So, we all know the Devs have started to implement drops from various hive vessels and whatnot. However, I'd like to throw a wrench in the whole works and suggest they make drops dynamic instead of static. Mostly because I'm a crochety old alpha tester and I don't want some knucklehead with two neurons and a spreadsheet program to put together a "this bot drops X at a Y percent rate with a z% chance of it covered in icky goo" for their buddies with only one neuron to look at so all the knuckleheads start bragging about their leet items.

What do I mean by "dynamic"? Well, make the hive conform to the laws of supply and demand. Completely. Say, the Leviathan in sector O-7 of Latos decides that its Queens need kneecaps. It takes over the sectors with the minerals needed to make the item "Queen's Kneecap" and has numerous fabber bots(Another suggestion in itself. Bots that make things, and when you kill them, drop what they were making and storing) fabricate 75 Queen's Kneecaps. The Kneecaps are then shipped to the Queens via Hive transports, and installed. Once installed, the Queens have a chance to drop the super duper item "Queen's Kneecaps", which prevents crochety old alphas like myself from falling over and breaking our brittle hips when we forget to snag our walkers.

Now, say the Leviathan is unable to secure the materials for making Queen's Kneecaps. Then the Queens don't get kneecaps, the kneecaps can't drop, and any mission that explicitly requires kneecaps to complete("Assist the Elderly, part MCXVII") requires you to buy Queen's Kneecaps from other players. Naturally, what the Hive needs to make things should never ever ever ever be given public, lest we have kapitalists capitalizing on the profession of, err, maintaining Hives.

Simply put, X shouldn't drop unless the Leviathan is able to A) Produce it, B) Ship it, and C) Have all the equipment necessary to equip the item on various hive ships. C is a bit iffy, because storage ships could be designed to hold parts the Leviathan(They would stay in its court, yet another reason to take down the big guy) wants to equip its minions with. Like, Queen's Kneecaps cost oodles, and Generic Raiding Party A manages to take down an entire Hive storage vessel full of them. That's a good two good ol' Constants to drag the Queen's Kneecaps back home and then set up shop.

Anyway, bees should have a dynamic economy too, instead of equipment being randomly spawned with Generic HiveMind NPC #2890455002. I.e. Hive equips should come from somewhere other than the Void too.

all these rules, sounds like it might make the server crash, look whats happened to deliverator without all these rules. when the computer has to think about all this stuff for thousands of bots, i dunno where that would take us.

other than that, awesome idea, though i think the materials required, etc would leak out of careful observation of where bots mine, what ships they send supplies to, etc.

edit: oh i just realised, ya know how they were saying that planets would serve to keep the player economy balanced... well what would keep this hive economy balanced?

This is a very good idea. Hopefully everything in-game will be supply and demand. 'Roids even need to be consumable in the future (with some sort of repleneshment, of course).

My only problem with your suggestion, is: How will having a Queen's Kneecap fix your old broken hip?

Majeeks.

Very nice idea. I'm all for it.

Bees

[Stamp of Approval]

They're rewriting the deliverator to be able to handle thousands of bots with scalable goodness anyway.

And, since I have nothing else to say, I think I'll slap a stamp of approval on my own thread

[Stamp of Approval]

I like. Sexytime!

i still wanna know what is going to keep this hive economy balanced. after all, the game world is small and it is possible if the economy is fully dynamic for people to break it. what's gonna keep it unbroken?

Those with vested economic interests will keep it running smoothly.

I love this idea. Scuba, will you marry me?

But aren't bots and things spawned only if a player is actually in the sector? I don't know if the game could handle keeping track of zillions of bots and their economic pursuits while keeping track of everything else. Correct me please if I'm wrong.

i think the devs said that they could simulate all that without actually having bots. pretty cool eh? i suppose someone could dig up a link, if they wanted.

This would really only be a facet of the dynamic economy. It just makes bots conform to supply and demand too(which they should). This sort of thing would probably be kept track by the Lisp portion of the Deliverator, and the actual commands and orders sent from the Leviathan processed in individual Erlang threads(Just going off the whole Deliverator complaining Incarnate was doing). Essentially, the Deliverator would keep a tally of what Hives have what raw materials, make a few decisions about how to best use those materials, and then order the relevant NPC's to do what they need to do to make it so.

And Lemming, sorry, but I'm already taken by the Empress.

We do intend the Hive to have a realistic economy just like all the human factions. I've had it in mind all along, so it won't be hard to put in place once I'm back to working on the economics system.

To clarify for SS9- the lisp portion of Deliverator will eventually not be responsible for any runtime tasks; it will just be responsible for turning the code written in our various domain-specific-languages into erlang. The shedding of responsibility is going to happen from the 'bottom' up, where the bottom is bot-senses/reflexes and the business-model definitions that comprise the economy are the 'top'.

Love the idea Stevie Boy.
BTW do you remember me from alpha?

[Stamp of Good Stuff to do List (Approved)]

That's quite nifty, Momerath.

And no, I don't Kirk. I have the memory span of a fruit fly with ADD. I don't even remember what I wrote in the original post of this thread, since I haven't read it over.

It's about insects.

I'm very sensitive to birds
I'm very sensitive to trees
I'm very sensitive to all these things
But I'm especially sensitive to bees
Yeah I really really really like bees

Have you ever walked outside
And noticed that they're really pretty cute?
They like to fly around and eat your fruit
But it's okay cause they're cute
Yeah it's okay cause they're cute

Bzz!
Ouch! Bzz!
Ouch Bzz Bzz Bzz Ouch!

I've heard some people say
That you can't count on a bee to pay
And they won't look you in the eye
And all they want to do is fly real high
But you gotta love 'em anyway
I don't care what they say anymore
Cause I really really do love bees
Yeah I really really really like bees

(don't tell anyone I sang along with you)

wow, I love that poem! Are you a poet?

Marzipan is the Poet Laureate.