be some kind of end-product, which vanishes one way or the other. Doesn't have to be microchips /weed though, as they are not really end-products.

s9ilent · Post by **s9ilent** » Thu, 21. Jun 12, 05:39

Few ideas come to mind:

1) Shift focus away from military production. i.e. I would make more civilian stations, who's sole purpose is to consume resources. More resources -> more prosperous station -> station growth. It will be similar to a trade station, but consume more resources (faster, and more at a time, MUCH more).
Generally the focus is on people consuming resources (in these stations) as opposed to factories consuming resources.

2) It would be nice to have a more complicated production system. e.g. Instead of just resources + time = products, pherhaps if there was wages, people, morale, goods to increase morale etc.
I would also like to see differentiated products but there is no way to effectively do this with the current game engine. (i.e. Meat stake cahoona has normal quality, add boron spices -> higher quality etc.)

3) Introduce a more people oriented system (ties in with above two points) i.e. labor (people/aliens etc.) is required to work factories. Labor comes from these civilian hub stations. Labor costs money (wages), needs facilities (acommo, rec, training etc.), different species have different strengths weaknesses etc.

I have some other ideas as well but they are... complicated and don't really roll with a game that everyone can play/enjoy. (Financial products, options, forwards etc.)

TrixX · Post by **TrixX** » Thu, 21. Jun 12, 06:15

Gotta remember that while it's all good to have complexity, within X you have to be mindful of CPU power stolen from other aspects of the game as well as what is actually viable in terms of having those "people" needing wages, food, transport, etc...

Also remember what is needed in making all these new stations for the people to work on, live in, have food created in. It's not quite as simple as it looks

UberWaffe · Post by **UberWaffe** » Thu, 21. Jun 12, 10:04

Wow. Lots of responses.
The brainstorming part of this little project is going well.

Might have enough ideas to move into the idea analysis and sifting process, but please keep them coming.

@Jack08
Thanks, that gives me a much better idea of profits/hour and station costs to aim for.

@X2-Illuminatus
I like your ideas. Adding them to the list.

@Killjaeden

Killjaeden wrote:You need these traders, otherwise there will be no ware sink. There has to be some kind of end-product, which vanishes one way or the other. Doesn't have to be microchips /weed though, as they are not really end-products.

True. I'm currently aiming for planetary docks to be the only sinks. As far as possible I want to avoid killing off traders. I see no reason why AI traders should be willingly slow and suicidal.

@s9ilent
I am planning planetary docks that will function pretty much exactly as you propose, with the exception that rate of consumption is based on how many sectors a race controls.
Adding the ideas to the list.

@TrixX

TrixX wrote:...while it's all good to have complexity, within X you have to be mindful of CPU power stolen from other aspects of the game...

Indeed. One of the major gate reviews for any idea will be its CPU impact. But so far I am planning only very slow cycles. (Ex. Planetary docks consumption script will probably only run every 10 minutes. Script to calculate consumption rates for each race will only run every hour or so.)

And if a feature proves too hungry, then I'll increase the cycles if possible, and if it is still too hungry, drop that specific CPU-hungry feature.

TrixX wrote:It's not quite as simple as it looks

I am under no dilusion about how much work this could be.

Ideas Analysis round 1
So far, if I boil down the ideas of all tha makes them unique, I can fit the ideas into two very broad categories: Profit vs. Cost ratio adjustments, Supply and Demand adjustments

Profit vs. Cost
TouchMyNipple
1. Make traders more expensive to make armed escorts make more economic sense.
2. Trade leases. Player pays fraction of ship cost every so often.

Supply and Demand
TouchMyNipple
1. Limit hauling wares to simple between point A and B loops only.
2. Government contracts of wares on a larger scale than just single mission.
Honved
3. Secondary resources increase production.
X2-Illuminatus
4. Get rid of all non-end-consumer ware sinks.
5. Improve NPC logistics (moving stuff) efficiency
6. Improve NPC production (making stuff) capabilities
7. Restrict player production
s9ilent
8. Increase demand dynamically
9. Add non-resource factors to player production (running costs, etc.)

In relatively broad strokes, this is how I see the provided ideas at their (oversimplified) core.

Currently my understanding is that economic balancing of individual components (stations, ships) occurs moer in the profit vs cost area (i.e. I would consider a station balanced if its average profit per hour takes 10 hours to repay the station cost, 15 if its servicing freighters are taken into account).

While economic balancing of the system as a whole will occur within the supply and demand method. (i.e. Is it possible for the player to simply plonk down 50 stations of whatever and make money, or hire 50 universe traders and rake in the money?)

Analysis of ideas
Profit vs. Cost
Both ideas in this category is essentially covered by the fact that I aim to balance cost vs. profit according to the following:
Station average profit should pay back your station within 20 hours.
Ships are harder to balance, but the aim is also 20 hours payback.

Supply and Demand
TouchMyNipple
1. Limit hauling wares to simple between point A and B loops only.
[Declined] Personally I would rather make the player's opposition tougher, as opposed to limiting the player.

2. Government contracts of wares on a larger scale than just single mission.
[Accepted] Though I need to first find a way to make the jobs not 'dissapear' the resources. So more like a 'Meet our normal consumption of ware X for the next X days.' where if you cannot keep a constant supply line going from the get-go, you will likely fail the job. You will only receive minimum price for each good delivered, but contract completion bonus will top this up to as if you had received maximum price for all goods delivered.

Honved
3. Secondary resources increase production.
[Accepted] Will test impact of scripts on game performance.

X2-Illuminatus
4. Get rid of all non-end-consumer ware sinks.
[Accepted] Already planned.

5. Improve NPC logistics (moving stuff) efficiency
[Accepted] Already planned. Currently aiming for more NPC sector traders, route runners, universe traders, using jumpdirves, and a station camper 'EcoHog' that does simple run, hogging all sales/purchases in run.

6. Improve NPC production (making stuff) capabilities
[Accepted] Overlaps with GoD-engine or other similar 'check-demand-and-spawn-stations' scripts, so might not do anything specific here. Will see.

7. Restrict player production
[Accepted] Already planned in that tier 0 resources are mostly mobile mining related. Might add some resources (Ex. Scrap metal or recycle waste) that is generated only at a few NPC stations.

s9ilent
8. Increase demand dynamically
[Accepted] Already planned, as described above with demand based on sector control count of race.

9. Add non-resource factors to player production (running costs, etc.)
[Accepted] Will first have to check up on how this will impact CPU load. Running costs already planned, and should be CPU light based on 5 minute scan cycle of player stations only.

Feel absolutely free to dissagree with me on anything. The point of this phase is to analyze the ideas from all angles.

[EDIT]Had an interesting read in http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... c&start=75 thread. Some very nice ideas there, and some overlap with this thread. Though I am aiming lower.

Anyway, the real aim here is a feasible, low-CPU-usage, competitive civilian economy for XTimelines.[/EDIT]

Honved · Post by **Honved** » Fri, 22. Jun 12, 14:37

The basic game already includes a few consumer items like Insecticide, Promotional Plates, Posters, and empty containers. If there were a couple of places producing and buying said items, that's more consumer goods to be produced and transported.

Having empty containers and spent E-cells as "returnable" secondary resources could offer a few more economic options, meaning more opportunities for "low pay" transport. Such items could be an additional output of certain military goods factories. If they're not moved, they eventually "fill up" and halt production, making the facilities a bit less attractive than the "consumer goods" factories unless NPC traders happen to pick them up, or you dedicate a ship to removing and selling the excess. As it is, if the NPC traders grab the "good deals", there's little else to do. Having a "lower tier" of items that pays poorly, but still pays, means that you have less traders sitting on Standby; they'll just start moving less-profitable items instead.

UberWaffe · Post by **UberWaffe** » Fri, 22. Jun 12, 15:14

That would be cool.
Even with XTImelines I won't be able to do multiple products per station (I want to make stations that use Ecells also produce Depleted Ecells

), but I could do specialised NPC stations that trade in these low-cost goods.

A sort of "Low but steady" profit source.
Would make neat training grounds for Universe Traders.

Jack08 · Post by **Jack08** » Sat, 23. Jun 12, 01:59

UberWaffe wrote:That would be cool.
Even with XTImelines I won't be able to do multiple products per station (I want to make stations that use Ecells also produce Depleted Ecells ), but I could do specialised NPC stations that trade in these low-cost goods.

A sort of "Low but steady" profit source.
Would make neat training grounds for Universe Traders.

You may be able to actually, ive added a "signal" (its not a full signal its just a script call) to a script called "xtl.signal.productloop" which is called every time a station finishes a cycle. Its unused at the moment. I was going to remove it but should i leave it there?

there is also "xtl.signal.prodbreakdown", and "xtl.signal.prodrestored" which are called when the station stops producing for any reason, and then starts again, these are used to speed up the AI's processing time.

You shouldn't have to worry about Universe Traders, there are already plants to make them smart enough to adapt to changes to the TFiles and trade with all available stations in the universe. ( the stock one can kinda do this, but we have to rewrite all of the trade scripts anyway )

UberWaffe · Post by **UberWaffe** » Sat, 23. Jun 12, 08:21

Jack08 wrote:You may be able to actually, ive added a "signal" (its not a full signal its just a script call) to a script called "xtl.signal.productloop" which is called every time a station finishes a cycle. Its unused at the moment. I was going to remove it but should i leave it there?

Yes, please!

If it isn't going to take effort on your part to keep it there, the feature could come in very handy.

Man, the more I learn about the stuff you have done for XTimelines, the more excited I get about it!

You shouldn't have to worry about Universe Traders, there are already plants to make them smart enough to adapt to changes to the TFiles and trade with all available stations in the universe. ( the stock one can kinda do this, but we have to rewrite all of the trade scripts anyway )

Great. I'll put my plans for such scripts on the backburner.

Current status:
I aim to write the script to spawn and control specialised 'Planetary docks' this weekend. Will simply be a test run in X3:TC or AP, but it should enable me to get the dynamic demand and their economic events down.

Planetary docks are planned to have random events that adjust the consume rate of wares at the docks.
The descriptions will vary: "Mad-argnu scare causes a 50% drop in Argon food demand!" or "Energy shortfall in Teladi space! Demand for Ecells increased by 300%!"
But in short, an event will have:
1. Duration (in hours, probably between 4 and 6)
2. Event type (What type of event it is)
3. Event Target (Race/Station/Ship/Sector/Pancake)
4. Event Value (The scale of the event. Like -50% or +200%, or whatever).

Similarly, I aim to write the script of player station economic events.
These will probably be scripted to only start once the player has enough stations, and will probably scale up as the player becomes more powerful.
Same as above events, except that they do something to a player's stations.
Such as increasing/decreasing running costs, stopping production, increasing/decreasing production amounts or cycle times, etc.

Boringnick · Post by **Boringnick** » Sat, 23. Jun 12, 11:03

How about creating planetary-supply stations?

Instead of just letting consumer good magically vanish from trading posts, let's make one additional type of station - planetary supply stations. These have their own traders to refill their stocks. The player and any other AI ship can't dock at these stations, only their own trader ships can.

These supply-traders land at the various consumer stations, buy the needed goods and transport them back the supply station. There the goods vanish. The explanation for this is that the goods have been shipped to the planet.

In systems with multiple planets, multiple supply stations should be present.

Of course, the "vanishing" still happens, but at least there is a good reason for that. This also adds some possibilities, for example - if not enough food has been shipped to a supply station, the planet suffers from starvation. Thus there aren't enough healthy workers available from the planet - the production of goods in the whole sector slows down.

Jack08 · Post by **Jack08** » Sat, 23. Jun 12, 14:13

An idea just came to me on how to create a civil circle of life without any product vanishing what so ever.

Heres the Circle of Life, from the point of view of a Planet.

The Civilian Economy pumps out goods like Energy, Food, and Excavation Tools (eg diggers, etc) (*Note1)

Planetary supply bases in systems maintain traders that go out and buy the goods that they need (*Note2), they will also maintain some civil defense forces (*Note3)

The Planetary supply bases will send these supply's to the planets surface, and the planets will slowly, but steadily, mine the surface and return minerals and elements back to the planetary supply bases based on the planets yield(*Note4), These minerals and elements are injected back into both the military and civil economy's, completing the circle of life.

----
Notes:

Note1: The basic building blocks of the Excavation Tools should be built from military Minerals/Elements

Note2: It is extremely easy to maintain fleets of transports (be it a fleet of 1, or a fleet of 20) in XTL. You simply create a "Fleet" object with our lib scripts, set up the fleet content, and set the signal manager to "auto rebuild", from that point on you never have to touch it again. It will order the ships from a shipyard, send them to work, and then rebuild them when they are inevitably killed. If the fleets home base is lost, the fleets logic scripts will handle the cleanup by themselves.

Note3: Lets face it, the XTL has a military universe, it was designed to be ruthless and unforgiving, civilians running around without protection would just be ... suicidal, XTLmay or may not launch with a Mercenary system. Mercenary's can be hired by the player and even other NPCS to protect them, What if the civil defense forces could hire Mercenary's in order to increase the protection of there traders?

Note4: you can use the sectors X/Y position, along with a planets subtype and X,Y,Z position, to give each planet in the universe a unique yield and rate of production.

In this circle of life, The civil economy is taking up military goods to produce ships and building materials, and then injecting minerals and elements, the basic building blocks of everything in the universe besides food and energy, back into the circle of life. You could even change it so that the planet produces goods higher then minerals/elements.

-----
I know this goes against a couple of the rules you set in the first post, but i figured id post it anyway

Killjaeden · Post by **Killjaeden** » Sun, 24. Jun 12, 04:01

so basically you (OP) want to take some magic away from the economy (apart from civilian a approach).
Players using same ressources as NPC's sounds plausible.
But if you would remove those secondary ressources, some wares become almost useless.
Furthermore, the secondary ressources usually where exotic, so you couldn't get them in the area -> thus encouraging long-range shipping (npc's mainly - player uses JD obviously), but the player also can check in sectors further away for trade opportunities.

This makes the economy interesting. If you would remove the secondary ressource this would be gone. If you add primary ressources across the board it quickly becomes complicated if you want to set up your own production. And the most important issue - NPC stations won't run if they lack primary ressources. So if there is a ware required , that is exotic (not available in close vicinity) the affected factories in the area have to hold production for a very long time until NPC traders solve the problem.

If you give NPC traders jumpdrives, the player will quickly be outrun and trade opportunities will dwindle because a freighter with JD can do the same job as ~5 (ballpark figure) normal freighters. If you reduce freighter amount accordingly the universe will suddenly get empty and void of life, except occasional traders that pop in.

Back to sec. ressources -
If you remove them from stations and use trade stations to create the demand, there will be an equal demand (units/time) in every sector, which makes it quite boring.
If you do it by script you could randomize it, to make it more interesting. In that case however there is no indication for the player whatsoever that demand has decreased, his factories will just start to sit on their products.

With sec. ressources on stations the player can see that there is a demand, estimate how big it might be, and he can check the "saturation" of the market by monitoring the npc stations/ see what's wrong with them (i.e. lacking primary ressources stop them from using up secondary stuff)

In the end it's the same magic, no matter what you do, because you have to artificially take it away at some point eitherway.

How about creating planetary-supply stations?

If you want to keep it somewhat believable this is a bad idea. Looking at the population in sector description , a single planet could consume every product that the universe-economy produces and even more.

UberWaffe · Post by **UberWaffe** » Mon, 25. Jun 12, 08:52

@Boringnick

How about creating planetary-supply stations?

Already planned.

UberWaffe wrote:I aim to write the script to spawn and control specialised 'Planetary docks' this weekend.

I got the scripts going, though I still need to read up on how to make it a proper AL plugin, though this is currently just testing anyway.

These have their own traders to refill their stocks.

I was planning to let the already present freetraders handle that. But giving them a few dedicated traders might be wise.

...the planet suffers from starvation...

After reading Jack08's post, I'll handle this slightly differently. See below.

@Jack08

and Excavation Tools

I named it Industrial Machinery and Commercial Machinery.

they will also maintain some civil defense forces (*Note3)

I think I might be overestimating how safe non-border sectors will be. I'll see what I can do.
Will probably wait for XTimelines to guage this and just use your fleet script as opposed to using my brain...

and the planets will slowly, but steadily, mine the surface

Hmm, a similar idea by Honved and above by Boringnick might also fall into this.
Perhaps planets produce not only the elements and minerals, but also goods otherwise not obtainable? (I.e. Soil, Water, etc.)
A planet would produce a base rate of all these mentioned above, and depending on how well you 'feed' the planet (i.e. how well you can keep the stocks in the docks up) it will produce extra.

planets subtype and X,Y,Z position, to give each planet in the universe a unique yield and rate of production

I'll take a look at this.

@Killjaeden

so basically you (OP) want to take some magic away from the economy

This is why I like the feedback. This mod is meant for more people than just me.

Furthermore, the secondary ressources usually where exotic, so you couldn't get them in the area

After Jack08's idea, I think I'll create products only produced by planets. And, as per your concern, probably limit planetary docks to 1-in-5 or 1-in-4 sectors, to encourage cross-polination. (Or, said differently, Run fatty-fat-trader! Run!)

Combined with the fact that ores (minerals/elements origin) will not be available everywhere, it should encourage a spread of factories, as opposed to everything just clumped around the nearest planetary dock.

If you give NPC traders jumpdrives... ...the universe will suddenly get empty and void of life, except occasional traders that pop in.

Wow. I didn't even think of that. Thanks.
Maybe I should forgo giving NPC's jumpdrives. But I will probably still up their speed (or at least give them tunings so they go faster than 50% of max).
The JD advantage should still be enough for the player to then grab some good deals.

If you do it by script you could randomize it, to make it more interesting. In that case however there is no indication for the player whatsoever that demand has decreased, his factories will just start to sit on their products.

I am planning feedback messages to the player about demand changes.

UberWaffe wrote:Planetary docks are planned to have random events that adjust the consume rate of wares at the docks.
The descriptions will vary: "Mad-argnu scare causes a 50% drop in Argon food demand!" or "Energy shortfall in Teladi space! Demand for Ecells increased by 300%!"

In the end it's the same magic, no matter what you do, because you have to artificially take it away at some point eitherway.

Entirely true. The purpose here is mainly to create a civilian economy for XTimelines that is currently planned to have a military economy (shields, equipment, ships, etc.), the 'products' consumed via war.
So while I am aiming to do something probably pointless, why not try and give it a new spin as opposed to 'vanilla' X3?

If you want to keep it somewhat believable this is a bad idea. Looking at the population in sector description , a single planet could consume every product that the universe-economy produces and even more.

Also true, but planets have their own planetside economies. Earth's a pretty good example of that.

It's more like filling the gaps.

[EDIT 12:09]Just drew up a complex calculator in my Excel sheet and did my first check on a complex and the numbers fit! Yay!

14x Alcohol Fabs, 2x Energy Cell Fabs, 6x Spices Fabs, 2x Growth Medium Fabs, 6x Carbohydrate Fabs
2 400 Water required, per hour.
352 800 Alcohol produced, per hour.

Running cost: 29 200 000 credits per hour
Profit at average sell price: 55 280 000 credits per hour
Total complex cost: 435 240 000 credits.
Time to repay complex capital cost: 7.87 hours.

And best of all, no over/under production of intermediate products! So it is Litcube's Saturn Complex Hub compatible so far! Yay!

I like spreadsheets.

Anyway, I doubt anyone will share my excitement.

[EDIT 12:09]

Falcrack · Post by **Falcrack** » Mon, 25. Jun 12, 17:56

I still think giving NPC traders jumpdrives is the best way to go. One of the things that bugs me to no end currently is how "demand" is currently generated by braindead traders trying to take shortcuts across Xenon space. Also, more importantly, it ruins the sense of immersion when the player is able to equip and use a fleet of jumpdrive equipped ships, while NPCs cannot enjoy the same benefit. Either make all NPC traders have the ability to use jumpdrives, or limit it for everyone (the player's trade ships included).

For the concern that trade opportunities for the player will disappear with the newly efficient NPCs to compete against, keep in mind that there will still be ways to make money for the player. For example, a player starting out could get a mobile mining ship and mine ore, selling it to refineries. Refinieries will probably always need ore, so they will always pay something for the ore you have, and as long as you are piloting the mining ship and not paying some pilot a wage to do so, there would be no operating costs (selling ore would be pure profit). You will still be able to try to buy low and sell high for trade runs, you just have to be more careful.

I think the automated MK3 traders should have to be paid a fixed wage per unit time instead of paying a single large lump sum up front (for the purchase of MK3 trade software). Factories should have operating costs per hour to simulate the need to pay workers, and if you cannot pay the operating costs, the factory shuts down (workers going on strike), and traders dock at a station and refuse to go on their routes.

Trade stations could be the receiving and consuming points for items such as food. The amount of food consumed by a trade station in a sector could be based on the number of factories in the sector. The type of food consumed (meatsteaks vs bofu vs rastar oil etc) would be based upon the race of the sector owner, perhaps with sectors on the border between two races consuming both kinds of food. The trade station would be the place where the factory workers live, so that is where they would eat the food. If trade stations are not adequately supplied with food, production efficiency at factories in the sector begins to decline (to simulate workers leaving to avoid starvation). No need to keep track of actual workers moving around.

From what I have read previously about XTL, jumpdrives will not need e-cells for jumps, only weapons energy, so making jumps should not cost the player or NPCs anything. Factories will also not need e-cells to operate. Basically, from the sound of it, e-cells will not exist as a product. And I say good riddance to them.

For products that are in excess, there should exist special recycling stations that can take finished products that are in low demand/high supply, and thus not very profitable, and sell them to a recycling station to break them down into their previous components, which components can then be used to make more profitable items.

I like the idea of planetary supply stations, which can take some goods from space, and send out to space some items manufactured on the planet surface, items which may not otherwise be capable of being manufactured in space.