Fixed supply of credits, inflation other ideas for rebirth

[Falcrack]

I was thinking how they planned on making the economy more realistic for Rebirth, which I wholly approve of. This raises the question in my mind of whetehr this is a fixed supply of credits in the universe.

Currently in X3, NPCs will continue to pay you indefinitely for goods, since they don't actually have a pocketbook to worry about. If there was a fixed supply of credits, though, then the more credits you amass, the less other NPCs will have in their pockets, meaning they can't continue to afford your goods, meaning you'll have to lower your prices if you want them to keep coming (deflation). If extra money was pumped into the system (such as a governement creating more money out of thin air to pay for items), the universe would start to become awash in money, meaning it would be worth less (inflation).

What do you guys think? Should the supply of money in X:Rebirth resemble more of what we actually see in the real-world economy, or would you prefer the pseudo economy we have in X3?

[KickAHobo]

I am all for anything that add complexity to a game. it might be difficult cause the AI would need a demand and elasticity for different goods.

What if you could destroy all other food factories and you would have a monopoly on food and charge exorbitant prices and RULE THE UNIVERSE! Cool 4X style game play.

If the price for a certain basic good was non-changeable then that good would become like a currency. but if any good could cost any price at anytime then weird stuff could happen.

Maybe a system of NPC Demand and Elasticity could be set up that would make the economic system work without needing controlling scripting.

I just dont want to be able to predict the max amount that Mr. smith will pay for my goods and cheat the system when i would normaly have to use trial and error and even then there is a bit of randomness that maybe this time he wont buy my goods or would have paid much more.

[bluenog143]

Now this is an interesting concept. I personally like a more realistic economy. Because even if there were a finite amount of credits (or a certain amount of credits based off of something, although I don't know what limitations the engine has), you would control everything anyways.

But that depends how the economy works also. Maybe potentially, there could be a near infinite amount of money but certain limitations. Like maybe the amount of money in the game can correspond to the amount of discovered nividium (like a nividium standard ). But like I said i don't know what the engine can do, so I guess I'll have to wait until I can take a look at it.

P.S. Oh and bernd answered some more questions, you can find the topic here

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=316347

[Probe1]

lol fixed supply of credits.
>build the most massive trade empire you can without dying of exhaustion IRL
>become a majority owner of all credits in the universe
>break the universe and its trillions by discontinuing your interaction with it
>watch the economy shrivel, die, and regrow in 1/10th of its original capacity.
>prices skyrocket against the lack of supply
>buying the universe is now attainable. you flood the entire universal market with your credits purchasing every station.
>roleplay crown yourself space pope and from time to time decide a race is dissident and shut down all the factories in their space while increasing costs in their neighbors border regions. Profit wildly from shortages.

Final step: get bored, destroy shipyards in universe and deploy laser towers everywhere they could spawn, self destruct all factories. the power go out and the universe recedes into darkness.

[Jumee]

[bluenog143]

[Ahem]

If Egosoft work out how to create a functioning economy with Inflation and Deflation and the like, then we need new leaders in the EU!!

But yes, I would like a more complex economy in Rebirth. Supply and Demand is fun in the X games, and it works well imo, but still, once I figure out whats profitable, its very easy to milk the system.

A fixed supply of money would make things harder...

[willyshop]

Thousands of different wares; in order to make a product you need some real planning and networking, just like in real life.
Make all the factories outputs prime numbers so you can never get a clean loop.
No more price floors ceilings; AI decides what weapons/ships to use based on semi-random utility functions based on different parameters; for example (cargo capacity)^1/3*(speed)^1/3*(weoponsgen)^1/3.
Loans and equity based securities.

In other words, a real economy!!!

[Catra]

how do you inflate / deflate the only currency in the galaxy?

[Star_Raider15]

[Jumee]

[Sir Warwick]

I think that egosoft do not need to do any of this directly.

Soory - this post is going stray along way off topic, but that is where the answers are I beleive.


Instead they should focus on the core game engine, mission engine and making the scripting engine as open as possible to fully enable the community with subject area experts to come along and fill in the depth.

The stock exchange in X3:AP is an example - as a real life financial trader - I find it a horrible hack and the fact that I cant fix it via script and totally re-write it is deeply frustrating. As an implementation by a non-trader - than actually its quite decent I guess - a good effort to be fair.

Same with economics - implementing a really deep economy requires alot of time consulting real economistcis to try to understand the often obscure driving factors of an economy and in particular, understanding a closed single currency econom - whihc does not currently exist in our real world - europe is in some ways the best model when it isnt be screwed over by the USA or the far east.

Another area - fleets, wings etc - I dont get the impression that any of the developers/designers have had cause to go anywhere near a navy or air-force to the degree required to have a good understanding of real world naval tactics for example, so what exiist in game in relatively poor when measures against the real world - and doesnt need to be because it isnt that complex.

Some specific that I would like to see opened up fully in scirpting:

The price of anything that can be bought, made or sold. Simply opening this up allows for a future script to deal with inflationary pressures for example. Fixed price rnage need to abolished perhpas in favour of bell-curve type pricing - ie have fit a simplified statistical bell curve, with a center that is determined according to the universal economy, but the extremes being determined by local consideration of supply/demand/disruption (by pirates, war or whatever)/labour availbility and cost etc.

The price of labour and supporting the concept of a cost of labour - from pilots to marines or whatever. This then allows for advanced scripts to vary labour costs according to local circumstances and to also add varying inflation. Additional such script might talke a portaion of labour wages and filter that money into the total economy (to simulate purchasing).

The resources and time required to produce a product. Over time in economies with varying levels of development, fabrication processes improve - they become more efficient and cost effective etc.
By open this up to script, then depth though concepts like research can be added, such that over time your industry gets better, as foers that of your compeitors.

On the fleet side
1. Open up formatiosn placement - let the X,Y,Z offset of each ship in the formation be specified dynamically in script to allows davanced dynamics formattion that can be threat-classification and threat-axis (read up on naval tactics for exmplanation) aware etc.
2. Provide more types of signals to allows scripters to implement more responsive and apparently intelligent behaviours to circumstances. Add a ships/threat become visible/non-visible a an example.


Non of this is compelx to implement - nearly all of this stuff must be look up table based - just let us modify those look-up tables and the bounds of them.

Finally, Id like to say that the one reason I still play X today and havnt given up on it long ago is down to it being scriptable and that the community has over the years stepped up and provide the real depth and longevity.

IMHO Egosoft must not only recognise this, but actually take this to heart in their development and engine choices. Microsoft are where they are today because they recognised this long ago - and allways supported developers with rich APIs etc.

They need to understand that I (for one and I sure many others too) wouldnt still be playing X if it wasnt for the excellent efforts of the likes of gazz, cycrow, luckie, litcube, lv and others in improving the game.

The biggest turn off to X for me in that some things are still not scriptable - these so much of a turn off that I somettimes come close to giving up entirely - complex linking being perhaps the number one turnoff - and this IMHO was a totally stupid decision by egosoft to remove this (at least Im sure it was in reunion).

Some people utterly hate repetiveness - egosoft may call it balance - personally I consider it to be a utterly aweful user experience and a sign of a really disorganised mind wheh organisation is crippled to such a degree. For anyone whos real life work is based upon organisation and user experience - then Im sure you understand where Im coming from.

So, the message is that while something may appear to be a great idea to cripple the game for balance reasons - dont force us to live it - set a default that suits your balance aims for the vanilla game, but make it overidable in script for those folks who will utterly hate the descision - as you may find yourself trying to live without a large segment of US - the buyers, community etc.

Do all these things - focus on a great immediate out of box excperience for the phase 1 users, but open it right up for us developers to take it to the next stage. Remember - X3TC, X3AP - how much of those are egosoft's works and how much of those games are community sourced work? Support us way way better for rebirth.

[Falcrack]

It might be interesting if there were in fact multiple currencies in the game. Could lead to some interesting possibilities.

[Sir Warwick]

Yeh - greece

[bluenog143]

But if everybodies making profit wouldn't the money in the universe get larger and larger?