I was excited to see some love being given to trade in the near future. As described the prototype economy at certain grey stations is much needed.

The way you have worded it however has me slightly concerned. "if you sell an item to the station, that it did not previously have, it will then offer one of them for sale. " Is this going to be item for item or just one out of however many you sell? And if it already had some of that item will it add what you sell to it's inventory and then lower the buy price due to the increased supply?

Because what I would extremely strongly suggest would be to make Nyrius F6 iirc one of these stations and allow players to sell fcp and ffsa there or even rba's. And then allowing the station to resell them at a higher price to the customer. This could be a great test and lead in to a DECENT player to player trading system. I would also strongly suggest making the conq stations dynamic. SS or sss would be excellent items for entrepreneurs to sell to the stations for a profit which could then be resold to trident builders.

I'm not going talk about the skin because it makes me angry, except to say that while I probably won't support their kickstarter, I will be watching for the game when it comes out so I can try it.

I'll be watching the updates for the implementation of the dynamic trading. I'll probably pop in to try it once it's in before going back to lurking here on the forums.

[EDIT: For any who haven't received the newsletter yet, this is what we're talking about ]

Is this going to be item for item or just one out of however many you sell?

Item for item. It would be pretty strange to only offer one item when you sold them a zillion. Yes, the station will re-sell them at a higher price to the customer. But, understand that the first implementation out of the gate may be a little rough.

I'm not going talk about the skin because it makes me angry, except to say that while I probably won't support their kickstarter, I will be watching for the game when it comes out so I can try it.

Why on earth does the skin make you angry? Jesus. I was just trying to add something fun, to inspire people to help them out. We're doing some pre-load stuff with a big OEM, where I need to give them an "item valued at $5", so I figured we'd add some purchasable skins, and this seemed to fit into that. It'll be generally purchasable later anyway, it's not a permanent exclusive.

Thanks for the answer. I don't expect the first roll out to be perfect, but it is definitely heading in the right direction for trade.

I'm angry because I am selfish. Being able to customize ship ships with skins should be available in Vendetta along with color choice for all ships. I understand perfectly why we don't have this and would much rather see you guys working on more important aspects of the game. However, seeing that this was being offered for another game, and the potential skin is actually one that I think looks good rather than the camo which I don't personally care for, I had a wtf moment reading that part of your announcement. The skin choice makes perfect sense as a way of offering something for players here to have a reason to make a contribution to this new game.

I am glad to hear that this and other skins will be purchasable in the future.

Otherwise, it's exciting to read about the long term conquerable territory and player owned stations with the ability to have and use bots.

Yay! Now I won't have to horde heaps of hive bot garbage because I know other players want to buy it anymore!

Maybe he's angry because, despite paying for this game's premium sub month after month, you guys haven't added any new ship skins to replace a any of the really ugly-looking old ones since over a year ago when the new Vulture came out.

Edit: lol, timing.

Maybe he's angry because, despite paying for this game's premium sub month after month, you guys haven't added any new ship skins to replace a any of the really ugly-looking old ones since over a year ago when the new Vulture came out.

I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here. We're adding a whole new skin system to make this kind of thing a manageable prospect.

The stuff we've done in the past, with custom textures for each ship, and custom variants for every texture, is not manageable. In fact, it really kind of sucks.

We did some of the basic work a year or so ago, but we never completed a whole skin-system, because we had other priorities. But, when gigantic-well-known-electronics-company offered me a pre-load in exchange for a $5 "item" for their users, I figured a skin would be a better idea than $5 worth of crystal or whatever. So, we're going to implement a skin system.

As a result of that, it made sense as a way to help out the EverSpace KS as well.

If we're actually able to create this system (which should be pretty straightforward), there will be tons more variation, and skins, and so on. I'm just pre-allocating a little of it in advance.

So, yes, it's the first new skin that's been seen in awhile. But think of it as a harbinger of our generally having a lot more ship variation options.

Well shoot, why didn't you say that in the newsletter? A lot of the ships are in dire need of a new paint job at the very least.

Re: EverSpace. I like that they put the Mac and Linux ports up to the first stretch goal. :)

The more words in any given newsletter, the less people read it. They have to be kind of short-and-sweet, or at least as much as possible. So, I try to pare down to the essentials.

Cool? I suppose. Ultimately, when I think of VO, I think of the sandbox and the player to player interactions. I want MORE tools for P2P interactions...not more tools for P2NPC interactions. How will this new system account for market changes and demand changes? I remember selling IHDPCs for 2 mil a pop when the upgrade went live. Then, over time, it stabilized to an avg 350,000cr. How will this new npc system accommodate for this? Who decides how much FFSA is worth?

I'd really like a developer comment on my marketplace idea thread: https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/30053

New tools like the ones suggested within that thread could greatly improve the user experience for both vets and newbies.

The point of these economic changes are not a black and white division of "player to player" transactions vs "player to npc" transactions. The mechanics of the economy are applicable to all circumstances. We have to make those mechanics.. work. "Keeping it simple" helps us make new-stuff work more quickly.

The initial implementation will just be a replication of what we already have, but with a finite Supply, an accurate inventory within the station, and the potential for a station to actually run out of goods.

Stations run by NPC factions will determine their pricing much as they always have, with a heuristic based on quantity available, and pricing bounds that we determine.

Player-owned stations, would eventually have entirely different mechanics of pricing, and allow the owning player to make determinations.. but this is all pretty early. We need to make the simple stuff work first.

I've also replied to your Suggestions post, but basically the mission system was designed to resolve the issues of player-to-player and/or player-to-NPC manufacturing and trade, on a large scale. What we call the "mission system" is a generic concept, I don't mean that every purchased good requires going off to shoot a bot somewhere.. I mean the transactions are posted to a dynamic, sortable area that people can drill into to find what they're looking for.

Nice update.

Seems like it'd be good to test in nation space first where it's more of a stable environment, then slowly roll it out in grey where it'll be over-run/exploited but what do I know.

Good luck!

The concern is having the haywire economy impact newbies who get confused as to why the station is out of something.

Generally speaking, I am more comfortable testing things in areas where it's more likely to face more-experienced players.

I don't think it's confusing to a new player that a station would be out of something, but I understand it would be frustrating if you've started a game and you can't find guns in any stations or can't find power cells or whatever.

If you're more comfortable testing on more experienced players, why not make limited supply apply only to items above a certain license level at all stations. So newbies will always be able to find the guns and supplies they want, but it will actually present a challenge to the vets. Then you can look at making the system apply universally later.

I don't understand what's to gain from having a few stations with limited supply in greyspace if other places have unlimited, people will just be waiting to tank prices to extract credits from the station and everyone else will buy from the remaining limitless supply stations. You might be testing the stability of the system, but you're not really testing the impact of the game mechanics at the same time when vets probably won't mind if you do.

mmm i think i will be back to shoot voys again to make sure i wont run out of supplies.

Interesting...

I'm also of the opinion that although letting vets test this stuff first doesn't really give you a good test case, but I guess I get why you would prefer this to confusing the hell out of new players. Anyway, carry on, as long as I can still buy a gun a ship and a powercell it wont affect me in the slightest.

Will the rendering engine becoming default have a negative impact on us people who have crappy outdated hardware?

Just a guess here, but I'm guessing even if DX11 or OGL4 is default, it will fall back on, or you will be able to choose the older renderer if needed features are not supported.

I really cannot see a reason not to keep the *legacy" drivers available. I could be wrong though, so don't quote me.

@TheRedSpy: I partially agree with you, but I have two points about why this way is better at first. For one, like you said, stability. If they apply it to all high-end gear and it breaks, then everybody would be limited to low-end junk until they fix it. Doing it in grey-only means that most people can just go back up to nation space to resupply until it gets fixed. The other reason to do it grey-only at first is that I doubt this initial implementation will actually include any way for stations to be supplied. Sure, players can sell guns to a station, but where do the guns come from? Other stations. They can't make all stations have finite supplies unless they finish the supply-chain manufacturing stuff so that stations can produce their goods from the raw materials we can actually mine, or unless they temporarily add magic resupply vectors (e.g. have convoys continue generating cargo from nothing, but then have them deliver that cargo into the station's inventory when they dock).

Drops.

The guns come from bot drops, and any high level guns that aren't bot drops should be added as bot drops in the interim.

It's not as good as having the station produce goods from raw materials, because it cuts out mining and we want miners to have a role too, but in the interim it makes a real supply/demand economy based around botting.

You wouldn't get that at all if you left infinite supplies on in some stations, but I see an argument for turning off infinite supplies on all high level stations but one or two because that would create a trade choke point that would be good for blockades and piracy.

Arguably you'll get the same effect anyway if you consider that only some drops are obtainable in certain systems but traders will want to move them out of those systems for extra $$$.

The next step would be phasing out drops of certain weapons in favour of station manufacturing when supply of minerals is satisfied to give miners the roll, but that sounds like more work than just adding a few weapons to drop lists and letting people discover where the best botting is.

I'm gonna go to Sedina during a fur ball and buy all the guns and sell them to the combatants at a slightly raised price