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More details: this game is an economic MMO. If a major player that used to produce a huge chunk of the supply of coffee suddenly decides to quit, then everyone
by frakkingcylons 3y ago
More details: this game is an economic MMO. If a major player that used to produce a huge chunk of the supply of coffee suddenly decides to quit, then everyone in the market for coffee will notice. Fortunately, almost everyone needs coffee (it makes your production times faster), so ideally someone steps up to fill that supply because they know the demand is there.
Things take hours to do. Fly a ship from Deimos to the commodity exchange at Antares Station? That's going to take 7 hours (like 7 _real_ hours). A smelter facility will take 10 real hours to smelt a batch of aluminum. You want to be a real good planner. Unless you like having to wait another day because you miscalculated the amount of flux needed to run your smelters, causing your aluminum production to run idle for half a day.
Where do you sell your goods? Well there's six commodity exchanges spread across the galaxy which accept one of the four currencies used in the galaxy (and yes there's FX markets). The bid/ask for goods varies so you'll want to decide where it may be optimal to sell (fuel isn't free!). You don't have to ship it yourself though, you can post a contract at your planet for someone else to ship your goods and deliver them within X days for a price.
This game is crazy. I have somehow ended up in a position where I now pay money to pretend to be a supply chain analyst and write my own ERP software. These are the scripts I use to run my company:
`csv.py` - converts exchange and inventory data to csvs
`production_line.py` - performs analysis of current production lines as described in `data/production_lines.json`
`analysis_increment.py` - Based on current production lines, gives a list of next building/recipe to invest sorted by ROI days
`analysis_multi_step.py` - Starting from current production lines, plots out the next several buildings/recipes to invest in based on their ROI days
`analysis_supply.py` - Gives a per-planet supply breakdown including planned productionn lines if included
`analysis_vertical.py` - Given a material ticker, returns an analysis of production lines with varying degrees of vertical integration to produce the given material.
`analysis_arbitrage_trip.py` - Takes origin, destination, capital, profit threshold, mass, and volume. Will give a list of materials to buy at origin at ask prices which then must be sold ASAP at destination bid prices
- athom 3y agoPoint given for "write my own ERP software." I work with that stuff on a daily basis, and am actually thinking of trying just that.
- jachee 3y agoI’ve only dealt with a couple of ERP systems briefly and at the lowest levels, but they both felt like an incredibly inefficient undertaking that is ripe for some disruption.
- sangnoir 3y ago> but they both felt like an incredibly inefficient undertaking that is ripe for some disruption That's because no 2 ERP deployments are the same: you either have a rigid, fully bespoke system that's "easy" to develop, but can't be used anywhere else. OR you have a gigantic ERP system that has knobs up the wazoo for customizability, which supports an entire industry of consultants that do installation & configuration (like SAP)
- mercwear 3y agoJust want to say that I respect and love the fact that you are doing this. I too get consumed by some stuff in this way and it's always a lot of fun, never time wasted.
- frakt0x90 3y agoThis sounds insane and amazing. I appreciate the detailed description as I've never heard of it or even the genre. I might actually check it out.
- chrbr 3y agoHuh, I had an idea recently to make an API-only game like that. Would let people build their own tools/GUIs and go as crazy as they'd like with building their own AI to control their empire. Just feels extremely niche, even if it scratches my own gameplay itch.
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y agoSomething like this? https://spacetraders.io/ https://spacetraders.io/
- chrbr 3y agoYep, that's exactly what sparked the idea.
- Jenk 3y agoI'm concerned that such a game would be so much more rewarding to me as a developer than my actual software development job is, that I would become miserable at work!
- frakkingcylons 3y agoIt’s starting to happen to me.
- cyanydeez 3y agoSo just meta it, make it your programming simulator to farming simulator. Now you can program in your program while you're programing your program to simulate programming programs against other programmers!
- harvey9 3y agoLaughed out loud at you paying to pretend to be a supply chain analyst.
- frakkingcylons 3y agoAlso something that might be interesting: the developer has recently started releasing monthly economic reports [0], (for example, see the most recent one for May [1]). These cover: - money supply (for each currency) - production of fundamental ores, minerals, gases, liquids - production of consumables (for your workforce) - balances of the market makers (MM). For background, for a particular material/commodity, a commodity exchange may have a MM that is basically the buyer/seller of last resort, so the bid or ask offered by the MM will be relatively low (for bid) or relatively high (for ask). I don't know the details well, but I think the devs introduce a MM if there isn't a lot of organic demand/supply for something (more seasoned players probably know this better). Anyway, so if you sell to the MM, the MM balance goes up. If you buy from the MM, their balance goes down. So an increase of the MM balance for say the Antares Initiative (one of the factions which operates a commodity exchange) can be interpreted as a lot of people had to sell to the MM, thus not a lot of player demand for that commodity. [0]: https://com.prosperousuniverse.com/tag/economic-report https://com.prosperousuniverse.com/tag/economic-report [1]: https://com.prosperousuniverse.com/uploads/default/original/2X/2/249a6a447f2d75caaad3856ae1aeec0c49c6d64c.jpeg https://com.prosperousuniverse.com/uploads/default/original/...
- bredren 3y agoThe level of detail and dedication of core users makes this sound like it could become far more than it is already. The word is tinged, and unfortunately so—but a functional economy that provides operators entertainment like this sounds like the start of a metaverse.
- thenipper 3y agoha, i've been an operations research engineer off and on for a few years now... definitely intrigued.
- hinkley 3y agoI mean it really does seem like a compelling simulation of a real or imaginary world situation would be the best way to either sell accounting software or at least teach an economics class. Particularly the parts about arbitrage.