Buy and Sell Economy Overview Question(s)

[Pantomath]

Hello Everyone,

I know what I want from this game. I want to enjoy a peaceful buy and sell from one station/base/city to another. I wanted to find a game like this with a live economy. Now that we settled on the type of play for Evochron Legacy SE I will be playing, here is my question(s).

When looking at the quadrant overview with the economy layout for each quadrant and when hovering your mouse over a quadrant, it shows a list of general goods titled for example, gold, silver, water, medicine etc. Every one of these general goods have two horizontal bars next to them. There is a top bar and a lower bar. Sometimes the two bars are equal and sometimes one is more full than the other. The more full they are, the more green they are. The less full they are, the more red they are. So the question is, why are there two bars over each other, and how are these representing the goods? What are they representing?

I flew from one space station in one quadrant to another space station in another quadrant expecting the prices to be different, but the prices for me to buy are the same for the same goods regardless of how much variation the colours are at the time for each quadrant. Also, the space stations wouldn't buy any of my goods, they would only sell me the goods. I flew to multiple quadrants encountering the same result.

I know I will eventually learn with time but a live economy is the reason I will buy this game. After going through the training, I am now playing in demo mode to make sure the live economy is present. There isn't a game like this out there with a claim of a live economy offline. So you can see, I wish to understand the fundamental basics before purchasing the game of how to interpret the economy as it is presented to me.

Thanks

[Vice]

... So the question is, why are there two bars over each other, and how are these representing the goods? What are they representing?

On the left side of the navigation map is a commodity value display (bars and market ticker), providing the values of each commodity type by region (each 500X500 sector block of space on the quadrant map) relative to the location you are in. The small line at the top of each listing represents the market value of a commodity for the region you are in (local). The large line indicates the current market value for the region you are highlighting with the mouse pointer (which is why it can change as you move the mouse pointer over different regions). The market ticker displayed below the bar graphs will scroll through two commodities at a time for specific value comparisons. So you can use those bars to pin down possible buy/sell hotspots.

There are other considerations as well, including localized economy types established by an in-sector planet (and indicated by a letter that follows the planet's name on the nav map when highlighted). That can have a significant increase or decrease effect on a baseline value. Certain items are also moderately cheaper or more expensive if you buy them from a city on a planet's surface vs space stations. So there is still an element of exploration that can be additionally beneficial, but for a raw comparison of values from one region to another, the market ticker and bar graphs are an effective tool.

I flew from one space station in one quadrant to another space station in another quadrant expecting the prices to be different, but the prices for me to buy are the same for the same goods regardless of how much variation the colours are at the time for each quadrant. Also, the space stations wouldn't buy any of my goods, they would only sell me the goods. I flew to multiple quadrants encountering the same result.

There are some terminology differences that may apply here. There is only one quadrant in the game, the Evochron quadrant. Then there are regions, which consist of 500X500 sectors of space. Individual star systems with planets can then be scattered among the regions. Then there are sectors themselves, which are large blocks of space and can contain individual planets/stations. If you fly from one sector to another, you won't likely encounter much, if any, price variation since you're effectively still in the same market. You may find pockets of price variation if one of the planets in a system has an economy type that provides a significant effect on a particular commodity or group of commodities. As mentioned above, that will involve the letter after a planet's name. You'll generally need to travel to a different region to encounter unique and significantly different pricing structures. To do that, map out which region you might want to visit/explore and then utilize the gates to travel there (purple circular icons on the nav map). You can then travel there and analyze the local pricing conditions and narrow the search further for any particular economy types, if desired. Here is a list of the economy types (a planet will have the letter in parenthesis after it's name, example: (G) for General):

G - General
A - Agriculture
B - Biological
E - Energy
I - Industrial
T - Technology

Hopefully, that will provide some basics to get started. The instructions are also available online with some additional information about travel and navigation concepts as well as some trading information: https://www.starwraith.com/evochronlega ... readme.htm

There is also currently some tuning/tweaking going on with a few internals of the economy system in a series of test builds for a possible future update. If you'd like early access to such test builds, just let me know via e-mail ( starwraith.com > contact ) and I can send over a download link.

[Pantomath]

Hello Vice,

Thank you for such a well crafted response. I believe I understand a lot more now.

Can you tell me why the top indicator bar and the bottom indicator bar are variously filled? Does the amount the bars are filled represent how much products are in stock for purchase or is it something else?

I am pleased to hear that you considered me for early access if I so choose. I hope if I take on your offer that I can do justice to the effort. I will e-mail you.

[Vice]

Can you tell me why the top indicator bar and the bottom indicator bar are variously filled? Does the amount the bars are filled represent how much products are in stock for purchase or is it something else?

IIRC when I originally designed it, the bar width indicates the potential range of value offset. So the middle is where the price is effectively in the median range. Higher is above, lower is below. The bars will generally shift color to green when they are priced significantly higher to indicate a positive relative value, red when they are lower. So buying lower level priced items at indicated regions and selling at higher indicated regions is ideal. And it can be further subdivided by economy types for more localized demand conditions for particular items. Specialized economy types can also impact inventory of particular items. Another option is to acquire materials through mining and then transport them to high priced selling points.

[Pantomath]

Hello Vice,

I understand now the idea you are portraying, thank you.

One last question. When I fly to a space station where the price is right for a product, as indicated in the bars mentioned earlier in this thread, they do not have it in stock. Is there a way to know a head of time if the item is in stock?

Thank you

[Vice]

No, there is somewhat of a risk/chance element to availability on the acquisition side of things as well as a need to fly to locations to check inventories. However, inventories rotate rather quickly, so you can just head out to another sector check for it or something else at a different location in the same region and then later return. And if you're in a system where there is a planet with cities, you can also stay in the same sector and fly down to the planet's surface to check those inventories.

[Pantomath]

No, there is somewhat of a risk/chance element to availability on the acquisition side of things as well as a need to fly to locations to check inventories. However, inventories rotate rather quickly, so you can just head out to another sector check for it or something else at a different location in the same region and then later return. And if you're in a system where there is a planet with cities, you can also stay in the same sector and fly down to the planet's surface to check those inventories.

For anyone else who might be reading this thread. I was e-mailed by Vice an excerpt from discussions/debates on this topic going back over a decade. I feel what Vice has said and the excerpt satisfies my question.

“If you could just jump to one location and get a bunch of information about everything in the entire area, then there would be little reason to explore and travel. ... Such 'remote information' would essentially eliminate much of the game’s intent itself by significantly reducing challenge, resource utilization, and risk (particularly in a game where the space environment is not just wallpaper and asteroids, but a universe where you can fly into planet atmospheres, into nebulae clouds, near stars, and navigate in full 3D space). Granted, there can be variations on this that alter the degree of impact it/they would have and when limited, remote information can be beneficial to gameplay. That is why there are some elements of remote detection (commodity market ticker, planetary economy classes on the nav map), which provide general information about the market conditions and likely availability of particular commodities.”

[dexatron]

Hi Pantomath.

There is also a great Voice pack for the game that will tell you what a station is selling and what a station is buying, also the best deals a station has to offer, this voice pack will also tell you how much your cargo is worth before you sell it at a particular station. I too love the trading aspect of this game ..so i decided to make it much more enjoyable Via Voice response. If you are interested let me know and I introduce you to EVA (Evochron Voice Authority) you will be glad you did. You can find me in multiplayer mode on the CASUAL CREW server, Or just leave me a message on here.

Hope to hear from you soon

Dexatron

[kmunoz]

I have a question about the Econ/Tech overlay. Let's suppose I'm in the Virgo system, and I want to compare relative prices in the Rucker system. So I switch to the Econ/Tech overlay and then hover over the circle indicating Rucker...

...and then realize that Rucker straddles two overlay squares. How do I interpret the data in that situation? Am I to understand that some Rucker stations/planets conform to one square's data and others conform to the other? Except Rucker only has one planet and one station, virtually next to each other.

[Vice]

That's a good observation. Yes, although Rucker's primarily local entities are in region 176. But if a system spans multiple regions, then you can have a situation where part of the system is affected by one regional level structure while another part by a different region. This will come into play more with systems on the +/- 250 border line, such as Olympus Prime.

[Marvin]

In some circumstances, you can take advantage of this dual-system setup by buying and selling in the same system.

[kmunoz]

So what I'm getting here is that Rucker only LOOKS like it has a single planet and station in a single region square...?

[Vice]

From the massively zoomed out perspective of the nav map in quadrant mode, yes, the Rucker system itself as a whole can appear right on the line. But if you zoom in closer (ie right click on the Rucker system), you'll see that all of the nearest objects in the system fall within region 176. The system is close to the border line at SX 1750 (aligning with that +/- 250 divider mark I referred to), but the entities around the star and the star itself are to the right at around the SX 1800 mark, well within the 176 region. Olympus Prime on the other hand is pretty closely split down the SX 1250 line.