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So trading always kind of bugged me slightly, and I decided it was time to change it.  I thought it was weird that traders will only trade in what they bring, rather than trading in what they would need.    I've revamped things and have actual supply & demand from each faction to create something more like an economy, and to actually give you a reason to maintain relations with specific factions.

So some tribe  may have a supply of steel, wood, food, and they want high tech stuff and will pay more for it.   Outlanders may want a mix of things, and can supply some weapons or medicine and things.        Right now you only ever have contact with a few factions, and none of them matter because one Tribe is just like another, and you get the same number of raids/caravans/etc regardless of who you're friends with.

Things have come along well, though I have a bit more to do before an initial usable version is ready.    It's far enough along that I thought it would be worth sharing the status and seeing what people think.


Completed Features:

• Schedule trade caravans from any non-hostile factions. 
• Traders want goods other than the types they bring
• Supply & demand based each faction's situation
• -- Biome and landform based supply - (for example, traders from mountainous colonies generally have more stone & metals)
• -- Tech level based supply - Neolithics bring more raw materials, and want higher tech weapons. 
• Interface to see all factions and their general status (how long until they arrive)
• Interface to see details of any given faction, showing what their supply & demand is, including quantities and/or prices.

[Newer screenshots, still a few tweaks / changes may come]





Included are screenshots of the supply/demand page for factions.    The left one is a tribe, which will tend to have more raw materials, and cheap prices.  They also import weapons at higher prices (if higher tech).   They may bring you bows and clothing as well (this one in particular doesn't), and they'll usually have low quality medicine, and pay more for high quality.

Right side is an outlander town, which will tend to have less resources, and pay higher prices for them.     They also more frequently bring weapons.   (And they pay more if you sell them high tech weapons)


Example trade screen of a Neolithic tech faction:



So here you can see they brought a bunch of resources   (and note they bring the same type of leather as they do meat - I thought that was a little detail worth having.    The animals also come from the biome their faction lives in)

I've also sold them 1 medicine and a pistol to show the price differences.    They pay more for higher tech weapons and medicine.   


I got fed up with traders always having a blanket price for everything.    Now you'll find traders with various prices for different things, depending on their type, what they have, what they want.  (All factions can bring components, but they bring fairly small amounts if they bring them at all, and they range anywhere from cheap to exorbitant, depending on their type and tech level.    Neoliths will *generally* serve cheaper components, and outlander will often gouge you.





The hard ground work is done, so now I'm just implementing and tweaking things a bit.     Things are basically done and all core features are set.    I'm just finishing some last bits, then I'll do some preliminary testing and put out a test version.    It's totally playable, just lacks some balance.    Traders don't bring huge amounts of stuff, so it's not a free ticket to get everything you want, but there is also nothing to stop you from trading with every faction on the map.    I plan to add something in such that you'll lose goodwill if they show up and you don't trade enough stuff with them, and later on I want them to request specific things from you, and if you don't supply them, they'll be a bit cranky.   



I've gone out of my way to make the mod as non-interfering as possible, in fact I specifically want it to work with some mods (More Factions Spawn would pretty much be a requirement to get the most of this), so all things I've done are new additions.    It shouldn't have any conflict with any other mods that play with storyteller caravans, factions, or trading, except in extreme cases.

No changes to existing storyteller traders have been made, so balancing things may take a little work, even though the storyteller is pretty shy when it comes to sending traders as it is.

Requested caravans will require you to buy a certain value of their goods, or you'll lose a little goodwill  (to help balance, and it's kind of realistic...  you keep asking people to send traders but you don't buy their stuff, they'd get cranky!)   Will do something with this later.   Probably via requests.. they'll ask you to provide them at least X number of prepared meals, or X amount of higher tech weapons, or they leave upset.





Things I want to add, but haven't started working on.   I'd probably release a basic version of the mod before tackling some of these:

• Dwarf Fortress style trade request system.   Rather than having traders bring a random hodge-podge of their faction produces, you can request specific goods, and they will request specific goods from you.
• Dynamic trading where factions would change supply & demand depending on events
• Base caravan time and prices on actual distance from your colony on the map
• Allow you to send your own caravans, using tamed colony animals as pack animals with a colonist trader (you'd get better prices)

Wow, VERY impressive! All these ideas sound like a HUGE improvement to the trading system. It sounds like you have gone to great efforts to not make it to over powered, but still very helpful. I look forward to giving this a try!

Sounds good to me.
[qoute]

• Allow you to send your own caravans, using tamed colony animals as pack animals with a colonist trader (you'd get better prices)

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Progress is coming along well.    Bit of feature creep came in here.    I decided I wanted more things to come into play.

So now:

Faction biome affects the type of goods the traders bring.     No caravans full of wood from ice sheets or deserts.
Forest based factions have more wood & plants.
Terrain type impacts things as well.    Mountainous places have more mineral type things.

Biome-appropriate animals come into play.   Traders bring animals from their own biome, and meat & leather is from the animals they bring.   (completed)

Oh man, oh man, oh man you just made my day sir. Recruiting muffalos will be a priority with this mod.
Also this mod will be bigger than what you can imagine! Why? Simply because a lot of events can happen when you send your caravan in the wasteland! Ever thaught of equiping your tanky muffalos with armor? Ever thaught of equiping your muffalos with carts? Ever thaught of discovering new factions? Ever thaught of discovering artifacts? Ever thaught of a lucky spaceship crashes right next to your caravan wich will give you lots of stuff? Ever thaught of airdrops that all the factions come to fight for? Ever thaught of bounty hunters that will capture your fellow colonists and sell them to the pirates? Ever thaught of actually using the rimworld map mid-game for a reason (to check the factions and stuff)?
Oh man i'm full of ideas on this mod. It won't have all of the features that i mentioned for sure, but at least a bit of everything would be more than cool.
I myself am a physhopatic slave trading cannibal so trading in rimworld is the best feeling that i always get while playing!

Quote from: Justas love on May 01, 2016, 06:09:17 PM
Oh man, oh man, oh man you just made my day sir. Recruiting muffalos will be a priority with this mod.
Also this mod will be bigger than what you can imagine! Why? Simply because a lot of events can happen when you send your caravan in the wasteland! Ever thaught of equiping your tanky muffalos with armor? Ever thaught of equiping your muffalos with carts? Ever thaught of discovering new factions? Ever thaught of discovering artifacts? Ever thaught of a lucky spaceship crashes right next to your caravan wich will give you lots of stuff? Ever thaught of airdrops that all the factions come to fight for? Ever thaught of bounty hunters that will capture your fellow colonists and sell them to the pirates? Ever thaught of actually using the rimworld map mid-game for a reason (to check the factions and stuff)?
Oh man i'm full of ideas on this mod. It won't have all of the features that i mentioned for sure, but at least a bit of everything would be more than cool.
I myself am a physhopatic slave trading cannibal so trading in rimworld is the best feeling that i always get while playing!

I'm pretty close to an initial release now, though I won't have colony caravans initially.   (It would take a non-trivial amount of extra work for that) but I think it'll be the first thing I add afterwards.    Assuming the mod doesn't bomb completely!

A lot of those other features are outside of the scope of what I'm thinking for this mod though :-P

I would like to have new faction discovery though, and I think we can do with a lot more factions in general on maps.  For my mod, I think the "More Factions Spawn" mod complements it a lot.  In fact, I'd say it's pretty much required.

Carts and armour for pack animals could be interesting.    (Actually my plan is to have any animal that's capable of carrying items to be used as a pack animal.   So you could have a fleet of pack pigs if you wanted.)

Do you think you can make a patch for "More Factions Spawn"? or do you just let it check if its tribal or not?

Quote from: Raccoon on May 02, 2016, 09:03:40 AM
Do you think you can make a patch for "More Factions Spawn"? or do you just let it check if its tribal or not?

I'm actually doing as little hard coding as possible, so it *should* work with any mods that add factions, provided they're using anything up to Spacer tech levels  (that's as far as I've gone with it, but I'll probably add some form of handling for other tech levels at some point)

My testing has been using More Factions Spawn actually, and no issues there.    In theory, any mods that add new items  (like the mods that add aluminum, copper, etc) should get picked up automatically by the trade caravans without any patching needed.

Totally new categories that don't exist in the base game would need to get handled though, but I'm planning to handle at least some of them out of the gate, such as ammunition from Combat Realism.    I'll have things like that handled in the initial release, and there will be no issues of it running fine even if you don't use CR.

I haven't tested with brand new factions (such as Norbals) but in theory it will all work without needing to do anything.

Thanks, nice that you already checked it. Do we get an Alpha?

I'm actually *just* about done.    That is, it works, but it's very untested and there are a couple little quirks that I want to figure out before it's ready for large scale criticism  :P

I also got sidetracked and wanted to include native support for Combat Realism, so traders will get ammo and such, and I tweaked it so they bring small stacks of throwing weapons and grenades instead of singles.   Now I'm trying to decide with either having traders just bring completely random tech-appropriate ammo  (less desirable, but easier to implement)   ...  or have them bring the same type of ammo as the guns they bring  (more difficult, but better, but also may force me to require CCL as a dependency.   Not that it's a big deal, but I was *hoping* to make my mod have absolutely no dependencies or conflicts)

I'll release something this weekend almost certainly.    It's usable, but I haven't playtested it for balance at all.

I follow your Thread very long and check it every 4 Hours so i just w8ing for a beta Release. But take so much time you need. Dont hurry.

Updated the main page with details and new screenshots, any feedback on how crappy (plain) it looks can possibly it get changed before I set it in stone and refuse to budge  :P

add the download tut. (Just zip the folder. Put it into you rimworld mods folder. Check out other modders, they do it)
Add the capable/incapabilities. (just type, i hope everything goes well with all mods)
Also y not make your mod with the more factions. iMean add the regular download and trade caravan revamp + more factions or more factions addition, something along those lines, other then that you're good to go

Cant wait, just about to start a new game and this makes me want to wait a bit longer.

once you finish this and make it open for download, can you please write a comment so i could immediatly see that it's uploaded.

Yup - will do.    Actually I'm just playing a game now to make sure everything works well enough.    So far I don't see any major issues.

I mean, I'm not 100% happy with the way I implemented the interface  (via a new building) ... but I opted for this for maximum compatibility.   Other mods play with the Factions tab, other mods may be messing with the Comms Console.  Originally I modified the comms console, since that's where this stuff really belongs, but I went with a new building and tied everything to that just to stay away from any possible issues.

I'll probably end up taking feedback for a while and adjusting things accordingly.     


For now I'll just play around for a few more hours and fix any issues I can find, then release it as an alpha version.

This sounds perfect. Do we get Version with CCL und without or how do you handle the addons?

Because you told you will add an Addon for Combat Realism and Stuff

Actually, Combat Realism is supported by default, and CCL isn't required by this mod.   (Of course, it's required if you install CR or any other mods that need it)

If you have Combat Realism installed, it will notice and then appropriately stock ammo on caravans.

I've also added in direct support for Expanded Prosthetics & Organ Engineering, since that adds a new category of prosthetics, and doesn't use all of the original categories.

Those are the only 2 that I specifically handle at the moment.


I'll write up a summary of stuff, but the short version is:    Any mod that uses existing categorization for items, and appropriately sets tech levels and things should work right out of the gate without any tweaking from me.

If they add in new categories (such as cuproPanda's soda mod, or the expanded Pharmacy things) then I need to handle them.    Only in the sense that I don't want to just blindly add in any new category of items that's added by a mod, due to potential imbalance.    Chances are I'll look at all popular mods and just check what categories of items they add, and then have them handled accordingly.   

In general though, any mod that is adding weapons, armour, resources  *should* work by default. 


That said, I only modify existing trade caravans, so in the cases of mods that add their own traders, then they will bring items accordingly.   So any mod that adds in unique items and has unique traders bring them, it (should) be all dandy and work as expected...  but I have not had time to test extensively yet.   

I don't see much chance of direct conflicts with anything though.   The worst case would be that caravans will not buy or sell the items introduced by any given mod.    However, I don't touch orbital traders, so at the very least you can get the new mod items that way, assuming the modder added the items to them.

Very good work. I will test as much as possible in some games, but how you told and i'm aware that you are good in doing things, there wont be problems so far. Very nice you already make an addon for EP&OE thats awesome!

#Sorry 4 that bad english and keep up your good work.

Released a first version of this!     I won't add any updates in the Unfinished Mods thread anymore, most likely.

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=19992.0 (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=19992.0)