|
Post by Cory Trese on Jan 14, 2011 1:48:55 GMT -5
I think I found the root of the issue is actually a trio of numbers.
FACTION_SYN_MARGIN_REQUIRED FACTION_CLN_MARGIN_REQUIRED FACTION_IND_MARGIN_REQUIRED
These three scale values essentially control the on-planet merchant's hunger for profit.
The issue I think isn't the economic system or the map. The problem is that the merchants on the planets are using ridiculous profit margins.
|
|
TeeWee
Hero
[ Star Traders 2 & Heroes Supporter ]
Posts: 247
|
Post by TeeWee on Jan 14, 2011 4:49:14 GMT -5
I think I found the root of the issue is actually a trio of numbers. FACTION_SYN_MARGIN_REQUIRED FACTION_CLN_MARGIN_REQUIRED FACTION_IND_MARGIN_REQUIRED These three scale values essentially control the on-planet merchant's hunger for profit. The issue I think isn't the economic system or the map. The problem is that the merchants on the planets are using ridiculous profit margins. Heh. Greedy buggers
|
|
|
Post by Cory Trese on Jan 20, 2011 17:59:23 GMT -5
I would be interested to hear feedback regarding trading as a profession in the most recent version.
Try it between the houses & syndicates (if you can work around the trade bans)
|
|
|
Post by RushSecond on Jan 20, 2011 20:40:49 GMT -5
^ I made a merchant recently. It was very easy to get money by pumping negotiation, buying every legal good (except vudka) from faction worlds, and selling it all at independent worlds. Almost guaranteed to get a little bit of profit.
|
|
spike
Exemplar
Posts: 360
|
Post by spike on Mar 8, 2011 19:39:51 GMT -5
Is trading a viable path? I'm trying to find out with a 'pure merchant' character. So far the answer is, Yes and No. Yes, in that just in the first-half year I found plenty of profitable trade routes, the best one being a $144/ton profit on Metals over a 6AU (one way) trip. There were plenty of resource/route combinations with over $50/ton profit. So you can make a few thousand a run even with a small ship, pay for your fuel and still have a profit - if you stay out of trouble. Staying-out-of-trouble skills and upgrades are at a high premium, maybe more so even than price-reducing and cargo-boosting skills and upgrades. If you keep moving on, and practice some 'crop rotation' rather than grinding the trade routes into the ground, it should be sustainable. No, in that by week 40 of the first year, there were so many Trade Embargoes that I could only trade with Cadar or Independents, and all my good routes were no longer viable. Literally every profit opportunity disappeared. I do think the Trade Embargo generation rate is kind of excessive. In the meantime it may be best for a Merchant to stick to Independent worlds only, to avoid the inevitable disruption caused by inevitable Trade Embargoes. 26 out of the 57 Urban Zones in Elite are Independent, so this should be a viable strategy. --- OK, it's possible to work with Faction Trade Embargoes, especially if they are not overlapping or multiple Embargoes (e.g. 4 trade embargoes against Thulun, then don't sell there). You have to go in to any Faction worlds you are buying/selling at with a single resource, high value, large quantity and buy/sell in one hit. This single Exchange action gives you only a single rep penalty, which you can buy back (Pardon) pretty easily and cheaply. What you don't want to do is be buying and selling mixed cargos of multiple low-quantity or low-value resources - pointless. corey, maybe that should be fixed, so that Rep loss is scaled with value of goods bought/sold and not just x1 per Exchange 'action'. At the moment, it seems like buying 1 fuel is equal Rep loss to selling 100 Artifacts or Weapons. And remember to stash fuel nearby first, or have a nearby Independent/non-Embargoed refueling point nearby, or buying the fuel to get home will give you an extra Rep hit.
|
|
|
Post by sgtcookie on Mar 9, 2011 8:47:56 GMT -5
The embargo system is a real pain in the arse. It means that you can't even buy water-fuel without getting arrested for criminal offences. Even your starting faction can't be traded with without a rep loss, surely water-fuel should be exempt from embargoes. It's the primary cargo for ALL ships, and your starting faction should never be embargoed or at least no rep loss from enemy factions when trading with your base faction under embargo.
For example if Cadar and Javat were both under embargo and the player was Cadar then the player shouldn't loose rep from Javat when trading with Cadar. As if a person can't trade with it's own faction then how are they meant to survive, but the the player were to buy water-fuel from Javat then Cadar would not be that bothered as water-fuel is the key component for space travel.
|
|
spike
Exemplar
Posts: 360
|
Post by spike on Mar 9, 2011 11:22:17 GMT -5
It's a definite pain in the behind, though there are ways to work around it, they are a bit tedious. To be honest, I think the strategic nature of water fuel means that it likely would be included in embargoes. Think about the modern world and the importance of oil, oil sanctions, sanctions-busting, etc. Factions or countries that start a Trade Embargo are trying to hurt the other country, punish it, coerce.
I was wondering if Stealth and related skills could help you to have a chance to avoid a rep penalty. Also (as mentioned earlier), for the rep penalty to be proportional to the value of what you buy or sell. So ten units of water fuel would be a much lower penalty than 50 Artifacts, and maybe you could be completely undetected (buying the fuel on the black market for example).
The problem with trading with your own Faction is that it's not your own Faction reducing your rep, it's the Faction that called the Embargo that drops your rep, because you are undermining their policies. Which, unfortunately, makes sense.
One thing that might help is to have the more usual one-sided Embargo that we see in the modern world. The ST RPG Embargoes all seem to be reciprocal and tit-for-tat, which makes it a lot worse. So for example Javat could declare a one-sided Embargo on Thulun, but you could still buy and sell at Javat without penalty.
Maybe, as was suggested elsewhere, rather than having a full on Embargo, Factions could work out their differences by raising percentage tariffs on other Factions. This is tricky for the game engine though as it needs a database to track where everything comes from. Applying a Rep penalty at the point of buying/sellling is a lot cleaner to implement.
In general though I just think the thing to do is reduce the frequency and maybe the duration of the embargoes. It's quite typical for 5 out of 6 Factions to be under embargo in the first year or two of the game, and stay that way for a long time. That would be some pretty bizarre politics that would drive that kind of situation. If we believe Adam Smith, then all Factions suffer whenever they have an Embargo.
For me the bottom line is that too many Embargoes makes the game very difficult to play as a trading character. It's not such a big deal if you are doing piracy or mission running or faction warfare, or a Jack of All Trades approach. But it hurts the Merchant quite badly, and for long stretches of time you just don't feel like playing the game because you have nothing productive to do.
|
|
|
Post by oldalchemist on Mar 9, 2011 11:29:01 GMT -5
I like the embargo system. It's supposed to be a pain in the ass because it's economic warfare in a highly formalized system.
Here's what I'd like to know: What actions can a player take to reduce the length of embargoes? I'm a little unclear on how my actions affect galactic politics.
|
|
spike
Exemplar
Posts: 360
|
Post by spike on Mar 9, 2011 12:28:13 GMT -5
The embargo system is so intense, it ought to create intense opportunities for merchants - or at the very least, opportunities for smugglers. Instead it just seems their work more difficult. Actually, it should create a combination of the two - challenge and opportunity. At the moment I'm seeing more challenge than opportunity, by far.
|
|
|
Post by oldalchemist on Mar 9, 2011 14:36:50 GMT -5
Really, taxes and bans ought to work for smugglers. That, however, would require a black market in addition to the exchange.
|
|
|
Post by MTKnife on Mar 9, 2011 15:28:51 GMT -5
It's a definite pain in the behind, though there are ways to work around it, they are a bit tedious. To be honest, I think the strategic nature of water fuel means that it likely would be included in embargoes. Think about the modern world and the importance of oil, oil sanctions, sanctions-busting, etc. Factions or countries that start a Trade Embargo are trying to hurt the other country, punish it, coerce. I was wondering if Stealth and related skills could help you to have a chance to avoid a rep penalty. Also (as mentioned earlier), for the rep penalty to be proportional to the value of what you buy or sell. So ten units of water fuel would be a much lower penalty than 50 Artifacts, and maybe you could be completely undetected (buying the fuel on the black market for example). What if there were a "Black Market" option for selling stuff? It might be risky (and/or require Intimidation as well as Negotiation), and it might be more appropriate as a Wilderness Zone choice (that works well with the idea of risk). The prices wouldn't be as good, but selling wouldn't have Reputation consequences, and it could also provide a new Smuggler activity: selling to a planet with a closed Exchange, a trading ban, or high taxes (and in those cases both buy and sell prices would be higher than normal, especially given that the black market would be the only game in town in the first two cases); it might also provide an option for a captain shut out of a particular faction's Exchange.
|
|
|
Post by sgtcookie on Mar 10, 2011 7:56:34 GMT -5
To be honest, I think the strategic nature of water fuel means that it likely would be included in embargoes. Trade embargo rep loss effects the other faction, in my example I am asking if Cadar would care that [glow=blue,5,5000]one of its own[/glow] bought water fuel from Javat. (I love the glow.)
|
|
spike
Exemplar
Posts: 360
|
Post by spike on Mar 10, 2011 8:01:12 GMT -5
As I understand it, a Cadar - Javat Trade Embargo means that you will lose rep with Cadar for buying OR selling at Javat, and you will lose rep with Javat for buying or selling at Cadar, and this is regardless of whether you have Javat or Cadar or anyone else as your home/starting Faction.
To your point, a Captain trading with Cadar, Cadar Captain or not, never loses Cadar rep for trading with Cadar, embargo or no embargo. They only lose rep with Javat (or whoever else has an embargo against Cadar). So the game already works the way you are asking.
As I suggested elsewhere it might be sensible to make at least some of the Embargoes 1-way instead of mutual. So you could have a Cadar Embargo against Javat that was not reciprocated. In this case Cadar would punish you for trading (buy or sell) with Javat, but Javat would not care what you did with Cadar.
The fact that the embargoes are all reciprocal at the moment means that it's easy to very quickly get to a state where all or nearly all Faction trade is under Embargo. In theory, just 3 Embargoes can lock down everything.
|
|
|
Post by Kelvin Zero on Mar 10, 2011 23:10:22 GMT -5
Perhaps one option of dealing with embargoes would be to say the more embargoes that pop up, the more likely the behind-the-scenes diplomats start working behind the scenes to end some of the embargoes. After all, these factions cannot possibly be completely independent. They each need what the other has. Continued pan-galaxy embargoes will end up with their respective economies shutting down as supplies dwindle.
One or two alerts of embargoes would last as normal but four or more embargoes would trigger the shortening of the initial ones. Perhaps you would find extra missions for transporting people around which would symbolize you getting diplomats to meeting zones. Perform a few of these missions and the embargoes start to end faster.
Another idea would be as the supplies dwindle in some areas or stockpile in others as regular traders are reluctant to go against the embargo, the player Captain could take advantage as shortage and surplus rumors start popping up. Yes, you would take reputation hits for trading against the embargo but the money would be worth it.
|
|
|
Post by oldalchemist on Mar 11, 2011 12:09:49 GMT -5
So...what player actions affect embargo and trade alliance statuses? They're not completely random, are they?
|
|