Your suggestions for improving the economy

[Nachtu]

I've been thinking on the economy side of the game recently. It seems that currently the economy is based on events that are not related to one another. Commerce happening is basically separate events determined by individual stations internal economies: stations produce, and order in supplies, and then set their buy/sell individually, without any connection to other stations. For example, one good can be sold at very different prices in the same sector, even by the same faction. So in a way the economy is event-based, and not interconnected unless a player makes it so (establishing a production chain in a sector).

 

I wonder if the devs have intention to add more dynamic to  the economy? Or will it remain "separate event-based"? Either is good in my opinion, but probably using both would be best: interconnected economy with believable random events.

 

Anyways post your suggestions how to make the economy more immersive, believable, playable and so on!

[Kamo]

There's a big trading suggestion thread already near the top of the list !

But I guess the main problem now is how it currently works on koonschi's side.

Recently I wondered if the out-of-sector trades (NPC freighters docking at my stations to buy and sell ) even happened in "unloaded" sectors or if those things only happened in loaded ones.

There are probably thousands of stations and simulated freighters/trade lanes in a galaxy, taking account of each one is probably already a chore for the server even if each station, like currently, just find the nearest possible suppliers/clients and "request" freighters from them. To add the PC freighters to the out-of-sector simulation is already proving difficult since their behavior can change and cause interaction with more stations than one or even two.

Can Avorion ever support a dynamic economy ? Probably yes since it just means making an inventory of each faction depending on station (wherever buy/sell-event-based or infrequent update-based) and making decisions about it, but before being able to support it, Avorion needs to support the current economy first, and this'll involve a lot of number-crunching and structural/database optimization work...

[DivineEvil]

1.) First and foremost, Economy has to be scaled down a lot. Like I've been telling for over a year now, there are way too many commodities in the system. In this respect Avorion looks like its trying to compete with other space games with sheer numbers, but in actuality more does not equates better in pretty much any case, for any system, in any game. Balance beats everything.

 

Current lineup of commodities is severely oversaturated and also requires an enormous number of redundant stations, each seemingly constructed to perform every small refinement step for even the most economically negligible goods. Some of these goods do not make sense in the galactic scale, do not make sense in case of completely alien civilizations, redundant variations of each-other or so generic and practically useless, that its outright repulsive. Reducing the number of used commodities also removes the necessity of having as many stations as there is in order to make the economy work, which would allow some more general-use stations added instead, like storage facilities and actual security stations and strongholds.

 

Goods for potential removal for one problem or another include: Protein, Dairy, Fabric, Toxic Waste, Plant, Scrap Metal, Clothes, Tea, Paper, Ore, Corn, Sheep, Cocoa, Chlorine, Raw Oil, Bio Gas, Crystal, Coal, Lead, Beer, Coffee, Ammunition S/M/L, Chemicals, Gem, Food Bars, Food, Books, Paint, Power Units, Metal Plate, Fuel, Energy Generators, Neutron and Proton Accelerators etc.

 

To remodel the system in a more reasonable fashion, the general categories of economic structures has to be established, namely Civilian, Military, Industrial and Scientific. For each category there should be a reasonable collection of finished end-user goods of variable credit values (around 5 per category). From that point, the economy should be branched off downward to accommodate the production of these goods, with the longest chain not exceeding 3 steps, and with as many commodities having multiple applications as reasonably possible. That would allow players to at least have a chance to remember trade routes and specific locations, instead of stumbling around blindly and relying completely on the high-end Trading Systems to find anything workable.

 

2.) Economy should be untied from the production of Turrets completely. It is already true for Systems, Fighters and Torpedoes. Player's assets should be attached solely to Credits and Materials, and the Economy should only offer the way to earn these. That also removes many commodities, whose entire existence is based on production of turrets alone. Turret Factories will be fine with just generating blueprints for the turrets players obtained trough looting or research (the horse I'm beating here isn't just dead; it has smelled funny for a while now) and offering production of set models for only credits and materials.

 

 

3.) Preferably, economy should be tied to the behavior of the given Faction. End-user stations should consume the commodities to sustain and improve their abilities in four previously mentioned categories. The specifics are up for debate, but in my opinion:

- Supporting Civilian bracket grants the NPC faction more sophisticated trading vessels, that buy from and sell to player stations in larger volumes at a time, and also increases the rewards for station-given quests and legit distress signals.

- Supporting Military bracket grants the NPC faction greater military presence in their own sectors, causes them to intercept pirates and Xsotans attacking the players in their area of influence occasionally, and increases the rewards for assistance against hostiles.

- Supporting Industrial bracket increases the rate of production of all faction's stations and grants discounts for buying the products. Equipment docks sell and Turret Factories produce better mining and salvaging turrets.

- Supporting Scientific bracket amplifies NPC faction's tech level, gradually improving the damage of installed turrets. Weapon turrets at Equipment Docks and Turret Factories are better, Systems are cheaper, and fusing turrets at Research Stations produces weapons with greater tech level, and thus stats.

 

 

Satisfying faction's needs in the commodities for these categories temporarily increase the internal counter, which introduces these changes.

This way the player can not only trade in order to earn money, but also actively support the NPC faction of his choice to reap the benefits. There are many options for the rewards of supporting NPC in general, like significantly reducing the reconstruction site cost or gradually aligning faction's diplomatic relations to other factions and players with the supporter, etc.

 

 

These are my core ideas about the economy. There are lots of other interesting and potentially beneficial suggestions, that might go as complex as you'd like, but for me there's little meaning in discussing them until those three main points are addressed in one way or another.

[Kamo]

Oh yeah, that third idea is awesome ! :)

Faction support should also upgrade diplomacy, opening options like asking two factions to make peace (having two clients just hitting each other and exploding each others' freighters is annoying, especially if they are firing at a freighter wanting to trade with one of my stations).

[Sir Charles]

Yeeeees...

 

thats exactly why i pushed the other threads up again...

Everything was said there so i will keep it very short here:

 

Please koonshi

 

-do what DivineEvil suggests up there or something similar

 

-system that simulates passed time in non player sectors is already there, use it to simulate changes in sector, not just economy (when the sector is loaded, the game should generate some change like the outcome of battles and (re)building of stations, see below)

 

-give factions a value for how strong they are atm, use that to calculate changes (if it works like that, i am no programmer)

 

-make territory ownership changeable , also I hope that boarding will also be possible for stations when it is implemented,  so players and factions will steal them from each other instead of just destroying them

 

-make alliances more like a real faction (in terms of faction wars etc)

 

-allow some system of station and ship spawning and respawning that enables factions to recover/claim new territory and also allows players and other factions to completely kill them, so they dont exist anymore (mabye allow creation of new factions, that separate from existing ones by war to make up for that

 

-many of this should depend on how high the factions strenght value is, e.g. a weak faction cant replace destroyed stations while a maximum strong one will claim new sectors

 

-please do something about the boringness and annoyingness of pirates and xsotan, how they spawn should depend on how strong the factions around are (they should scale, strong attacks on strong factions, but also strong factions should be attacked only on rare occasions, while the wastelands of the galaxy should be full of pirates which attack very often but with less or weaker ships)

 

-make the AI use gates and wormholes

 

-mabye implement some more interesting dialouge and interaction (have you ever spoken to a freighter surrounde and attacked by pirates? Its like they dont even care...)

 

 

Yeah... Not short at all, sry for that...

[Sir Charles]

 

2.) Economy should be untied from the production of Turrets completely. It is already true for Systems, Fighters and Torpedoes. Player's assets should be attached solely to Credits and Materials, and the Economy should only offer the way to earn these. That also removes many commodities, whose entire existence is based on production of turrets alone. Turret Factories will be fine with just generating blueprints for the turrets players obtained trough looting or research (the horse I'm beating here isn't just dead; it has smelled funny for a while now) and offering production of set models for only credits and materials.

 

 

I just found this while lurking around in the forums:

https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,100.0.html

 

The third option koonshi seemed to prefer is pretty much what we want, isn't it? It is a really old thread, so i don't know what became of that idea...

 

I did some turret building again recently and it is extremly annoying, i was not even happy about the final turret cause it took me 6 hours to get the components together -.-

[DivineEvil]

I just found this while lurking around in the forums:

https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,100.0.html

 

The third option koonshi seemed to prefer is pretty much what we want, isn't it? It is a really old thread, so i don't know what became of that idea...

 

I did some turret building again recently and it is extremly annoying, i was not even happy about the final turret cause it took me 6 hours to get the components together -.-

Yes. Third option is preferable because there's already Turret Factories that are necessary for it to work and they are not very convenient in how they operate at the moment, and the fact that Avorion doesn't seem to be an RPG, but rather a strategy game, where you have a third person perspective to issue orders directly.

 

It is an old issue, which for some reason has been overlooked in favor of much more complicated changes and new mechanics. I think it deserves upmost attention over the economy, since we're talking about weapons here - any mid to late game ship has to operate dozens of turrets, and if the only way to mass-produce turrets is trough current Turret Factories with painstaking commodity collection (instead of just money and materials), then the weapons looted or researched have no practical value.

 

We're not even touching the faction mechanics, AI behavior, etc - turrets are bread and butter of playing Avorion. A simple experience of playing the game is severely diminished by the current inability to reproduce the turrets you find and the attachment of Turret Factory production to economy, where nothing else (ships, fighters, torpedoes, systems) is related to it.

[Sir Charles]

Yeah, it really should be changed, there is not even a blueprint mechanic needed, just go to a turret factory, put a turret in, reproduce it with cost scaling by tech and rarity...

Mabye there could be a buff system as well, where you can upgrade a turret at a research station so it becomes better, but raises up in rarity (a legendary turret could not be updated any further that way, giving it a limit ofc)

[DivineEvil]

I think that turret Research is plenty in that regard. Even without upgrading turrets, players will look completely differently at what they get by fusing looted and bought turrets, given that anything you get as result can be mass-produced indefinitely. For a price.

[Ubus99]

i just made a new thread about some changes I'd like to the alliances, and one of them was economical: add humans as a resource, and then train them as crew or workers. this way, commodity's are needed, while also making acquiring crew more interesting.

[Kamo]

Oh yeah ! So there'd also be a "crew pool" (or score), fueled by Habitats' cycles (and Biotopes?) that would add itself to the crew base pool in stations, allowing for easier ship crewing (even in Creative crewing Destroyers needs a lot of work, imagine in Survival with twelve times less crew! :().