[Kenshi 2] A Better Economy

[Spankahontis]

I know this is allot to ask, but I feel this was one of Kenshi's weaknesses of the few it had. I felt it wasn't properly fleshed out due to time constraints?

A Living, Breathing Economy
- Price of Goods in Settlements need to fluctuate, what was a Bargain before can increase in price a week later? The price goes up and down on all items weekly.

- Proper Shops, Playable Characters staff a shop and sell your goods.
-- Shops need prerequisites to be met, Building Size, Food Basket, Shop Counter, Bed to sleep on etc. Or the Shopkeeper Job wont activate?
-- They take a small commission to buy their own food from the profits they make, sustaining themselves.
-- Every Business has it's own Prerequisites, you don't just have to be a Merchant Shop selling your loot.
-- Build a Blacksmith (Meeting the Prerequisites.. Large House, 2 Squad Members, Smithy (Requires Character with Lvl 10+ Weaponsmith/Armoursmith to activate Job), right storage, 2xbeds, shop counter (Requires Character with Speechcraft Lvl10+).
-- Build a Bakery
-- Build a Bar/Brewery/Pub/Restaurant
-- Build a Pottery/Robotics.. Be the Trader Character you want to be in your playthrough.

A New Skill.. Speechcraft.

-- You can haggle with shopkeepers, entering a dialogue with the shopkeeper, every time you try to get a favourable deal, there is a percentage chance you can drop the price, if you fail? you pay more. But the more you try the more your speechcraft skills goes up, making it easier to sweet talk the shop owner for a better deal next time.
Eventually.. a high level Speechcraft will see you get significant discounts, reduce greatly your chance of failure, even improve relations with factions by talking with them, unlocking new dialogue opening new possibilities in the game, being able to manipulate people for profit, new recruits, power or simply survival when you're in a tight spot (Sweet talk your jailer into letting you out of chains paired with high Stealth "Judo Chop*).

Better Mining/Agriculture Mechanics

- Regions need to have resources that only that Faction makes. Everywhere else? it's expensive or high demand so the opportunity to maximize profits!!
-- You pretty much have areas where there is an abundance of a certain metal anyway, so just need to make it more spread out.. Take advantage of that.
-- Late game technology in underground mining will unlock metals that are rare in that region trapped deep below the surface allowing your city to be more self-sustaining reducing even eliminating your dependence on outside trade.
-- You also can't grow Rice in dry areas or Wheat in damp areas, so until you can unlock Hydroponics technology, regions with no water make only desert foods, where wet areas make wet foods. Certain animals are only native to certain regions (Which you have in Kenshi) But you can only buy food items/Animal Skins that are native to THAT region. Foreign foods are brought in from neighbouring regions via trade caravans are more expensive.
-- These rare items can be raided, the more say for example Rice Bowls Travelling Merchants deliver to a city that demand Rice Bowls? The less you will get when you trade the same product until the resource sink clears the resource from consumption by nobles that can afford these luxury foods.
BUT, If you have a party of raiders and you decide to attack these trade caravans, steal their produce? you stop these rare items reaching their destination, they will cost more to Import! You fill that gap, selling what you stole and making the profit.
So there is some market manipulation in the game.
-- Food Spoils, food is no longer immortal. You have 4 stage process for Food.. Fresh >> Rotten >> Decomposing >> Gone!! (Despawned).

Once food is made, it's set on a timer, if not consumed or sold in time it enters stage 2 'Rotten' and becomes inedible for Shek/Human Races (Unless you're a specific race like Hive, animal, Fishmen etc.).
Again, failure after that to consume, it enters stage 3 Decomposing where not even Hive or animals will touch it. Stage 4 is just a despawn, removing it from your inventory.
It's this race against the clock that makes trade in this commodity either Extremely Profitable or Wasted Profit So the high reward should encourage players to make the gamble, matched only by selling High-Tech goods that are highly coveted.
-- Made easier in the Late stages of the Tech Tree.. Unlock the Technology 'Refrigeration' to store your foods to keep them fresh longer, maybe even a future tech to make them last indefinitely so your Faction doesn't overproduce food only to go to waste.

[Aufstandsboxer]

These are great suggestions. However I think having special required conditions for certain shops would feel unauthentic, since noone needs to be able to produce a good in order to sell it. Having the shop counter be a work station and not just another container would be perfect and the character assigned to it should indeed develop a speech skill or something.
I personally wouldn't want it to be too complex though since trading is an essential part of any playthrough but not every player wants to focus that much on trading. For some it's core gameplay for others just a mere tool to aquire food or weapons.

[Spankahontis]

These are great suggestions. However I think having special required conditions for certain shops would feel unauthentic, since noone needs to be able to produce a good in order to sell it. Having the shop counter be a work station and not just another container would be perfect and the character assigned to it should indeed develop a speech skill or something.
I personally wouldn't want it to be too complex though since trading is an essential part of any playthrough but not every player wants to focus that much on trading. For some it's core gameplay for others just a mere tool to aquire food or weapons.

It would be nice to have the choice though, you still have to survive first and be good enough to acquire what wealth you can to use that experience you acquire from constant scrimping and saving to start your own business in a United City or other faction. Set up a Bakery or your own blacksmith.

There would still be a degree of spawning when it comes to the local economy, every shopper or shop owners wallet refilling every day (depending on their class status).
But items that are rare, like a desert faction getting food you can only get in say 'the Swamps', that should come in via external influence like trade caravans. This is where the economy can be manipulated by the player, raid the caravans, they receive less of that rare import and the price goes up.
Shops will never run out of local food/produce.. The game engine will maintain a supply of this every day/week by spawning it in the inventory (Like Kenshi already does). But this gives the trader playthrough more immersion and influence over the economy.

Or better still? Like you can hire Mercenaries to guard your settlements, you can hire Travelling Merchants to sell your products to other Factions? They are given a months wages, place all your products in their inventory and order them to go from town to town until they've sold all your wares and they will return for new orders.

[swillo]

Most of what you suggest your already able to do in Kenshi 1.
You can build any kind of shop you want and sell commodities like booze, food, fabrics ect…,
The only thing that keeps this from being an automated thing is the lack of money the people in town have. If their money would replenish then they would stop in every day and buy things. Currently however they usually run out of money after the first purchase and never get more.

You can already sell your goods to traveling merchants. And they will travel else ware. What would be a good addition is if they would sell those things and return with more money to buy more of your stuff.

And the system already gives bonuses to selling things the farther way you take them to sell. And all things like rice weed, and wheat are more prevalent in certain areas as opposed to others and prices reflect that as well.

[Spankahontis]

Most of what you suggest your already able to do in Kenshi 1.
You can build any kind of shop you want and sell commodities like booze, food, fabrics ect…,
The only thing that keeps this from being an automated thing is the lack of money the people in town have. If their money would replenish then they would stop in every day and buy things. Currently however they usually run out of money after the first purchase and never get more.

You can already sell your goods to traveling merchants. And they will travel else ware. What would be a good addition is if they would sell those things and return with more money to buy more of your stuff.

And the system already gives bonuses to selling things the farther way you take them to sell. And all things like rice weed, and wheat are more prevalent in certain areas as opposed to others and prices reflect that as well.

Only the shops are never manned, which I've felt is pretty non-immersive.
That they just walk in, put money on the table and walk out with what they want and NOT be tempted to steal it?

From playing X4 Foundations, it's been extremely complicated for Egosoft to create a fully simulated economy where 95% of everything is either mined by ships, grown, manufactured, and then bought and sold to factories.
The Factions still have unlimited wallets to buy what they want so it's not entirely self-sufficient.
But doing something like X3 where factories are spawned/despawned to give the impression of businesses going out of business or being started.
And freighters spawning with goods to deliver to stations to keep the supply and demand going.
I feel that Kenshi 1 does this in a certain regard, but not perfectly.
The X4 way would take way too many resources and manpower to put through, took Egosoft over 10 years to get to this stage, and it still needs tinkering with.

But an Export Economy where Shopkeepers have 2 Budgets the one where they have a buy cap for Player Purchases (Which Kenshi 1 already has).
And a second budget where they have an unlimited wallet or a large one that refreshes every 2 days that buys exotic goods from trade caravans.
This could also effect prices of home grown products as well.

The more Exports they get? The cheaper their Imports become?
If you were to raid the Caravans and stop them coming in? Then the prices of home grown produce increases?
You may not even need to personally effect the Caravans yourself for this to happen, a Caravan could end up walking into a nest of Beak Things and be ripped to shreds which effect the prices.
There would obviously be a cap to how much they are allowed to charge for an import/export product.
But would be nice to enter a market and find they have a robotic limb for sale when 8 out of 10 times they wouldn't.

I don't know how caravans and spawnage across the continent of Kenshi works? If you're in the Hook is there a caravan heading to Bad Teeth that you don't see? A Basic tree falls across the World, does it make a sound?

In X3 and X4, you couldn't create every ship, every station, every asteroid that would crash the game. So instead you can see on the Map Interface, ships existing, doing their daily tasks as dots on a map screen. If you were to catch up to that ship on the other side of the Universe, that ship would exist when you get close to it.
I don't know if Caravans in Kenshi do the same thing? Or everything just spawns around you except for settlements, nests, unique locations.
Cause I noticed how bandits and animals can just appear and attack you? That comes off as having an area of effect where units spawn around the player?
Let me know about that as I would be interested to know?

[Elowrzud]

So you ask about features from The Guild 3 with living and growing city and population. This would be great actually I could worship this game if this would be possible. But they will never add it

[heu3becteh]

I think the game can realistically benefit from adding some concepts like price/supply/demand and logistics. Especially during the late gameplay, it can possibly occupy player for whatever amount of time to manage the world economy.

At least caravans should be more reasonable. At least they should have some money and different types of goods.