AI Economy

[Dubious]

Inspired in part by the discussion of the Planetary Events suggestion in the "Feature requests" thread, I thought it time to revisit the subject of the game's economic engine which was initially brought up during the Demo release in the "Welcome" thread.

There were some definite improvements to the commodities market between the demo and the initial release. Kudos to Ibol for being responsive to early concerns. But he stated the focus of the game design was to encourage advancement into new sectors rather than on trading, so it's just an algorithm designed to adjust prices over time. Observations have shown that while prices do fluctuate, there are not significant changes BETWEEN commodities. The most profitable commodities to buy and sell in a given sector remain stable (with only minor exceptions) throughout the period of observation. Only the commodities with the lowest profit margin are likely to fall out of profitability between one price adjustment and another.

EARLY SECTOR OBSERVATIONS:

In tracking trades across the first six sectors for 20,000+ turns, I have developed a spreadsheet to aid in quickly discovering the best deals within WP drive range (currently 2 sectors). Consequently I have learned I can completely ignore the Best Buy/Sell Sector entries (except when data is stale but not obsolete: about 2100 turns) as they don't mean that commodity is the most PROFITABLE (rarely the case); as well as the Economic Events for the same reason. Shortages and Surpluses are rarely worth noting either if all you want is the single most profitable commodity, though when they coincide with the most profitiable trade you can make a relative killing quickly. By having the spreadsheet simply highlight the best deals (buying and selling) from the current prices (max value) at that station, compared with the adjacent (higher numbered) sector out to the WP single jump limit, I learned the best deals are all you need to know. This what I would expect any basic trader program to produce, and displaying that information the single most important improvement I would suggest to the game. Once you know the best deals for the sectors, they remain so (with minor exceptions for surplus/shortage). Knowing this still doesn't prevent you from making mistakes, such as buying the commodity you are supposed to be selling in that market, but it makes the process faster.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, the most profitable commodity trades tend to remain fairly stable despite price fluctuations. If the highest value is Antimatter bought in sector 3 and sold in Sector 1, and Transuranium bought in Sector 1 and sold in Sector 3, then those trades seem to remain the best among those sectors, regardless of ALL other factors. At least in the first 5-6 sectors, you can ignore all the commodities listed above "Chemicals". They are simply never profitable enough compared to others. "Chemicals" is the most volital of those remaining, falling in and out of "most profitable" on occasion. The rest seem to remain profitable enough to gamble on when necessary, even if your data is quite "stale" and out of date.

Once you have determined the "most profitable" deals in a sector, you can pretty much ignored all subsequent price changes if you don't care about wringing out the very last dollar from every deal by updating the market prices whenever they change. Just watch out for surplus/shortage situations in your "deal" commodities. Those are generally worth taking the time to exploit.

Price changes seem to occur on the same date for a race. That is, all the Terran sectors change their price on roughly the same day (based upon noting the change and jumping to the next sector immediately to find it has changed as well), while the Gruff, Tentaculon, and Firax follow their own dates. (Only observed one sector of each race, so this is conjecture, but their date change was independent of the Terran's, though still seeming to generally be a 2000-2100 turn interval.)

When the "Price/50 supplies" changes, it pre-sages a Major Market Price Shift (probably next trip). This is not infallible, but if near the end of a cycle it's probably a good idea to give up on exploiting any particular market advantage you don't want to get caught holding a large quantity of when the bottom drops out.

-Dubious-