Trade Development Blog

[Xoria]

Fun fact:
When Freelancer hit the shelves back in 2003 the market_commodities file that contains all commodity prices was 81,191 bytes.
The 4.84 file is 182,481 bytes.
The 4.85 file is 466,076 bytes. (This was the first version I worked on,)
The 4.86 file is 872,748 bytes.
My current draft is 1,795,050 bytes.

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Trade Development Blog
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[farmerman]

I was wondering what will the future of the Human Organs commodity be? They've been all over the place in different versions and all.

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Faction info links: Samura Heavy Industries : LWB : Watchers

[[FC]Flox]

posted about adding new commodities in the flood but then someone re-directed me here.

Since it seems your the one in charge about the commodities i wanted to see if you are willing to add some more.
i only have a partial list at the moment

-Illegal Computer equipment
-Drones
-DNA
-Blood
-Clothing
-Luxury Clothing
-Donuts
-Vaccines
-Viral Virus Containers
-Planetary Vehicles
-Luxury Planetary Vehicles
-Livestock
-Research Tools
-Illegal Research Tools
-Prostitutes
-Captured Civilian Pilots
-Milk(MoooOoOooo?)

I'm not sure if you would like to add, but it doesn't hurt to ask does it? )

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[farmerman]

@Flox - I think the clothing items would be covered under (luxury) consumer goods. After all, the GC are supposed to attack lux good transports for fancy clothes.

Mostly posted for this though. http://bradius.net/freelancer/gc_motiv.jpg

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Faction info links: Samura Heavy Industries : LWB : Watchers

[Unseelie]

Sorry, but I'm about to demolish the list...

All of the consumer goods fall under food/lux food or consumer goods/lux goods.

That leaves
-Illegal Computer equipment
-Drones
-DNA
-Blood
-Vaccines
-Viral Virus Containers
-Livestock
-Research Tools
-Illegal Research Tools
-Prostitutes
-Captured Civilian Pilots

Of which, Illegal computer equipment/research tools/illegal resarch tools all fall under optronics, which is what the computers are made from, or opitcal lenses, the smaller components. Or robotics, or consumer goods.

Illegal computer things is sort of covered by the commodity Counterfiet software.

Captured civilian pilots can be captured in the game, soo...already exist.
Prostitutes are covered by multiple passenger commodities, between slaves to vips...

DNA/Vaccines/blood/etc kind of come under pharmacuticals (which, if you read the description, are auto-gene tailored wonderdrugs capable of much) and human organs.

Something like viral virus containers do exist, but are mission only commodities. The sort of mission you get sent on to blow up X.

Which leaves you with cattle and Drones.
Drones kind of count under robotics.

which leaves you with cattle.

Cattle sounds like a neat resource.

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[Xoria]

Merry Christmas.

My elves and I have been busy debugging this colossal mess for a couple of weeks now, and it's a worse debacle than I imagined, in many respects.

First, somehow my foolproof method of assigning consumption bases to their closest production point for commodities that are produced in multiple locations is not foolproof. Lots of tedious recalculations and spreadsheet copy/pasting to get things in the proper places.

Second, and this was unavoidable, I discovered that many of my assumptions about resale c/sec calculations at unlawful bases for H Fuel and at lawful bases for all sorts of products do not work, and I've had to reduce resale points and run all new price calculations for all the unlawful H Fuel prices.

Third, I discovered one jump hole shortcut in Gallia that I had spotted earlier but forgot to get fixed, and another one that I had not even noticed before. Fixing those will require several thousand prices to be recalculated - everything in Orleanais is affected, and everything to the left of Planet Le Mans in Maine. The only good news about those is that fixing the jump holes will result in the current price calculations being too low instead of too high, so it's not a bug that has to delay the public betas - I just have to get the prices fixed before the final release, and that's not a problem, although it will still require a lot of hours to do.

My guess is that total debugging time will run about 40-45 hours, and I'm at about 25-30 now.

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Check out my
Trade Development Blog
for all the latest news on Nerfs and Final Nails, or to request trade changes.

An Interactive Tour of OSC Routes  | POB Supplies

[Ursus]

thanks for your hard work

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Xelon]

Indeed, appreciated your hard work very much, not many people would do that.

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“This font is good people said, this font is awesome others said, I say it works well enough to waste 2 seconds of your life reading this.”

[Xoria]

I had a day off work yesterday, so between that and last weekend I finished my first examination of all the bases for commodity price bugs. Theoretically, the economy is now "safe" for a public beta, although quite a few hours of work remain to take care of some loose ends. I also have to change two parameters for each commodity in the goods.ini that indicates whether a commodity is displayed as red or green in the commodity dealers, depending on its price at those locations.

I had hoped that even though Gallia is moving much closer to Sirius in travel time I would be able to use existing passenger commodities in Gallia to set up internal passenger travel there. I did have to switch two passenger types to make it work, but the plan worked out about as well as could be hoped for. Here is a sketch of passenger travel in the next version:

- Many planets in Sirius will be "selling" Vacationers, which can be transported to either Hawaii or Shetland (whichever is closest, for the best profit).

- Luxury destinations will not "export" passengers to any location that they also "import" passengers from. There will be no A-B-A passenger travel possible. There will be a wide variety of A-B-C-A routes for passengers. Luxury locations typically have 3 to 5 import and export locations. I tried to balance each location with 4 imports and 4 exports, but there is some variation.

- The House liquors are tied into these networks also, so if you transport passengers to a House capital, you can then trade liquor to a luxury base in or near that House and pick up passengers again. There is also one long liquor route around Sirius, Berlin-Tokyo-Manhattan-London-Berlin, with another loop Tokyo-Paris-Berlin, and a cut out for London-Tokyo, so there are effectively several combinations of loops you can take if you only want to trade liquor.

- Routes are not possible if their fastest path between the bases passes through illogical geography for a Liner. For example, Hawaii to New London would pass through the Corsair Omicrons and Omegas, so those routes are not priced. Hawaii to Shetland would pass through the Tau 31-Newcastle jump hole, so those routes are not priced. The only exception I can think of to this is from Provence to Shetland, but that is a balance issue related to producing that passenger at both locations.

- Passengers will continue to be available from Freeports to Gran Canaria and Freeport 9, however Freeport 10 will not be participating due to balance conflicts with Gallia.

- Passenger traffic will be available from many luxury locations to many planets.

- Luxury goods (Cigars, Elixirs, etc) will parallel passenger traffic, but also have a broader distribution to other locations too.

- I have changed Gallic Artifacts into Sorted Artifacts, to be sold at Hawaii.

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Check out my
Trade Development Blog
for all the latest news on Nerfs and Final Nails, or to request trade changes.

An Interactive Tour of OSC Routes  | POB Supplies

[Gentlefood]

- Routes are not possible if their fastest path between the bases passes through illogical geography for a Liner. For example, Hawaii to New London would pass through the Corsair Omicrons and Omegas, so those routes are not priced. Hawaii to Shetland would pass through the Tau 31-Newcastle jump hole, so those routes are not priced. The only exception I can think of to this is from Provence to Shetland, but that is a balance issue related to producing that passenger at both locations.

To clarify, does this mean Luxury routes won't use JHs at all? I find that impossible due to the nature of how the liners are situated, but I just wanted to be sure that routes weren't thrown out due to JHs.