The mod is complete, and is now online at xscripting.com.
You will need to unpack your game to use this mod. Here is where I learned how:
Tutorial: How to Unpack your game for Modifications in X² by Shadowtech
Please let me know if you find any mistakes, and I'll fix them. (My eyes are crossing from looking at it for so long.)
Here is the info from the readme:
This modified spreadsheet contains new product and factory prices, and is intended to provide a solution to X2's economy problems. As the game stands, all factories are on a linear progression. This means that as you buy more advanced factories, the investment and resource costs go up, but profit remains the same. This model is based on a curved progression and is primarily based on the factories price. A more expensive factory will provide more profit per minute, but a longer ROI cycle.
This fix is accomplished entirely through changes in product and factory prices. The one thing that changes when implementing this fix is game balance. Some of you may have seen my first economy proposal. That one was made to fix the profit curve, while maintaining game balance. It wound up in the trash once I found out that Egosoft had hard coded the factory consumption ratios, and based them on price, not production.
While we all thought the economy ran on 15 Energy Cells / min. The truth was that everything ran on 240 credits worth of energy / min. So, if you set E Cell cost to half normal - the universe would consume at twice the normal rate. Which makes all price changes to production resources completely pointless. (Welcome to government imposed equality.)
Since I can't change prices on any resources used for production - I can't curve the economy AND bump it to fit the current price structure we're all used to.
This new fix implements the same profit and loss curves of my previous plan, but leaves all production product Avg Price equal to the current X2 economy. In those cases, factory prices changed - sometimes drastically to fit the curve. Some went up - Some went down. Overall, the game will be more challenging with this fix - so it won't be for everyone. Low end equipment tends to cost similar to original. High end tends to cost more, and prices vary sharply with stock levels. I wish that didn't happen, but the Factory Stock Limits are hard coded by Egosoft as well. So anything with an 2/2 limit will sell at Avg Price with 1 in stock, and Min Price with 2 in stock. (Docks are still at Avg.) In most cases for high end items (125MW shields, PPC's, etc.) the min price is comparable to the old prices. Avg is higher. Max is way higher, and will only come into play if you let the docks buy from you. (Welcome to government assisted buying.) I'm sorry it has to be that way. But all the values to fix those issues are hard coded. PPC's are much more expensive now. I'd suggest making them more powerful to justify the cost.
All of the price settings are calculated with the following formulas:
Max Profit / Minute = SQRT(FactoryCost) / (2 - (Factory Cost / 8400000)) (The more expensive the factory - the higher the potential profit per minute)
Min Item Price is set to equal a x% loss based on worst case resource costs, where x= 0.6 + (Factory Cost / 16800000) (Less expensive factories are subject to higher % loss under poor management.)
The only exceptions are Space Fuel and Space Weed which behave as if their factories cost 75% more than actual, and Swamp Plant and Squash Mines which have a 50% bonus. This bonus is to reflect the added risk of transporting these goods. If there is no incentive to trade in illegal goods - nobody would ever bother. (I also significantly raised some of the prices on these so they would be more profitable.)
All repeated products have their prices scaled to factory cost of the first race to include it. (Argon -> Boron -> Paranid -> Teladi -> Split)
In some cases the racial variation in factory price had to be narrowed a bit. While they all have the same max profit - their avg profit varies slightly (and so does price)
So, what's the bottom line?
Basically, you get to play with an economy that isn't flat. If you invest more, you stand to make more. There is now a reason to build high end fabs. And the better you manage them, the more you'll make. If you just plop down a bunch of cheap factories, and manage them horribly - you can even take a loss.
This should appeal to anyone who is sick of running Solar Power Empires.
The difficulty will probably be higher than normal. So newbies may find it difficult, but players who really want to "Think", or wish that starting on Extreme mode actually DID something will probably really like it.
Firing sound is in Tlasers column 9 I think. Hey, get MSN Messenger. My account is in my profile, I'm on all the time.
