This has probably been posted before so I apologise in advance as I only checked back so far, but can we have some kinda working economy in the game. The only thing that happens if you bulk sell something is that the price at the sell point drops. There's no supply and demand economy..well not on any real sense. Now I know there's gonna be those who have played since 2003 or whatever, and think that VO is a purely PvP game who come down on me for suggesting this, but it would flesh out the game I reckon. Do the devs have any plans in this direction? I'm not looking for anything like EVE far from it, just a working dynamic economy.

As far as I know it's a long term plan, but really you can't expect it to happen over night. An economy is a massive project to create, balance, and debug.

What are you asking for, exactly?

To write that there is "no supply and demand economy" is somewhat misleading; there currently is demand-side variability. There is no supply-side variability for anything you can purchase under the "Commodities" tab. Different commodities have different variability ranges in sell-price, different elasticity, and different rebound rates. Therefore, while it may be technically true that the "only" thing happening is a drop in sell price, it seems as though you are missing some of the finer details. What about items that are truly scarce, such as Hive drops, capship components, samoflange, etc?

Your argument needs to be defined and fleshed-out a little more. To me, there already is a working game economy, but there could be a number of improved facilitations.

Saying that we have a working game economy is about like saying that the USA doesn't have a two-party political system.

@Thoth: Yes, this has come up before. Also, just because people like PVP doesn't mean we're opposed to better economic stuff. We're just opposed to things that interfere with PVP, like letting traders have nigh-invincible ships, or making PVP prohibitively expensive. Personally, I think that implementing a more realistic economy and then linking it to convoy shipments would open up interesting new avenues for gameplay. Piracy would cause ripple effects, for example, and nationalist blockades could really hurt prices in the targeted territory.

All the pieces of a working economy are there. Perhaps they should behave differently, perhaps not. Who is to say what is "realistic" in VO's world? Canon doesn't preclude the possibility that anything purchased from a station might be printed from its constituent molecules, and not subject to scarcity.

I'm all for arguments toward a more player-centric model, but there needs to be a certain critical mass in playerbase before this happens. Disrupting supply chains might sound fun in theory (or maybe it's fun in practice; I've never played Eve), but I think VO is taking a good approach for its current size by having some items scarce, while ensuring a dedicated (or lazy) group of players doesn't "dry up" a given area in commodities.

I'm looking forward to the day when what Pizzasgood suggests becomes reality. I could argue that it's already there on one level (manufactured components), but I'll agree with the general thrust of the matter.

Be that as it may, trading on the commodities market remains a satisfying experience for me, and transporting scarce goods against the threat of piracy contains an element of "fun" risk. That's a pretty good job for an in-game economy. I get that some elements are 'faked', I'm just glad that when a VO player uses the word 'economy', s/he isn't referring to a cash shop.

Eve pundits, take it away.

All I'm asking is if the dev team have a plan for a more integrated economy within the constraints of the game. I've played EVE and yes blockades do work and it makes piracy AND smuggling a lot more interesting. I'm not asking for a huge intricate economy just something where prices rise and fall and as Pizzagood says player actions have an effect. Not trying to cause any problems its just a general enquiry. I already trade stuff like weapons and equipment to other players and theres a sort of basic player and guild led economy in Hive parts and Dent parts, so its of interest to me. I have played EVE and VO is way better so I don't want an economy that would impact what we already do.

As far as I know it's a long term plan, but really you can't expect it to happen within a decade and change.

Fixed.

+1 to beating the dead horse.

I'm not going to harp on the need for scarcity this round, but I will annoy a fair few purists about pleasure and incentives.

A number of years ago now, GS made some arguably needed changes to the way the economy works, effectively eliminating a bug that allowed players to sell many thousands (I forget what the station limits where at that time) of units of a given widget at maximum profit. You could literally make hundreds of millions of credits off of a single or double trade (it's always best to have a return trade item). Now, commodity trading is just silly unless you want to flutter around like a butterfly from station to station. I can make a good 10 million running an XC through all of the stations in Serco space if I wish. Grey space trade sucks ass imo. And for some reason, certain weapons trades have been left open to allowing players to rapidly profit off of generally safe, but heavy moves of cargo.

I'm not saying that we should go back to the old system. I AM saying that I had a damn good time hunting for and then milking the hell out of those old trades. I had an incentive to play, and an urgency to protect my route lest someone else come along and tank it before I made my sell. These days, I don't have any incentive to trade. I spend my time if I bother to log on, helping trident builders or building myself. Off topic I think, but manufacturing should be so much more than just tridents- and very rewarding.

Further, it did absolutely nothing to address the biggest complaint which was that traders were able to rack up huge profits in the near complete safety of nation space. So what was done? Well, GS put in a porn trade from Odia to the capital systems of Serco and Itani space that offered pretty good reward- but for the amount of work involved not really any better than could be gotten from the butterfly method. Less if you count the added risk. And then their are the weapons trades. High profits within the security of a single system. So in the end, the only people really crossing system borders to trade are new players who are working off their inherent disadvantages by building standing with proc missions and now trident builders for whom there are now enough trident pilots to ensure that really critical components are safely transported.

Many good suggestions were made along the way as to how to fix the economy, but the only things I've noticed being done have been changes as to which of the weapons items tank slowly enough to profit from.

An economy doesn't need to be wholly realistic to be fun. It needs the right incentives. What reward, what tickle to the pleasure center of the brain is going to make a player want to risk running cargo through dangerous territory when they can make as much or more in near perfect safety (unless they happen to be UIT).

/me gives the horse another swift kick and wanders off.

I think a more realistic economy will come about once player owned stations are introduced. Stations would serve as your storefront where players could sell anything they manufactured, mined, got from bots, or bought elsewhere. This could be even more dynamic on a guild level. The station would operate even when the player was offline. New achievements and badges could be added for profits made at your station.

Lol Borg Collective.

It's clear from your previous posts you're STILL stuck in the honeymoon stage in your relationship with VO. Snap out of it already.

You know why Mark Twain is my hero? He once said, "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt."

Have faith my friend. All that separates the dream from reality is time and money. I'm just choosing to be optimistic. Once this game becomes available on the iPhone a lot of opportunities will open to the devs. This game may be ten years old but I believe it's real potential is just around the corner.

Given enough money and enough players, a working economy develops on it's own. incarate didn't hire [TRI] to start a market on dent parts, they did it on their own. incarate didn't tell people that SSS was rare, he let people find it out when they built dents.
On Vendetta's next birthday I will split all my bot drops between all players I see, BTW.

To start getting a proper economy in place, we need to develop a consumption tree. That is what item(s) should be consumed to produce the next item in the tree. There would be multiple trees for military, commercial, and civilian uses. (e.g. combat, mining, exploration) We already have in place those items which stations normally have available. Say every 1 minute or so (debatable and definable) a consumption phase is run at all stations, which consume the items necessary to produce the items they would be selling. If those items are not present, the resulting item is not produced. We don't have to have a supply-side pricing model just yet at that point.

What's needed:
* Consumption tree for different branches of an economy
* Defined consumption phase which loops through each station's available inventory items for production
* Station item storage for sellable items. (essential, otherwise we'd see no difference)
* Supply-side pricing model (optional for now)

The reason the station inventory storage is last is because it's the most complicated (from a modification perspective - the entire station code would have to be modified to make it work. I believe this is why we haven't been able to get guild storage yet; it would by necessity be associated with the Station code class rather the Player class). Until that's in place, we really would see no changes at all in the economy. Once that's running, a supply-side pricing model could be implemented.

Ok so it ain't gonna happen. That's fair enough, I just wanted to know. It's seems that it's time for me to move on anyways. Can't be bothered with rats and griefers who now appear to be able to blast your ship in nation space with zero cost. But that's another thing. It's been a good ride and I will recommend it to anybody I know who wants a PvP game. Adios.

Erm, actually there are greater consequences now for attacking in nation space -- after making three kills within one week within one faction's station-sectors, we become temp-kos with that faction for 24 hours (even if we die). That system is enabled for all factions but Corvus, and it has inconvenienced me from time to time. Furthermore, the game now permits people who have been aggressed to defend themselves (or even hunt down and seek revenge) without taking a faction penalty for killing the other guy, and without the kill counting toward the 3/week limit.