I have seen a couple of threads recently dealing with trade. Here is another. For the rest of this thread I will assume this trade model is in present day earth. It can easily be modified for another time period or area. Most current trade sims that I have seen, model trade for several specific items. The problem with this is that:

• No one port really needs 400 tons of rugs. Some sims try to model this with decreasing prices as you sell and increasing as you buy. This is a good first step.
• Most shipping does not carry just one specific type of material unless it is bulky, a small vessel, or a basic resource such as iron ore.
• In sims it is much easier to represent a myriad of items under one name. You supposedly are not buying 100 tons of Furby’s, but are actually getting numerous useless technological goodies for consumerism. (or something like that)

My solution? Have many items being modeled in the game but represent them under several categories. Each category is then broken down into different levels based on how much work has been put into them. For example:

• Inorganic
• Level 1
• Iron ore
• Copper ore
• Salt
• Gravel
• Level 2
• Iron
• Copper
• Silicon
• Level 3
• Wire
• Tire rims
• Chip quality silicon
• Level 4
• Transmissions
• Engines
• Computer chips
• Level 5
• Airplanes
• Organic
• Level 1
• Sugar cane
• Wheat
• Pigs
• Level 2
• Flour
• Sugar
• Level 3
• Bread
• Cookies
• Coke
• Level 4
• Medicine
• People
• Level 1
• …

You get the idea. In this way you could buy 400 tons of level 1 inorganic at a port and sell it somewhere else within reason. That 400 tons could be composed of a number of different items. By looking closely at your cargo you should be able to find out exactly what you are carrying. Port A may only want to buy iron ore while Port B may only want aluminum ore. This results in selling partial loads at each port (a much better representation). In order to manage the prices you should be able to set a profit margin needed on each level or if you want to micromanage on each item. If you have an item which you need to get rid of (such as 2 tons of cable ties) you should be able to force sell them below cost. This scheme should allow a more accurate representation of trade, resource use, and production while keeping a manageable and user friendly interface. The downside is it complicates programming and takes extra time to calculate use/need of extra items. It should ease the introduction of new items during gameplay though. Comments?

Sounds good to me!
about overhead, almost every improvement possible involves some overhead. This one has a minimal one. I'd like to see this being used :)

I need clarifcation on this. How does one increase in levels? Or are you talking about a system of production where level 1 + processing = level 2, etc. So that you would continue to trade to profit and reach the level 5?

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Original post by Talonder I need clarifcation on this. How does one increase in levels? Or are you talking about a system of production where level 1 + processing = level 2, etc.

yes, exactly.

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So that you would continue to trade to profit and reach the level 5?

In most trade sims, you are not doing the manufacturing or processing yourself. That doesn't mean it can't be done, but I was looking at this as a straight trade for cash scenario. Processing usually costs money and more mass of materials than it generates. This means that while theoretically you could build every step up the processing tree, it would take such a large commitment that only the largest of corporations could do so (think GE, TYCO, and other conglomerates). The US has laws against creating such processing chains under its antitrust codes.

Also remember that while level 5 goods would be high price (due to the amount of materials and time needed to create them) the demand for them is also greatly deminished. I guarantee I can find a bigger market for raw iron compared to built airplanes.

Is that what you were asking?

Edit: Also, since it requires time for goods to be made, sticking around waiting for your ore to be processed does not make sense (unless they have been stockpiling while you were gone.)
One last note- As in most trade sims, selling proces in a port should be the same or lower than buying. Nobody likes going through a middle man when they can get it straight from the factory.

Ah yes - What I was getting at is it sounds similar to Railroad Tycoon, the only sim trader I would say I have played. I think the system proposed is great. However, to provide a bit of constructive criticism, why dont you try to make connections between different trees of goods? This might make a more complex, and tied together system. An example would be the parts from level 2 are nesscary to build ovens to produce the cookies, bread etc.

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Original post by Talonder Ah yes - What I was getting at is it sounds similar to Railroad Tycoon, the only sim trader I would say I have played. I think the system proposed is great. However, to provide a bit of constructive criticism, why dont you try to make connections between different trees of goods? This might make a more complex, and tied together system. An example would be the parts from level 2 are nesscary to build ovens to produce the cookies, bread etc.

I agree (although the oven would only need to be built once, fuel would be needed each time.) This was more a way to group large amounts of items together under a simgle name to help with management.
A side bonus would be the way you could easily clasify ports. New York is a People level 4 where as Anchorage Alaska is a inorganics level 1. Now granted Anchorage has some good people in it, but the vast quantity of oil its pumping out overwhelms its other factors.

you seem to be grouping and ungrouping things so maybe I need clarification. You have inorganic 1 which you purchase but when it comes to selling those good its the specific types of inorganic 1 products that are sold and not the group as a whole. Is that correct?

Also you example over no port buying 400 tons of rugs is also flawed since trade is generally consists of taking X goods to a place that wants X or more of those goods.

My main thought though is that your groupings seems flawed. It would be better to classify things based on the type of product and not its material.

So you would have groups like:

Consumer Goods 1-5
Industrial Goods 1-5
Raw Materials 1-5

You could have many diffrent groups but it would make more sense to organize them based on purpose then on material.

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Original post by TechnoGoth you seem to be grouping and ungrouping things so maybe I need clarification. You have inorganic 1 which you purchase but when it comes to selling those good its the specific types of inorganic 1 products that are sold and not the group as a whole. Is that correct?

Sorry I took a while to answer. I have been trying to explain it to myself first.
The short answer is yes. The long answer is that the computer will do all of the grouping and ungrouping. If you pick up 10 tons of category A level 1 at port alpha you may only sell 5 tons of A1 at port beta. If you looked into why you only sold half you would find out that you picked up 2 things at alpha and only one item sold at a better price at beta. However, the goal of the system is to simplify a complex trade scenario into one that is easier to understand. Think about like it is mutual funds with a twist. You tell your stock manager you want to invest x dollars in biotech, but your manager buys and sells the actual stock.

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Also you example over no port buying 400 tons of rugs is also flawed since trade is generally consists of taking X goods to a place that wants X or more of those goods.

Very true. It is also called a job and it is not a game. If this was the type of trade to be modeled, it would be an endless series of missions. It’s doable, but not what I see in most trade sims.

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My main thought though is that your groupings seems flawed. It would be better to classify things based on the type of product and not its material. So you would have groups like: Consumer Goods 1-5 Industrial Goods 1-5 Raw Materials 1-5 You could have many different groups but it would make more sense to organize them based on purpose then on material.

If that is the worst thing about this then I am relieved. I picked those categories, because those were to first to bounce out of my head. They can easily be switched to whatever floats your boat. Splitting it as you did definitely has merit.
That said, let me explain why I chose the groupings that I did. I see most towns restricted in what they produce by the surrounding geography and the level of industry present. I am not expecting Denver Colorado to be an organic goods Mecca. My thinking is probably flawed. It would be best to group the items however they would naturally group. If you think a different way is better, by all means, go for it.

What I really like about your representation is that you've taken a good look at what dynamic you're trying to capture: Texture without too much complexity, variety of ports giving strategic gameplay, and some level of risk via the mechanic of only being able to sell a certain amount at a port. I like the mutual funds manager explanation as well, that clears things up for me (maybe you want to present this in terms of a "cargo master" so that people immediately get the level of abstraction that they're working at).

Here's what I'm wondering about: You mentioned that you don't want this turning into a "move good X to port Y" bunch of missions (or did you? I think that was the impression I got). What stops that from happening here? Is it that you can't be guaranteed to sell a certain amount?

One of the things that frustrates me about trading sims is not having the kind of market information that I'd expect to have as a trader. Some-- make that many--games are so bad that you have to buy a bunch of goods and wander around until you find a buyer.

Without killing the sense of being a game (especially being able to pick up & play easily), I'm wondering if you could both provide more market information and create more risk/reward/uncertainty. For instance, I might know that Alaska sells inorganics, and Denver buys them, but short of using a traveling salesman shortest-path analysis, what other factors could there be in buying / selling?

Outside competition, even abstracted, might help here. Perhaps the risk of going to a port is that it's popular, and more people are likely to undercut you. Or maybe all goods rise, level out or decline within a certain time frame, kind of like stocks?

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Essentially, I'm trying to figure out a way of creating more tradeoffs, which make for interesting choices, without complicating the system. Without any other elements, I don't see a way of keeping this from being a straight "haul X to Y" experience. Maybe you were thinking that you have to pick your ports as clusters, so that if you don't sell at one, it's easier to move to another?

(Of course, all this is moot if you're layering a bunch of other stuff on top, like combat as in Elite-style games.)

I like the dynamic of the whole thing, I think it would be cool if technology played a part in it too though, like say you need Lvl 1 organics to make purple dye, but they are very rare and therefore very expensive, which then leads to a massive demand for purple dyes, because it becomes a status symbol. Then some clever chemist finds a way to make artificial purple dye (if you're a history person you probably recognize this scenario) thus Purple Dye goes from an expensive Organic Level 2 to a cheap Inorganic Level 3.

Also a Fad system would be cool:
Expensive things become status symbols, rich people will pay ridiculous prices for silly things because of fads. (Tulip mania, The Net craze, etc.) So you get the bubble effect where people will pay exponentially higher prices for rare items or services, now so far this is basic econmics, supply < demand = higher prices, but fads end, so you have to account for this and make sure your not stuck with a warehouse of overpriced dyes. That is; demand is not directly linked to supply, but may also be affected by temporary pathological obssesions with certain products.


I have no idea how you would program such a monster, it'd be fun though