1. Private markets will presumably remain private from the local population - but is it feasible to have a private market that is aimed at the local pop and not passing traders? (...though I guess that just replaces sell to local pop with a local pop *can* buy this). One concern I have is that smaller markets may suffer if a rival - with access to a larger market - keeps sending over a carrier to buy-out all trade goods on offer, thus depleting the local market...
2. Will local pop be after a wide range of goods? For example, I presume there is only so many Brooker Steaks a population are going to want to buy. If so, does it imply that there may be too many unique goods in the game - and particularly unique perishable goods? One concern I have is that it could devalue perishables further because if a trader buys 1000 from a market it could now take several weeks to sell them all whereas it may have been possible to sell all of them in one go before.
2b). If the local population will have demand for a variety of goods, will the existing goods be grouped and have various levels of demand? For example - taking two perishable goods, Brooker Steak (local value 0.2) and rock Plant (local value 2) as example whilst they are both food sources with the steak is clearly less of a luxury item than the rock plant. However - whilst the rock plant is worth more than the steak, I would imagine there would be more demand for the steak because it is more likely to be part of a staple diet
Perhaps demand for goods could be based on the local value - ie; the lower the value, the more likely it is required by more people.
3) Are racial modifiers on trade goods still relevant?
4) If there is a demand for items such as consumer goods and food - will the value of these goods be reviewed so that it possible for a base to produce them with at least some profit?
5) Presumably it would become impossible to oversell to the local population (because they only buy what they need), and I assume that they will buy imported unique goods over locally produced uniques.
6) If local pop can buy from a bases market can they also sell to it? Presumably the local population work for a living - whether they be farmers, miners or perhaps run their own workshops. As such as well as having a place to buy goods from, surely they would want somewhere to sell their own produce to? For a starbase this could work in that it would be in a postion to buy a good/mineral at say 0.25 stellars less than what it sells at. In effect the starbase becomes the market centre - only it has access to sell those goods brought from the local population (as well as goods it produces/imports itself) to other people on the planet and to passing traders
Smaller markets should not suffer. Starbases in the same system will be selling luxuries t the population through the market a tthe same modifier so it makes no sense to send over a carrier and take all the trade goods as the larger starbase will not make any profit. The only profit to be made will be to ship it to another system. You can also only put on the maket what you want to sell. If you set up the starbase to sell 200MU as an end of week order then you can only sell 200MU to planet or ship even if you have 2000MU in stock. You only sell to the planet the quantity which makes the most economic sense. We will find this out when the game changes however it's going to be a similar ratio to what we can sell today.
2) I hope in the future there will be an automatic trade good modifier such that if you oversell one unique to a planet then the price plummets. This should nt imply there are too many uniques in the game rather that the uniques are spread out and therefore it hould open up the possibilities of uniques being traded more.
I think the perishable price will be factored in to the value of the sell prce. If you cannot sell them in large quantities then that will drive some of the value out of them. I guess this will mean we are forced to find markets first before jumping in.
2b) Nice idea - the lower the local value the more you can sell.
5) Perhaps the population only has a certain amount of stellars per week and therefore will only buy to this value spread ove rhte uniques available?
6) Isn't this merchandising factors for the market and exchange complexes to get back trade goods?
Example: On planet X, are starbase A and starbase B. Trade demand is 2000mu, so 1000m per starbase.
Starbase A has a lot of trade goods, originating from far off systems to sell to its population. Starbase B just produces its own fairly low-valued trade goods to sell.
Under the new rules, these goods are placed on the public market for the population and the public to buy.
If Starbase A and Starbase B both put 1000 mu of goods each on the market and the population buys all their goods, then things are ok - the order has worked like the Sell to Population order and both starbases benefit.
However, what if Starbase A had put out 1500mu of trade goods - what is to stop the population from preferring to buy all of his superior goods from far off systems and only buying 500mu from Starbase B? Starbase B would lose out.
Is this just to encourage everyone to sell goods from other systems at their bases?
What if Starbase A and Starbase B were selling the same trade goods? Would the population automatically buy from whoever is selling the cheapest goods? (makes sense, but would pave the way for price wars...).
And if they were selling at the same price, would the purchase be split equally?
Sorry, just trying to get my head round the proposals..
cheers
weenie
| QUOTE (Andy @ Jun 1 2004, 12:53 PM) |
| 1) ...Smaller markets should not suffer... |
I think (?) the point Duck was making was that if an aff buys all the market goods from a rival aff's market, the locals won't be able to buy them. Short term the rival aff won't suffer, as they'll get the same income, but eventually the local market will dry up (it was stated as part of the change that demand would drop if not used). Once that happens the buying aff stops buying, leaving the rival aff with no market...
To be honest I think it may add a new element to the game - trade wars, but without an order on the lines of 'This base won't transact with AFF/Position #' it could be difficult for a base to prevent the depletion of its local market if up against what would admitedly need to be a pretty determined trade rival.
I guess the effect of a private market for the planet is that it would mean an affiliation still gets to keep its more valuable goods for itself - so perhaps it should be possible to highlight a percentage of a good that is for local buyers only (say upto 25% - but at perhaps 90% of the sale price)?
One other thing that occurs to me is that if the result is that affilations now have to deal with smaller amounts of goods to meet a wider variety in taste, would it be possible to look at the TU cost of transactions?
I've never quite grasped why loading a ship with 3000 MU's of one item is quicker than loading 100 MU's of two items. I appreciate that not everything is packed the same, and that some thought may be required to fit 1500 steaks alongside 1500 alloys and manage to avoid contamination of the meat...
However, I would also expect a Courier to be able to load 400 MU's of a single item quicker than a Carriers 5000 MU's
Would it be feasible for a sliding scale of TU cost? For example, perhaps for each transaction it would cost 4 TU's for the first 500 MU's plus 2 TU per additional 500 MU's of goods? Perhaps after the first 2000 MU's additional TU increases would be 1 per 500 MU's to represent better efficiency.
That is;
0-500 MU's - 4
501-1000 - 6
1001-1500 - 8
1501-2000 - 10
2001-2500 - 11
2501-3000 - 12 etc
admitedly more complicated, but would make transactions in several items less painfull
| QUOTE |
| I think (?) the point Duck was making was that if an aff buys all the market goods from a rival aff's market, the locals won't be able to buy them. Short term the rival aff won't suffer, as they'll get the same income, but eventually the local market will dry up (it was stated as part of the change that demand would drop if not used). Once that happens the buying aff stops buying, leaving the rival aff with no market... |
No that would be too easy to screw up. Its will be the presence of a good market that will matter more than who is buying them for the purposes of local changes. So providing that the rival aff does not buy you into the ground, it should be ok.
Any excess can be sold during the week between adjustments.
Andy