More in-depth and reactive economy.

[Severinshot]

I think it would be awesome to see NPCs wielding the weapons and armor you have created. The prices could be set by you and the demand for those items could be based on your reputation and skill.


Also, the prices of things in shops should react to supply and demand. If I go around and wipe out all the traders I see, I want to see the economy react.

Wandering traders would also be awesome.

All-in-all, the more detail placed in this game will multiply the level of awesomeness.

[Mattk50]

from chris's early musings on the subject of ai interaction with the player, this is the eventual hope.

Something like this would take quite a bit of mental exercise and hard work though. And it would seriously impact the performance on the game, especially if the game scales up in size.

[Narstein]

Being able to set up outposts id like to see the ability to rent buildings/beds to roaming NPC's. Also in your own town management to be able to set medics who after automatically defending the outpost to heal the wounded and take those who collapse to beds. It would also be nice to set certain defenders to gates, for example I have 20 squad members and 2 gates. When enemy NPC's move within a certain radius of that gate 5 set squad members move to a gate and prepare to defend, then they heal up and go back to their jobs. It would also be good to have set places where people on jobs take their stuff, or pick it up from therefore making better use of the storage chests.

[Squidcod]

I would like to +1 the dynamic economy.

For a game to include trading and shopkeeping as a listed feature, this is a MUST.
It adds depth to the trading aspect and makes flooding the market with your towns single product output much less profitable.

[PnzrNorm]

For the record, trading and shopkeeping worked flawlessly prior to recent patches that removed wandering caravans and some of the shopkeepers.

I would also like to see a sprawling, world-wide economy with all the bells and whistles.
Thinking about this from a design perspective, expanding the economy to become more dynamic would allow the player to directly affect the inventories of not only the shopkeepers, but also the guards, civilians, and other NPCs in the town and/or faction, which (in my opinion) would give the player the satisfaction of seeing their char's crafting and trading skills directly alter the Kenshi-verse.

User Case:

• Player brings Char X laden with a variety of goods to the nearby town
  Char X sells weapons, armor, and trade goods to Merchant Y, whom is a member of Faction D
  X then sells the rest of his weapons, armor, and trade goods to Merchant Z, whom is a member of Faction G
  At the end of the work day (or whenever shopkeepers refresh their inventory), Merchants Y and Z would have inventories filled with their default goods (in coding this can be denoted by the "Manufactured By" variable/tag or a new variable that denotes these specific goods are default in this shopkeeper's inventory), and they now have these goods from a different manufacturer
  During the time period when the merchants refresh their inventory, if a merchant's inventory contains goods that are not there by default, then special things will happen depending on the items in question (in this case they both have new weapons, armor, and trade goods)

To set a few variables for the following formula, each weapon has a value corresponding to their weight (measured in kg, so let's label it KG), and there is a certain Strength value a char must be equal to or greater than in order to be able to wield this weight with moderate ease (let's label this S).
Don't forget the previous variables: Merchants Y and Z belong to Factions D and G, respectively.

Formula for Distribution of Player-Sold Goods:
Test Case for Weapons:

• Y has several new weapons in his/her inventory, each having some value KG
  When inventory refresh occurs, each weapon is sequentially copied to a unique, invisible, temporary slot (in coding this is known as a temp value, which I will call W) and is ordered from highest KG value to lowest
  Then some system will search for and list all nearby chars that are members of Faction D (the merchant's faction) ordered from highest Strength value to lowest
  Starting with the highest Strength value char first and the 1st W in sequence (i.e. with the highest KG value first), the char's Strength value must be greater than or equal to S, which is the Strength value required to wield this weapon such that the "Attack Speed" and "Block Speed" (or other parameters) are higher than certain thresholds (i.e. the char is able to wield the weapon with "moderate ease"), and S can be found using a formula which calls the KG value of W
  If the char's Strength stat is not greater than or equal to S, then remove this W (i.e. delete it from the Kenshi-verse) and proceed to the next W in sequence (in coding this is called popping a stack, but this data structure would likely be too restrictive for the purposes of ordering from highest to lowest, etc.)
  If the char's Strength stat is greater than or equal to S, then W is compared to the weapon the char has currently equipped (when I say "compared", I'm not sure how to elaborate further on that since different weapon classes have different bonuses and penalties, so it would take more discussion to fine tune this system rather than just comparing damage values), and if W is more favourable, then replace the currently equipped weapon with W
  Should the currently equipped weapon be less favourable, then proceed to the next char in sequence until W is removed from the stack either by equipping it to a char or by reaching a point in the list of chars such that their Strength stat is no longer greater than or equal to S

This system could also apply to the armor sold to Y and Z, and the system would also affect Z although it would generate a list of chars that are members of G rather than D.

For Trade Goods, I think a much simpler system could be utilised.
Test Case for Trade Goods:

• Y's inventory contains Trade Goods that are not a part of the default inventory at the time of inventory refresh
  These Trade Goods are pushed to a temp stack (I say stack for this case because there is no specific order necessary)
  Starting from the head (or top) of the stack, each Trade Good's value is compared to the Avg Price (assuming that the Avg Price is the Trade Good's value averaged across every town/shopkeeper in the world, and its value is the price at the current town/shopkeeper)
  If the value is higher than the Avg Price, then the player would receive positive relations with Merchant Y, Faction D, and the town in which Y resides. This represents "feeding a shortage" or "satisfying high demand"
  If the value is lower than the Avg Price, then the player would receive negative relations with Merchant Y, Faction D, and the town in which Y resides. This represents "saturating the market" since the Trade Good is already high in supply and low in demand
  Once the Trade Good is compared and relations are changed, pop it from the stack (remove it from the Kenshi-verse), lower the value of this type of Trade Good in the local economy by some value (which can be either arbitrary or produced by a complex economical formula that takes into account all the different aspects of the local town as well as nearby towns, such as producer structures, consumers, frequency of trade caravans, etc.)

This Trade Goods system would allow the player to produce a decent amount of goods for profit (by allowing the player to sell multiple stacks of the same good at a set value before the inventory refresh occurs), but it would prevent the player from amassing a single product without pissing the town/faction off by destroying their local economy.
This system could also be appended to the end of the previously mentioned Weapons & Armor system to allow weapons and armor to have fluctuating prices as well as affection diplomatic relations (perhaps certain factions like or don't like certain types of weapons or armor, thus allowing weapon and armor sales to affect relations in the same way as goods).

[Hatsune_Neko]

For the record, trading and shopkeeping worked flawlessly prior to recent patches that removed wandering caravans and some of the shopkeepers.

I wouldn't say that. for even when they did work they still had issues and the over time they would stop trading altogether and stand out in front of your base.

[PnzrNorm]

I wouldn't say that. for even when they did work they still had issues and the over time they would stop trading altogether and stand out in front of your base.

But at least the few issues with their pathfinding could be fixed by Rebuilding the NavMesh.
Now Rebuilding the NavMesh causes all chars inside buildings to freeze in position and traders no longer exist.
I guess I had poor word choice when I meant, "The grass is greener on the side we just left ".

[Squidcod]

If anything the one at a time declining value is more accurate.
Yes we have a shortage of rum, no we don't need enough rum that we could drink it continuously for 3 years straight.
Not only is it more accurate, but it works better with the current inventory system.
Pumping out ridiculous amounts of a single product should not be profitable. It should flood the market and drop all the prices and screw your future production over.
That said, I would very much like the ability to stack sell so I don't have to click 15 times for each product, but I think it should take that into account (probably with a tooltip displaying net per item faction/sale)

[PnzrNorm]

If anything the one at a time declining value is more accurate.
Yes we have a shortage of rum, no we don't need enough rum that we could drink it continuously for 3 years straight.

This is more accurate, but I stuck with the idea that the prices would decline at "the end of the day" when inventory refreshes, because this represents the shopkeepers taking inventory of not only their stock but also "researching the stock of the whole town".
Each time you buy or sell an item IRL, the shopkeeper isn't going to tell you that the price changes from each item to the next.
The movement of larger volumes of product presents a much more significant effect on the economy,

That said, I would very much like the ability to stack sell so I don't have to click 15 times for each product, but I think it should take that into account (probably with a tooltip displaying net per item faction/sale)

Shift + LMB sells whole stacks of items if possible.

[Squidcod]

Omg i thought i tried that combo...

Anyhow...

Ideally in a dynamic economy they wouldn't refresh at the end of the day, they would be continuously producing and consuming like an outpost. Artificial constant leaks would make sense for some things, but otherwise the concept of midnight being important should not be a thing.

[Squidcod]

The economy of larger volumes is a computer age thing. Imagine it more like a swap meet, you go to a staall and try to sell someone twenty tetris cartriges. They wont buy them all at the price thetd pay for one thats for sure... Would you?

Really it comes down to opportunity cost and modeling of a real conversation. You wouldn't try and sell 1 thing at a time either.

You would say I want to sell 200 building materials.

They would say, I don't need that many and could probably not sell it all very quickly, I will give you a low amount of money for the lot.

You would say, I will not take that amount, how much for just 50.

He would say something probably more in line with a standard rate.

Here's the problem (and the key to becoming a good merchant in hardcore economy games) You as the merchant have limited resources. Limited product space, limited time and limited money. You can buy all the product in the world, but if you have nowhere to sell it you wasted your money.

Furthermore if you spend the money, you cant use that money on future opportunities that may be better than the first.

Finally if you only have X storage for product, odds are you are going to have to run to 5 different towns to sell all your Building materials when it's full of them. If you are tactical and fill it with things you can sell at the next town you will make more money by 5 trips and rotate your inventory in 1.

So yes, it should go down by one each, but only because we cant try and sell 50 at a time due to inventory restrictions.

[PnzrNorm]

The economy of larger volumes is a computer age thing. Imagine it more like a swap meet, you go to a staall and try to sell someone twenty tetris cartriges. They wont buy them all at the price thetd pay for one thats for sure... Would you?

Are you suggesting that selling product in bulk should reduce the price per item?
I hadn't thought of this, but it does make sense when you have a barter system in mind.
Perhaps, Kenshi's currency can be used as a secondary form of payment if a bartering system were implemented.
For example, there could be a marker number in the corner of the shopkeeper's screen that displays the net change in cats if the trade were to be completed at that point in time, as opposed to the current system which immediately transfers cats whenever an item enters or leaves the shopkeeper's inventory.
In order to implement changing the price of a good as each unit is bought or sold, it would be possible if this marker system were introduced, because then it would be possible to insert a function that raises or drops the price as each item is bought or sold during the transaction, and the transaction would not be completed until the player clicked a button (or some other similar interaction) to confirm the trade is complete.

Test Case:

• Player brings 12 (2 stacks) of Iron Ore to a shopkeeper
  As the player sells individual units, or whole stacks, there will be a function that appends a positive value to the marker for the first unit of Iron Ore, then reduce the price of Iron Ore at this shopkeeper (or in the entire town to simulate the economy in real-time) before proceeding to the next unit

It would be possible to handle entire stacks by placing the items in a linked-list (coding talk for a data structure that is a sequence of objects that also have parameters to allow looking at the next item in sequence, i.e. seeing if the list is at the end) and having the function to alter price inside of the for loop acting upon the linked-list.

Ideally in a dynamic economy they wouldn't refresh at the end of the day, they would be continuously producing and consuming like an outpost. Artificial constant leaks would make sense for some things, but otherwise the concept of midnight being important should not be a thing.

Perhaps I can amend the following statements:

*snip*
Test Case for Trade Goods:

• Y's inventory contains Trade Goods that are not a part of the default inventory at the time of inventory refresh
  These Trade Goods are pushed to a temp stack (I say stack for this case because there is no specific order necessary)
  Starting from the head (or top) of the stack, each Trade Good's value is compared to the Avg Price (assuming that the Avg Price is the Trade Good's value averaged across every town/shopkeeper in the world, and its value is the price at the current town/shopkeeper)
  If the value is higher than the Avg Price, then the player would receive positive relations with Merchant Y, Faction D, and the town in which Y resides. This represents "feeding a shortage" or "satisfying high demand"
  If the value is lower than the Avg Price, then the player would receive negative relations with Merchant Y, Faction D, and the town in which Y resides. This represents "saturating the market" since the Trade Good is already high in supply and low in demand

to read:

Test Case for Trade All Goods:

• Y's inventory contains Trade Goods that are not a part of the default inventory at the time of inventory refresh point of transaction completion
  ...
  Starting from the head (or top) of the stack, each Good is identified and all nearby structures' Inputs are checked for availability, and then each Trade Good's value is compared to the Avg Price ...
  If the value is higher than the Avg Price OR if the product's consumers have available space for Input, then the player would receive positive relations ...
  If the value is lower than the Avg Price AND the product's consumers do not have available space in their Input, then the player would receive negative relations ...
  If the value is lower than the Avg Price but there is space available in the product's consumers Input, then the player's relations would not be altered
  
  Where the black text is deleted, and the white text is added

Thus, I am requesting that NPC towns have producer and consumer structures to assist with this reactive economy, and the goods would alter in price during the transaction, but relations would be altered after the total transaction is completed. This would also empty the goods from the shopkeeper's inventory immediately upon completing the transaction as well, representing them being consumed by the town's local economy, which, I assume, it would be possible to append another step to this economy and have specific goods that aren't used by the town's local economy to eventually shift to the shopkeeper that sells that item type (weapons, trade goods, or anything).

[Squidcod]

My god I did not realize my spelling was that bad.

Yes. Traders should sell the excess from the town. Their prices should be fluid.
The value of an item to be sold should depend on demand.

This get's shady with things like narcotics and medical supplies, so we may need either new systems to make them worthwhile, or artificial consumption.

I'm thinking medical supplies could provide a boost to healing in beds and narcotics and rum could be a morale booster. Perhaps the various foods could have morale grades as well.

This would put medical supplies in high demand in high injury zones and narcotics and rum industries would be rich in areas where misery lies... Such as being beholden to bandits or constantly losing fights.


EDIT:
Oh and a linked list shouldn't be necessary unless the demand algorithm is particularly complex.

There should be a simple algorithm to calculate what the total 12 should cost all-said. So the game can simply count how much ore has been moved in the transaction. Likely it would average out the first and last sale then multiply times the lot of ore. Linked list might be fine for total sale, but I don't think it's necessary per stack of item. Nega space of coding doesn't require to track each individual item when each item is identical in qualities.

If I sell 100 chainmail sheets (was actually doing this recently one damn click at a time, thanks for the tip) it should only need to check the starting and final price and average out the lot if it's a linear drop in value. If it hits a critical point where it flatlines, the code should be able to figure out that it was the 23rd chainmail sheet, calculate only the 23 then add on the rest. Displayed to the user it would probably give the average of all 100 however.

There really doesn't need to be a loop to do the math. I could probably dig up the algorithm, but am too busy playing Kenshi or doing minimal maintenance to survive right now...

[PnzrNorm]

Traders should sell the excess from the town. Their prices should be fluid.
The value of an item to be sold should depend on demand.

It would be cool if the roaming caravans moved product in and out of the towns they visit, which would also have effects on the overall prices around the Kenshi-verse.

This get's shady with things like narcotics and medical supplies, so we may need either new systems to make them worthwhile, or artificial consumption.
I'm thinking medical supplies could provide a boost to healing in beds and narcotics and rum could be a morale booster. Perhaps the various foods could have morale grades as well.
This would put medical supplies in high demand in high injury zones and narcotics and rum industries would be rich in areas where misery lies... Such as being beholden to bandits or constantly losing fights.

I do believe whenever bandit cities (as well as other biomes, cultures, factions, etc. in addition to the eventual capability of cities being constructed randomly around the Kenshi-verse, which I believe is a planned feature further down the road) are added, they will also have a local city economy just like every other city, with their own supplies and demands.

There should be a simple algorithm to calculate what the total 12 should cost all-said. So the game can simply count how much ore has been moved in the transaction. Likely it would average out the first and last sale then multiply times the lot of ore. Linked list might be fine for total sale, but I don't think it's necessary per stack of item. Nega space of coding doesn't require to track each individual item when each item is identical in qualities.
If I sell 100 chainmail sheets (was actually doing this recently one damn click at a time, thanks for the tip) it should only need to check the starting and final price and average out the lot if it's a linear drop in value. If it hits a critical point where it flatlines, the code should be able to figure out that it was the 23rd chainmail sheet, calculate only the 23 then add on the rest. Displayed to the user it would probably give the average of all 100 however.

I think you're right, a linked-list would be a bit too complicated for such basic economics.
So long as the price drops according to a certain pattern, or a pattern determined by a function, it would be possible to determine how many items it would take to drop the Value of the product from its existing price to the minimum price.
Then it would simply be a sum of the average between minimum price (or lowest price after calculating the price after a certain # of items were sold) and the current Value of the product + all the additional items at the minimum price, if there are any.
Of course, the negative relations would occur on each iteration of product sold at the minimum price.

The marker could also display a warning with the number of product about to be sold at the minimum price.

[Squidcod]

Honestly, I don't really believe negative relations should occur from trading at extremely advantageous rates to the vendor.

I'm not quite sure how that works actually.

"I'm willing to give you money for these goods, but at a rate that I come out WAY ahead should I sell them all. This makes me mad."

The positive relations makes sense, and thieving or threatening the vendor makes sense, but the player getting the raw end of a deal doesn't so much. I've always seen economic exchange as a friendly activity that represents a degree of trust and communication.

"I let you in and you didn't rob me."
"I went in carry lots of stuff and they didn't seize it!"

That said, faction is a currency, and it should be just as easily calculated. Thinking about it, even if the faction change isn't linear, it's still possible through calculus (I know eww) to determine the 'area under the curve' as it were.

[PnzrNorm]

Honestly, I don't really believe negative relations should occur from trading at extremely advantageous rates to the vendor.

Not the drastic drop in relations from attacking someone unprovoked, but there should be a shift towards the negative if you're going to literally fill their market stalls and consumption buildings with massive volumes of a single product because:
A) This halts all of their local production structures that produce this product, which IRL would piss off a LOT of people
B) It would fill their corresponding vendor stalls that sell this product to the maximum capacity (and then some excess lying around), which is one of those things that merchants don't want to do.

Perhaps it would be possible to have a safeguard in place to set the merchants to sell only a maximum # of each type of product and to leave the rest in a storage area until it is needed by the local economy or for the merchant to refill his stock.
Then I can understand selling massive amounts would not cause negative relations, but there is still the fact that now you're filling up their storage bins to capacity so you can make almost a pittance amount of money.

That said, faction is a currency, and it should be just as easily calculated. Thinking about it, even if the faction change isn't linear, it's still possible through calculus (I know eww) to determine the 'area under the curve' as it were.

What?
Do you mean "disposition" or "faction relations" when you say "faction is a currency"? That's the only way that statement makes sense in my head. No offense.
Even if the change in factions relations isn't linear, I don't believe it would be possible to 'find the area under the curve' simply because it would be a step function and not a continuous function.

For example, each action that causes negative relations, or each item sold in this case, would cause the faction's relations with you to change by a specific amount.
Therefore, if you're trying to find the net change in relations, then you would have to sum all of the changes rather than integrating over an interval.
Unless there is a function in place that is dependent upon a variable to change relations, then I don't think calculus is necessary.

[Squidcod]

Well honestly, the merchant should not purchase enough to piss people off.
Keep in mind, a merchant can just say no. Just like you can say no to 20 tetris cartridges.
This could be simulated by the fact that since it is a salable item (aka they are not going to consume it or they would definitely NOT be pissed they have an awesome stockpile of X) the stuff would just stay on the counter. Thus blocking the player from blocking production lines. There is always private storage chests that hold TONS of whatever they are producing/require.

As for faction is a currency, apologies. I've played too many games where it get's shorthanded to just faction rather than faction standings or faction reputation. If the game is programmed smart they will avoid any step through instances whenever possible as it just causes more stress spikes for the game and creates hitching.

This is all academic at this point as I doubt you or I am doing the code, but yes. I would rather use calculus than a loop. Furthermore I understand what you're saying, but feel it would be better to compare the difference between A and B for the current change, because it makes it more exploitable to use the step function.

[PnzrNorm]

I guess it does make sense that the merchant has stacks of chests to hold his stacks of excess goods, and there will be more than one safeguard in place to prevent negative relations. I am now thoroughly convinced that negative relations do not need to occur simply because the product's price is being bought/sold at the market's absolute minimum, regardless of the circumstances.

My thoughts for a formula would be to label the starting value as A, determine the quantity of this product that is being sold, then determine the quantity it would take to drop the value from A to the market minimum and label this quantity of product B.
Then find the average between A and the market minimum, multiply that amount by B, then the remainder of the product left would simply be the quantity multiplied by the market's minimum price.
Thus the player will be able to sale an infinite amount of product, but the majority of it would be sold at the market's minimum price with no change in faction disposition (aside from satisfying any shortages).

[Frei]

Given the fact that currently towns basically disappear when you move away from them far enough, and their inventory is refreshed on reload, losing standings or limiting prices is a bit useless, since you may just circle between 2-3 towns 'til you sell everything at decent price.

What about constantly active pool for resources for each town, and some resources are consumed or produced at different rates. Pool for an item would have "100% supplied" state when it got 5-7 days worth of this item consumption or 3 days worth of production. You get up to 1,5x bonus price for items that are in demand and are not present in pool, while produced goods are bought at 0,9x til the 100% is reached, prices would quickly drop to 0.2x from 100>200% supplied volume, and traders would refuse to buy above 200% supply for produced goods, and 300-400% for consumed goods. Just a flat-out refuse 'sorry our warehouses for this item are already full'.
Caravans try to take all produced goods and consumed goods above 200% pool for re-sale in other town, opening the marked again.

For weapons and armor, it would be nice to have different pricing slots for items, like - town could buy medium-grade weapons (like catan1) with 4 times more total value than high-grade edge-5 - only officers and extremely rich inhabitants can afford those. Additionally, town may buy much bigger volume of weapons preferred by their faction militia and shop guards, adding 20% to their price. Everything above the required volume would get a big price drop. Clothes without armor rating should be stackable and got to be in much higher demand - common folk doesnt wear heavy armor at work ya'know.

That should give the feeling that you are actually supplying the town instead of dumping your 100 chainmail sheets at all shops in town til they are dry, only to dump the rest after save-load.

[Squidcod]

Given the fact that currently towns basically disappear when you move away from them far enough, and their inventory is refreshed on reload, losing standings or limiting prices is a bit useless, since you may just circle between 2-3 towns 'til you sell everything at decent price.

What about constantly active pool for resources for each town, and some resources are consumed or produced at different rates. Pool for an item would have "100% supplied" state when it got 5-7 days worth of this item consumption or 3 days worth of production. You get up to 1,5x bonus price for items that are in demand and are not present in pool, while produced goods are bought at 0,9x til the 100% is reached, prices would quickly drop to 0.2x from 100>200% supplied volume, and traders would refuse to buy above 200% supply for produced goods, and 300-400% for consumed goods. Just a flat-out refuse 'sorry our warehouses for this item are already full'.
Caravans try to take all produced goods and consumed goods above 200% pool for re-sale in other town, opening the marked again.

Persistent economy is of course assumed in the long back and forth above. As is demand. I'm not sure if you read the whole thing, but I wont blame you for not. There's a lot of breakdown going on there. Essentially it looks like you and I are looking for the same things. Thanks for the +1