A couple of weeks ago I had to have two jump holes in Gallia moved because they were shortcutting trade lane travel between bases. It took about 3 hours to reprocess the prices for the affected bases, and an hour and a half for my computer to complete the script I wrote to change prices in the game file. The total was 971 affected prices due to those two jump holes. Affecting travel paths is annoying when there are almost 25k prices in the mod. Unfortunately, I made a 5 hour mistake by not catching and fixing those jump holes earlier.
It seems that I forgot to submit the price edits in my last post, so those are included now in update 2. I also have made it about halfway through the economy checking for changes to base-to-base travel times. There are almost 500 commodity price edits included in update 2 for those. I expect about that many more by the time I finish checking.
I've also included about 200 changes to Gallic trade rumors to update them to reference the new commodities and economy in Gallia. If a trade rumor in Gallia refers to one of the new commodities for 4.87, then it can be trusted. If it doesn't, then I suggest checking with Freelancer Companion or the in game prices by selecting the commodity. I'm not sure when, or even if, the rest of the Gallic trade rumors will be updated.
I've just finished adjusting commodity prices due to system changes made since last January. There are less than a thousand, which is not bad. This should fix just about all of the bugged prices. Once I've implemented these, I'll run through the mod with Freelancer Companion, checking each base for anything that looks wrong among the top level prices.
You do know using FL Companion is a terrible way to balance prices, right?
And that it's something that should be done ingame, right?
Ah who am I kidding.
Logging in isn't your thing.
I've finished accounting for system changes, and that takes care of the obvious bugs.
I've also recentered Scrap Metal consumption to focus on Bourg-en-Bresse and Culebra, which are the two hubs for production of Manifolds from Scrap Metal.
I'll now offer a few notes about the new trade system.
Gin, Sake, Rheinbier, and Liberty Ale are available from capital planets and are primarily sold to locations in their own Houses. This makes them function in the trade system similar to Kensington, Trenton, Narita, Mainz, and the other shipping stations: sell at an import hub, then buy a local product to transport within the House to buy a high value product to export to another House. There are also some routes for Gin, Sake, Rheinbier, and Liberty Ale that go to the luxury destinations, and even a couple of routes that export them to other Houses. None of these allow A-B-A trading, however.
The passenger transport system involves luxury destinations like liners and resorts, and also involves many habitable planets. For example, you can transport Passengers from Luxury Liner Mackinac to Planet Hamburg, Vacationers from Hamburg to Luxury Liner Hawaii, and Tourists from Hawaii to Mackinac. I will post a comprehensive guide to the passenger and luxury commodity trade network in the future.
Gallia's economy is the only House economy in Sirius that fully allows in-House trading on a comprehensive scale. However, the best profits are still gained from trading between Gallia, Kusari, and Rheinland. Gallia also has its own internal passenger trade network, although it also intersects with Golden Dragon Casino, and Luxury Liners Mackinac and Hawaii. Gallic trade also involves high profits transporting supplies to the front lines of the war in Leeds, and transporting Gold from BS Castres, Ship Hull Panels from Stokes, and Lanthanum and Casualties from Planet Leeds back to Gallia. Royal Marines, Promethene, Munitions, and Bio-Stability Monitors are just a few of the products made in Gallia that are in high demand at the front lines.
Prisoners are available at Battleships throughout all systems, and are transportable to prisons nearby. Criminals are available at police outposts and are transportable to prisons, or bases that use forced-criminal labor. Houses with more than one prison have one designated for Prisoners and the other for Criminals. Passengers (who are released criminals or prisoners) can be transported from prisons back to capital planets. In Gallia, criminals can also be transported to the prison in Picardy from the two prisons elsewhere in Gallia, and Crew are transportable from the prison to nearby planets. This allows for efficient routes for Prison Liners, which can also incorporate Light Arms or Side Arms into their routes, because those are sold to police outposts and Battleships.
Why are you so keen on eliminating in house trading? Some low profit routes in there are not a problem. It is also absurd that an nations/house economy is so dependent on others.
I have updated the sale locations for Reinforced Alloy, Robotic Hardware, and Hull Segments, so they will be included in Update 3.
(10-05-2013, 10:01 PM)Scumbag Wrote: [ -> ]Why are you so keen on eliminating in house trading?
I created all of it to begin with, so there is nothing to eliminate that I didn't already deliberately create, and thus have not eliminated.
(10-05-2013, 10:01 PM)Scumbag Wrote: [ -> ]Some low profit routes in there are not a problem.
I created them, so we agree.
(10-05-2013, 10:01 PM)Scumbag Wrote: [ -> ]It is also absurd that an nations/house economy is so dependent on others.
No, it isn't. But this is a simulation anyway, not an exact duplicate of the actual economy that exists in Sirius. Only some of the commodities and transactions in the actual economy are in the simulation. Trade between Houses is more valuable to balance the game because it discourages the accumulation of too many traders in any region for too long, and spreads activity around Houses to enable all factions a chance at interaction. In a word, it's called diversity.
If you want interaction you must create activity hubs and trade highways where pirates can catch traders. Spreading the activity is exactly what we don't need, it's the bane of Discovery.
Agreed. I remember the end of 4.85 when Copper Ore madness. That was the only ore to sell for 10K but you had to take it to a hostile nation. (Omega 7 -> Rheinland -> Liberty(Houston) ) That attracted dozens of people constantly. Pirates had a good time, miners and haulers earned a lot of cash and even police was included vastly. Both in ending piracy AND in chatching smugglers taking their precious Ore to Liberty!
That created huge activity around Omega-7 / RH / LI
There was profit, there was risk and there was fun.Of course you also had the chance to try other ores. For less profit (~7K at best) but also less risk.
I liked that environment.
Now it's just too easy to earn money. At least 6-7 of the ores sell for 10K, at different sale points. Too spread out, little activity, hard time for pirates, too easy cash for traders. -> Cash is worthless (real inflation)
If there is a lot of something and it is still easy to make then it's becoming worthless.
Increase the activity by having the 4.85 Copper ore example back! Not by increasing one ore sell price, but by decreasing all the other, except for one. Of course you can rotate through all ores by time. Like for 2 weeks now the Gold ore sells for 10 K and only in Liberty. Then the Cobalt Ore sells for 10K but only in Kusari, all the others are worth 7K. And so on. It would work
Switching Mox and HazMat Canisters between Wuppertal and Dortmund will be in Update 4, if it didn't make it into Update 3.
I thought it might be interesting to share some basic statistics about the spreadsheets used to calculate prices. These are taken from the file's records.
Created: 09/20/2012
Total Editing Time: 292:02:53 (I would guess all but maybe 50 hours was done between September and the end of 2012.)
Current Revision Number: 403
Size: 2.35 MB
Number of Cells: 446,299
Number of Pages: 2,060 (if you printed it all out on 8.5"x11" paper)
Number of Rows on the main pricing sheet: 24,713