There are two basic ways I've seen space trading in single player games done: Versus the game itself, and versus active NPCs. Can these be mixed? In some games where trade is a central feature, either you trade against the environment or against AI players. The former involves finding what to sell where and is more geared to trade being secondary gameplay (say to combat). The latter involves racing the competition from port to port, and is more geared to games where trade is the central or the only feature. I want a mix of both. I like the feeling that you're one of many merchants, but I also like the feeling that you could grow to be one of the dominant merchants in a given area. The way I thought this might work (along with the angry merchant idea I posted about) is to have tiers of pricing that make certain goods more profitable as you become a more powerful trader. Tier 1 - Random Competition At the entry level, merchants are spawned at ports and near ports somewhat randomly based on events near the port (harvesting season, overproduction, import / export logic). The main gameplay then is to race these captains to a port, but they rarely persist once they leave the player's view (meaning gameplay is more versus the economics of the ports, and as such more laid back and luck based). Tier 2 - Big Ticket Items, Persistent Competition and Bulk Trade Once at this level new ports or merchants become available. Big ticket items show up at cheaper prices than previously available, but won't trade unless you buy or sell in bulk. This requires a bigger ship and more capital. Captains begin persisting at this level, but their trades have no long term effect. If docked at the same station as you, they may call up the same merchant you're dealing with and try to outbid you for goods. (Like you, they have a rep with the merchants). Tier 3 - Superlifters, Contracts and Distributed Trading You're at the mover and shaker level with a "superlifter". Governors and CEOs deal with you. Completely new sets of goods are now profitable due to price breaks. You can flood markets, crash economies and affect system politics, starting or stopping wars and altering the direction of development. Six or seven other superlifters are your main competition. You can always see them on the map (due to backstory, ships get brighter on sensors as they get bigger). Using your clout, you can buy information about your rivals, remotely sabotage them and persuade CEOs or governors to give them less business (and they will be doing this to you as well). New at this level is the idea of long term contracts with negotiable terms and penalties. You're expected to supply entire star systems over long periods of time. To do this you're rich enough to subcontract captains on regular trade routes, farming the boring "space trucker" stuff to them while you flit about trying to beat your rivals to new opportunities. If you made it this far, thoughts? I'd like to see this along with being able to go head to head at the upper tiers, pirating, sabotaging or ambushing your competition. (EDITED to fix rushed grammar) [Edited by - Wavinator on August 9, 2008 11:30:29 PM]

I like it :) I never really thought a pure trading sim could be interesting, but the political stuff at the top tier sounds really fun. Only suggestion I would make is allow piracy, sabotage, and other combatish activities at the lower tiers too. Maybe even allow players to choose between becoming an honest merchant, or pirate.

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Original post by MrMark I like it :) I never really thought a pure trading sim could be interesting, but the political stuff at the top tier sounds really fun.

Thanks!

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Only suggestion I would make is allow piracy, sabotage, and other combatish activities at the lower tiers too. Maybe even allow players to choose between becoming an honest merchant, or pirate.

Hmmm... rethinking about this, maybe the top tier thing could exist but on a smaller scale (say just for a single station).

Maybe at Tier 1 there could be local persistent captains that hang around a handful of lucrative ports, giving you a taste of Tier 3 without so much economic risk. If you want to take on the local heavyweights, maybe that gets you into the political aspects, albiet on a smaller scale. If you screwed up badly, the lesser ports would still be open, and you'd be moving to and from other star systems anyway.

I don't think I should do this with every system you visit, though, or you'd have to keep track of countless relationships. Maybe it should only happen in very settled areas, as such a system would have many more ports.

Overall the tiers make sense and when I imagine tiers, it helps avoid micromanagement, and the transition to the next tier means a drastically different sub-game.

[edit] Separating tiers on prices is an approach that seems fine to me.

I think separating out the tiers on ambient via direct competition is not the optimal approach to take. You can always have ambient competition regardless of tiers. And the ambient factors e.g. random events should affect all direct competition.

Instead I would design your tiers on the increasing sphere of influence as you move up.

Tier 1 - you worry about basic goods and their prices

Tier 2 - you upgrade to the more lucrative and illicit goods. You also care less about one ship and instead are controlling multiple ships. You are now worried about piracy, police, etc.

Tier 3 - the superlifter now controls an entire trading company and as such you need to interact with other companies and governments.

Note the subtle difference here. Gameplay does change from the ambient to the direct but your tiers are designed on the increasing sphere of influence rather than the gameplay changes which really are a symptom of changing rule environments.

The direct competition can always be present if you design from Tier 3 down and I think doing so will help with the immersion and improve coherence. When you first start, the superlifters exist as vast powerful benign entities that the player sees. In tier 1 and 2 they do not really care about a small fry like yourself. As the game progresses the player comes to realize the importance of them and they start taking notice of you.