Trading! In space! Ideas for making it cool wanted! What would you like to see? What do you think about this (it''s a bit longish... but comments appreciated): * BARTER: Some governments and races like to bargain. Others don''t. For those that do, you can offer a price if selling, or counter NPC offers. Repeat until a deal is made or NPC runs out of patience. You can do this once a day. * COMPETITION: The more settled a world, the higher it''s background competition. Core worlds have high competition, which decreases your bartering power. The only way to compete is to get big and sell more at lower prices. Or go to a more remote system were demand is higher. * TRADE RACE: When you jump into a system, a semi-random number of competitors are spawned at various distances from the world. If you beat them to market, you''ll have greater bargaining power. Arriving and departing ships make supply and demand fluctuate each day. * PIRACY: You can pirate other traders and they you. You''re only marked as a pirate if your prey survives or another ship sees you do it. Pirates may not trade at any base, and are hunted by military forces. Excessive piracy will inspire a permanent task force, devoted JUST FOR YOU. * BLACK MARKET ACTIVITY: Smuggling can be lucrative, especially in core worlds were security is tight and demand is high. Governments decide what''s illegal. * NEW MARKETS: If you explore, you can be one of the first to find a new trade good. * SECRET ROUTES: Whenever you find a new market, vultures follow looking for a piece of the pie. If you invest in stealth and speed; manuever; and hide from time to time, you can keep your route secret. * MAP DATA: You can buy maps, sell them, steal them, and have your own maps stolen. * LOCAL AND RANDOM EVENTS: Things like disasters and wars increase or decrease demand and prices for certain goods (ex: medical supplies or guns during a war). * IMPORT / EXPORT: Each planet has import and export goods based on their wealth, population, and social types (wealthy hedonists would buy different things than a small colony of monks) * DISTANCE: Farther goods are more expensive. * QUANTITY BREAKS: You get discounts if you buy a lot. * FAVORS: If you trade fairly with a certain planets, the trade master may give you discounts and deals. A good way to get favors is to help a world out in a time of need (like selling them med supplies dirt cheap after a disaster). * REP: Trade with one race / government will makes it''s enemies less friendly in trade towards you. This is worse if the two sides are at war. * BUILDUP: You can upgrade your ship, and hire other ships as extra cargo room. In time, you can acquire warehouses, fuel dumps, etc. -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:Original post by Wavinator
Trading! In space! Ideas for making it cool wanted! What would you like to see?

I''ve got a Design Doc for a MMOSpaceTrader... Not sure it will ever be created but, I do have some thoughts on how to make a Space Trader more interesting (I won''t give you all of them on the slim chance that my game will see the light of day )

I am a long time player of Elite, Frontier:Elite II and now X:Beyond the frontier... One thing that really bites about these games is the stock market. X:BTF does take a step forward in making the market seem volitile and in a constant state of change (as it should be) but, does not go the distance.

I would like to see a market that is going crazy. The cost for every item on the market should be going up and down (base on other players purchases or computer generated purchases). You should be able to set a low price that you want to buy and at the other startpoint set a high price to sell. In an MMOnline game this would be really cool. You bought all those computer components on Earth and zip over to Epsilon to sell for big bucks... when you get there your in shock as every other trader jock in the system has been flooding the planet with the same item...

Which leads to another point about the stock market. When on a planet, there may be a few different ports which would all have different stock markets. Using my example from above... if you hop over to another port on Epsilon you may find a market to sell in. Of course you should be able to get this information from your communication computer reducing the waste of fuel.

Just a few of my ideals for a Space Trader


Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Looks like you have enough ideas to me.

Adding to "BUILDUP:" Form corporations and direct players and AI''s alike to do certain trade runs or give them guidelines.

TRADING GUILDS: Certain trade runs are available only to Trading guild members.

MERCENARY: Hire or become mercenaries obtaining and lending firepower where needed. Say a certain section of space is too dangerous to go through because of pirates. Just hire a bunch of mercenaries and cut your trading time in half.

Going to state the obvious though...Of course this game has to be multiplayer.

These are a few of my ideas because I too yearn to make a huge space sim. Let me know if you are going to start working on it soon cause I would love to help out.

Later,
Eck

quote:Original post by Eck

(snip)
Going to state the obvious though...Of course this game has to be multiplayer.

I know there are MM Space games out there.... none of them seem to fill the void in the genre. I think David Braben is going to do a sequel to the Frontier, FE2, FFE series. Tentatively named Frontier IV (IIRC).

Those games were great as a solo player... as a MMPOG it would Rock!


Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

quote:Original post by Selkrank

I think "once a day" is quite artificial. I hate artificial limits. The limit should instead also be based on the patience of the NPC, which recovers over time and with good deals.

Yeah, I was doing this for the TRADE RACE concept, that abstracts the fact that you want to try to sell your goods one day instead of the next because the traders you beat to market may be landing, and thus lowering your bargaining power by increasing supply.

quote:
Note that if you bring eg. weapons from 1000ly away when you can get the same weapons from 10ly away, you don''t get a higher price when you bring them from farther away. The price should be based on how near the nearest supply of the item is and how abundant the supply is. Maybe some kind of influence maps would be good for this, to take multiple sources into account.

Urgh... was tired... that''s what I meant. Thx.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:Original post by Dak Lozar

I''ve got a Design Doc for a MMOSpaceTrader... Not sure it will ever be created but, I do have some thoughts on how to make a Space Trader more interesting (I won''t give you all of them on the slim chance that my game will see the light of day )

You know, I had this fear myself. But after working in the industry a number of years I realized 3 things: 1) everybody else has my ideas... (similar experiences, psychological configuration, etc.) 2) Execution counts 1000% more than the best, most original idea... 3) I''ll never work the bugs out of my ideas if I keep them hidden...

quote:
I would like to see a market that is going crazy.

I worked for awhile on this concept and have all but jettisoned it. The problem: The player not only has to keep track of the "galactic" market (which systems to buyand sell at) but also has to be aware of constantly changing local events. In a small "universe," this would be okay, but I''m shooting for 30 to 100 ports.

I''ve tried to work volatility into the idea of the TRADE RACE and COMPETITION parts noted. Supply and demand fluctuate as merchants land. This way, the bargaining experience is never guaranteed unless you''re the sole supplier (as in secret trade routes).

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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:Original post by Eck

Looks like you have enough ideas to me.

"You can never have enough..."

quote:
Adding to "BUILDUP:" Form corporations and direct players and AI''s alike to do certain trade runs or give them guidelines.

I like this. I want it to be consistent, tho, not a seperate type of game. There needs to be a way of capturing markets, as companies do.

You''d also need to have some kind of AI behind opponent corporations. Hmmm... this needs work...

quote:
TRADING GUILDS: Certain trade runs are available only to Trading guild members.

MERCENARY: Hire or become mercenaries obtaining and lending firepower where needed. Say a certain section of space is too dangerous to go through because of pirates. Just hire a bunch of mercenaries and cut your trading time in half.

Yup, sounds good.

quote:
Of course this game has to be multiplayer.

I know this is sacreligious to say, but I''m not sure about multiplayer. Competitive doesn''t work because you''ve got too big a playing field (200 star systems)... it''s like playing quake on a map that''s so big you never see anybody.

Co-op could work, but I''m not sure I''ve got the technical firepower to handle network gaming... which, as they say, is non-trivial. I''d love help, BTW, but I''m not sure I''m going in the direction you want to go.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Any direction is better than not going anywhere. The basis for both ideas is very similar though so we could form a temporary coding alliance until the ideas' differences became major decisions.



Edited by - Eck on August 24, 2000 10:57:40 PM