[suggestion] Disable Black Market Toggle, Allow Resource Trading

from Sins Forums

It would be nice to run "closed economy" games where the Black Market is disabled.   Players could also have an interface where they could make secure resource trades with each other, rather than just give resources to a player and hope they get something back. 

ie:  Offer 300 metal for 200 crystal
      Offer 250 metal for 1000 credits

Players could also restrict who they are willing to trade with in this interface. 

This change would seem to fit with Diplomacy expansion -- Empires would try to control enough resource production rather than just building the biggest trade network possible.  Trade alliances could then be formed between players with complimentary overproduction.

 

Just an idea ...   :)

9,250 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Agreed. Allow the giving of free resource to other teamates as a game option.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Your idea of having a secure interface for giving resources is solved by the ability to offer other players and AI's missions which is a part of the Diplomacy expansion.  You could give a player a mission to give you 500 credits, and reward them with 200 metal, for example.

 

As for your idea of having a game option to disable the black market: I'm intrigued. We'll definitely look into something like that.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Your idea of having a secure interface for giving resources is solved by the ability to offer other players and AI's missions which is a part of the Diplomacy expansion. You could give a player a mission to give you 500 credits, and reward them with 200 metal, for example.

This would work nicely!

 

As for your idea of having a game option to disable the black market: I'm intrigued. We'll definitely look into something like that.

Cool!

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

these ideas do sound good

harpo

 

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

As for your idea of having a game option to disable the black market: I'm intrigued.

I was involved in another topic several months ago where we were discussing possible changes to the black market, and this was the big stumbling block we came to for every proposal: the more you limit the black market, the more severe a shortage of a particular resource becomes.  I'd have to agree; there are many otherwise fine start locations currently that would be unplayable without the black market. 

The big problem essentially comes down to map randomness.  It's nice to say "find a buyer" to someone who has excess metal deposits near their start location, but a buyer may not exist.  If everyone else is scraping by for metal, you might only sell a small fraction of your excess.  On the flip-side, no one may have a large excess of crystal, and you have no ways to deal with your shortcoming.

 

Consider other RTS games out there with multiple resources.  You either have games like Warcraft or Starcraft where each map is hand-designed to ensure that the types of resources are balanced in appropriate proportions, or you have games like Sins where there is some sort of market feature.  I think you'd have to hand design every map (down to the extractor level) if you wanted to turn off the black market.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Consider other RTS games out there with multiple resources. You either have games like Warcraft or Starcraft where each map is hand-designed to ensure that the types of resources are balanced in appropriate proportions, or you have games like Sins where there is some sort of market feature. I think you'd have to hand design every map (down to the extractor level) if you wanted to turn off the black market.

 

I'm not suggesting the game get changed for everone....obviously this isn't going to work for multiplayer games on random maps.

However, I think it would be interesting for people playing longer single player games, and it would be an interesting option to have for people who are playing with custom designed maps, with some mods, or who decide to just play a game where resource control has a huge impact on gameplay.  Can you imagine people building refineries / using resource focus on ice worlds trying to squeeze some more crystal production out of them?

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I like Cykur's closed economy game.  To make it viable why not make the black market dependent on the existence of neutral extractors?  The pirates can be eliminated, why not the smugglers...?

This would then mean that instead of randomised behaviour, the black market prices could be linked to the number of neutral extractors- perhaps including the ones at planets?