[1.0] Trading Economy 3.1

[Expresso]

Do you always need the caravans you create? Or they can come alone?

[WalkingProblem]

Do you always need the caravans you create? Or they can come alone?

It works exactly as the normal caravans already in the game.

The only difference is that these factions actually sells things that you need. So for example you are living on ice sheets and you need wood, you can contact the Agricultural corporation to send a lumber caravan to you (which you have to pay the standard request for caravan fee); or you can send a caravan to the nearest Agricultural corporation to buy the lumber yourself.

The mod actually just make things a little more convenient, but it does not break the game balance, since you probably wont have enough silver to buy literally anything you want, or to even request for a caravan if you are in your first year.

People are complaining about balancing and OP, had not really played with the mod. Using the dev mode to call the caravans of course will always feel OP.

----

I am currently working on improving the defense of the caravans, so people cannot just raid the incoming caravans easily and become rich overnight.

[WalkingProblem]

Trading Economy Ver1.1 Released!



– Added Walkblem Soldiers
– Added Walkblem Charge Rifle (not for sale)
– Added Walkblem Charge Sniper Rifle (not for sale)
– Replaced escorts of Walkblem Corps' caravan with Walkblem Soldiers
– Reduced starting Goodwill of Walkblem Corps factions to 0~50
– Reduced amount of silvers brought by Walkblem Galactic Trading Corporations

----------

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://walkingproblem.com/
FORUM LINK: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=35551.0
NON-STEAM DOWNLOAD: http://walkingproblem.com/2017/09/11/trading-economy-1-1-released/
STEAM DOWNLOAD: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1130945311
DEVELOPER'S DISCORD: https://discord.gg/W2Vb27T
FACEBOOK PAGE: http://fb.com/walkingproblem
FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP: http://fb.com/groups/walkingproblemstudios/

[CookieWizard]

Yeah some kind of trade agreement routes.
Every season begin a caravan arrive, grab x ItemA and drop y ItemB, sleep overnight and leave at the morning, no trading.

Looks neat. Sadly, at first when I read the name I thought this mod would do something along the lines of consistent trade routes with pre-existing factions.

Perhaps someday? Things have to begin somewhere.  =P

As for consistent trade routes w existing factions - the problem with this is the lack of a general concept of resources distribution on the world map - and the very fact that nothing really actually happens beyond your own colony in the game.

For example, there is nothing to suggest that this tribal village would actually have something that they want to sell, which you do not already have; or that outlander town would have a surplus of a certain thing which you actually wants. This entire situation will compound when you add in mod factions. Orassan caravan coming to you just to sell timber? It would be pretty hard to reconcile all these and complicate the entire games design (or rather mod design).

My current thought is more of creating a global price index of every single thing there is in the game, and there will be incidents/event driven situation that will create massive or some price changes to certain items.

For example, massive forest fire on the one region of the planet has caused wood prices to go up by 25% for a year. Or, gold was struck by a certain faction, causing a massive influx of newly mined gold, causing the price of gold to fall by 50%. Or, war on a nearby planet had create a surge in demand for weaponry or mortar shells, all weaponry/mortar shells now doubles in value.

But the above is not easy to make, it will take sometime before I figure a way to make it happen.

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Nice mod, is there a faction that sells prisoners?

Current there isnt.

RimSlaves' Walkblem Slavers occasionally sell some prisoners, but very few and far between.

Worry not, I'm under no illusion that the changes needed for permanent trade routes would be easy. One of the things I hope Rimworld does before (or on) 2.0 is adding further faction mechanics and events around the world. Right now they're just sort of there to interact with you and don't really do anything. Maybe one day!

[XeoNovaDan]

I posted this on Steam, but I'm also posting this here: My opinion on this entire mod, and a brief dissection of how imbalanced it is. Thankfully this has a 20,000 character limit versus Steam's 999 character limit, so I don't have to break my 6,379 character mini-essay into many small parts:

When I first saw this mod, the title make me expect something that would simulate supply/demand (even as little as value multipliers that slowly fluctuate over time on a per-faction basis) at the very least, maybe diversify currency types across multiple cultures, fluctuating currency values. Possibly the first Walking Problem mod that I'd buy in to because it'd enrich gameplay in an area that desperately needs fleshing out. Safe to say, disappointment soon crept upon me as soon as I took a further look in, but that's not the worst part.

The worst part is that this mod adds caravans, with astronomical amounts of wealth, packed upon vulnerable muffalo, easy for the player's pickings; up to 5 million silver (average 2.55m) for the buying caravans, and even well into the hundreds of thousands for selling caravans in terms of item wealth! To put that into perspective, most mid-game colonies will probably have a total wealth of 100-200 thousand silver. My 25-year vanilla Alpha 15 colony, so extreme end-game, was only 2 million silver in terms of total wealth.

Considering how well-made (mechanically speaking) some of your other mods are such as Minions and Smurferim, safe to say I wasn't expecting an implementation as cheap as this. Ludicrously lucrative caravans, and a ton of extra factions for reduced save-friendliness already places this mod amongst my least appealing list, and I'm very critical when it comes to balance - although admittedly, I'm only recently putting my opinions forwards.

Now with v1.1, each caravan's accompanied by a group of supersoldiers that have this ridiculously overpowered 'Walkblem' gear. Sure enough, taking an initial look, this gear was indeed very powerful, so I decided to conduct the ultimate experiment: five trigger-happy level 20 pawns, in full legendary power armour, with legendary charge rifles, behind a double layer of sandbags versus... one level 6 standard pawn, with good quality (average for caravan guard) Walkblem armour, and a good quality Walkblem charge rifle (the more OP of the two weapons), behind rock chunks. Here's the test setup: https://i.gyazo.com/f6e62fd53e9e7093a9ac8d6ffafce25b.jpg

The results: the 1 pawn was, of course, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of bullets flying at them, but they were still able to down 1 or 2 of the vanilla supersoldiers. Taking this experiment further, I only had 4 of the vanilla supersoldiers fire at the Walkbem-geared pawn, while I micromanaged the Walkbem pawn as much as possible, except the results this time around were a clear contrast: the single 'medicore' Walkbem unit was able to consistently beat the 4 legendary vanilla supersoldiers, while only typically getting up to around 50-60% pain. I repeated these combinations, and the aforementioned results for both 5v1 and 4v1 actually happened consistently. Therefore, it's safe to say that 1 mediocre Walkbem guard is roughly as powerful as 4.5 near-absolute top tier, legendary-geared, godlike vanilla pawns.

So with guards with gear as powerful as that, along with the significant silver cuts for the caravans; the entire balance implications with v1.0 are gone, right? Well, while many of v1.0s issues are gone, v1.1 brings its own equally ugly balance implications, of course relating to that coveted gear that all Walkbem corporation caravan guards are lugging around!

First and foremost, all Walkbem gear can actually be produced at conventional workbenches, only requiring what researches their 'vanilla counterparts' need to also be produced. While yes, the plasteel and component costs are high; the former can easily be solved by mid-late game mechanoid raids and deep drilling, and what's 50 components for an OP rifle now that they're so easily-accessible with the plethora of caravans that this mod introduces, especially with your shiny new economy!

However, there's arguably a significantly easier method of acquiring a specimen or two of this gear. Have you been eyeballing that lonely psychic animal pulser that's been gathering dust in the corner? Because that is the very method I'm talking about.

So, basic psychic pulser mechanics: pawn press button, pulser send waves, animals go cuckoo, animal attack human. All you need to do is designate a zone for your animals, then wall that zone in so that when you activate your pulser, the animals can't actually go rampant, thus preventing them being harmed. Next, all of your colonists go into another room, which you then wall off, but don't forget to bring out that animal pulser! Once all of the preparatory steps are done, get that pulser finger ready.

That Walkbem armour & weapon caravan, with its *muffalo* and OP troops, are unsuspectingly heading towards your not-at-all conspicuous wall setup. I'd recommend waiting until there's a Walkbem soldier next to a muffalo, preferably with a Walkbem Charge Rifle as that's the more overpowered of the two weapons. Once the above condition is met, press that button as hard as you can and let all hell break loose, while your colonists and your colony's animals are in the safety of their secluded 'shelters'!

Once the dust clears, you should find...
A) Some precious Walkbem death machines, ready to be repurposed
B) The majority of, if not all of the caravan's merchandise on the floor, fresh for the picking
C) Animals everywhere, so your colony will never have to worry about food again
D) Mountains being dug out by the explosive power of the Walkbem weapons

So now that you've got a ginormous wealth spike from the muffalo that were felled by Pandora's rifles, as well as all of the firepower you'll ever need to compensate for that and then some, you've basically won the game! All for a relatively small investment of 1200 silver.

Fun fact: two poorly-skilled pawns were able to single-handedly take over a pirate outpost, sustaining only one or two injuries between eachother, both with Walkbem weapons acquired using the method above. Anyways, I beg to digress.

In all seriousness, this mod has so much potential. Such a great concept which many players would want, and that's shown by how many views this mod has raked in, in such a short period of time! However, the execution at this stage is, quite frankly, too flawed to be appealing based on the points above. I'm hoping that this improves over time though, but in the state that this mod is in, I simply can't recommend it.

GG no re.

[faltonico]

If you don't like it, don't use it.
Don't try to smear it with your sense of balance, that you somehow think inherited from Tynan.

[WalkingProblem]

If you don't like it, don't use it.
Don't try to smear it with your sense of balance, that you somehow think inherited from Tynan.

Nah, dun say that. XeoNovaDan is pointing out really good points, which I am still in the process of ironing out.

------



VER 1.2 DEVELOPER'S NOTE
A quick patch to the 1.1, as serious vunerabilities was reported by players regarding how wild animals can easily cause huge friendly fire problems. As a result, trade caravans are now protected by GunBladers and Snipers. Walkblem Charge Sniper Rifle and Walkblem Charge Rifle are nerfed as well. Charge Rifles no longer have explosive rounds, Sniper Rifles explosion is reduced. All Walkblem weapons will also self-destruct on drop, to prevent OP weapons falling into players hands. Unintended error of the Walkblem Rifles being able to be crafted is also amended to be not craftable. I have also nerfed the amount of goods brought in by the caravans, as well as drastically reducing further the amount of money brought by the Galactic Tradings Corporation. The caravans will now no longer be worth raiding. If you have more products to sell/buy, then you should send your own caravans.

VER 1.2 CHANGELOG:
– Added Walkblem Gunbladers
– Walkblem's caravans are now protected by Walkblem Gunbladers and Walkblem Snipers
– Walkblem Soldier will only appear in Walkblem raids
– Walkblem weapons will all self destruct on drop
– Walkblem Charge Rifle will no longer have explosive rounds
– Walkblem Sniper Rifle's explosive round is now smaller in explosive radius
– All caravans now carries significantly lesser wealth.
– Walkblem weapons and apparels should not be craftable or purchase-able.

------------

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://walkingproblem.com/
FORUM LINK: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=35551.0
NON-STEAM DOWNLOAD: http://walkingproblem.com/sdm_downloads/trading-economy-ver1-2/
STEAM DOWNLOAD: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1130945311
DEVELOPER'S DISCORD: https://discord.gg/W2Vb27T
FACEBOOK PAGE: http://fb.com/walkingproblem
FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP: http://fb.com/groups/walkingproblemstudios/

[WalkingProblem]

So my conclusion was that, by trying so hard to give the players a good trading platform (getting caravans that can sell you or buy literally everything you need at almost any amount you would literally need) is breaking the game and virtually impossible to balance.

As caravans will always have vulnerabilities somehow or another, and replacing muffalos with a armored vehicle, at the current juncture, will cause mod conflicts as I will need to replace the biomedefs.

So the only way is to massively nerf the caravans, and the players will have to send their own caravans to the corporations themselves, if they need stuffs in bigger quantity or they have so much goods to sell that Walkblem Tradings' caravans would not be able to purchase everything.

------

As for the super soldiers, the weapons are now all hidden away and destroy on drop. These are original "stop-gap" in nature.

There are currently 3 different Walkblem soldiers: charge rifle, sniper and gunblader.

Charge Rifle is still a powerful rifle in the game (minus other mods) even after nerfing it and removing its explosive rounds. Gunbladers are somewhat OP in term of melee wise.

These Walkblem soldier may be further tweaked in the future if there are still more complains.

If I can "balance" it proper, I may allow these weapons for sale by the Walkblem Military Industrial Complex. But currently no, as its not a "final product" - more like "experimental weapons & armors"

By the way, none of the walkblem gears should be for sale or craftable. If anyone see it is for sale or craftable, please let me know.

[WalkingProblem]

I posted this on Steam, but I'm also posting this here: My opinion on this entire mod, and a brief dissection of how imbalanced it is. Thankfully this has a 20,000 character limit versus Steam's 999 character limit, so I don't have to break my 6,379 character mini-essay into many small parts:

When I first saw this mod, the title make me expect something that would simulate supply/demand (even as little as value multipliers that slowly fluctuate over time on a per-faction basis) at the very least, maybe diversify currency types across multiple cultures, fluctuating currency values. Possibly the first Walking Problem mod that I'd buy in to because it'd enrich gameplay in an area that desperately needs fleshing out. Safe to say, disappointment soon crept upon me as soon as I took a further look in, but that's not the worst part.

The worst part is that this mod adds caravans, with astronomical amounts of wealth, packed upon vulnerable muffalo, easy for the player's pickings; up to 5 million silver (average 2.55m) for the buying caravans, and even well into the hundreds of thousands for selling caravans in terms of item wealth! To put that into perspective, most mid-game colonies will probably have a total wealth of 100-200 thousand silver. My 25-year vanilla Alpha 15 colony, so extreme end-game, was only 2 million silver in terms of total wealth.

Considering how well-made (mechanically speaking) some of your other mods are such as Minions and Smurferim, safe to say I wasn't expecting an implementation as cheap as this. Ludicrously lucrative caravans, and a ton of extra factions for reduced save-friendliness already places this mod amongst my least appealing list, and I'm very critical when it comes to balance - although admittedly, I'm only recently putting my opinions forwards.

Now with v1.1, each caravan's accompanied by a group of supersoldiers that have this ridiculously overpowered 'Walkblem' gear. Sure enough, taking an initial look, this gear was indeed very powerful, so I decided to conduct the ultimate experiment: five trigger-happy level 20 pawns, in full legendary power armour, with legendary charge rifles, behind a double layer of sandbags versus... one level 6 standard pawn, with good quality (average for caravan guard) Walkblem armour, and a good quality Walkblem charge rifle (the more OP of the two weapons), behind rock chunks. Here's the test setup: https://i.gyazo.com/f6e62fd53e9e7093a9ac8d6ffafce25b.jpg

The results: the 1 pawn was, of course, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of bullets flying at them, but they were still able to down 1 or 2 of the vanilla supersoldiers. Taking this experiment further, I only had 4 of the vanilla supersoldiers fire at the Walkbem-geared pawn, while I micromanaged the Walkbem pawn as much as possible, except the results this time around were a clear contrast: the single 'medicore' Walkbem unit was able to consistently beat the 4 legendary vanilla supersoldiers, while only typically getting up to around 50-60% pain. I repeated these combinations, and the aforementioned results for both 5v1 and 4v1 actually happened consistently. Therefore, it's safe to say that 1 mediocre Walkbem guard is roughly as powerful as 4.5 near-absolute top tier, legendary-geared, godlike vanilla pawns.

So with guards with gear as powerful as that, along with the significant silver cuts for the caravans; the entire balance implications with v1.0 are gone, right? Well, while many of v1.0s issues are gone, v1.1 brings its own equally ugly balance implications, of course relating to that coveted gear that all Walkbem corporation caravan guards are lugging around!

First and foremost, all Walkbem gear can actually be produced at conventional workbenches, only requiring what researches their 'vanilla counterparts' need to also be produced. While yes, the plasteel and component costs are high; the former can easily be solved by mid-late game mechanoid raids and deep drilling, and what's 50 components for an OP rifle now that they're so easily-accessible with the plethora of caravans that this mod introduces, especially with your shiny new economy!

However, there's arguably a significantly easier method of acquiring a specimen or two of this gear. Have you been eyeballing that lonely psychic animal pulser that's been gathering dust in the corner? Because that is the very method I'm talking about.

So, basic psychic pulser mechanics: pawn press button, pulser send waves, animals go cuckoo, animal attack human. All you need to do is designate a zone for your animals, then wall that zone in so that when you activate your pulser, the animals can't actually go rampant, thus preventing them being harmed. Next, all of your colonists go into another room, which you then wall off, but don't forget to bring out that animal pulser! Once all of the preparatory steps are done, get that pulser finger ready.

That Walkbem armour & weapon caravan, with its *muffalo* and OP troops, are unsuspectingly heading towards your not-at-all conspicuous wall setup. I'd recommend waiting until there's a Walkbem soldier next to a muffalo, preferably with a Walkbem Charge Rifle as that's the more overpowered of the two weapons. Once the above condition is met, press that button as hard as you can and let all hell break loose, while your colonists and your colony's animals are in the safety of their secluded 'shelters'!

Once the dust clears, you should find...
A) Some precious Walkbem death machines, ready to be repurposed
B) The majority of, if not all of the caravan's merchandise on the floor, fresh for the picking
C) Animals everywhere, so your colony will never have to worry about food again
D) Mountains being dug out by the explosive power of the Walkbem weapons

So now that you've got a ginormous wealth spike from the muffalo that were felled by Pandora's rifles, as well as all of the firepower you'll ever need to compensate for that and then some, you've basically won the game! All for a relatively small investment of 1200 silver.

Fun fact: two poorly-skilled pawns were able to single-handedly take over a pirate outpost, sustaining only one or two injuries between eachother, both with Walkbem weapons acquired using the method above. Anyways, I beg to digress.

In all seriousness, this mod has so much potential. Such a great concept which many players would want, and that's shown by how many views this mod has raked in, in such a short period of time! However, the execution at this stage is, quite frankly, too flawed to be appealing based on the points above. I'm hoping that this improves over time though, but in the state that this mod is in, I simply can't recommend it.

GG no re.

So I gonna pick up the remaining ideas/concepts that I could possible "flesh out" in the future, after removing all the parts which are just conceptual mistakes and coding errors on my side, which is resolved in 1.2.

- simulate supply/demand (even as little as value multipliers that slowly fluctuate over time on a per-faction basis) at the very least,
- maybe diversify currency types across multiple cultures,
- fluctuating currency values.

I have some ideas regarding the simulation of supply/demand of items... I'm not sure if I have the ability to code those yet. Will try someday after I'm done with another mod that I'm working on.

As for the currency - I doubt I would touch this because, the default currency in the game is silver. To create multiple version of it - I currently can't wrap my mind around how to do that... so I have to give this a pass.

[Canute]

Instead of caravans, why not using drophips from
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=31906.0
Yes that would need alot of different mechanic, but the ship can liftoff and leave at the first damage it takes.

[XeoNovaDan]

Walking Problem, I'm actually glad you handled this sort of feedback so well. Props to you, sir!

I'll definitely keep an eye on this mod to see how it goes; making the Walkblem weapons no longer acquirable by players is a significant step in the right direction, without a doubt. Armour's a bit of a more complicated beast because, despite possibly being marked with the big 'D', I doubt that'll stop many people from acquiring armour that's not only notably more protective than vanilla power armour, but also having a plethora of other bonuses such as significant movespeed increases, and much improved thermal insulation for the helmet.

I look forward to see how this pans out though. Good luck!

[SpaceDorf]

Instead of caravans, why not using drophips from
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=31906.0
Yes that would need alot of different mechanic, but the ship can liftoff and leave at the first damage it takes.

Not only this, you could also make your own Dropships as flying fortresses.
The Problem would be trading as far as I know it is not possible to trade directly out and into the cargo hold of the dropship. ( except the trading interface when visiting another village )

A workaround I could think of .. or maybe a general change to the mod .. would be if the caravan triggered a Space Trader Event and you had to trade via the coms console.
This way the guards become obsolete too.

[AngleWyrm]

All Walkblem weapons will also self-destruct on drop, to prevent OP weapons falling into players hands.

In the game Starbound the player's character can go on a quest to defeat an assassin who will then join the player's crew as an AI teammate. While the assassin is an enemy he is powerful, but after he joins the crew he is weak.

So: Was the assassin powerful or weak?

Or is it looking more like there was not actually an assassin in the game, but rather that the entity's stats were part of a hostile PvE environment?

[SpaceDorf]

I have to meditate on that.

AngleWyrms Zen of Gaming.

[WalkingProblem]

Walking Problem, I'm actually glad you handled this sort of feedback so well. Props to you, sir!

I'll definitely keep an eye on this mod to see how it goes; making the Walkblem weapons no longer acquirable by players is a significant step in the right direction, without a doubt. Armour's a bit of a more complicated beast because, despite possibly being marked with the big 'D', I doubt that'll stop many people from acquiring armour that's not only notably more protective than vanilla power armour, but also having a plethora of other bonuses such as significant movespeed increases, and much improved thermal insulation for the helmet.

I look forward to see how this pans out though. Good luck!

I have players wanting the Walkblem gears. The biggest reason is, the gears are not balanced yet, so removing it when drop is the right thing.

But since I have nerfed the caravans, I am now working on balancing the gears so that they are not OP and is at the right price (its my first time working with weapons and apparels... so there is much to learn). The weapons will be further nerfed, thats for sure (with less accuracy).

Instead of caravans, why not using drophips from
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=31906.0
Yes that would need alot of different mechanic, but the ship can liftoff and leave at the first damage it takes.

Not only this, you could also make your own Dropships as flying fortresses.
The Problem would be trading as far as I know it is not possible to trade directly out and into the cargo hold of the dropship. ( except the trading interface when visiting another village )

A workaround I could think of .. or maybe a general change to the mod .. would be if the caravan triggered a Space Trader Event and you had to trade via the coms console.
This way the guards become obsolete too.

The thing about dropship is that, it complicates the coding for me. And I'm also wary of building my mod on another mod. It might have problems which I would have no means of resolving. So unless absolutely necessary, I usually try to be as independent as possible in term of what I create - so I know how to resolve any issues. But its a good idea nevertheless.

But if have a choice, I still prefer to build an armored vehicle to bring the goods. I just not sure how to "patch" a xml file without causing mod conflicts... anyone have any idea?

In the game Starbound the player's character can go on a quest to defeat an assassin who will then join the player's crew as an AI teammate. While the assassin is an enemy he is powerful, but after he joins the crew he is weak.

So: Was the assassin powerful or weak?

Or is it looking more like there was not actually an assassin in the game, but rather that the entity's stats were part of a hostile PvE environment?

I dun think the Rimworld engine allows such change in stats - and also the players will feel cheated, and then I get another round of complains... lol...

I think I just need to make sure things are balanced and it should be fine.

Like the lesson learnt from the overloaded caravans is that - while certain ideas are good in concept, its literally game-breaking in practice. My hope to give more convenience to the players, only results in turning the players into evil pirates... lol.... and thus the caravans now only carries 1/10 of what they originally carry in the version 1.0.