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Commodities and Bases

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Commodities and Bases Empty Commodities and Bases

Post by Gunner Wed 6 Mar - 21:31

Commodities

I post the following as a thread to provoke some thought about the pricing of items and the manner in which they are assigned to bases.
The data on commodities in the data files is huge and rightly so considering that buying and selling at good rates is key to the success of the trader.
So if someone could explain just how prices are set up and arranged in the various bases it would be a bonus to folk like me who are interested in the finer details of bases and their mechanics.

Regards
Gunner
Gunner

Date d'inscription : 2012-10-17

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Commodities and Bases Empty Re: Commodities and Bases

Post by keltwookie Wed 6 Mar - 22:52

Few days ago, I asked something about commodities on Starport, here's one of the answer I had by StarTrader from a well known FL community:

StarTrader wrote:
This might help a little more...

This is quite easy to do manually.

1. Create your commodity in DATA\EQUIPMENT\goods.ini - here is the Boron definition as an example:


[Good]
nickname = commodity_boron
equipment = commodity_boron
msg_id_prefix = gcs_gen_commodity_boron
category = commodity
price = 120
combinable = true
good_sell_price = 4.1
bad_buy_price = 4.1
bad_sell_price = 1.5
good_buy_price = 1.5
shop_archetype = Equipment\models\commodities\nn_icons\cwire_rawmats_1.3db
item_icon = Equipment\models\commodities\nn_icons\COMMOD_chemicals.3db
jump_dist = 5

message_id_prefix is the location of the recorded word "Boron". You can record your own name recording but that is another subject beyond my scope here.

Note the price, 120.
This is the NOMINAL price. The actual sell or buy price for this commodity is set on each base by a multiplier, I will explain this shortly.

combinable = true means that you can buy and carry more than one unit of this commodity at a time.

Note these multipliers:

good_sell_price = 4.1
bad_buy_price = 4.1
bad_sell_price = 1.5
good_buy_price = 1.5

These are margins to guide you in selling and buying the commodity, but they didn't seem to do much when I played with them briefly. They are not as I expected because 4.1x120=492 and a good sell price should be anything over 140. So you can set them as you like in your commodity.

shop_archetype is the icon displayed for Boron at the dealer, this one is a pile of rocks, as Boron is a mineral.

item_icon is the icon displayed for the commodity in your ship's inventory.

jump_dist is how many jumps the commodity will last if it is perishable (degrades with time), it's not used for non-perishable commodities and I'm not sure what part it plays for perishables in fact sice the lifetime

Open market_commodities.ini and we will see that Pittsburg (Li01_02_base) sells (and also buys) Boron:
[BaseGood]
base = Li01_02_base
MarketGood = commodity_boron, 0, -1, 150, 500, 0, 1

And in the same file we see that Manhattan (Li01_01_base) buys (and also sells) Boron:
[BaseGood]
base = Li01_01_base
MarketGood = commodity_boron, 0, -1, 150, 500, 0, 1.3

Also in the same file, we see that Southampton Shipyard (Br01_02_base) buys but doesn't sell Boron:
[BaseGood]
base = Br01_02_base
MarketGood = commodity_boron, 0, -1, 0, 0, 1, 5.5

Here are the parameters:
Pittsburg: 0, -1, 150, 500, 0, 1
Manhattan: 0, -1, 150, 500, 0, 1.3
Southampton Shipyard: 0, -1, 0, 0, 1, 5.5
= (minimum player rank to deal), (minimum player rep to this base to deal), (stock control 1), (stock control 2), (buy only/buy and sell),(price multiplier)

1. Minimum player rank to deal: 0 is lowest so any rank player can deal with this base for this commodity. If you set this to 30 then only players ranked 30 or higher can deal with this base for this commodity.

2. Minimum player reputation to this base to deal: the range is -1 (totally hostile) to +1 (totally friendly). So -1 means players of any rep can deal at this base for this commodity. CAUTION: If you make it 1 then NOBODY can deal because the highest rep in the game engine is 0.99
To make it so that only friendly players can deal at this base, set this rep parameter to 0.2

3. Stock control 1: this can be 0 or 150 for commodities. Must be 0 for bases selling this commodity. Stock control was not finished and so it is not implimented, so although this parameter is 150 for commodities, there is no limit to how much you can buy of any commodity in this game, you can buy as much you can pay for. In the vanilla game this parameter is set to 3 for Order shields and thrusters, 10 for weapons and equipment, 50 for ammo, and 100 for shield batteries & repair nanobots. For ships it is 0 or 1.

4. Stock control 2: this can be 0 or 500 for commodities. Must be 0 for bases selling, and 500 is the normal for bases only buying this commodity. As for Stock control 1, it is not implemented but must be more than 0 to work. For commodities it is only 0 or 500. For other goods it is set to the same value as Stock control 1. For ships it is 0 or 1.

5. Buy only/Buy & sell: I don't know its true name, but this is what this parameter does. For bases selling this commodity, it must be 1. For bases only buying, it must be 0. Note: in the market_ships.ini there is an entry for all ships in the vanilla game, but all of the buy entries can be removed, leaving only the ships sold at each base, to make the file smaller. I haven't played with it but this could have been put in to enable us to vary the sell price for our old ship when we part-exchange it for one sold at the base.

6. Price multiplier: This is the price-setter. Multiply the NOMINAL price by this multiplier to set the price for this commodity at this base.
So on Pittsburg, the price of Boron is: 120 x 1 = 120 credits
And on Manhattan, you can sell it (or buy it) for 120 x 1.3 = 156 credits
And on Southampton Shipyard you can sell it for a huge profit; 120 x 5.5 = 660 credits!
NOTE: the multiplier can be less than 1, e.g. 0.4, so the price will be 120 x 0.4 = 48 credits, so the player will lose money if he/she sells at a base with this price multiplier.
If you set the multiplier to 0, tell me what happens?

For simplicity until you know more about what to change:
a. if you want your base to sell (as well as buy) your commodity, just copy the Pittsburgh parameters to your base commodity list and set your price multiplier.
b. if you want the base to only buy your commodity, then copy the Southampton Shipyard parameters to your base commodity list, and set your buy price multiplier.

If you omit putting in the commodity in a particular base, that base will still buy, but at the NOMINAL price...
Knowing this, I really managed to set fine parameters with commodities, but it still a huge sum of work as I have to edit manually the concerned *.ini file (market_commodities.ini). My question was thus to find a method (batch? macro?) to set prices more easily. And once again, it still take ages to set a commodity for all bases which could be concerned on the map. Okay, it's easy for "rare" commodity like Titanium, Trade Lanes parts, etc..., but see Oxygen, Water, etc,... these goods are needed by everyone.


Last edited by Myrdhin on Fri 6 Dec - 4:25; edited 3 times in total
keltwookie
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Date d'inscription : 2012-10-17

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Commodities and Bases Empty Re: Commodities and Bases

Post by Gunner Thu 7 Mar - 13:01

This is really useful so thanks for the insight. tell me is it the same for weapons, over 500 of them, and ammo?
Good stuff to know, thanks.
Your comment about batch filing is a good question, or perhaps a table with batch filing attached. I will ponder that one.

Gunner
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Commodities and Bases Empty Re: Commodities and Bases

Post by keltwookie Thu 7 Mar - 16:14

Yes, it's about the same thing for all stuff buyable/saleable

In fact, it exist a fonction in FL Explorer which can set commodities but this not very practical and if you have many bases where set the prices, you can forget where and how much after 10 bases. So to be the most precise, the only solution for now is to set the prices manually.

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