Development:Economy

Current situation and wish list

Currently the economic system is quite limited (as far as playing the game has showed me). Only the player himself (or herself of course) is actually trading goods. To create a more dynamic universe, the economy has to be extended in such a way that NPC (i.e. non-player characters, the computer-players) are also able to influence it. This will require quite some extensions. Ideas about a new economic system will be posted here and can of course be discussed.

Future economy

The future economy should be more dynamic in the sense that not only the human player does trading, but the various computer players also participate. To create this, there are a number of changes required. Note that the changes described here are without any knowledge about the actual code, so there may be errors in this describtion.

The first thing needed is an improved model for the demands and offers of goods on different bases and planets. A mining base e.g. would need a huge amount of food and mining equipment, while a medical base might supply medical equipment. An indication of this system are the different prices for goods on different types of bases/planets. Usage of these goods however is not build into the game. The first task, thus, would be to create a model which describes the usage and production of goods, resulting in not only increasing amounts of goods due to production but also descreasing amounts due to consumption. Depending on the consumption and current stock, the price of the goods should be determined. This change in price can off course be used as a way to fuel trade. There are however a number of problems which need to be addressed:

1) Does a base or planet have a certain amount of money at the start of the game and does the change with every purchase or sale or do they have an unlimmited amount of money. The major problem with the first option is that this can result in bases going bankrupt.

2) Is there a limit to the amount of products e.g. a miningbase can produce as this will result in bases being abandoned when resources are depleted.

The probable course to follow for these problems is to start with bases without any limits. Introducing limits will spawn the need to add the option to start new bases on e.g. asteroids with valuable resources, which is a large project itself.

The main goal on this change is to provide a basic infrastructure to allow trading by NCP's. To achieve this the modal of a NCP has to be extended. They should be aware of prices on the different bases and should be able to figure out a nice trading route. This in itself isn't really hard as it's just calculating the profit per distance (or time) traveled of all known goods and selecting the highest. Besides this parameters like the type of the goods (and thus the space usage), the amount available on bases, etc need to be taken into account.