X4 - Just a faked economy?

[BlackRain]

You don't need to post lines of code, just simply the files to look into. For example, I know for a fact that most ships are built at shipyards because I saw the code. There is also a quota for the ships and the quota can not be exceeded. When ships are destroyed, the factions will build more as long as they dont reach the quota. This will of course affect everything else. So how is this not dynamic? It affects trading, buying/selling of goods, mining, etc. Also, in my game, the AI has built many stations and the economy is pretty solid. I have noticed lots of fluctuations in prices and I only have 3 autotraders, 1 miner and the PHQ station. I haven't done anything else. The only thing that annoys me is the lack of enemies but this is because of other reasons.

Well, they build, but where the used wares are coming from? i've bought so many ships all from the same station and it never ever run out of resources even though there are barely any traders running around but what the worst is, ive just been watching 2 construction vessels building up stations without ANY trading ships coming to them. not a single one. just came, built up the stations in no time and left. unless they have bought all the wares before launch, it was very obviously fake...

My argument isn't whether the economy is dynamic or not. My issue is that none of you are providing actual evidence. Just because you made some observations I should believe you? I mentioned some observations and you clearly didn't believe me, but I guess I should just take your word for it because your experience was a certain way and you are clearly bias towards one particular opinion? As for why the station isn't running out of resources, I don't know. Maybe it is being provided resources but you just didn't realize it? Maybe those builder ships already have the necessary resources to build and they picked it up beforehand? I don't know because we are all only guessing here. I didn't go into those particular scripts enough to see. Maybe I will see if I can find the builder script and see how it works.

[Zippo342]

BlackRain, this is how research into a topic starts. Theres a claim and it needs verification or falsification.
So far hes not complaining about the game but was trying to look into the issue that some players have a very active universe while others complain that nothing is going on with their enemies. More as a side effect he stumbled over this potential issue.

Why here? Well, if theres something true about this topic then Egosoft did not implement the dynamic economy they claimed they have. I hope this forum is not about hissing at people that actually dig into the works or Egosoft and look for answers? Transparency shouldnt be a problem?!

Making claims without evidence is utter nonsense. I can make any claim I want, doesn't mean anything without something to back it up. You are just posting slander otherwise. The point is, you just reposted what someone else said without a single shred of evidence. It would be one thing if you posted a claim with subsequent evidence or at least some form of objective reasoning, but just making a claim and then your evidence is "because I looked in the code" is not convincing. He hasn't even mentioned which scripts do what he says they do. I am not even denying whether or not the claim is right, but how it is presented is ludicrous. Okay, you are making these claims, then show me where I can see the evidence please. Otherwise I could say that i think under hood there are space dinosaurs eating up the xenon ships, you just can't see them because they disappear whenever you get close. This is why Xenon aren't attacking you in Argon prime!

Jokes on you, BlackRain, they slipped up once, and I saw them. I just couldn't take a screen shot in time.

[CaptainX4]

But... I do believe you. You said they build those ships, which is good. You didn't say where the wares did come to build them. also the exact same happened when I have found a xenon sector matrix(xyz), seconds later 2 teladi builders arrived and started building... it really seems to be locked to the player, though, again its just an unproven claim, i might have found the sector just in the moments the teladi did anyway, I dont want you to believe me, this is not about convincing each others, conversations are about discussing the possible (sometimes even the impossible)

[BlackRain]

Alright, I just took a brief look through the XML Script in MD folder, FactionLogic_Economy.xml. For those of you who are familiar with XML code, please take a look too. I don't get all of it yet as I only briefly looked through it. But, it creates tons of tables and references about SHORTAGES, request freighters for goods, buildings, etc. There is tons of code in there about this, so obviously the factions are requesting goods, reporting shortages, etc.

[Lyth]

This does not disprove a dynamic universe because it might have picked them up from somewhere, you'd have to look at the job and associated scripts.

I'd just point out that CV's with enough resources to make production modules does not mean anything, that could just be a fail safe way of ensuring a faction does not grind to a halt if it has all of it's other assets destroyed but just as likely the build isn't started until they have enough resources in the CV.

[nalim27]

Hello,
I spent 46 hours in game so far. Mostly by exploring universe, deploy satellites and do missions and looking for crates. Truth is that never saw shipyard/wharf that is building NPC ship (I watched one time when mine medium ship was build). But from 340 stations only 6 or 8 are shipyards/wharfs and ships are building pretty fast so it probably only bad luck and NPC ships are building in mine economy.

But one time I visited station where new module being build (it had those texture with invisible spots). So NPC is doing something but very rare. Also I saw about 12 Constructions vessels in total - and all doing nothing, just waiting in some factions sectors near gates.

So econony is evolving but really slow - maybe it is by desing because game must give some time to player to looks for opportunities and build players stations where it is most profitable? Try to imagine game start - all NPC factions have unlimited money - when all NPC will start building many stations everywhere in universe - player will not have a chance to build his empire.

But still it can be some bug ..... unfortunately game have many bugs, some on core mechanics that do not exists in X:R or previous games (I'm looking on you, turret scripts!). But I believe that Egosoft will fix this ..... at least during next 6 months.

[Zippo342]

But... I do believe you. You said they build those ships, which is good. You didn't say where the wares did come to build them. also the exact same happened when I have found a xenon sector matrix(xyz), seconds later 2 teladi builders arrived and started building... it really seems to be locked to the player, though, again its just an unproven claim, i might have found the sector just in the moments the teladi did anyway, I dont want you to believe me, this is not about convincing each others, conversations are about discussing the possible (sometimes even the impossible)

Just want to note something here. Your perceptions are locked to your player. You aren't looking everywhere in the universe at once to see if they are doing similar things elsewhere. Thus, just because this happened in front of you doesn't support a claim that it only happens around the player, only evidence that it never happens when a player is not around, in conjunction with the prior, would support that argument.

I'm not saying that you're necessarily promoting this claim, you might be, you might not be, but the current evidence doesn't support it. In fact the only thing that the evidence supports is that they do actually build stations like a player would.

I personally wouldn't care much if the economy was more like X3 for performance reasons. It was good enough in my book.

[Lyth]

Alright, I just took a brief look through the XML Script in MD folder, FactionLogic_Economy.xml. For those of you who are familiar with XML code, please take a look too. I don't get all of it yet as I only briefly looked through it. But, it creates tons of tables and references about SHORTAGES, request freighters for goods, buildings, etc. There is tons of code in there about this, so obviously the factions are requesting goods, reporting shortages, etc.

Naughty Blackrain, too spoilers section.

Yeah... pretty much what I saw too but if someone actually wants to know, they should just test it.
I do not think the issue here is that it is not a dynamic universe, it's more a case of it just doesn't feel like one because the players are not seeing the effect they COULD be having on the universe.

I'm gonna go back to working out how to kick the biggest hornets nest in my game.

[Revenant342]

Did a quick experiment and built some ships in Argon Prime. Both the Shipyard and the Wharf were at full resource capacity with no buy orders. Ordered a Carrier at the Shipyard, and its storage immediately dropped from 3.2m/3.2m to 2.9m/3.2m, and it posted buy orders for the missing resources. So the wares are being consumed. Ordered an M-sized miner from the Wharf which was at 2.2m/2.2m, and it dropped to 2.19m/2.2m. M and S sized ships seem to use a negligible amount of actual resources. Even the carrier, when you think about it, used less than 10% of the Shipyard's stock, and I don't imagine that they're a very common order.

So resources are being used in construction. I think the reason the stations are filling up, though, is that there's no real consumption in the form of lost ships. Ships seem to be the endpoint of the entire universal production chain, and if none of them are dying, none will be built to replace the losses, assuming that there's a cap to the number of ships a faction will have which seems logical to keep the game from running away and killing itself.

[burbonnn]

Did a quick experiment and built some ships in Argon Prime. Both the Shipyard and the Wharf were at full ...

Huh. You anticipated my actions!

I conducted the exact same experiment, and was greatly upset by its results.

Perhaps this is just a bug. I hope this is a bug, not a feature.

[Revenant342]

Did a quick experiment and built some ships in Argon Prime. Both the Shipyard and the Wharf were at full ...

Huh. You anticipated my actions!

I conducted the exact same experiment, and was greatly upset by its results.

Perhaps this is just a bug. I hope this is a bug, not a feature.

What did you find upsetting about the results? Did yours not deplete resources?

[Lymark]

There is also a quota for the ships and the quota can not be exceeded. When ships are destroyed, the factions will build more as long as they dont reach the quota. This will of course affect everything else

I think the reason the stations are filling up, though, is that there's no real consumption in the form of lost ships. Ships seem to be the endpoint of the entire universal production chain, and if none of them are dying, none will be built to replace the losses, assuming that there's a cap to the number of ships a faction will have which seems logical to keep the game from running away and killing itself.

I guess we have found our issue here?

[Lyth]

Why I am trying to get some aggressive wars going.

[Morkonan]

Just my two coppers: I don't care if the economy is "a real, dynamic, economy that responds to the economic environment and has resources that actually get used to make stuff and then blah blah blah."

All I care about is that the game's economy is "real enough" to satisfy whatever game-mechanic needs I require in order to continue suspending my disbelief and to offer me a useable game-mechanic for my enjoyment.

IMO, too many gamers ask for "realism" without understanding that "realism" is not an intrinsic property of a "fun" game element. It can be, but a game that is designed well enough does not have to be based on "realism" especially where "economy" elements are concerned. Considering the size of X games, I would never believe that the entire economy is based on some completely "realistic" economy modeling. Somewhere, there's an infinite sink just as there's probably a hard-cap. Otherwise, there'd be too much game processing going on that had no effect whatsoever on the gamer's experience of the game other than reducing it to a slideshow until it finally crashed...

That being said, regarding the related OP, I trust what Egosoft has stated they have done up to the point where any further extrapolation of their claims leads one into absurdities. IOW, I'm sure it's an economy that is "realistic and dynamic" enough for the game we're to play.

Right now, I'm sitting on my butt in a comfy chair after having finished the last of the morning coffee... in the afternoon. I have done nothing productive all day and have had no meaningful influence on my "real life" game's economic environment. However, it appears that the Wall Street stock market DOW index is on its way to lose about a 800 pts or so today... Yay, "realism?" I don't think so. Is my wallet now completely out of my control with no impact on a potentially positive "gameplay" experience for me, today? Probably needs a patch...

[Grudd]

Personally, I'd love to hear what a dev has to say about this.

[DuckSoup]

Personally, I'm just surprised how many took the bait on this obvious troll post.

[Kadatherion]

Just my two coppers: I don't care if the economy is "a real, dynamic, economy that responds to the economic environment and has resources that actually get used to make stuff and then blah blah blah."

All I care about is that the game's economy is "real enough" to satisfy whatever game-mechanic needs I require in order to continue suspending my disbelief and to offer me a useable game-mechanic for my enjoyment.

IMO, too many gamers ask for "realism" without understanding that "realism" is not an intrinsic property of a "fun" game element. It can be, but a game that is designed well enough does not have to be based on "realism" especially where "economy" elements are concerned. Considering the size of X games, I would never believe that the entire economy is based on some completely "realistic" economy modeling. Somewhere, there's an infinite sink just as there's probably a hard-cap. Otherwise, there'd be too much game processing going on that had no effect whatsoever on the gamer's experience of the game other than reducing it to a slideshow until it finally crashed...

That being said, regarding the related OP, I trust what Egosoft has stated they have done up to the point where any further extrapolation of their claims leads one into absurdities. IOW, I'm sure it's an economy that is "realistic and dynamic" enough for the game we're to play.

Right now, I'm sitting on my butt in a comfy chair after having finished the last of the morning coffee... in the afternoon. I have done nothing productive all day and have had no meaningful influence on my "real life" game's economic environment. However, it appears that the Wall Street stock market DOW index is on its way to lose about a 800 pts or so today... Yay, "realism?" I don't think so. Is my wallet now completely out of my control with no impact on a potentially positive "gameplay" experience for me, today? Probably needs a patch...

This, a thousand times this.

Now, let's go in order:

1) The claim from that guy is ludicrous. He actually might be right, coincidentally, but he can't even word the behaviour he claims to have inferred from looking at the files, do your really think he understands the mysterious scripts he's talking about? And no, native language isn't the matter here, he just has no idea whatsoever of how these mechanics actually work.

2) That doesn't mean something like this can't be going on. BlackRain was swearing the other day no ship is ever spawned by the game, because he looked at the job files (which don't spawn ships, obviously) and because a dev supposedly assured him so. Turned out to be false: there simply is ANOTHER script that spawns ship - probably temporarily - to ensure the player encounters other ships even if he goes his merry way for hours into empty space.

3) Why is the aforementioned mechanic in? For obvious reasons: you can't have so many ships filling the universe at any one time just so there's no empty corners. It would both destroy perfomance and there's no reason for the AI to go into that forgotten corner. So a different, lightweight mechanic was added on top the normal ship creation system to mimic what could be made if we had computers with a 100GHZ cpus. It's a semplification. That doesn't mean the actual real game doesn't follow the promised rules: it does by all means, and the lack of enemies we are all seeing comes from that fact, that those rules aren't balanced enough yet.

4) OF COURSE a game has to make compromises and only emulate certain mechanics to save resources, it's not real life. Is anyone here angry that out of sector ships have no collision detection, as nothing is really rendered? Of course not, it would make no sense nor serve any purpose. And neither this is any infringement on the "promises" made.

5) I wouldn't be surprised - it's the way games are made - if the economic simulation simplifies some less evident calculations. It actually would also be smart to do, because having a balanced environment is a very difficult thing to achieve (many similar games that DON'T have any dynamic economy, still have unbalanced ones ffs!), so the code should try at the same time to: don't be too heavy when it's less necessary to be 100% faithful (AKA: far from the player), and to have some safeties that can fix issues if the economy becomes TOO unbalanced, which can happen easily and could potentially bring core features of the game to a halt. What's more important, always 100% simulation, or the risk the station module you are building will NEVER be completed because the economy has died due to poor, still unrefined at launch balance?

There's nothing wrong if point 5 turns out to be true. It's often actually how you make good *working* games as opposed to good - but inevitably broken - promises. The only silly thing here is believing (and both sides do, with incredible stubborness) that it would be so wrong that it could be used as effective slander or on the opposite something to deny at all costs. It's just absurd.

[BlackRain]

Whoa, aren't you over exaggerating what I said? I originally said that no ships were spawned true, but to say I was swearing up and down is wrong. That was because I only took a quick look at jobs but then I said SOME ships are spawned, those without shipyards and this was what I confirmed with the dev I spoke with. I didn't know about the encounters script true, but those are not ships which impact gameplay and are just for immersion. I wasn't entirely wrong either so no need to over exaggerate lol. Also, I didn't "supposedly" talk to a Dev, I did talk to a dev. You don't have to believe me I guess though, but I am a LEVEL 5 who has signed an NDA and participated in X betas before so it shouldn't be such a far fetch that I have spoken to some devs before, geeze. Either way, it is still pretty much true that ships are built in 90% of situations. The small exceptions are minor concerns in my opinion. There may be other scripts which spawn ships in certain situations but I haven't seen anything else.

Also, I am not defending any side. I just want concrete proof if someone makes a claim about something. Actually, I don't even care if it is fully dynamic or partially dynamic as long as I am enjoying it.

[CaptainX4]

@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)

[Taramafor]

Considering the same company also promised a WAR and we have skirmishes at best with no missions doing patrol or defends...

I dunno about this topic but promises were made which were present in past X games. Whatever way you look at it that's just not on.