Author Topic: New Trade System for v4.1  (Read 8906 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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New Trade System for v4.1
« on: April 04, 2009, 04:32:18 PM »
I am revamping Trade for v4.1 to bring a few things together and reduce micromanagement. Trade Convoys, Spaceports and manual setting up of Trade Routes will all be removed. Before explaining the new Trade system I should mention that every civilian vessel in v4.1 will be owned by a Shipping Line. Each Empire will have one or more Shipping Lines that carry out colonization and trade. Each Shipping Line will be generated and controlled by the program and new Shipping Lines may appear as the game progresses

I originally considered a system of import points and export points but it was far too abstract and I couldn't generate any logical reason while ships wouldn't just move back and forth between the same two planets. Instead there are now seventeen different Civilian Trade Goods. Each planet of more than one million pop will both supply and demand eight basic goods. When it reaches reach ten million pop, six luxury goods will be added as well as three illegal goods.

Basic Goods
Consumer Electronics
Civilian Transport
Textiles
Chemicals
Machinery
Pharmaceuticals
Plastics
Construction Materials

Luxury Goods
Precious Metals,
Spices
Luxury Foods
Wines
Furs
Entertainment Products

Illegal Goods
Weapons
Slaves
Recreational Drugs

The basic demand for each good will be the size of the population. Some populations will produce more than they need of each good and some will produce less. Pops will tend to specialise so they will produce anything from 0-100% of about three-quarters of the goods and produce anything up to 400% of the others. This will vary from pop to pop and some will be net importers overall, as well as for individual goods, and some will be net exporters. This has nothing to do with trans-newtonian minerals, which are mainly for military applications, so some pops with little TN mineral resources could actually be major exporters of civilian goods. Given an equal spread of probability there will be about the same amount of supply and demand across the galaxy, although within a sample of a few pops there may be considerable excesses and shortages.

Civilian freighters will look for opportunities to move different types of goods from planets with a surplus of a particular trade good to those with a shortage. When the freighter arrives, it will generate wealth for the shipping line and wealth for the parent government in the form of tax on both the shipping company and on the original (invisible) company that produced the goods. With a trade treaty in place, goods can be shipped between pops of different races, which will create more opportunities for trade. A trade treaty will also allow foreign shipping lines to move goods within your own Empire or between your Empire and another. In this case the foreign government will get the tax revenue from the shipping company so I considered a tariff system. However, your Empire will be able to move foreign goods between foreign pops and you will get the tax revenue so it's probably easier to assume it will all work out in the end.

All of the above will take place automatically. You will see the shipping traffic but you won't have to get involved apart from possibly building jump gates to facilitate the trade and protecting the common trade routes from pirates and raiders. Trade routes in this context are not planned in the v4.0 sense. They will naturally be formed by civilian traffic as it identifies trading opportunities. With actual goods in transit with an associated value, some type of realistic pirate activity should be possible, although it may not be added for v4.1

The existing Trade Point Creation tech line will be replaced with some type of Increased Civilian Trade tech line. This will boost both the demand and production of trade goods. So with a twenty percent increase, pops will demand goods equal to 120% of the population and all trade good production will increase by 20%. This will increase the amount of trading opportunities and generate more revenue for the shipping companies and the government.

As Shipping Lines make money, they will keep some for their owners and shareholders and spend the rest on building new civilian ships. Therefore all new civilian shipping will be paid for by the wealth generated by the existing civilian shipping (plus one or two by the Shipping Lines' startup capital). I will add a window where you can monitor the holdings and profit of shipping lines within your Empire if you wish to. This is not something you need to monitor but I imagine some players will be interested to have that information.

Steve
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2009, 06:56:35 PM »
Cool!!!  This sounds like a nice model.  And it gives a good model for the question "why settle a world without any Trans-Newtonians?".  It would be nice if trade could double the productivity of a civilization, i.e. cultures with several planets do a lot better than cultures with only one.  Hmmm - when I was typing that, I was thinking about wealth, but what if there's an unrest penalty for populations whose demands aren't fully met?  In other words what if a 10% shortfall of Consumer Electronics meant a 1% level of unrest, due to all the bored teenagers smashing windows in the street :-)  This would be an indirect way to simulate inefficiencies due to a lack of trade and diversity - the unrest would cut economic productivity.

Referring to the other thread we had going, have you considered putting infrastructure on the list of e.g. basic goods?  Demand could be controlled by how close the pop was to saturation of its infrastructure....

John
 

Offline ShadoCat

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2009, 07:27:56 PM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
As Shipping Lines make money, they will keep some for their owners and shareholders and spend the rest on building new civilian ships. Therefore all new civilian shipping will be paid for by the wealth generated by the existing civilian shipping (plus one or two by the Shipping Lines' startup capital). I will add a window where you can monitor the holdings and profit of shipping lines within your Empire if you wish to. This is not something you need to monitor but I imagine some players will be interested to have that information.

That would be me.

What would be really nice in version 4.2 or 4.3 would be the ability for the SM to tweak things in the civilian area.

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2009, 07:29:46 PM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Cool!!!  This sounds like a nice model.  And it gives a good model for the question "why settle a world without any Trans-Newtonians?".  It would be nice if trade could double the productivity of a civilization, i.e. cultures with several planets do a lot better than cultures with only one.  Hmmm - when I was typing that, I was thinking about wealth, but what if there's an unrest penalty for populations whose demands aren't fully met?  In other words what if a 10% shortfall of Consumer Electronics meant a 1% level of unrest, due to all the bored teenagers smashing windows in the street :-)  This would be an indirect way to simulate inefficiencies due to a lack of trade and diversity - the unrest would cut economic productivity.

Referring to the other thread we had going, have you considered putting infrastructure on the list of e.g. basic goods?  Demand could be controlled by how close the pop was to saturation of its infrastructure....
I intend that the wealth generated by this trade model could as much as double current wealth, creating a reserve of wealth to be spent paying civs to move things around. It will be a significant advantage to have many pops rather than a few because the more pops you have the more chance that one will be producing something that a different pop wants. Equally, this is a major incentive for inter-Empire trade because each Empire could benefit by supplying the goods needed by the other and vice versa.

I also considered that over time pops might adjust what goods they create to meet available demand but I am concerned about how that might develop and it might stifle inter-Empire trade so I probably won't bother. The way it is set up is not perfect and has some realism holes (why is this pop producing something nobody wants at the moment) but it should generate the right feel for a trade system and over time that pop will find the right markets for its goods if it is exposed to as many other pops, foreign and domestic, as possible. It will also create a situation where war will likely disrupt trade severely and reduce income accordingly. Protecting civilian traffic will become vital for the long-term health of the Empire.

Here is a screen shot showing the trade situation for Sparta. Its only a few days after I set this running so the import and export columns only have small amounts at the moment.

[attachment=0:39cyq0qq]trade.GIF[/attachment:39cyq0qq]
I haven't looked at the Trade Goods influence on pops yet or the details of how illegal goods will differ from non-illegal. Certainly a lack of basic goods might cause some minor unrest if the situation continued for some time (perhaps if the import requirement was greater than one year's worth). As far as illegal goods go, I may hide them from view so you can't automatically know what the situation is. The symptons might be that if illegal drugs were getting to the planet, productivity would drop and unrest would grow. I might actually have planets either produce a surplus or not produce drugs at all so that certain planets would become the source of drugs and others would be purely consumers, not producers. Weapons would increase the rate of unrest. In this case you would need to inspect civilian traffic to try and stop the drug trade. It would probably be easy to set up a default order for this so you could set a patrol ship loose in a system that would start checking freighters.  Although if it just sat in orbit it should be able to check everything fairly easily so that may not be worth the hassle. The alternative is for drugs and weapons to be handled in much smaller quantities so they could be smuggled along with a regular cargo.

I am not sure about slaves. I might replace them with ancient artifacts, which would be produced by planets with ruins and everywhere else would have zero production. Again this could be a small quantity good smuggled along with normal cargo.

Steve
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2009, 07:57:20 PM »
I like the idea of coupling smuggling (illegal goods trade) with unrest.  I also like the "ancient artifacts" concept.  I also agree that you shouldn't try to stick demand feedback into the production levels at this point.

For the smuggling stuff: are you planning to put a "customs inspection" order into the default list, where a warship would pick a random civie, intercept it, and "inspect" it (both ships stopped) for a few hours?  Presumable this would indicate how much smuggling is going on - how often you find stuff.  Are you contemplating a new shipboard system, e.g. "boarding party facilities" or "boat bay" (which seems kind of close to hangar decks) as well?

John
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2009, 08:02:50 PM »
Maybe instead of an alphabetical list, sort it Common/Luxury/Illegal.

Offline Sotak246

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2009, 08:43:23 PM »
I definately like the sound of this new trade system.  The only thing I would worry about is attaching an unrest factor to shortages.  Since this all is automatic with no player input then you could end up with unrest across your empire if your random distribution shorts several planets of goods.  While realistic, it would greatly lower my enjoyment factor if I can't have a say in fixing the problem causing the unrest.  Sure I could add more troops, etc. but depending on the campaign I am running that could be contrary to the way I am running the empire, I mean would a 'borg race care they don't get all of their luxury goods.  One empire I have is loosely based on the Fremen from Dune, can't see them having unrest if they were shorted some of their basic goods, they are used to deprivation.  Don't know how easy it would be, but perhaps have a check button on the begining options or perhaps even on the race info screen that allows/disallows unrest due to trading shortages.

Mark
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2009, 07:59:49 AM »
If you want ships to be doing custom inspections lookin for small amounts of material hidden with the normal cargo you might want to consider having a low chance to discover the hidden material.  Modifiers could be a commander with a good logistics bonus, and crew grade.  Another modifier could be having a dedicated Space Station set up where the custom inspections take place.  The number of ships able to dock and procede with normal unloading is restricted by requiring the SS to have as many commercial freight modules as the docking ships.  All other ships would have to wait untill the docked ships were done loading and unloading to get to their cargo.  This could also be applied to the colony ships, after all it should be possible to ship drugs or slaves in a colony ship without much trouble, and they would need to be inspected as well.  This would also add an extra time element to the loading and unloading time for commercial ships at major hubs.  If the SS does not have enough space to handle the traffic then there would be extra delays.  As an alternative to a SS, this could be built in to a pdc as the ground component for unloading.  In either case if you want to make things more beliavable, the extra cargo handling could modify how fast the ships get unloaded.  This would help with the delays as well.

Brian
 

Offline ShadoCat

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2009, 06:17:51 PM »
I wouldn't worry about demand feedback at this point.

For most goods the demands are "wants" the things they produce are things they consider "needs".  If the population fees that they need Consumer Electronics (CE) then internal production will fulfill that need.  Since there is such high local demand for CE, internal production will get better and better and producing CE (they will make it better and they will make it more cheaply).  Eventually they will produce it of high enough quality that other populations will want the cheaper and higher quality CE that this population creates.

One important note here is that the other population will have a different need that they are fulfilling.  Thus there is little incentive for them to try to play catch up by trying to produce CE at the quality and cost that the first population produces it.  

Along the same lines, the first population will have wants that don't relate to CE (everyone wants it but everyone has what they need).  Thus they would want to import other goods.  They wouldn't want to devote a lot of energy into making those goods because they are only "wants".  They will continue to produce what they "need".

However, after some thought on the illicit goods, I see a problem.  In some society weapons or drugs are not illegal and decriminalizing them actually increased stability and decreased unrest.  I think that it is too hard to define what an illegal good is.  Heck, in some societies, an illegal good could be an internet browser that doesn't filter the search content based on government supplied criteria.  Maybe, instead of giving different illegal goods, just create a single good called illicit and assume that the name covers what ever is illegal for that society.  The other solution would be to determine illegal goods based on government types (like in SF).

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #9 on: April 06, 2009, 09:21:28 AM »
Quote from: "Sotak246"
I definately like the sound of this new trade system.  The only thing I would worry about is attaching an unrest factor to shortages.  Since this all is automatic with no player input then you could end up with unrest across your empire if your random distribution shorts several planets of goods.  While realistic, it would greatly lower my enjoyment factor if I can't have a say in fixing the problem causing the unrest.  Sure I could add more troops, etc. but depending on the campaign I am running that could be contrary to the way I am running the empire, I mean would a 'borg race care they don't get all of their luxury goods.  One empire I have is loosely based on the Fremen from Dune, can't see them having unrest if they were shorted some of their basic goods, they are used to deprivation.  Don't know how easy it would be, but perhaps have a check button on the begining options or perhaps even on the race info screen that allows/disallows unrest due to trading shortages.
I do share your concerns. One of my design goals is to avoid too much micromanagement. Having the civilian trade system causing unrest could mean players would have to monitor colonies more closely, which isn't ideal. I would give this a lot of thought before introducing anything along these lines and even then it would have to be limited to perhaps certain illicit or illegal goods and there would be associated events to warn the player.

Steve
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #10 on: April 06, 2009, 10:22:59 AM »
Based on the suggestions made in the First Impressions thread. I have changed the way civilian-produced infrastructure works for v4.1.

The infrastructure produced by civilians is now a trade good, like Machinery or Spices. Every colony produces infrastructure equal to double the population in millions every year. So a 500 million pop will produce 1000 infrastructure per year. Note that until deployed on a planet, when it becomes normal infrastructure as if produced by construction factories, this is tracked as a trade good. The demand for infrastructure is based on the infrastructure required for the existing population multiplied by 1.25, with a minimum of 100. This should give sufficient room for growth and, as the population grows, the demand figure will increase. A new demand figure is calculated after pop growth during the 5-day increment and also after colonists arrive on the planet. Colonies with zero colony cost, or which are unsuitable, have no demand for infrastructure.

A colony will update its stock of the infrastructure trade good during the 5-day increment based on its production rate. If that colony has a demand for infrastructure then the newly produced trade good will be immediately converted into regular infrastructure without any need for transport. This means that new populations will have a limited ability to expand their living space, although bear in a mind a pop of ten million will only produce 20 infrastructure per year. If no infrastructure is needed on the planet, or there is already a sufficient amount, the new infrastructure trade good will be available to be exported for planets with a demand for infrastructure. This will work just as any other trade good, except that on arrival it will be added to the infrastructure for that population, which will in turn reduce the demand for the infrastructure trade good.

This should better simulate the 'free' infrastructure as it is being produced by companies that sell it to new colonies and shipping lines are paid to move it.

Steve
 

Offline SteveAlt

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #11 on: April 08, 2009, 08:27:37 AM »
Another update as I am getting into the nitty-gritty detail of the trade system now.

As I mentioned earlier, the existing convoy system and the concept of Trade Routes have been removed. The spaceports that were used to generate the trade points for the convoys have been replaced with a Commercial Spaceport, which is 1200 BP instead of 4800. The only function of this facility is to speed up loading and unloading. Additional levels speed it up further. The actual modifier is the normal loading time divided by (spaceport level +1). So a planet with a level 2 Commercial Spaceport will be able to load cargo three times as fast as a colony with no spaceport.

The cargo sizes and the actual income rates for the trades have been setup. Each Trade Good requires 2500 cargo points, or half a cargo hold. Thus a regular freighter with five cargo holds can carry ten trade goods. This matches the size of infrastructure, which makes things easier. Every time a freighter picks up trade goods, the parent government receives 0.5 wealth per Trade Good in tax from the planet-based manufacturer, or 5 wealth for an average consignment. When the freighter arrives, the parent government receives 0.5 wealth per Trade Good in tax on the profit of the Shipping Line. The reason this is split is because while a trade conducted entirely within an Empire will yield 1 wealth per trade good, the goods might be carried by a foreign-flagged vessel, in which case you only get the export taxes, or it might be a consignment carried by one of your shipping lines from one foreign pop to another, in which case you only get the shipping taxes. Shipping from your Empire to another will provide export taxes but imports from a foreign power will yield nothing, unless they are carried in a freighter owned by a Shipping Line of your race, in which case you get the shipping taxes. This is worked out automatically and you see the different tax types in the Empire income breakdown. This is all up and working already.

The Shipping Line itself receives 2 wealth for each successfully delivered trade good (20 for a normal run), regardless of the nationality of the start and destination pops. The shipping line will use this income to eventually buy additional ships. A new shipping Line window has been added that allows you to see the Shipping Lines, along with the number of ships they own, their total tonnage, their income over the last twelve months, their current wealth and their total assets. A list of their ships is provided, along with tonnage, current location, destination and cargo. Also, a list of recent deliveries is shown to demonstrate where they are operating.

Quote
The existing Trade Point Creation tech line will be replaced with some type of Increased Civilian Trade tech line. This will boost both the demand and production of trade goods. So with a twenty percent increase, pops will demand goods equal to 120% of the population and all trade good production will increase by 20%. This will increase the amount of trading opportunities and generate more revenue for the shipping companies and the government.
The above has been implemented in a fairly similar way to that described in my original mail but I have also integrated it with wealth production to create a more realistic whole.

The Wealth Rate and Trading Rate tech lines have both been replaced with a tech named "Expand Civilian Economy by 20%". Researching this tech will increase the income of all populations by twenty percent and will increase the production and demand of all trade goods within your Empire by twenty percent. This is also the first example of what I am calling Replicating Techs. When you research this for the first time (at a cost of 2500 RP), the program creates a race-specific version of the tech. Every time you research it, the tech remains the same but the research cost doubles. This means only one line per race on the tech system tables for this tech and it also means that a situation can be created where different races pay different amounts for the same level of per capita income, which should finally solve what I have come to think of as the "China Problem"

The "China Problem" is that China has a population five times greater than the United States but a much lower per-capita income. This is hard to simulate in Aurora because income is based directly on population so, all things being equal, two equal size pops will generate the same income. I have tried to fudge this by adding lower and expensive tech levels for wealth to give a China-type power some hurdles to overcome before catching up. However, once it gets on the bottom rung of the 'normal' wealth tech line, it can catch up fairly quickly. Besides, this is obviously a fudge and the realism aspect is hard to accept, especially when it suddenly becomes cheaper to increase wealth at 20 per million pop.

The new Replicating Tech allows a much neater approach. When a race is manually generated you are informed that a regular TN race will receive 100% of normal income and you are asked if you want to modify this percentage. Lets assume you do and you decided to give China 15% of normal income. Normal Income is 20 wealth per million pop so China will start with 3 wealth per million pop. However, as the tech system is now entirely percentage based and specific to each race, it doesn't matter what the starting point is. It will cost the US 2500 RP to move from 20 wealth to 24 wealth and 5000 RP to move to 28.8 wealth. It will cost China 2500 RP to move from 3 wealth to 3.6 wealth and 5000 RP to move to 4.32 wealth, etc. Now it could be argued that China will improve its economy to be more efficient and this low start will penalise them. However, the US could also improve its economy and stay ahead. All this is doing is reflecting the start point for both nations. When I finally get around to sorting out real government modifiers, this will also be very useful in simulating the econmic starting point for different government types.

The per capita income figure shown on the Trade tab of the Pop window will now have real relevance and will be the wealth per million figure

Steve
 

Offline SteveAlt

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #12 on: April 08, 2009, 10:59:54 AM »
I forgot to mention that both demand and trade production are boosted by the Wealth bonus of the planetary governor - although now it's called the Economics Bonus.  Given the potential wealth generating capability of colonies without any minerals, this bonus will be more useful than in the past. The per capita income is shown for the race as a whole (which is the original wealth rate modified any Economics Expansion tech) and a per capita income is shown for the population, which show the same figure boosted by any governor bonuses (including sector governors).

Steve
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #13 on: April 08, 2009, 03:32:14 PM »
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
As I mentioned earlier, the existing convoy system and the concept of Trade Routes have been removed. The spaceports that were used to generate the trade points for the convoys have been replaced with a Commercial Spaceport, which is 1200 BP instead of 4800. The only function of this facility is to speed up loading and unloading. Additional levels speed it up further. The actual modifier is the normal loading time divided by (spaceport level +1). So a planet with a level 2 Commercial Spaceport will be able to load cargo three times as fast as a colony with no spaceport.

Will the shipboard Cargo Handling System go away or become bigger/more expensive?  I would vote "yes" - this would give a big incentive to build civilian cargo facilities, and simulate the difficulty of unloading at undeveloped worlds.

John
 

Offline SteveAlt

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Re: New Trade System for v4.1
« Reply #14 on: April 10, 2009, 10:29:07 AM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
As I mentioned earlier, the existing convoy system and the concept of Trade Routes have been removed. The spaceports that were used to generate the trade points for the convoys have been replaced with a Commercial Spaceport, which is 1200 BP instead of 4800. The only function of this facility is to speed up loading and unloading. Additional levels speed it up further. The actual modifier is the normal loading time divided by (spaceport level +1). So a planet with a level 2 Commercial Spaceport will be able to load cargo three times as fast as a colony with no spaceport.
Will the shipboard Cargo Handling System go away or become bigger/more expensive?  I would vote "yes" - this would give a big incentive to build civilian cargo facilities, and simulate the difficulty of unloading at undeveloped worlds.
I haven't made it bigger or more expensive yet but with the increases in the size of all other major commercial systems I probably should. The other alternative is to make unloading times longer so that spaceports and additional cargo handling systems bring them back to what is currently normal.

Steve