Dynamic Economy

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EVWeb
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After playing the game a little, I have come to be eternally frustrated by the economy being completely static while the amount of loot is VERY dynamic. The two systems end up clashing, and the economy ends up losing badly. It also leads to situations where you can't find that one item you need even though it's "common". I'm not saying implement a complex dynamic economy, just a generic this merchant's inventory will refresh after X number of in-game days and keep any items/ships the player has put a hold on. I feel this would lessen the problems due to bad rng and reduce the random difficulty spikes through the game.
PM
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A possible problem with dynamic economy, where inventory changes, is player can defeat buying limits more easily. Player sold too many turbolasers or particle beam weapons and cannot sell anymore. Wait? What's that? Dynamic economy sold turbolasers to the void while we were gone? Yay! Time to sell more junk weapons to get more money!

Corporate Trading Post is kind of like a wand of wishing where player can order whatever low or mid-level item he needs. Of course, that use is less than ideal because player probably wants to use all of the orders for tritium enhancers to turn his endgame thermo weapon into an overpowered demon gun.
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Ferdinand
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However, it might make some sense indeed.
Take for example a Starton. Ususally all kinds of ships are coming and going, those ships could randomly take new items to the station (like the player does) but also take random items away when they leave (like the player does)

This would make the economy a little bit more realistic.

The items don't need to be on the ships, but can be generated and removed on docking.
It does not have to be much, 1 item per docked NPC ship gets exchanged, so when an NPC docks, a random (level appropriate) item is added to the stations inventory while at the same time one (random) item is removed from the station. It could of course be added to the inventory of the NPC that docked although that is not really necessary.
It is possible that the generated item is the same as the removed item. Usually Stations have multiples of the same item in stock, so probably most of the stuff will still be there but it is entirely possible that new items are added to the inventory, while items you brought in are gone....
Kourtious
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I completely with agree with Ferdinand. Spawning ships could bring and take away items. So when they are eventually destroyed, let's say through enemy attacks, they are not just scraps of broken and cheap equipment but also of possible food and other luxury items. This makes a scavenger or pirate playstyle more viable. However, we must consider the abuse of such an idea. Some routes that ships take are static, causing ships to continuously die to enemies patrols around a station. For example, there are multiple instances where Marauders or Ranx stations have a ring of dead ships nearby because their patrols cause such damage. Personally, the of dynamism needs to be more present in the game but I am getting off topic.

Yes. I would love to see the economy be more static with Ferdinand's idea but at the same time, I don't think the game is ready because the consequences are usually that the player gets an endless and quick supply of free stuff from scavenging. The alternative is just have the costs fluctuate in stations per supply and demand but as PM pointed out, it's not feasible without the target station being an endless money source and personally, not very realistic.

My own suggestion would be a dynamic event generator for the galaxy. For example, news pops up (where ever it is easiest to view it) saying that Eridani has a basic commodity shortage. The player now knows that Eridani is more likely to buy food from there. And later on, news would say that the shortage is over if the player gave enough food. Vice versa with the example. There could be a surplus so players know where to buy.
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 A more mechanical issue is that changing a station’s inventory while you’re trying to browse it causes issues with displaying said inventory. Regardless of what sort of system was to be implemented, it would be best from a QoL perspective if there was a check on whether the playership was docked at the station at the time the event happens. If not, the event happens as normal. If so, I’d suggest a recurring event to happen every tick — remember that time is slowed down by a significant factor while a dockscreen is open, so performance issues should be negligible at the absolute worst — and for the event to go through once the playership is no longer docked at the station.
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