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question about "Locally Produced" item tag
Items can have a tag marking them as "Locally Produced", and according to the recent november newsletter, some items required this tag for the dynamic station economy to function.
My question is, what does that tag actually change about the item functionality-wise? Back in your 2016 interview with the space game junkies, you mentioned something about stations actually creating items as long as their stock of something else was high enough to be consumed, i think - is that the intended system? If it were, though, I don't see how that would matter to the dynamic stations...
My question is, what does that tag actually change about the item functionality-wise? Back in your 2016 interview with the space game junkies, you mentioned something about stations actually creating items as long as their stock of something else was high enough to be consumed, i think - is that the intended system? If it were, though, I don't see how that would matter to the dynamic stations...
So, this is a complicated question to answer, and we've made a great deal of behind-the-scenes changes over the last year, some of which I quickly forget, but I'll try to do an overview response..
First of all, as you're aware, there are two different economies "live" right now: the older "demand" driven economy that's a bit "fake" when it comes to item supply, versus the newer fully-dynamic supply-side system that's only in usage in the Latos system.
Both of them have always had Locally Produced flags, and they mean different things depending on the economy back-end.
At the same time, both economies are fully live across the entire game, which means that depending on where you are geographically, there's an "apparent" economy and also a "shadow" economy, which is hidden and not in usage.. for economic purposes.
But both economies are in usage for the purposes of things like triggering Trade Convoys to fulfill Trade Missions that have no been taken by players within X amount of time. This aspect is primarily driven by the "new" supply-side economy, which even though it's only used in Latos from an actual "exposed economic number" perspective, the supply-side system is still fully utilized throughout the whole galaxy. That's why there are like 16,000 convoys per day, everywhere, and not just a whole bunch in Latos.. because they're fulfilling missions that only they can see, for an economy that only exists for them, outside of Latos.
This give us a means of testing a complex system in a production environment, while still being careful about staging the actual release to only impact limited areas at a time.
Earlier this year we were having problems with items not being supplied to Latos stations that were ordering them. For instance, "Outer Hull Plate" was never showing up. The reason why, was simply that, as a rule, the Supply-side economy currently only issues orders from stations that Locally Produce a given item. There's a much longer discussion about why this is.. we've had some other heuristics and algorithms at various points, that used "distance priority" and "pricing priority" metrics and other things. But part of the juggling act here is to fulfill the goals of making convoys make economic sense (good prices, reasonable delivery times) which also not having explosions of convoys suddenly crop up in places that have a great price on a particular item.
So, anyway, the issue with "Outer Hull Plate", for example, was it was not locally produced anywhere. It just had never been defined as a Locally Produced good. There were already stations in UIT space that were where the local production was intended, but the flag had never been applied. Therefore, the item could never be "ordered" and delivered by NPCs, since the Trade Missions would only be taken by a station that had Local Production of the given item.
So, as a result, "Outer Hull Plate" would run out in Latos stations, unless players happened to fulfill the Trade Missions, or randomly choose to sell it there.
Thus, we had to fix a whole bunch of newer items (a lot of manufactured stuff) that had no Local Production facilities, and that was part of what made the Latos system work a bit better (there's also a whole related discussion about how convoys were being triggered, that I'm not going to go into, but there was a lot of algorithm testing around that).
Your larger question is about what I said on that podcast, in terms of content being manufactured by the station. That is true, within the newer Supply-side economy, stations have a "construction" mechanic around Locally Produced goods, and there is a rule system for their assembly and sale based on meeting the inventory needs of the station, as well as the availability of component goods. This allows for the possibility of stations being unable to make major goods (like, say, "Outer Hull Plate") because the required component "ingredients" are not available. Which creates more ramifications to things like blockades and the like.
But, I'm a little fuzzy on the current state of that system, right now, because it hasn't been a major focus for us.. we've been mainly focused on just getting the economy to self-balance reasonably well, which is all about convoys and price-escalation and so on. Most meaningful goods have some Local Production in Nation space, which means their likelyhood of being attacked or blockaded is low (although the routes themselves could be pirated, obviously). It also means they're still using the older Demand based economy, with infinite Supply, so Local Production isn't likely to be a problem for them at the moment. But, it doesn't rule out the possibility of grayspace stations having Production be interrupted, and that then triggering convoys from further afield (like Nation Space).
So, while the Local Production / Construction system does exist, I don't have a lot of detail about the state of that right now, and I'm not going to bug Ray about it at the moment. But, you can assume it will become more relevant down the road, as we expand the Latos economy to include more systems, and especially as we're looking at player-constructed stations and the like (which are intended to be able to bolt-into the Supply-side economy, even potentially including specialty player-Manufactured goods, which may be unique to the particular player in some way, like "branding").
Anyway, in closing, the Local Production fix was not as exciting as it might have seemed, based on your question, but it was an important bug fix that caused a lot of the delivery mechanics to start working properly, and it does bear on where the economy will go in the future.
First of all, as you're aware, there are two different economies "live" right now: the older "demand" driven economy that's a bit "fake" when it comes to item supply, versus the newer fully-dynamic supply-side system that's only in usage in the Latos system.
Both of them have always had Locally Produced flags, and they mean different things depending on the economy back-end.
At the same time, both economies are fully live across the entire game, which means that depending on where you are geographically, there's an "apparent" economy and also a "shadow" economy, which is hidden and not in usage.. for economic purposes.
But both economies are in usage for the purposes of things like triggering Trade Convoys to fulfill Trade Missions that have no been taken by players within X amount of time. This aspect is primarily driven by the "new" supply-side economy, which even though it's only used in Latos from an actual "exposed economic number" perspective, the supply-side system is still fully utilized throughout the whole galaxy. That's why there are like 16,000 convoys per day, everywhere, and not just a whole bunch in Latos.. because they're fulfilling missions that only they can see, for an economy that only exists for them, outside of Latos.
This give us a means of testing a complex system in a production environment, while still being careful about staging the actual release to only impact limited areas at a time.
Earlier this year we were having problems with items not being supplied to Latos stations that were ordering them. For instance, "Outer Hull Plate" was never showing up. The reason why, was simply that, as a rule, the Supply-side economy currently only issues orders from stations that Locally Produce a given item. There's a much longer discussion about why this is.. we've had some other heuristics and algorithms at various points, that used "distance priority" and "pricing priority" metrics and other things. But part of the juggling act here is to fulfill the goals of making convoys make economic sense (good prices, reasonable delivery times) which also not having explosions of convoys suddenly crop up in places that have a great price on a particular item.
So, anyway, the issue with "Outer Hull Plate", for example, was it was not locally produced anywhere. It just had never been defined as a Locally Produced good. There were already stations in UIT space that were where the local production was intended, but the flag had never been applied. Therefore, the item could never be "ordered" and delivered by NPCs, since the Trade Missions would only be taken by a station that had Local Production of the given item.
So, as a result, "Outer Hull Plate" would run out in Latos stations, unless players happened to fulfill the Trade Missions, or randomly choose to sell it there.
Thus, we had to fix a whole bunch of newer items (a lot of manufactured stuff) that had no Local Production facilities, and that was part of what made the Latos system work a bit better (there's also a whole related discussion about how convoys were being triggered, that I'm not going to go into, but there was a lot of algorithm testing around that).
Your larger question is about what I said on that podcast, in terms of content being manufactured by the station. That is true, within the newer Supply-side economy, stations have a "construction" mechanic around Locally Produced goods, and there is a rule system for their assembly and sale based on meeting the inventory needs of the station, as well as the availability of component goods. This allows for the possibility of stations being unable to make major goods (like, say, "Outer Hull Plate") because the required component "ingredients" are not available. Which creates more ramifications to things like blockades and the like.
But, I'm a little fuzzy on the current state of that system, right now, because it hasn't been a major focus for us.. we've been mainly focused on just getting the economy to self-balance reasonably well, which is all about convoys and price-escalation and so on. Most meaningful goods have some Local Production in Nation space, which means their likelyhood of being attacked or blockaded is low (although the routes themselves could be pirated, obviously). It also means they're still using the older Demand based economy, with infinite Supply, so Local Production isn't likely to be a problem for them at the moment. But, it doesn't rule out the possibility of grayspace stations having Production be interrupted, and that then triggering convoys from further afield (like Nation Space).
So, while the Local Production / Construction system does exist, I don't have a lot of detail about the state of that right now, and I'm not going to bug Ray about it at the moment. But, you can assume it will become more relevant down the road, as we expand the Latos economy to include more systems, and especially as we're looking at player-constructed stations and the like (which are intended to be able to bolt-into the Supply-side economy, even potentially including specialty player-Manufactured goods, which may be unique to the particular player in some way, like "branding").
Anyway, in closing, the Local Production fix was not as exciting as it might have seemed, based on your question, but it was an important bug fix that caused a lot of the delivery mechanics to start working properly, and it does bear on where the economy will go in the future.
I always wondered what meaning the tag had to the economy and if it impacted prices. I started playing about 2 years ago now and I still don't understand how the old economy really works very well. Every time I started to develop any theory, like oh, I haven't seen this particular commodity anywhere except this one station so logic made me think it must be rare and therefore in high demand but I can't find good prices for it anywhere in the verse. The new economy does seem to make more logical sense to me though from what I've seen so far.