Trading in X Rebirth, thoughts (Giskard is talking about TRADE again)

[giskard]

I am wondering about the X Rebirth trading game.

I have watched well intentioned players dive in to their spreadsheets and work out a cool new trading system for every X game ever released and none of it worked because cold hard numbers do not account for travel time.

Every attempt to fix the economy failed because supply and demand does not work right 5 sectors away.

Early on you would have dozens of ships racing to make the sale, only 1 would make it, the rest would have wasted their time. Factories would be waiting for deliveries and not get them as lots of freighters all rushed to the same point of sale. The game needed too many factory ships to compensate for this so game only ran right on faster computers.

Later in X3, they made FAKE local TRADERs that made distance selling impossible and left holes in the trade of the universe where factories 1 sector away never got anything. Factories no longer had a means of gathering goods them selves and so could not solve the problem them selves.

Universe traders helped a little but too many of those scanning for sales became another CPU HOG, so the old problem returned every time they tried to solve the problem.

Resource sinks started to be used to fake demand, which made for a very poor trade game.

In my opinion it became a farce the moment factory owned freighters disappeared since they filled the supply and demand locally at least and helped keep the demand realistic.

In X weapons and shields are the top of the economy, everything goes in to making those eventually. Yet nobody added an On Death Script to ships to automatically order a replacement from local suppliers when a ship died and remove the parts from factories or equipment docks.

A simple list of parts to remove from the local supply if a ship died would have created a demand and given the player a reason to destroy ships.

A good way to create a REAL demand and generate gameplay without hogging the CPU too much.

The one station designed to handle the trade problems was the one station that has barely changed since the days of XBTF and that is the Trading Station.

In X3 as an experiment, I made what i called Trade Networks, I wrote a guide about it and it worked. It fixed the problems of the X trade system by improving delivery locally and at greater distances.

No spread sheets involved either.

The basic idea was factories brought goods locally using their own freighters that only scanned that sector for goods, very low CPU trick. They would sell to trading stations or what ever station needed their goods.

Trading Stations traded with other trading stations are greater distances and only scanned other trading stations within their range for goods they needed.

Special trading stations became trading hubs in important places around the universe and they traded with each other. Transfering large amounts of goods using armoured convoys over VAST distances.

Thus VERY LONG RANGE trade was made possible too. Again limiting the scan to just certain stations helps keep the CPU usage down.

But X3 did not make the sale until the convoy arrived, so the station may not need the goods by the time the convoy got there. Another wasted trip.... same old problem X always had.

But if X supported a system of mail order... the buyer would buy the goods from the seller and the seller would then deliver them. The sale would have been made before the convoy/freighter left. The goods would be removed from the sales list to await pickup or delivery.

Only 1 ship or convoy would have been used per order... a VAST CPU saving whilst delivering a realistic and workable supply and demand system.

As for what the trading stations needed to buy in or sell, a simple scan of the local sectors demands every now and again would keep the supply and demand list for that sector up to date. Allowing the Trading Station to know what it needed to keep in stock.

Simplez.....

But I fear X Rebirth may make the same mistakes X has always made and fail to address the delivery problem. Which has always caused most trading systems to fall flat on their faces in X games.

[Galaxy613]

I honestly never thought about this in depth before. But I certainty noticed the disparity between low tech and high tech goods. It always perplexed me that a equipment station can only carry a handful of HEPT or other weapon arrays at a time. And you were the only one really buying them...

[Berhg]

"In X3 as an experiment, I made what i called Trade Networks, I wrote a guide about it and it worked. It fixed the problems of the X trade system by improving delivery locally and at greater distances." -Galaxy613



Did you make this as something that worked in game? Can you submit it to the community as a mod? It sounds very interesting!

[BarrenEarth]

In X3 and expansions the AI could never ever "Use" finished goods. Sure they would use energy cells or ammo, they would use goods for trade, but they never actually consumed anything outside of stations needing materials.

So weapons and ships are never depleted, or in demand except to the extent the human player needs them or uses them.

That was the greatest failure of the X3 economy. Now it appears weapons are a bit more simple, being there is one on our ship and it looks like they are a base + upgrade item now.

We might have a new greatest economy problem.

[Bobucles]

A simple list of parts to remove from the local supply if a ship died would have created a demand and given the player a reason to destroy ships.

The X3 economy would have collapsed under the huge demand of NPC ships. It had a hard enough time providing for the player as is!

Some of the ideas in here make sense. Having a higher order "Corporation AI" dish out tasks to freighter ships makes sense. It minimizes the difficult decisions and lets more ships run off of less CPU cycles. It's not just efficient for the computer, but it helps the economy run more smoothly as you don't have a hundred independent traders colliding on the same deals.

Should ship production and equipment be based entirely off of existing goods? Probably not. There will always be secret trade channels and ground based facilities that a player won't have access to. A government armory may have some extra PPCs or a planetary provider exports energy, that sort of thing. That being said, the fastest, smoothest form of production should happen when all the goods are in space and ready to go.

[pjknibbs]

Sure they would use energy cells or ammo, they would use goods for trade, but they never actually consumed anything outside of stations needing materials.

That's not actually true--both trading stations and equipment docks gradually use up the products stored in them over time, so they are the ultimate consumers of the production chain in X3. No idea if there'll be a similar mechanism in XR, though.

[Tommety]

I read that part about weapons and shields being the end of the production line.

I agree with this, and to some extent I also think this is where part of the flaws begin.

For one, ships are spawned (I believe a big part of your post was around this fact) and are not actually built and equipped by shipyards/EQ docks.

Of course, to some extent this must be done because otherwise it could present the problem of an empty universe if all yards are destroyed (though I'd say let us if we want to).

Second, even IF yards were the only way of resupplying the universe with ships, they don't actuall follow a proper construction cycle, they just spawn a random inventory, or at least the quantities of 'm. Sometimes you could only buy the base model ship, sometimes you could buy a fully decked version. Equipment docks were meant to be supplied by other shield/weapon factories, but aside from some missiles, I rarely saw the shield being supplied (although this might just be BECAUSE of the botched economics).

This was what also sort of defeated the purpose of self-constructing your ships, there was no point, it took resources and time that wasn't the case with NPC shipyards, the only thing I made my many self sustaining production cycles for were the high end equipment that the game-economy just couldn't produce effectively.

Of course, I needed MANY trading scripts to set up this self sustaining economy (mostly because the complex building system was horrible) so I could assign specific trade jobs to my ARMADA of cargo ships that would transport the wares between stations.

So in short, I think that if you integrate the shipyards of the game to also require resources to build ships and have ships being resupplied only based from those shipyards and based on actual production criteria, that you can keep the economy alive for a lot longer that was the case with the x3 series.

[giskard]

Hi PK, hope your keeping well

To all:

For the record:

I built a massive trading Empire like the one I felt the game should have had and then let it run and see how well it worked. Then wrote a guide about it. Delivery methods was the key to solving the X economy, the spreadsheet approach was always a "good on paper" idea that failed in game due to the distance issue. Solve 1 and tweaking the other stops being a waste of time.


Reply to On Death Ship replacements:

The key point of this is to use up existing stock, not delay the production of AI ships if there is no stock available. So if a ship needs 4xGPPCs and only 1 was available, it would take that 1 from the equipment dock and magically create the other 3 using a special wand of making that exists only in AI land

That would prevent a high demand causing the universe to empty slowly. But would use up the stocks at top of the food change properly.

Also since the stock would be searched for locally, stations near conflict zones would do big business. You would want to weapon factories near hot spots because of this.

If X does not support this in game when released, assuming it needs it still. I'll put serious consideration in to making the mod to do it my self.

Btw the sig I once used here for about 5 years had to be removed because a moderator told me it was too big last year. AFTER 5 YEARS! I notice a distinct lack of sigs around here today. I wonder why lol.

[Geek]

The key point of this is to use up existing stock, not delay the production of AI ships if there is no stock available. So if a ship needs 4xGPPCs and only 1 was available, it would take that 1 from the equipment dock and magically create the other 3 using a special wand of making that exists only in AI land

There would be no equipement left for the player very quickly then.

Yes, the X economy is not perfect... it does not have to, it should not even be. A 100 % NPC run economy equals nothing to do for the player.

[Aragosnat]

The key point of this is to use up existing stock, not delay the production of AI ships if there is no stock available. So if a ship needs 4xGPPCs and only 1 was available, it would take that 1 from the equipment dock and magically create the other 3 using a special wand of making that exists only in AI land

There would be no equipement left for the player very quickly then.

Yes, the X economy is not perfect... it does not have to, it should not even be. A 100 % NPC run economy equals nothing to do for the player.

Actually. You are missing the point of taking only from equipment docks and no where else. But, if wares where being magicly taken from all stations then yeah. It would suck and leave nothing for the player.

A 100% NPC run economy just means, to me at least, the player has to be a little creative if they want to get into the trading business or have a lot of patients. But, this can only happen if the wares are transported by ships and not magically ending up at the next station.

[98abaile]

I am wondering about the X Rebirth trading game.

I have watched well intentioned players dive in to their spreadsheets and work out a cool new trading system for every X game ever released and none of it worked because cold hard numbers do not account for travel time.

Every attempt to fix the economy failed because supply and demand does not work right 5 sectors away.

Early on you would have dozens of ships racing to make the sale, only 1 would make it, the rest would have wasted their time. Factories would be waiting for deliveries and not get them as lots of freighters all rushed to the same point of sale. The game needed too many factory ships to compensate for this so game only ran right on faster computers.

Later in X3, they made FAKE local TRADERs that made distance selling impossible and left holes in the trade of the universe where factories 1 sector away never got anything. Factories no longer had a means of gathering goods them selves and so could not solve the problem them selves.

Universe traders helped a little but too many of those scanning for sales became another CPU HOG, so the old problem returned every time they tried to solve the problem.

Resource sinks started to be used to fake demand, which made for a very poor trade game.

In my opinion it became a farce the moment factory owned freighters disappeared since they filled the supply and demand locally at least and helped keep the demand realistic.

In X weapons and shields are the top of the economy, everything goes in to making those eventually. Yet nobody added an On Death Script to ships to automatically order a replacement from local suppliers when a ship died and remove the parts from factories or equipment docks.

A simple list of parts to remove from the local supply if a ship died would have created a demand and given the player a reason to destroy ships.

A good way to create a REAL demand and generate gameplay without hogging the CPU too much.

The one station designed to handle the trade problems was the one station that has barely changed since the days of XBTF and that is the Trading Station.

In X3 as an experiment, I made what i called Trade Networks, I wrote a guide about it and it worked. It fixed the problems of the X trade system by improving delivery locally and at greater distances.

No spread sheets involved either.

The basic idea was factories brought goods locally using their own freighters that only scanned that sector for goods, very low CPU trick. They would sell to trading stations or what ever station needed their goods.

Trading Stations traded with other trading stations are greater distances and only scanned other trading stations within their range for goods they needed.

Special trading stations became trading hubs in important places around the universe and they traded with each other. Transfering large amounts of goods using armoured convoys over VAST distances.

Thus VERY LONG RANGE trade was made possible too. Again limiting the scan to just certain stations helps keep the CPU usage down.

But X3 did not make the sale until the convoy arrived, so the station may not need the goods by the time the convoy got there. Another wasted trip.... same old problem X always had.

But if X supported a system of mail order... the buyer would buy the goods from the seller and the seller would then deliver them. The sale would have been made before the convoy/freighter left. The goods would be removed from the sales list to await pickup or delivery.

Only 1 ship or convoy would have been used per order... a VAST CPU saving whilst delivering a realistic and workable supply and demand system.

As for what the trading stations needed to buy in or sell, a simple scan of the local sectors demands every now and again would keep the supply and demand list for that sector up to date. Allowing the Trading Station to know what it needed to keep in stock.

Simplez.....

But I fear X Rebirth may make the same mistakes X has always made and fail to address the delivery problem. Which has always caused most trading systems to fall flat on their faces in X games.

Fourth sentence in and I came to the same answer, stations soliciting goods from other stations.
The problem however with stations pre-purchasing goods is that it leaves little room for the player to make local trades early in the game, since stations will have already pre-purchased what they need and the suppliers will reserve what they have or are producing to meet the demand.

I think another possibility is for all the trader ships to be owned by the local trading station, the TS then polls all the stations in the zone (assuming in X:R it's organized Clusters>sectors>zones) and gives ships specific instructions to pick up A at X and deliver it to Y and will do this with as many different ships as needed to fulfil the demand with the existing supply. That way you only have one AI making select trades as needed instead of multiple AIs bum rushing the same trade. it also creates an opportunity for the play to get in with sneaky trades (the AI ship can then be diverted elsewhere).
Goods that are produced which don't have a demand in sector or are in excess supply will then be bought up by the TS, but only up to a certain price limit so as to always allow a certain amount of stock to be kept available to the player and also to simulate the transport cost limiting demand from other zones or sectors.

Moving up a level you then have a more central trading hub (TH), the parent TH will buy up all the TS' "end" products (products for which there is no demand or excess supply in sector) and will then poll all its child TS' for what products are in demand in those zones and will then allocate accordingly what resources it has and then keep a list of what is still in demand. This list can then be polled by the next level up in the network (call it a trading nexus TN) which will also buy all the surplus and redistribute it to where it's needed.

Basically you have less AIs that efficiently organize all trading between the nodes below them in the hierarchy whilst acting as nodes for the AIs above them. The net result is less AIs, a natural distribution of resources to where they're needed and a natural flow of end products to the top of the chain where they can either be used by GOD as ships and stations are destroyed, or just gradually deleted to create an artificial demand, whatever works best. The other advantage is that you allow the player to get in on the trading action by stopping stations making private sales between themselves.

Lol, I'd never thought I'd be advocating a nearly communist central planning economy, but I only do so because it allows us capitalist to make a killing on it.

[giskard]

98abaile

The repurchases system would only work properly as a cron job, eg a timed event. If it was real time the CPU overhead would be too great. So it would give the player time to buy and sell stock. But its important to understand the existing system acts the exact same way as your describing, the player gets there only to find the station no longer needs an item. So it makes ZERO difference in that respect.

Plus there is nothing to stop the AI buying from the player, the players own factories could put goods aside and a await pickup.

The point you make about only the trading station owning local freighters would fall over when the player built a lot of factories in a sector. The original idea I posted about pre purchase works and is scalable because the factories have freighters too.

The reduction of AIs doing the major calculations is also a point I made and totally agree with you on. 1 brain... many hands sort of system. Timer events work best at spreading the load in this area.

[Aragosnat]

I wonder if this would work for trade orders. First it is offered up as a standard trade mission to the player and when the usual timer runs out a NPC takes the job and goes out and tries to complete it... With this it should make it possable for the player to be a merchant as well as brake into the market earily on.

Yes. Did grab that idea from SC. Also one can interperate that in Rebirth that all stations will become more like trading stations and the mega-plexes we where able to build in X3, but possable to still specialize in producing one or more ware as well as needing more then one ware brought in. At least that was my impression when it mentioned how stations will work.

[rhohltjr]

Hi PK, hope your keeping well

To all:

For the record:
...

If X does not support this in game when released, assuming it needs it still. I'll put serious consideration in to making the mod to do it my self.

You've got me interested. I'll see if I can find your network mod and try it on AP. And I'll keep watching for you're Rebirth version if you choose to do so.

[giskard]

There was no network mod mate, it was a series of guides aimed at creating a real trade network in x3 after x3 faked it and ruined it.

[rhohltjr]

There was no network mod mate, it was a series of guides aimed at creating a real trade network in x3 after x3 faked it and ruined it.

OK. Just found another post of yours where you were talking about what Bearnt said about trading.

That you (player) trade with large ships and they trade with stations/factories.

Is this just a different form of your networking plan? These large trading ships acting like mobile(?) trading stations?

I am curious about these large trading ships How large ? How mobile are they. Will they have routes to follow?

[VincentTH]

I like the trade model that Star Citizen has:

- NPC factories (called nodes in SC) post missions for resources they need
- Mission will be up for a certain amount of time (1-2 days) for Players to pick up.
- If missions are not picked up by players, an NPC will take the mission and try to fulfill it.

- This has the advantage of keeping the number of Players and NPC constant (When a player logs in, he would take the place of an NPC), so keeping the client CPU load and server load in check. (Of course server load is not applicable to XR, but the concept of keeping client CPU load low applies).
- Not sure if this is applicable to an SP game, but Player's Auto-trader ships can be substituted for real players in SC.
- Unlike X3, the missions will be posted when the quantity of resources hit a low water mark (X3 would only post missions for resources when the resources have been exhausted). The other difference is that the amount of time given to fulfill the mission in X3 is unrealistically short.

[giskard]

Based on what I read today, it looks like the player trades with capital ships and the capital ships trade with stations.

Not sure how the economy will work with that model but I am guessing there will be more than 1 capital ship doing the buying and selling.

[Geek]

Not quite, the player use capitals to trade with stations.
There is no direct trading at all.

[spitzfire]

There is no direct trading at all.

This is true...but only if you are referring to large items that you cannot carry as cargo, e.g. ore.

According to this very recent quote from Bernd, anything you can carry in your player ship, can be traded. For example, if you are able to directly pick up a weapon from the wreckage after a battle, you can then dock at a platform (station?) and sell (trade) that item. I'm hoping that also means small volumes of high value items.

We have two types of trading, one is item trading and one is for the large quantities. Item trading is basically what you can call intenvtory items. You buy and sell things mostly on platforms, use them in missions and for special purpose. The serious trading with larger quantities always happens with third ships (usually capital ships). They take orders from you and execute the trade asynchronously.