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Originally posted by Masamune:
**Zhouj, I've put a lot of thought into this same direction. The way we're doing it in SS is supposed to be an extension of the modern economy. Some key points (with 1 cred = $1):
1. Each and every ship captain is independantly wealthy. Even if you own the equivalent of a shuttlecraft, you are a very rich person compared to the average.
2. Small ships are mass-manufactured. This brings the shuttlecraft equivalent (the Caravel) down to the 1-2 million credit range. This is based on the purchase price of an equivalent ship in the approx. 200 foot range. (Not a luxury ship-we're talking stripped down barge here, which is about all a Caravel is, stock).
3. You can't just buy the big military warships. You have to either pirate and capture one (amazing, and Governments HATE you if you do it- prepare to die), or be put in command of one.
4. There's a very good chance you will never buy a new ship- too expensive! Quite likely you will start with a ship and upgrade it continuously.
5. Continuous Upgrading- This is important because things are expensive! You are not going to buy a 5000 cred laser cannon. You aren't going to buy anything suitable for space combat for 5000! Weapons capable of taking out ships are awsome weapons. You aren't strapping pistols onto your ship. You aren't even strapping 50cal machine guns on. You are strapping on Vulcan Rotary Cannons! These may be more mass-manufactured, but the simple problem is that weapons are precision devices, and you can't get them cheap. The same goes for things like the engines/shield systems/turn thrusters/whatever on your ship. Thesse are expensive, precision, and high-quality units. You are going to have to scrape to come up with the money to get new ones.
6. Compounding all these natural difficulties, you have to maintain your ship (expensive!) AND usually pay taxes! Damn!
7. There are ways to offset all this, of course. As I have explained, space ships are an expensive commodity. People are going to have to pay you, and pay you well, to use your ship. Commodity trading is much more lucrative (increased commodity prices, for instance). You can make money hand over fist if you don't mind being bored.
8. Pirates are dangerous! These people are trained, well equipped, and experienced. Bounty hunting pays well.
9. Pirates are rare! These people are trained, well equipped, and experienced. Bounty hunting work is hard to get, and you must be good to do it.
10. There are economic options available to you. Rental equipment, for one. Loans, for another. You could entirely finance your new ship, but you better be ready to make the payments.
11. Not everything is expensive. Software outfits, like auto refuellers, are insignificant cost wise- maybe a hundred credits. That's 1/5 the cost of a day's fuel in SS. It doesn't come standard, but you aren't going to have to pay much to add it. Bullets for common weapons are cheap, as are railgun slugs. Missiles are not cheap. Missile launchers are- it's a rack, with computer interfaces so that the missiles' guidance systems can be primed and loaded. Even internal-magazine launchers (most launchers) are pretty cheap- it's basically a conveyor belt. Those have been made for a long, long time. And so on and so forth.
Now, this wasn't meant as a plug, but simply as an insight into one method of doing things. My point is that you don't have to make too many concessions- economy wise, you can actually be pretty accurate if you want, AND keep the plug fun. Nova uses a 32-bit integer for money. I think it might even be unsigned (no negative money), so that it can hold 4 billion+, so even that expensive dreadnought's price tag can be handled, at least in the player's scope without worrying about limits. Even if it is signed, the game can handle 2 billion+ credits, positive or negative. Not bad.
**
Hmm. Interesting ideas. I think there's an issue of economic scale here. An interstellar empire would have a vastly larger demand than a single system. When there's demand, there always be a company there willing to fill it with supply. At least in a modern market economy. I think I can say that weapons are indeed mass-produced by then but not dreadnaughts. Every year brings advancedments in the precision of automated machinery. With civilian technology, you could simply explain that they were passed down after they were obsolete for military use. By that time, producing them would be like us mass-producing most things from before the 70's.
As for the financing and rental ideas, I like them. Would you mind sending me the money-checking idea if you manage to fix the last bug you mentioned? A plethora of options opens up the instant I can check if the player has insufficient funds to make a payment.
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Originally posted by Zzap212:
**Sorry. I meant to post 100,000 pounds for the large ships (we're talking 4-decker 136-150 gun Santasima Trinidad's here, though).
Yes, by definition, the battleship is the only kind of dreadnought, but by comparison, the Carrier is MORE than a dreadnought.
Yes, the ability to lease ships adds interesting aspects to the game. For example, some missions might not be made available because you don't own your own ship. Others might be made available because you owe money on your loan or something. You never know.
And to second what Massamune just said here, I'll say it again. You need to really make it apparent that the military ships are clean cut Enterprise D-kept ships with state of the art technology and the shuttlecrafts and freighters are more like crew habitats stuck on the side of engines than actual hulls and engines and life support.
If you want a true economy, then there simply can't be "Starbridges" and "Valkryies" available to the player at the comparative prices in the standard game. The comparative price (Carrier being 2 billion standard) is about 10,000,000 per starbridge, versus 600,000 in the standard. This give an idea of how "off" you can see the standard game being in terms of realistic economics. That's about 200% more expensive for the state-of-the-art ship from the state-of-the-art civilian ship.
While stretching the value of the credit may seem like a good idea, you have to remember that these players get rich on mining asteroids and such in the game. It's very unrealistic that with all of the prospectors, there would be any demand for these at all. Asteroids should be rare and only the largest ones, which rarely appear, should have "motherloads" in them.
Realistically, you can't expect space to be populated with spacegoing people. Either your economy is at the point where ships are so commonplace that everybody owns them, they are extremely cheap and extremely inferior to the military's ships, or you can go in so far as to make it apparent that the majority of capatains use used ships, leased ships and/or loaned ships. Degrade the performance a lot from stock.
So quite simply, the best solution is to make a wide range of ships, commonplace being bare-bones strip-down barges (the shuttlecraft, the caravel (as mentioned by massamune), the bulk freighter (being held together with forcefields), the panzer), somewhat uncommon being the newer ships, commonly piloted by loaners or leasers, renters or commercial pilots (mandatory passenger missions???) and the upper class being the bounty hunters, the CEO's, the richy richs and the inheriters. The military being somewhat common, but so superior that nothing really puts up much opposition.
**
You said technically before you said that carriers were dreadnoughts and so I interpreted it as meaning by the exact definition. I really don't think can compare a dreadnought to a carrier or vice versa. At the time, the dreadnought was at least equally as impressive as a carrier is now. They are warships made for two different eras of warfare. The only reason that a carrier would defeat a dreadnought of the past would be because of improved technology and superior tactics. I'd be interested to find how the two compared in terms of cost as percentage of GDP or military budget.
Of course it will be apparent. The only reason players can kill Federation Carriers with a Starbridge is because the AI is not very intelligent. I will likely widen the gap between the 'normal' ships and the very high-end ones.
Yes, there can. A Federation Carrier is only 12 million stock. The value of the credit is far greater than that of the dollar or the prices of all ships have scaled downward.
The issue of asteroid mining is easily solved, both by making it difficult, or simply scaling the price of goods with the value of the credit. A ton of metal may be worth 300 credits in a scenario where a dollar = a credit but in a scaled one, it may only be worth 3.
No one has an idea what sociological and economic changes will take place in the next 500 years. That's the difficulty here. Maybe space will be filled with the rich and powerful or maybe half the population will have access to a starship. Civilian ships will always be inferior to military ones simply because the civilian weapons and ships are made probably by government contractors and the military would never allow civilians to have comparable weaponry legally.
I think the solution to this issue in the plugin will combine much of the suggestions. I think I will implement a system where you are indeed only allowed to buy a new ship if you have a commission and certain rank. (ie, you can only command a dreadnaught if you're an admiral or higher.) but since the military can only supply stock ships, if you wish to upgrade your ship, you must own it and hence you must buy it. As for financing such a purchase, I'll try implementing a banking system or loan/rental system, and then increase the payouts from the government. I mean, if a government has a military budget in the trillions of dollars, I'm sure they'd reward great heroes and saviors of their government with awards and grants ranging up to billions that allow them to upgrade/buy their ship especially since it saves the government the money of constructing it, paying for supplies, and the crew of that ship.
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(url="http://"http://www.zhouj.net/days/")Days of Glory(/url), Upcoming TC for EV: Nova
Have a system of the government giving out billion dollar rewards. (their economy would be in the ten's of quadrillion's.)
(I can wish, can't I? :-D)