Operating on the assumption that a strong trading aspect to the game is desired...

Economic System

• Supply and demand must be major factors influencing local price changes

  • Supply eq (local inventory + incoming contracts - sales contracts)
  • Demand eq (avg rate of sales contract volume per unit time + known local processing needs + coefficient of value)
    
    

• Regardless of demand, local resolve to purchase must be considered and limited so "market flood" abuses are capped

• Developers require an interface allowing access to both general and local economic variables without being forced to edit code to make adjustments
  
  

• Economy must be value-driven; prices on second-order products derived from some measure of inherent usefulness

• Processed and manufactured material supplies must be directly dependent upon first order raw materials

  • Parent-child material trees necessary for both economic value measurements and for potential manufacturing functions
  • All sources of raw materials must be accounted for either as player-driven processes or as regulated influx variables at specific sources
  • Processing and manufacturing capacity is the bottleneck for production of processed or manufactured goods given infinite raw materials supply
    
    

• Majority of commodities and equipment must be able to decay, with either use or direct age, as appropriate

  • Continual decay of manufactured goods buoys demand by creating constant low-level "sink"
  • raw or processed materials may be extracted from decayed or damaged higher-order goods through salvage mechanisms
    
    

• Certain material and commodity sinks must be predefined, with sink rates as limited, controllable variables

  • Commodity or equipment sinks may be Orgs or governments (i.e. Europa navy needs powerplants, Earth needs metals, Mars needs women)
  • Critical economic needs for an Org or government should be integrated with Sociopolitics features to allow for simple AI trading activity

Trade Interfaces

• Market Interface Lists must have

  • current inventory
  • buy price (ask)
  • sell price (bid)
  • last/current price
  • "tick" (up or down) - whether price is rising or falling relative to last datum
  • basic filtering / sorting features
  • indicator whether each commodity is produced or consumed locally
    
    

• Basic Buy/Sell - principal ability to access local market and sell from or purchase to ship inventory / hold

• Contract Jobs - perpetual or enduring agreement to supply a particular location with a particular volume of commodity per unit time for set pay
  
  

• Trade scripting (for Org or business management)

  • per unit time OR based on supply or demand, sets a buy or sell order on local market
  • may implement as "market orders" (current best price) or allow limit orders (manually set price)
  • allows automated purchases of materials for manufacturing or sales of products
  • alternative to trade scripting using local market is creation of specific market interface for business, where owner manually sets prices for inventory
  • if business requires commodity not present at local market for a period of time (zero inventory), trade script might spawn bulletin-board advertisement instance
    
    

• Remote orders

  • local market interface accessible within communications range / station vicinity
  • pilots may place option orders to buy or to sell at the current price listed (as opposed to whatever the price is upon landing/arrival)
  • placement of such an order should entail a surcharge (goes to entity owning market module)
  • any order has a limited duration, must expire to free commodities held against order
  • orders affect demand, not supply, until executed
  • upon physical arrival, pilot wouldbe reminded of standing orders to buy or sell to that they may be executed
  • gives a pilot ability to transact business while on approach to a station

Currency Balancing

• Unobstructed creation of currency in the environment must be avoided
  • Database function required to sum and display all currency held by all entities in the environment for tracking
  • Economic theory should be researched to enable creation of mechanics that either restrict currency creation or cause price inflation across the environment to compensate
  • A measure of currency per entity is required
  • All entities should attempt (AI) to maximize either currency or a prioritized set of resources (players obviously will)
• Model Options:
  • Constant-sum - game starts with set currency in possession of select entities, redistribution occurs continually
  • Scaling-sum - currency creation occurs as population increases (as above, plus each new player add brings in X amount of new currency with it) Istvan (5/22/02) - I dislike that specific implementation for this model, because if a gov Org is sponsoring a new pilot (as in JG), that entity should provide for that pilot's starting cash. This involves questions of where the pilots are coming from, a clash with the reality of the nature of a game: pilots/players come from outside the game environment.

Discussion

Istvan The market should be transparent and easy to use. (Contraexample - in E&B I can't make purchases easily because I don't know what prices are like at my destination until I get there WITH the product! If it's not being sold at a location, I have no clue what its value there is unless I bring some and try to sell. This means I may cruise around with a hold full of crap I should have never bought. Bad.) After seeing issues with the JG economy (and doing some online trading in the last few years), I really think a stockmarket-like (doesn't have to be perfect) interface (and information presentation) will be the clearest approach for the most users. I'm still not thinking in terms of trading in futures or anything like that, but if we have travel time issues, I think being able to radio a station and lock in "pre buy" orders or sales price commitments will be very useful to the merchants.

JDH Options sound like an excellent idea - as does the comms aspect (gives something else to do on those long flights) - the more we can model the economy like the stock market the more realism and richness we can bring to the trading side of the game.