Well if your universe doesn't have "instant communication", that would mean that there's a relatively large market for "information" between planets.

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Original post by Katie Things like food, metal and wood are a bit non-descript. And generally, we probably wouldn't ship them interstellar unless there was a HUGE disparity in production costs.

I think you're right about this, but technically it doesn't matter.

If you listen to hard SF writers like Ben Bova, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, interstellar shipping makes no sense. First, the cost to move mass interstellar distances is (pardon the pun) astronomically expensive. Likely the costs to extract resources in the new system, including the billions of comets in the outer system, innumerable asteroids and solar energy itself would be a fraction of what it would take to send something to a colony.

And why would you even do that? If you've got the technology to settle another world, you've got hundreds of heavenly bodies in our own solar system, ranging from asteroids that could be spun up to create artificial worlds to the possible genetic and cybernetic changes that might be made to the human body plan to adapt it to more extreme environments. And we're not even touching on terraforming, nor nanotech or even smaller technologies. You don't even need FTL!

But even without FTL, it seems that the cheapest thing to send is information, including plans for constructing items be they materials or genetic code. You can see this trend already happening on Earth, where 3rd world doctors are reviewing medical charts from 1st world patients because sending the data via satellite is much cheaper than paying 1st world wages. I can imagine future colonies in debt up to their eyeballs because they're paying licensing fees for intellectual property beamed to them from Earth (and just like America in its inception or China now, some will be rampant IP violators until they bootstrap their own local economies and have something to lose by not following the rule of law).

But again, none of this matters. The space trading genre is about duplicating the romanticism of 17th century high seas trading in the future whether it makes sense or not. Tea, tobacco, cotton and slaves all need to be replaced with a futuristic analog that traders will ship, navy and pirates will seize and smugglers will smuggle.

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Original post by Punk Designer In my new space game idea the key to success is the trading of goods to and from different planets/moons/space ports/etc. My universe is one of functionality and a gritty grind of human labour and un attractive equipment. Think of it like this, say in the next 100 years we developed star/warp drives and started colonizing other worlds, etc. But it isn't the space we all know and love from the sci-fi films, there are no cool holo projectors or super advanced robots, because in the depths of space you don't want cool, you want something that is functional and tough so it works in the extreme conditions the universe throws around.

I know you're going for gritty but I think you'll drive yourself nuts if you use that as a standard. Since goods aren't really logical, why not make up things that explain your universe and give it more depth?

For instance, don't give us slaves. That tells us nothing about your universe and implies you're just lazily ripping off the 17th century. Instead, why feed and house slaves when you've got robots? If these "artificial persons" can be sentient, maybe you've got "Drone Chattel" which are effectively lobotomized androids. Or maybe you've got "Companion Units" which hint at the modern day evils of the so-called white slavery trade. That would give your universe more color and depth, differentiate it from what's already out there, and maybe even draw the player in to explore more.

FTL speed travel doesn't have to be expensive.

Lowering the cost of energy or simply creating jumpgates both allow you to drastically reduce the cost of travel. Also FTL travel can be a series of small jumps through space as opposed to simple propulsion.

Basically you just make the world that you want from a game design pov and mold the tech around that.

Thank you all, you’ve expanded my list far beyond what I had originally planned for, I have a whole four pages.

But Wavinator has changed my mind, with this game I hope to be different, with very little focused on anything else apart from trading, so I should in fact strive to create a universe that is as different as possible.

I'm torn between the tried and tested romance of 17th century transport and a creation of originality and probably a lot of mind mapping.

I would like to explain first my idea for the game.

In this game you own a port, a space port, obviously. You get to name it and probably choose the primary colour and logo; I enjoy customization at every level.

After this the space port is placed on your desktop (I'll now create a little mock-up on my own computer to show what I mean) there will be nothing in the taskbar but the port will sit just above the notification bar. It will extend its runway and have a light on top that will flash "green" for spaces available and "red" for no room. You then can go about purchasing a small vessel, then you assign a place for that vessel to go (another port, a colony, a space station, etc.) pick up materials at one price then take them back to your port, you then assign another ship to take the materials from your port to where they are needed.

As you go on you can upgrade the ships with weapons, engines, armed crew, etc. To help your chances. You can also upgrade your port to have more storage space, bigger run ways, etc.

There will be four different types of ship ranging from tiny (one manned or un manned), small (few crew and a few storage spaces), medium and then of course large.

These ships will come in all different shapes and uses, including people carriers, tankers, refrigerated units, etc. To comply with all the different products and goods that might need to be transported.

I want to have it as sort of a real world economy or real universe economy should I say, this will be hard to keep balanced but hey, it's space, it is hard anyway. So that means that I want "wants" and "needs" in the universe and you know if too many people ship to much of something the want for that item goes down, etc.

Mock Up -

This is a mock up, I'm not very good at pixel art and this is the best way to illustrate my point, you can see three run ways, etc. I don't know how the space port would look, but I would get an artists to knock up a few then probably get them built in 3d models and the ships of course or graphically, still unsure.

When you double click on the space port it brings up the menu with all the game options, to control sound, quit, restart, etc. and also in this menu there are tabs for port information (about ships and how much you’re making), there is import tab, export tab, buy/upgrade, etc. So that the player is in full control and can keep an eye on the market to make sure they are doing the right thing.

Is this a realistic way to go about it? I mean with the addition of random events and user controlled situations ("A young GELF pet as developed a skin condition" What do you do "kill it" "leave it" "try and heal it" "isolate it") and basically what you choose effects obviously what happens and how much credits you get, etc.

So what do you think? A) the idea as a game? B) 17th century or new universe?

Thanks for your help.>

Like other people have said,

The transport and trade in basic resources like minerals, and food, would be so low margin in the space colonization era. That it would only be viable for small timers taking advantage of short term market conditions, such as a drought on mars makes it profitable to ship food from earth to mars. Or the super transports trading in such vast quantities of goods that the transport costs become insignificant.

Most the trade between colonies would be in exotic, rare, and specialty goods.
So in that way you could come up with just a list of those goods and have the player trade solely in those.

Rather then being a bulk trader you could be an exotic goods merchant, bartering your way through the universe. You might pick up a rare martin peacock egg on mars, a case of champagne on earth and trade it for an gold disk of alien origin at the Phoebes mining colony. Which you then trade to the lunar xeno research lab for some AI chips and an upgrade to your shop to allow you to safely transport exotic particles.

Rapid prototyping machines are getting good enough to produce end line produces. Also these devices are getting cheaper and cheaper. A few years ago a low end one would cost around $30,000. There is a project called RepRap that has got the cost of one down to around $500 (but you have to assemble it yourself).

Part of what made RepRap so cheap is that it is designed to be able to make most of its own parts. So, if you have one you can make a second, then with those you can have four, then eight, then sixteen, thirty two and so on...

At the moment they can only print in plastic, but some have been able to print in metal, to make electrical circuit boards. If you extend this development 100 years in the future, then you are going to ahve self contained 3D printers that can make all their own parts and even make the parts for space stations, ships, and pretty much any object that you would need.

So shipping complete objects will not likely exist. There might be a small market for the few objects that could not be crafted with these kinds of machines (original works of art and such) and certain raw materials that are difficult or dangerous to produce locally.

Mostly the raw materials will be available locally (one of the plastics the Reprap can use can be made from certain plant starches called Polylactic Acid) so will not need to be shipped unless it is a very new colony.

As these 3d printers will be able to print their objects from a data file, then transmission of these data files will be an important trade.

As for organs and such, there are 3d printers that exist today that can print using cells grown in a vat and printed onto a scaffold of the organ (this is made from a biodegradable plastic - which, incidentally, is one the Reprap and print with) and then grown in an incubator (or just inserted into the patient).

This would be a much more efficient way of transmitting an organ from place to place. You would send the DNA sequence for the cell and insert that into a prepared cell (had the DNA stripped out of it) and then this new "hybrid" cell would be cloned (made into a stem cell) and grown in the vat. the organ would then be printed from the 3d Printer at the same time the cells form the vat would be incorporated into the organ. This would then be finally implanted into the recipient patient.

This could be used to create entirely new organs (how useful to space travel would an organ that could store oxygen for long periods and then release it as needed, or a an organ that allowed you to generate energy directly from sunlight like a plant), not just replace existing ones.

He who controls the spice, controls the universe.

Scarcity is key to creating a good game.

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Original post by Stangler He who controls the spice, controls the universe. Scarcity is key to creating a good game.

I would say that conflict is the key. Scarcity is just one way to create that conflict.

And I don't mean conflict as in combat, but as in there are two (or more) sides that disagree about something (whether it is who controls a region, or who gets the resource, or they want you dead and you want to live).

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Original post by Edtharan Quote: Original post by Stangler He who controls the spice, controls the universe. Scarcity is key to creating a good game. I would say that conflict is the key. Scarcity is just one way to create that conflict. And I don't mean conflict as in combat, but as in there are two (or more) sides that disagree about something (whether it is who controls a region, or who gets the resource, or they want you dead and you want to live).

Scarcity doesn't just help create a conflict, it also helps establish the nature of the conflict. For example: in Chess you have a scarce amount of resources; pieces. You are also fighting over a scarce resource; victory.

Edtharan, you have reduced my list down to three things!!!

DNA Codes
Data
3d Printers

I hate to be picky but if that is the case I think I should go for more of the romantic side, for this game is all about trading, and with three types of things to trade (apart from people and the raw materials) then it's not worth making or playing the game!

Has anybody else got any ideas, thanks thought Edtharan for the good source of knowledge.


Cheers.