Forums » Suggestions

Back to the economy Very long post.

«12
Jul 15, 2005 Spellcast link
""No I did not miss the point. I just feel that you are thinking to small. We are supplying entire planets, not stations'"

""Besides what was intended? For all we know the 300000 stockpiled orewidgets were exactly what the station needed.""

you guys are still looking at it incorrectly, and as such yes, you ARE missing my point.

I am looking at the game MECHANICS.

if the station NEEDS 2,000 units, than the price would not bottom out when they are sold, it would reduce some to signify that there is a reasonable supply of goods on the market, but the price would not fall to rock bottom.

As it stands now, ~200 units is enough to fill the DEMAND a station requires in most cases, causing the price to fall significantly, hence as far as vendetta is concerned 200 units FILLS the DEMAND that the stations have.

this is a FACT. (take a moth and try it. make 2 trips, then sell, the price will drop quite significantly, probably enough to make it pretty much unprofitable)
Hence, looking at the way the game views demand; 3,000 units is far more than the station actually wants. they should not pay top price for that many. the proof of this can be found by selling as you go instead of stockpiling.
As such, stockpiling is evading the way a portion of the game was intended to work, and that makes it a bug.

actually i prefer the real time update like beolach suggests, the 6 second thing would be a quick fix that might be easier to implement if making it real time would require too much code to be re-written.

oh, and for reference fireice, only about half of the stations are actually around planets.
Jul 15, 2005 johnhawl218 link
and of the ones around planets I though only 4 were actually inhabited.
Jul 15, 2005 Renegade ++RIP++ link
Well spellcast, I don't care... I am happy with how it works now. And in my view it does not need an alteration.

And like I said in my post, untill now it has been whatever you deliver stockpilled that is what is needed. I proposed to give an indication of what was needed. Be this 5000, 2000, 50 whatever number. But that number will be what is NEEDED and after that you will notice a serious drop in the price offered for any additional ones. But really discussing semantics is pointless. Maybe it is 200 now, maybe once more people join it will be 1000... in my opinion it does not matter a thing nor do I actually really care that much to see development time go into something like this... since in my eyes these are details and not that high on the list.

And at that time you would not need a 6 second update, just an update of each visit of the person.

And beolach, really what does it matter that it is 120 now? At least it makes it a bit less annoying to load up a full moth, otherwise why even put it at 100? lets just put it at 1 in stead and let you do the work of loading 120 wedgets one after each other. The 120 was put in to make loading up a ship less cumbersome and boring then before (there were some complaints if I remember correctly). Same reason as why we have an autorepair, a autorefill button, etc. Its a game make it fun, not tiresome...
Jul 15, 2005 Fnugget link
And Spellcast misses my point, which may not have been clear enough for him.
A 6 second timer would make a trader willing to move 3000cu make less than a trader selling a few cu.

Why doesn't small business run the world? Why do people ship in bulk instead of like what the 6 second timer would induce, short and small trips? Looking at the small details like "stations only need so much" and so on ruin the big picture. Like Rene hints at, these are SMALL details.

People who move more should be payed more. But maybe only to a certain, yet high, extent.

Let's assume a miner can mine 1000cu of something in a day. Lets also say each station can will only willingly buy 200cu. In less than a week, half of the universe would be wiped out of that price. If you were to fix it accordingly, maybe 3000cu might work. 3000 is a lot closer to the current maximum you can sell to a station at high prices than 200.

Although Spellcast is right that there should be a limiting factor, having a six second timer would be way way too low. With a six second timer, I would kill 4 station prices for Heliocene in a day. Prices can take at least 2 weeks to regain value (just a guess on that one, no real data on it yet). Five miners that know all the current mechanics could possibly kill the entire universal price for Helio in 2 or 3 days. There is no way a six second timer will work.

The six second timer would make small trade the ONLY way to go. That's just not right either. How would you keep big traders making more money then small traders? You're trying to cure a symptom by bleeding or leeches, not the disease.
Jul 15, 2005 Spellcast link
no, actually a trader who moves 3000 units will make the same amount as a trader who moves just a few, not less, not more.

additionally what is this focus you seem to have with the 6 second timer???

Please read my posts.

here i'll quote it for you...

""actually i prefer the real time update like beolach suggests, the 6 second thing would be a quick fix that might be easier to implement if making it real time would require too much code to be re-written.""

And just for reference fnugget, small time trade is what the game is set up for right now. no matter how much you argue about it, you are using a bug to sell mass amounts of product at too high a price. you acknowledge that there is a problem with it in your own post.

If the devs wanted 3000 units to be sold at a high price, than the stations would have a much higher demand. and you wouldn't need to stockpile.

""-Although Spellcast is right that there should be a limiting factor, having a six second timer would be way way too low. With a six second timer, I would kill 4 station prices for Heliocene in a day. Prices can take at least 2 weeks to regain value (just a guess on that one, no real data on it yet). Five miners that know all the current mechanics could possibly kill the entire universal price for Helio in 2 or 3 days. There is no way a six second timer will work.--""

you are wrong you know. the prices take so long to rebound because you sell 3k all at once. If you only sell a few hundred the prices rebound in a few hours, half a day at the most.
Jul 15, 2005 johnhawl218 link
the underlying problem here is pure greed. There is no reason to have 10's of millions of dollars right now. IF/WHEN we get cap ships the need may arise but not now as it is. I've managed to have all the fun everyone else is enjoying on a few million no problem.

And we can already see the beginnings of guilds cockblocking other guilds ability to sell there ores, via TGFT, in this post, with Fnuggets comments.
Jul 15, 2005 Fnugget link
Killing station prices have never been one of my own efforts. What few stations I do sell at will be affected; I don't do it on purpose. What I was referring to below would have to be the side effect of multiple small sales. As of now, the only people I have heard of station market killing is IGPK and another helio miner over by Helios. And as far as I can tell, station price rebuilding is nearly linear, exception at near ceiling where it slows down.

johnhawl, one thing I know about games, if it can happen, people will do it. Although I haven't purposefully attacked anyone economically, I have seen it happen to me. I agree there is no reason to have that much money but as RPing traders, that's what we do, make money.

If Spellcast wants to say the game is set up for small time trade, then okay. VO is set up for small battles between a few players or even 1v1. It's true, but no one argues about it. If VO wants to be an MMO, big time trade with bigger risks and possibly bigger rewards is needed. I don't think anyone wants VO to become like a life long minimum wage job. I'm not here to slowly work my way though, but to take big risks and have fun knowing it really isn't my future I am wagering.
Jul 15, 2005 Spellcast link
"" I don't think anyone wants VO to become like a life long minimum wage job. I'm not here to slowly work my way though, but to take big risks and have fun knowing it really isn't my future I am wagering.""

this is true, but at the same token the current system is out of hand. The suggestions i made should actually increase the overall profitability of the economy, it would just do it in a manner that made it more advisable to trade several steps in a chain, instead of repeatedly hauling the same cargo back and forth for an hour or 6 then selling everything at once.

Picture this for a moment Fnugget.

you and your guild set out to profit from a supply chain under the setup i propose.

first you detail a miner or three, their job is to gather the raw ores and take them to the refinery station. they make money everytime they sell ore to the refinery, and at the same time 3 basic metals become somewhat cheaper there.

about 15 minutes later two more traders start to haul those metals to a manufacturing station that makes basic components, because they are now buying the metals at the same rate ore is being dropped off, the price stabalizes, they are getting metal for a discount, the miners are still making a decent profit.

another trader hauls the now cheaper components to a third station, where they are used to manufacture plasma coils. As the price of plasma coils drops significantly, NPC traders arrive and begin to move the plasma coils along.

Every leg of the trade route remains moderately profitable, because the act of buying the item that is made when material is sold to the station brings the demand for the material back up.

when you are done, all the stations are still reasonably close to the base price for the items you've been trading, because the demand is not linked only to sales, but is a truely functional supply chain.

If a pirate group wanted to engage in some shady buisness prectices, you can pick a station and blockade it
buy an item the station produces and ship it out (or find a station that allready has a high demand for some material because someone else has been trading there)
then kill any trader attempting to dock there, NPC or otherwise. Collect the raw materiel without selling it to the station.
If you can sucede in keeping very much of that material from being delivered, the price will skyrocket.
Jul 16, 2005 Beolach link
> And beolach, really what does it matter that it is 120 now? At least it makes
> it a bit less annoying to load up a full moth, otherwise why even put it at 100?
> lets just put it at 1 in stead and let you do the work of loading 120 wedgets
> one after each other. The 120 was put in to make loading up a ship less
> cumbersome and boring then before (there were some complaints if I
> remember correctly). Same reason as why we have an autorepair, a
> autorefill button, etc. Its a game make it fun, not tiresome...

Well, I was more thinking about player-selling-to-station transactions, rather than player-buying-from-station. For buying from the station, I don't think there should be any limit on the size of the transaction, unless the devs start limiting the stock station has available to sell. But when a station is buying, I think they should refuse any bulk transactions (more than 100 units), as I think the stations should make the bulk orders they need through the trade guild missions.
Jul 17, 2005 terjekv link
some proper sort of supply chain is sorely missed, today VO isn't halfway interesting to trade in since there are set routes and set missions to do if you want cash.

that's not how a trader should earn money.
Jul 17, 2005 Fnugget link
Trade missions are for standing and XP. Free trade is not set in only a few routes. Free trade also gives you more money.
Jul 18, 2005 terjekv link
free trade doesn't give more money in todays VO. there is one traderoute you use if you want pure cash. this is _not_ how a trade system should work.

also, I honestly doubt I can make as much money by consistant free trade as I can with certain missions. it's fairly easy to make around 1M / hour with trade missions. if you're not doing a single fixed route, I'm not sure how easy 1M / hour is, as a hard average over 12+ hours.