Re-stocking Stations

[george moromisato]

I've heard a lot of requests for stations to replenish their stock, but I confess that I don't quite understand why that's desirable.

Could someone explain how the mechanics would work and why that would make the game better?

In particular:

1. How does the re-stocking work? Do Ice Farms just make more Martian Nori?
2. How does that preserve game-balance? Wouldn't trade routes yield infinite money at that point?
3. Why is this fun?

Thank you for any help you can give.

[p.s.: I'm not skeptical--I just don't understand the full idea--I'm thinking about implementing it, but I'm not sure how.]

[p.p.s: I've never played Elite, and I'm not planning on cloning Elite, but maybe someone can give me a quick primer on how the game mechanics worked there.]

[Betelgeuse]

I think restocking stations are a bad idea. It causes the situation where the player can just wait for the best stuff that that station can offer. Want worldship armor every single game you got it with the first armor dealer. The only ways to counter this is to give the enemy better stuff over time (bah everyone has the best stuff and leads to even more money being generated faster) or to make the stuff it restocks worthless (lower level than the station normally gets and that would kill the point or restocking)
I am also opposed to it due to that it would take randomness out of the game whatever method you use to balance it. The infinite money part of it isn't a problem (lets face it its just farming but without ships, time is a factor in money) but having what you want all the time takes too much from the game.

[Blinzler]

Well, just my input on this:

1. How does the re-stocking work? Do Ice Farms just make more Martian Nori?
Basically you restock what would be appropriate for a given station - in other words - what that station produces.

2. How does that preserve game-balance? Wouldn't trade routes yield infinite money at that point?
That's a tough point and is likely to require some testing. It needs to find the sweet point were it is acceptable to run trades between stations without making it too easy to make unlimited money.

3. Why is this fun?
Because it offers a different way to earn credits. You could either see it as a kind of roleplaying a trader or you just view it as a welcome break from the kill-loot-sell cycle that's the main source of *income* in the game right now.
I guess it all comes down to basic human nature - you always yearn for those things you don't have

In Elite-style games you usually have various station types - mines, agricultural world, industry worlds etc. They require a certain resource and produce certain other resources. The point is finding traderoutes that offer a maximum of profit for a minimum of effort (be it distance between stations, buying prices involved, enemies on the way...).
These resources restock over time, but usually much slower then you (the player) deplete them. Therefore you're always on the move, trying to find new traderoutes.
So, in the end, these traderoutes are not really an endless source of money but more like a way of making *quick* money for some time - usually to get enough cash to buy an upgrade/ weapon/ new ship - and then move forward.
You could trade this route forever - but that would involve downtimes (waiting for items to restock) and quite frankly be boring like hell after the umphteens run. So only a little minority to this.
Another point against this *doing it forever* is quite simple: do you make more money waiting & trading over and over or is it faster to earn more cash by just going on ahead.

[Boris the Cat]

You could handle the restocking in such a way, that only the most basic goods and products (say, up to level 5?) respawn at a station, and then only where it would make sense for it to respawn. Also, giving a station an upper limit of how many units of product X it could have, would help keep the situation under control.

For an example, let's take the basic Commonwealth Station: It's starting inventory consists of 3 different un-ID'ed ROMs, 4 ditto barrels, the regular assortment of arms and armour, and 21 rods of He3 fuel + random assortment of regular trade goods (ice, medical supplies, whatever) and ammo.

You could then set the CS to restock on the following items at the following intervals:

He3 rods @ 1/minute
ROMs @ 1/½ hour (chosen at random)
Barrels @ 1/½ hour (chosen at random)
Arms n' armour @ 1/hour (again, at random)
Tradegoods @ 5/20 minutes (random selection - could be 2 salmon and 3 ice, or just 5 ice... etc.)
Ammo @ 10/hour (10 longbow missiles, 10 of some mag...)

[Betelgeuse]

Boris are those in game times or real time? But it does show another bad point ammo weapons don't have the ammo restriction anymore. You can have as much ammo as you want. (admittedly trade stations already do this but that is limited to one trade)

[Boris the Cat]

^ Real time. But then again, those are only suggestions. I personally would like restocking, because I hate going into battles where I am guaranteed to get blasted into bits, just because I need fuel.

Also, you could add a flag to all items: Respawn=True/False

[Betelgeuse]

personally the only way I would support it is if it didn't apply to
weapons (the omni debate or insert your favorite low level weapon here)
shields (why even have lower level shields then, shields power is very dependent on level unlike weapons)
armor (well the meteor steel armors would be the biggest problem, but those are the only armors worth bothering with anyway)
ammo (ammo weapons do more damage and take less energy than non ammo weapons of the same level please don't take away the only disadvantage)
enhancements (yay all armor is regenerating and all shields have double the hp)
special devices (everyone gets a patch spider and jumpdrive without looking )

so really the only things left are trade items and fuel and fuel is more common than dirt already.

[dvlenk6]

[p.p.s: I've never played Elite, and I'm not planning on cloning Elite, but maybe someone can give me a quick primer on how the game mechanics worked there.]

Elite has completely different goals than Transcendence.
One of the major aspects of Elite is finding and running circular trade routes to upgrade to new hulls and buy new equipment for them.

System A --> System B --> System C --> Repeat | is the normal course.
The systems may have more than one planet/station which produces specialty items that you buy cheap and sell for profit at the next system, which ideally produces specialties of it's own. The system's supplies are slowly rebuilt.
Elite has a vast galaxy to explore, but only the premium ships can reach and survive in further (From Sol environs) systems. The Elite galaxy is 3D and you travel via 'warp'. Faster warp drives cut down intersystem travel time and faster engines/retros cut down intrasystem travel.
Its fine for a while, but gets tedious. Eventually (and it can take a lot of time) you get a viable ship for exploration/combat and are able to move outward, trading and running missions to maintain cash levels in order to buy fuel. That is when the game gets interesting.

I don't think this would fit Transcendence as is. It is not the same type of game at all. Besides, it isn't that difficult to mod (I've done and tried it before), so that is available if somebody wants to do that for themself. Having restocking (when I tried it out) made credits/rins overly abundant, so you (the player) could always afford the best equipment immediately upon finding it. Right now, I usually have to scrounge for some time to gather rins to afford the top end equipment at Ringer/Teraton/Taikon stations. With restocking, I dind't have to do that and could just buy the Hyperion, Omni Ion, whatever, right away.

There is a thrill when you find certain system arrangements (Ferians and Ringers in the same or nearby systems, for example) that is lost when you can just buy/sell and gain the rins that way.

[Blitz]

Make it so that once the game creates an inventory for a particular station for a particular game, no new items are added to the inventory. And make the regen times increase gradually. That would prevent infinite money. I like randomized inventories but I hate it, I mean absolutely HATE it when I make a bad click and I waste an item. I think all tradable commodities should regenerate. The ammo for weapons should regenerate too but not too fast so that you never have to worry about running out of ammo.
Shields and weapons should not regenerate or must have extremely long regen times.
Armor sections should not regenerate or it would be possible to equip your ship with level four VII sections in the second system. However, you could let them heve very long regen times to serve as replacement armor sections but what's the point? One or two armor patches + repair at station is enough to get your armor to max health from 0. It would be a good idea to change this....
Expendables such as armor patches and enhancing items should have long regen times.
Trade would never be like in the other games as, unlike in other games, you have linear star systems. But I do think there need to be more effective ways of making money.

[goat not sheep]

I didn't ask for restocking. There, i can easily get 4 holocal armour in mid-game.

[Sponge]

I think having trade ships restock items would pretty cool. Even add new stuff to buy. It would also make it easier to control abuse, because trade ships could come at random times, be destroyed, etc. As Boris said, you could add a way of defining which items got restocked, or even make it so items with certain drop frequencies would not restock. For example "Rare" and up could either not restock or restock VERY slowly.

[OddBob]

You can have as much ammo as you want. (admittedly trade stations already do this but that is limited to one trade)

You can't afford or carry as much ammo as you want. I think, with a few exeptions, that there should be as much ammo as you want to buy.

The restriction on ammo is that you have to keep paying for a good weapon, and you have to run back to a friendly station every now and then. The restriction should not be that there is limited amounts of ammo actually available, I would regard this as a flaw in the game. There's no reason there would be a shortage of ammo unless it's for alien weapons.

EDIT:

As far as replenishing stations go, I think that it would be useful (at least as a start) if it was

a. Confined to commodities, i.e. things that the players sells but does not use (food, luxury goods, etc.). This encourages trade but is impossible to abuse unless you want to throw frozen chicken at the Ares.

b. Combined with item consumption by stations as well as some sort of price changing between stations. Randomizing by a few percent either way is a start, but I don't think it makes sense by itself. Prices based on:

1. Proximity to stations selling goods: so a hotel in a system with 2 ice farms will pay less for one in an empty system.
2. Previously bought items: after the 500th case of Bombay Sapphire, a hotel will not be willing to pay as much. This will reverse itself in time, as the hotel consumes it's stock.

will sort of fake a supply/demand system without actually having to have one. Item consumption is just where a station steadily decreases it's supply of items that it wants.
If you want to reduce farming while at the same time adding fun, I think the best way is to have NPC traders look for good deals and making the appropriate trades, this would give the player a little competition, as well as forcing them to look for new routes.

This means that an observant player can spot trade routes, for example by seeing that a system full of food producers is close to one full of hotels.

If it was all random, this wouldn't be possible, as occasionally the route might flip around (a high priced food maker and a low priced consumer means you can buy at the consumer and sell at the source, which doesn't make sense).

I also think that there could be more types of stations that need goods to encourage trading: like factories that need ores, but make parts you can sell to dry docks.

[Fossaman]

I think the main problem with the idea of stations generating items is one of scale. For this idea to work, and be plausible, fun, and not too easy, you'd need to simulate a massive economy. There would need to be dozens of ships running around doing the same stuff the player is trying to, and I just can't quite reconcile that with the way the game is now.

[darksider]

1. How does the re-stocking work? Do Ice Farms just make more Martian Nori?
2. How does that preserve game-balance? Wouldn't trade routes yield infinite money at that point?
3. Why is this fun?

Here are my thoughts.

1. Well, let's see...
If the station is some productive sort (like a mining colony, an ice farm or a Rasiermesser factory, not a general weapon shop or something) and if you buy something there, they will eventually restock the popular item (which you bought) as time passes.
As you see, some items will never be generated this way, and popular items should gradually become more pricey.

For example
Ice farms > ice moss, vodka, etc.
Miners > several kinds of ores
Fuel depots > fuel rods
Tempus labs > illegal drugs
Commonwealth stations > furnishings and medical products maybe?
Other colonies > agricultural commodities

2. I don't worry about that at all.
Currently, gaining infinite money is exceedingly easy even without it, if I say.
Friendly ships are so plentiful, enemies to loot too, and salvagers never come back if they get destroyed.
Shops buy infinite amount of junk from you (even shopkeepers in NetHack can run out of money, you know)
and there are no tax collectors or no thieves whatsoever.

And if hostile ships respawn infinitely why not items for trade?
I'm sure ordinary peaceful people want commodities more than those broken weapons and armor segments!

3.
a. Agricultural colonies which actually do not produce anything is not fun
b. There should be alternative ways to gain sufficient money, other than just destroying and looting (and I think that doing businesses with companies should generally be more profitable than just killing).
c. This will be the basis for a further implementation of the 'deepness' of the game (more sophisticated in-game economic system, quests/stories related to trading, etc.)