CaptainX4 wrote: ↑Tue, 4. Dec 18, 21:15
@Kadatherion: May I disagree? Its a thing that it doesnt matter for you but it might for others. In properly simulated economy you can plan and run errants that you can predict. in randomly fulfilled fake economy you cant. in x3 it was clear after a short time what is missing where and it added a great deal to the gameplay, now it doesnt seem to matter at all. like all is full and nothing is needed. the miners are still mining and the traders are still trading but we cant really see what. I didnt care for watching much yet as the game is simply way too easy on economical level but when i will have a little time i will see if the traders running around do make any difference (they made a very clear difference in x3)
Sorry for the double post to answer you too, the forums are failing me hard, 5+minutes and 2-3 tries to actually don't get a total load error
The point is, EVERY game simplifies the reality it's meant to simulate. It will always be so. What matters is to which extent, of course if it gets to an extent that is detrimental to the gameplay and its scope, it's going too far.
In X3, for instance, AI solar plants were resource free, instead of needing crystals like yours would, because the economy needed that built in "safety" to avoid it getting to an halt. Economy is a very complex thing, even after a lot of testing you'll never know what happens a 100 hours in, or foresee all the possible scenarios influenced by the player. Several of the most successful mods for X3 (like Litcube's) went even further: spawning and consuming from thin air weapons and certain much needed wares, that were often a big problem and frequent complaint in vanilla (fully kitting an M2, let alone multiple ones, was an incredible PITA), because up to a point playability in a game is more important than 100% simulated faithfulness. And yet we all love those mods, why? Because the compromise overall feels ok, you sacrifice a bit of simulation to have in exchange a better game with a few less quirks and annoyances.
Now, let's say the issue we are having in X4 with static economy comes from the fact there's nothing simplified: wars don't happen because the job files are too conservative and so on, so ships (which are resource sinks) aren't being destroyed enough to keep the economy from saturating. It feels much sensible to me and I'd bet this is at least a big part of the issue, like BlackRain hypotized. Now, IF we can fix that simply by balancing the jobs file, great, all the better. If we can't just like that, though - it could happen, balance is hard to achieve, as stated - then it's better to have a simulation that, under the hood, where you can't see it, auto consumes certain resources so you, the player, can actually play the trading game. Of course we can't go too overboard with this: autoconsumption should never be so relevant it prevents the player from actually causing and exploiting market "holes", it has to be as silent and unnoticeable as possible, so as to not break the "illusion".
But notice this, which is a very important aspect:
if the player needs "holes", aka unbalances in the economy to make a profit and play the trade game (and he does), then this means that an economy built to have such holes is condemned to, sooner or later, grind into a halt unless the player fills them. Meaning a safety, the ability to break the "rules" of simulation behind the curtains, is mandatory in the system for all those players that actually don't take part in the trade game so extensively. Otherwise they'd be forced to soon play in lifeless economies.
Same goes for my aforementioned example about the simulation "rules" possibly being bypassed sometimes to ensure the player doesn't get cut out of core features, and why there'd be nothing wrong. Like a script that, if the game shows it wasn't able to fulfill that building order given by the player for many hours now, then says "ok, screw it, something is wrong in the universe, let me spawn a builder just so that guy can keep playing without coming to steam screaming the game is utterly broken".
Think 4X games, like Civilizations and the like. You know the AI cheats, right? It does so because an AI can't still be competitive against the player if it follows all the rules he has to. And you want a competitive AI, otherwise the game is not going to be fun: the goal of a game is to be fun. What do the devs do then? They try and make it so the AI cheats when the player can't notice. For instance, spawning stacks of units for the AI only under the fog of war. Yes, the player will still often notice something is "wrong" (they had no money anymore, how could they build another unit stack to come at me?), but at least it wasn't in his face, you get your competition and the suspension of disbelief is preserved as much as possible (which isn't perfect, but it's what we can do with the current tech).
) to be inquisitive on that.
