Economic model

[Pyrizzle]

That's why i was using turn based time.

Using a time frame based on Sleeping (Using a bed) could be manipulated easily.

Another way of going about it would be to not tell the players how it is keeping track of the reset period...

"Come back in a little while" or "After some time has passed my prices will go back down"

[sorrow]

Ya that's a valid point cm. In order for this.to work timing.is needed in the realm of at

[Sarumar]

What do members of the community think about introducing a fairly simple economic model into the game? Merchants could buy only what they need - eg a potion maker won't buy swords, and an armorer won't buy insect shells, or else they'd buy them at a steep discount to resell them later. The price could also rise and fall based on supply and demand - the more meat you try to sell to an innkeeper, the lower the price goes. Players would have an incentive to seek out new markets for what they're selling, and even to engage in some minor trade, eg buying stuff cheap in Fallhaven, then transporting it to Prim, which is experiencing severe shortages (until the player saturates the market). It would make gameplay more sophisticated, and save the lives of thousands of small rabid dogs in the fields west of Fallhaven.

CM

PS I'm willing to help code it, if there's interest.

+1 Great idea!
Perhaps it is time for some economic in AT.

[rijackson741]

I like this idea. With some planning it would even be possible to set up "trade routes", where an item could be purchased in one place and sold in another for a profit. The amount of potential profit would have to depend on the distance between the two places, the difficulty of getting between them, and the cost of the items to be traded. So, for example, I could buy some armor in Remgard, and sell it for a healthy profit in BMW settlement.

It would be a lot of work to implement though. Aside from the requirement for time (I think this would be needed; the price has to come down again) the value of every item would have to be set individually for every NPC. For just 100 items and 100 NPCs that's 10,000 prices!

[sorrow]

Well I think we all agree that any item sold to prim or bws are going to have a high sale cost unless a quest comes were we can clear the cave in an open up trade rout again. And then again the price going up and down would have to be different every time we buy or sell items. Ie I buy 10 potions price stays high for xxx amount of turns the next time I want to buy more potions the amount of turn change. Like:

1st time buy - 20 turns
2nd time buy - 10 turns
3rd time buy - 100 turns.

All.examples of course but what I'm trying to say in order for the merchant to become fully stock the timing has to.be different every time so that the player doesn't catch on that way we (the player) can't cone into the forum read this topic and figure out the restocking timing.

[Sarumar]

Well I think we all agree that any item sold to prim or bws are going to have a high sale cost unless a quest comes were we can clear the cave in an open up trade rout again. And then again the price going up and down would have to be different every time we buy or sell items. Ie I buy 10 potions price stays high for xxx amount of turns the next time I want to buy more potions the amount of turn change. Like:

1st time buy - 20 turns
2nd time buy - 10 turns
3rd time buy - 100 turns.

All.examples of course but what I'm trying to say in order for the merchant to become fully stock the timing has to.be different every time so that the player doesn't catch on that way we (the player) can't cone into the forum read this topic and figure out the restocking timing.

hmm perhaps the poor people of Prim do not have much gold..

[rijackson741]

Maybe some places are poor, and cannot buy expensive items from you, even if you are selling weapons to the smith. Other places are rich, and can buy almost anything. But also, rich places that are remote, such as BWM settlement, will very rarely sell to outsiders, so the available gold will run out, and it will take a long time for it to build back up. Other places that are near the main road or are in big cities will sell to outsiders and travelers frequently, so their gold supply will build back up much quicker. Except in Vilegard of course, because they don't like outsiders, and therefore don't trade much .

Perhaps items sold to NPCs could also stay for some time in the inventory of the NPC. In BWM that would be a long time, whereas at the crossroads guardhouse it would be a much shorter time. The exact length of time any item was in a NPC inventory could be randomly chosen between lower and upper limits, and only when the item disappeared would the gold become available again to buy more items.

[sorrow]

Lets get one thing strait.

We are taking about timing again. As of now there is no time in the realm of AT. So therefore we need to stop talking in time and focus on turns.

You make a good point. Different places should keep different items for different periods of turns. But with vilegard and bws and prim these areas should have the longest of turns before the restock or lose the stuff you sold to them. Now how would we make lodar and charwood work?

Lodar needs food so in turn he should buy lots of food but due to him not having an income food is utterly cheap unless you become his trader with the outside world ie when nor city is brought into play maybe people/merchants needs lodar's goods so they hire you to get them in exchange say they give you 1000 gold for lodar's goods so you go to lodar buy the goods now when you buy the goods lodar (if you have it) offers you the goods for say 500 gold and the and asks for the food you have (ie your raw meat)

Now charwood would be a different story. They have beds to rest in and fighter to get food from the local monsters. But what they need is potions and possibly weapons for there fighters. So you supply them with weapons (ie daggers and long sword you get on you grinds in the prison) and potions (that you get on your grinds for l/e items when your up there in lvls) and return maybe they give you some meats and a little bit of gold?


And every xxx amount of turns depending on how much of said items you have given to these places) you have to keep doing it
Ie:
You give lodar 100 meats = maybe 1000 turns

[rijackson741]

We are taking about timing again. As of now there is no time in the realm of AT. So therefore we need to stop talking in time and focus on turns.

I was talking about time in terms of turns. What a great sentence Everything in AT is turn based, and I wouldn't vote to have that changed.

I think adding bartering would really complicate things. I like the idea of becoming a trader for someone though. I agree that Lodar would not have much money, but you could change that. You could buy potions from him, and sell them at a premium somewhere else. Then he has money to buy food or ingredients from you. The same situation would be true in Remgard. They make great armor, but they have nobody local to sell it to, and therefore limited money to buy stuff from you. But if you buy their armor and sell it elsewhere for them, then they would have more money to buy other stuff from you. That would mean the pot of gold in a place goes down when you sell an item, and up when you buy an item (and also up when the item you sold them is removed from the inventory after some number of turns).

This would add a whole new dimension to the game. In fact, it would almost be like a whole new game, so maybe there has a be a limit on how complicated the trading system becomes. Trading is not what AT is about. It also brings up another question: what to do with the gold you make by trading? I have more gold than I need right now, so what would be my incentive to tramp around the world trading stuff?

[Spark]

If you are going to implement law of diminishing marginal utility than there should be a wholesale pricing for buying more product units.

I was talking about time in terms of turns. What a great sentence Everything in AT is turn based, and I wouldn't vote to have that changed.

I noticed a very low energy consumption of Andor's Trail compared to other games. If absence of "time process" effects battery consumption than it is better without time.


If there are money, there should be a way to spend them.
The best way to do this is to invent more useful consumable products.

There were suggestions of consumable weapon (fangs or claws as daggers), perhaps more useful potions (xp, magic finding, gold), valuable crafting or donations for temple.