Merchants: Planets and Stations

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bzm3r
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RPC: I love your post. I have a lot more incoming, once my midterms and assignments are done, but for now I'd like to ask about:
RPC wrote: I suggest getting a list of all the items in Transcendence
What would be the easiest way to do that?
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bzm3r wrote:RPC: I love your post. I have a lot more incoming, once my midterms and assignments are done, but for now I'd like to ask about:
RPC wrote: I suggest getting a list of all the items in Transcendence
What would be the easiest way to do that?
 I can help with that. It wouldn’t be too hard to put together a quick utility mod that runs at game startup and dumps a list of every item (and assorted details thereof) to Debug.log for you to browse through.
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bzm3r
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AssumedPseudonym wrote:
bzm3r wrote:RPC: I love your post. I have a lot more incoming, once my midterms and assignments are done, but for now I'd like to ask about:
RPC wrote: I suggest getting a list of all the items in Transcendence
What would be the easiest way to do that?
 I can help with that. It wouldn’t be too hard to put together a quick utility mod that runs at game startup and dumps a list of every item (and assorted details thereof) to Debug.log for you to browse through.
Awesome! What I'll do is come on IRC probably this Friday evening (the next time I'll have a bunch of time), and then instead of making you do the work, I'll ask you what has to be done in order to get that going (I'd really like to learn!).

Sounds good?
RPC
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

What time Friday? Is it Friday ~6pm PST? I'll probably be on by then but if not PM me on Thursday to remind me.
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 Actually, I’m not going to be available at all this weekend, I’ll be out of town at a convention. We’re either heading out Thursday evening or at oh-dark-thirty Friday morning.
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bzm3r
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One quick point.
JohnBWatson wrote:
RPC wrote:
Note on Mining:
I want asteroid mining to be the main source of raw materials for the space economy (and possibly planet production now that you mention it). In this I would propose to make asteroids produce a percent chance of ores instead of being able to deplete them entirely. This is because economic agents will require materials as time goes on, and with a finite supply of ores eventually everybody will end up starving in the universe. Mining percentage will be based on the level of the system and mining technology.
I like the idea of this. For one, it would explain why mining outposts exist at all when the player can seemly strip mine a system in a matter of (in game) days.
Might this break compatibility with digdug's and TransGeek's mining mod? Also, it might take away from a possible opportunity: what is the incentive of expanding to other systems, if one is always somewhat likely to find minerals in a secure system? In fact, with this system, having a massive swarm of miners can always compensate for low probabilities of finding ore.

On the other hand, what we can do is have the following system:

1) Keep current finite mining system, but perhaps increase the amount of material that can be mined drastically. Alternatively, we can decrease the amount of ore that can be mined per "mining action", and increase how much useful material can be extracted from one unit ore. I think both of these will produce the same effect, but the first will be much easier to implement.

2) We can implement "mining rights": within CW territory, the CW will authorize miners to mine particular regions of an asteroid field. If illegal miners are caught in a region, either by CW patrols, or a civilian vessel willing to report it (i.e. one that survives to see the misdemeanour), then they are subject to retaliation or fines. In less governed places, mining rights, if enforced, are enforced with less bureaucracy.

2) In order to compensate for the possibility that during one game, a system might run out of ore -- we can implement "reconnaissance" missions which either the player, or NPCs can participate in. Basically, they have to jump through some hoops (gather enough materials for scientists to conduct research on how to extract more ore, pay for people to look for more minerals, etc.), and then they can regenerate the mining capacity of a certain region. These will get increasingly more expensive, the more often it happens.

3) Alternatively, reconnaissance missions might simply target systems that are a little more dangerous, simply because its (much) cheaper than conducting such missions in a secure systems. Then, this can trigger things like station building (which will need merchants to provide the supplies), and so on, to support and secure local mining operations.

Presumably, all of this would feed into (and fed by) some sort of global tracking for how wealthy various factions are.

The challenge here will be coding the NPCs to make use of such decisions. I think its doable, even if difficult, but I am not very experienced. Thoughts?
bzm3r
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RPC wrote:What time Friday? Is it Friday ~6pm PST? I'll probably be on by then but if not PM me on Thursday to remind me.
That's right -- Friday about 6 PM PST.

Presumably, this is something RPC knows how to do too, so if AP can't make it, we'll still be okay?
RPC
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

Yes. Keep in mind that you're supposed to mostly idle on IRC, and just ask questions. I'm pretty sure though Wolfy or Atarlost will be there to help out with code issues. If not just pm me and hope I check my email >.<

RE: mining: I think it would be better to just introduce a hard cap on the number of mining stations and mining ships in system. The one thing you have to keep in mind though is that your proposition requires a lot of scripting and if you're not experienced it would be a hard first task to do.

RE: JohnBWatson:
Yeah, I agree that fuel should probably be the only upkeep for ships.

I didn't like having merchants doing only favorable deals in the system (instead of keeping a personal history) because then NPC merchants would have an unfair advantage against the player. If they had to travel to find information or go to hubs where jobs are posted then the player also has the same opportunities at the NPCs do.
Also, when they gate they will take their items with them but I wanted to simulate cross-system trading because then the most developed economic systems would be the ones that the player has spent the most time in because then most trades will be in the player's system. We might have to implement this though since simulating cross-system transactions is a very daunting task.
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Der Tod ist der zeitlose Frieden und das leben ist der Krieg
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I don't want any sort of copyright on my Transcendence mods. Feel free to take/modify whatever you want.
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 Actually, if there’s anyway you can be there tomorrow, I should be on all day. Weather just wiped all of my classes off the schedule.
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TVR
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Attribution for quote #4 about the Salvager Nomads should be to KA101

Periculi's EnviroTopo mod that you were looking for can be found in mod #167 "Huge bunch of old mods" on Xelerus - It's inside OLD.rar/EnviroTopoMod.zip

Still also need Succession 7's modpack?
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JohnBWatson
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I didn't like having merchants doing only favorable deals in the system (instead of keeping a personal history) because then NPC merchants would have an unfair advantage against the player. If they had to travel to find information or go to hubs where jobs are posted then the player also has the same opportunities at the NPCs do.
Also, when they gate they will take their items with them but I wanted to simulate cross-system trading because then the most developed economic systems would be the ones that the player has spent the most time in because then most trades will be in the player's system. We might have to implement this though since simulating cross-system transactions is a very daunting task.
Possible solution: Add a % chance that a deal will be ignored during a search. In addition, give credit stocks to each ship, and do not permit them to buy what they cannot afford. Merchants will naturally know a system better than the player, however, given that they've spent time trading there while the player is on their way coreward.

As for inter system trading, add items removed from system to a table, and, when the player enters a system, add them to various stations that want them, reducing their credit supply accordingly.

With regard to illegal mining, I think the CW's mad at them for selling ore to hostile factions, not for depleting asteroid fields. A possible solution to mining challenges is to make mining a combination of the methods discussed. Have a % chance of getting ore that decreases as ore is mined down to a minimum level that is not profitable to the player. Have asteroids near stations spawn partially mined. Thus, asteroids become less lucrative over time, but they don't deplete outright.
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