How do goods & pricing work?

[sandbags]

It seems like stations just randomly have a certain number of goods and a price. Is there any economic model at play? Or is it entirely random?

[Lurler]

Yes, there is simulated supply and demand model that change according to certain rules. Plus the prices adjust back and forth from time to time.

[sandbags]

Thanks Lurler that's good to hear. I guess I need to start watching prices more carefully now (I was ignoring them in case they were random).

I think those suggestions already made about showing high/low prices are good ones.

It would also be interesting to maybe be able to see the last price recorded on a given station so you could figure out where you'd seen a good price.

Then again I guess something showing which system/station had the most recent high/low price for each good would really help you plan trading properly.

[sandbags]

Hi Lurler,

Can you explain the meaning of the goods/ore configuration and how they work:

Code Select Expand

<base_quantity_production>100</base_quantity_production>
<base_quantity_neutral>10</base_quantity_neutral>
<base_quantity_consumption>5</base_quantity_consumption>
<production_chance>0.05</production_chance>
<consumption_chance>0.2</consumption_chance>

Happy to add your explanations to the Wiki.

Kind regards,

Matt

[MenschMaschine]

There is always the possibility to use pen and paper to make notices
The serious trader uses a second screen with a spreadsheet anyways ;P

[sandbags]

There is always the possibility to use pen and paper to make notices
The serious trader uses a second screen with a spreadsheet anyways ;P

Apparently I am not a serious trader :-)

m/

[MenschMaschine]

My apologies, what i meant was "trader with no life and OCD issues"

[sandbags]

My apologies, what i meant was "trader with no life and OCD issues"

[sandbags]

Yes, there is simulated supply and demand model that change according to certain rules. Plus the prices adjust back and forth from time to time.

From time to time? Hrmmm...

I recorded the price of polymers in one system as 367/354

I go to the next system where polymers are 285/275

Seeing a quick profit I buy 191 polymers, all that station had, and head straight back. When I arrive the price to me is now 326. Okay I still made 8K but I lost almost 1/3 of the margin on the deal. That's quite a price variation in a pretty short time (I pretty much to flew one system and back again)

Is this the kind of price variability one should expect, and in this time scale?

Is price fluctuation random? Or affected by incoming traders?

m/

[sandbags]

You probably already realise this but I think this system needs some work.

For a start prices within a system should not have such variability. I just netted a 10K profit shifting electronics from one station to another in the same system.

It seems likely that prices within a system would stabilize unless a massive amount of something arrives. I guess that's possible.

In general it would be interesting to understand a little better how the economic model was actually working. It seems very volatile and a little too random.

[sandbags]

Yeah this is crazy.

I buy bio-material from one station in a system at 387.

I go to another station in the system and see the price to me is 592. Then I realise I forgot to move them from station to ship storage. So I go back to the original station, pick 'em up, haul 'em back, and the price when I arrive is now 478.

This level of variability both between stations in the same system and in time feels entirely random to me and suggests there's no intelligent strategy or reason to find trade routes since they won't be stable for more than 30s anyway.

[necavi]

If you look at the server console you can see that prices are fully recalculated every x minutes (I think around 2 or so, based on how frequently I see it come up), that's done at the same time as general production/consumption is applied. Seeing that kind of variability has made me consider making a mod that would create a slightly more realistic system, one that uses some basic AI for traders (and a limited number of them) to balance and modify prices. Although doing what I would vastly prefer (actually having traders going everywhere) seems impossible as systems don't tick when a player isn't in them (and I believe that counts AI as well, but I haven't done enough research to be certain). I have a significantly more interesting mod idea in mind that I'm currently working on, but I would likely take this on as a second project if I deem it feasible.

[jeeplaw]

Something like adding a wrapper around the framework of the universe to allow for that "ticking" while the user isn't in a system? Definitely feasible, but you're right..you would need to maintain trader movement/dock/sell/buy and have the avg's of those prices be rolled up somewhere so that it affects the base that the user is at for sure. It almost seems you could build an economy around the existing framework, but that would be a dev job and a half.

[necavi]

I have some pretty solid ideas for it, but that would involve some fighting with the existing TradeSystem. I did some more digging and some core elements of the other idea that I had aren't really plausible, they'd require some pretty annoying client-side work, so I might end up putting some effort into a better TradeSystem first, considering that that can be done entirely server-sided.