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Today I finished the third pass through the economy spreadsheet. The first pass was to establish all the buy and sale locations. The second one was to assign profit margins (c/sec) to each transaction. The third has been to input the algebraic formulas that calculate prices. The fourth and final pass will be to replace prices like 1453.326 with 1454 so that the ini code will be nice and neat. After that, all the prices will be sorted into groups by base, the prices will be transformed into game code, and then copy/pasted into the game file. Once that is done, debug, submit, and wonder why I bothered. Last time I checked, my spreadsheet has logged 150+ hours since its creation at the beginning of September.
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(11-29-2012, 07:09 PM)Xoria Wrote: Once that is done, debug, submit, and wonder why I bothered. Last time I checked, my spreadsheet has logged 150+ hours since its creation at the beginning of September.
I, for one, am very glad you did bother doing it man.
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And, as expected, I basically finished with the final pass through the pricing spreadsheet today. I actually haven't set up prices for Gallic Artifacts or Scrap Metal yet, pending decisions about what to do with them in the mod. Next comes saving the data into a new file, and deleting the data columns that I no longer need. Then sort the prices according to the type of code they need, write a script to set up the code for me, and go read a book while the computer works on it. Then I'll resort the sheet according to bases, and after saving as a text file I'll basically have the code ready to copy/paste into the game file. Unfortunately, that will all have to wait a week due to some real life obligations.
Current length is 24,692 rows, and 160 commodities.
You may be interested to know that earlier this fall I categorized the 579 bases in the mod according to function in the economic system, such as population, raw materials, processing, outpost, battleship, etc. Here are a few statistics:
Excluding nearly all guard bases and alien bases (Nomad, Wilde, Phantom) leaves 477 bases. So about 100 bases are either guard or alien.
There are 53 battleships in the mod.
There are 124 unlawful bases in the mod, not including unlawful guard bases.
298 bases are within the borders of a House, as defined by the server rules. 64 of these are unlawful bases, leaving 234 lawful House bases.
138 bases are located within Gallic-controlled systems (not all of these are House bases as defined by the server rules).
Excluding battleships, guard bases, unlawful bases, and lawful police outposts leaves 245 bases. These are the primary bases in the economy, and are my main concern when establishing prices.
Check out my Trade Development Blog
for all the latest news on Nerfs and Final Nails, or to request trade changes.
(12-08-2012, 03:01 AM)Xoria Wrote: Excluding battleships, guard bases, unlawful bases, and lawful police outposts leaves 245 bases. These are the primary bases in the economy, and are my main concern when establishing prices.
All seems great but this, but I still hope there be some unlawful trading good enough to care about.
(12-08-2012, 01:52 PM)Pavel Wrote: What to do with Scrap Metal? Starting place will be changed between houses monthly, right? Make it newbie ore like Penny Helium.
So all the new players have to be Junkers or ALG?
Or are you saying remove the only minable commodity that Junkers have?
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Well, I used dev work to procrastinate from the other things I should have done this weekend...It took about 5 hours, but I got all of the spreadsheet data transformed into game code (4.5 hours) and added to the market_commodity file (30 minutes). If I had done it all manually instead of writing scripts to do it for me, it probably would have taken several dozen hours. I can't believe that last time I wrote the scripts so that I actually had to activate it for each and every price, rather than just turning it loose on all of them at once. Of course, the job was only 1/3 as large last time too. Most of the time this took was writing the scripts and figuring out where the bugs were.
Next up is the error checking. I've already gone through all the bases that start with the letter A, and I've only found about 3 dozen prices to fix.
Here's a little piece of trivia: in researching House laws regarding Synth Marijuana, I discovered that only Gallia outlaws it entirely. The other Houses either license it or allow its transport by Cryer or other corps. So, only Gallia will have contraband level profit margins. The other Houses will have profit margins as if it is a normal commodity.
Now, if you're a frequent reader to this blog, and you've made it this far into this post, then I think you deserve a bonus spoiler. Leeds will have Refugees fleeing through the freighter-only docking spot behind the planet. The Council will have Fugitives transporting from Council bases in Gallia to Planet Toulouse. Planet Toulouse will have a new exclusive commodity. You can figure out what it is if you read the planet's current infocard. Here's a hint: hold your breath when handling the stuff.
The one piece of bad news is that with 25,000+ prices to calculate, Freelancer Companion's load time when you start it is 2 or 3 times longer than it is in 4.86.
Check out my Trade Development Blog
for all the latest news on Nerfs and Final Nails, or to request trade changes.
I can attest to how long it takes to edit the commodities without the aid of a script of some sort. Back before I was playing on a server, and I was still playing single player I had to merge the commodities from flhook a couple times. and had to do over every time an update came out thankfully sometimes didn't have much to change on there. So good on you for doing it! Many thanks.
and more commodities is always good.
so I recently started exploring Coronado. I must say you're all doing a wonderful job.
so I recently started exploring Koeln. I must say you're all doing an amazing job.
some time ago I explored Rousillon. Impressive. Particularly the music on the planet that was a nice surprise.
so I recently started exploring Omega-55. LOL... NOMADS. LOTS AND LOTS OF NOMADS. SHOOTING THINGS. I GOT THE HELL OUT OF THERE. (and I was thinking, jeez I can't remember what that one was from the news. I hope I don't run into a nomad system)
recently started exploring Omega-41. what did you guys do to the star? that new effect there, that's impressive.
