Jump To Lightspeed Archive

INTRODUCTION

I believe that SWG and Jump to Lightspeed will be more funwith features that supportspace-based commerce -- in other words, space needs to have features to support both combat and commerce.

To this end, I've put together a number of ideas to support commerce in space. Some of them I've already discussed in other threads, some are new. The main new idea I get to toward the end of this message. If you're terminally impatient (heh)you can skip to the "SHIPPING TERMINALS" section, but I hope you'll try reading through the preliminary comments first -- they'll help the rest of this message make more sense.

SPACE EXPANSION: THE COMMERCIAL GAME

I put together a fairly detailed list of ideas to support space-based commerce in my thread "Space Expansion: The Commercial Game" (Core Systems thread #17565). This discussion wasn't so much about how to implement ideas for space commerce as it wasto talk about what kinds of commerce the Space Expansionought to have. It was a pretty good discussion, but I wouldn't mind giving these ideas a little more exposure -- if anyone thinks it might be useful to repost that thread over here in the actual Jump to Lightspeed forum, let me know.

The core of that thread that relates to this one is the list of three main types of space-based commercial service:

• passenger transportation


• freight delivery


• cargo sales

So how can we get these features?

PLAYER CONTRACTS

There's an idea I had a while back that would support space-based commerce without needing to implement any other new features. This is because it's a major new feature itself that goes well beyond supporting just space-based commerce.

This is the concept of Player Contracts. I've designed a contract system that would allow players to establish long-term and repeated contracts with each other to securely perform many different kinds of economic transactions, from the basic goods-for-money trade we currently use to crafting, repair, guard duty, player bounties(!), and even in-game marriage contracts.

If you'd like to check out the details of this idea, you can read the messages in thread #4421 in the Core Systems forum ("Player Contracts: A Design Document") -- there's also a somewhat shorter version ("Player Contracts: The Short Version") in thread #15183 of the Core Systems forum that gives you all the details in one message. (Admittedly, it's not all that short.)

A couple of the contract types Ipropose are Transport and Delivery. Transport contracts allow you to make deals with players to move items or players to a specified location; Delivery contracts let you agree to give specific items to another player.

If just these two types of player contracts were available, we would have a formal, game-backed way to perform twoof the most requested space commerce services: passenger service and freight delivery service. There's nothing preventing us from doing these things informallythe daythat JtLships... butit doesn't appear that there'll be any features to reliablysupport doing those things, either. And without a formal in-game system that protects the players who agree in good faith to make contracts with other players, these kinds of commerce just won't happen -- it'll be too easy to cheat the other guy by taking his money or goods or services without providing the agreed-on payment.

A game-implemented contract system would be exactly the kind of formal system needed tobe able to make trustable deals. But how would this actually work in practice?

One feature of player contractsthat would make a freight delivery system practicalwould becontract terminals. As a freighter pilot, you'd be able to go to a contract terminal near your favorite starport, find a delivery mission that suits you, accept the mission, take "delivery" of the item (I put delivery in quotes because you never actually see the item in your inventory -- it's put in a special contract account to prevent theft), travel to your destination, and have the item "transferred" to the delivery terminal, at which point your bank account is credited with the freight delivery fee offered in the contract.

Sound like it might work?

It must be said that although the developers have discussed the idea of implementing some systemsupportingplayer missions (which really is what my player contract system winds up being), they haven't mentioned it publicly in months. Nor do they show anysigns of considering implementing anything like a player contract or mission system.

So is there some other way to support space-based commerce? Is there some other relatively simple feature the developers could implement that supports not just freight delivery but cargo sales?

SHIPPING TERMINALS

Having gone through all the background details, let's cut to the chase. What we need is this: Bazaar terminals that can be placed inside starports, and that have been enhanced in two ways: to allow players toenter "want ads," andto provide automatic payments for delivering selected items to selected off-planet destinations.

(In what follows, remember the distinction between freight and cargo: freight is stuff you carry for someone else for a predetermined fee, while cargo is stuff you buy in one place and carry to sell in another place in the hope of making a profit between the two transactions.)

What we need is a new type of terminal -- a Shipping terminal -- that works just like a Bazaar terminal but with a couple of enhancements and a restriction:

• has a new "Wanted" category (in addition to Armor, Misc, Resources, etc.)


• has two new columns on all item categories (except the new Wanted category)




• Delivery Location


• Delivery Fee


• is only found inside starports

When you offer an item for sale on the Bazaar terminal, you have the option of marking it for delivery to another starport. If you take this option by selecting a Delivery Location starport from a pulldown list, you're prompted to enter a (non-zero) Delivery Fee as well. If you don't enter a Delivery Location, the item is listed for sale just like items are listed currently. Otherwise the delivery fee is immediately deducted from your bank account (if you can't pay it, you aren't allowed to mark the item for delivery) -- that way when someone delivers it they are assured of payment. If you later cancel the offer, the delivery fee is credited back to your bank account.

[Question: Would we want to allow items to be delivered to starport Shipping terminals on the same planet as the source Shipping terminal? Or should the pick list of possible delivery starports exclude all starports on the same planet where you're placing the item for sale?]

Only operators of multi-player ships would be able to accept freight delivery missions from the Shipping terminal. Starfighters will already have plenty of cool things that only they can do; they don't need to be able to haul freight or cargo, too.

To prevent the theft of freight, you never get the actual freight items in your ship -- you just get a ship's manifest that lists the items you're moving from one Shipping terminal to another. When you take a freight delivery contract from a Shipping terminal, the item is marked and displayed as inactive to anyone viewing that item ina Bazaar orShipping terminal. If you get killed in space, the item is marked back to active. Only when you successfully land at your destination and redeed your ship is the item removed from the source Shipping terminal, added to the destination Shipping terminal, and the delivery fee deposited to your bank account with an in-gameemail message telling you about the transfer. (It might also be nice to send an in-game email message to the person who offered the delivery fee to let him or her know that the item has been successfully delivered.)

[Note that if piracy and docking are ever implemented, having a ship's manifest of items being delivered would be a good source of items for pirates to steal.]

[Additional enhancement: What about allowing anyone to mark an item for delivery, even after it's originallybeen added by someone else to a Bazaar terminal? That way if you're on Lok and you need 1000 units of Resource X and someone is selling it on Dantooine, you can offer a delivery fee for someone to bring it to you. The only catch is that the person who placed the item for sale would have to authorize the delivery, otherwise you could have people griefing merchants by having their products shipped to undesirable locations.]

Finally, there would also be a new button next to the "My Sales" button on the Bazaar terminal -- this would be labeled "Wanted". Pressing it would allow you to create what would essentially be want ads. You'd enter text into two fields: a short Subject line (probably with something like a 30-character limit), and a Details text entry box. You'd briefly describe what you want to sell (or buy!) in the Subject line, then provide any other necessary information in the Details box. When you hit OK, this would create a new "item" that's only shown when you click on the "Wanted" category on any Bazaar or Shipping terminal. All Wanted items would automatically have, say,a 3-day lifespan, but you'd be able to cancel Wanted messages in a way similar to how you cancel sale offers on Bazaar terminals currently (the only difference being that you wouldn't get an actual physical item to retrieve, since there was never one to begin with).

SHIPPING EXAMPLE

So how would all this actually work? Let's try an example.

Congratulations! You're now the proud owner-operator of a YT-1300 -- she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, and you're ready to start earning back what you paid to buy her.

You walk into the Coronet Starport with your YT-1300 deed in your inventory. Set amid the ticket stations are several new terminals -- they look sort of like Bazaar terminals, but seem to have a few more blinking lights.

You access this newShipping terminal, and click on the "Resource" category. On the right side of the terminal screen, the usual list of resources for sale appears... but you notice that there are two new columns: one for "Delivery Location" that for some resources lists the names of starports on various planets, and one for "Delivery Fee" that showssome number.All the resources marked as having a Delivery Location also have a Delivery Fee listed.

There's one item that shows a 500-credit delivery fee for taking some Radioactives to Theed Starport. You were already thinking of heading that way, so you mark that item and click on the "Deliver" button. You notice that there are two other items whose owners want them delivered to theShipping terminals at the Theed starport, so you click on "Deliver" for them, too. Now all three items are grayed out on the Shipping terminal display.

You deed your ship, travel (uneventfully!) to Theed starport, and redeed your ship when you get there. As you stand on your two feet again, you notice that your email icon is blinking. When you click on it to bring up your Email window, you see that there are three messages waiting for you, each one telling you that the appropriate delivery fee has been credited to your bank account.

"All too easy!" you think with a grin. Then you realize that while you were in Coronetyou could havechecked the Wanted category for Bazaar terminals on Naboo to see if there were any items you could have bought in Coronet to bring to Theed in the hope of making a profit.

You figure you'll head back to Coronet, so you access the Theed Shipping terminal and select the Wanted category for Corellian terminals. Someone is looking for Lokian leather; someone else wants as many crates ofMuon Goldas you can offer (but you're not desperate enough to try smuggling spice -- yet); and -- hey! someone wants Nabooian Fiberplast. You click on the Resources category, and sure enough, someone is selling 1000 units of high-quality Nabooian Fiberplast for 6000 credits. That seems a bit steep, but the person who left the Coronet want ad says he'll pay 8 credits per unit. That would be a 2000 credit profit, which would definitely pay the electric bill for a few days.

So you buy the fiberplast (before someone else can) and send an IM to the guy who wrote the want ad -- no response. You send an email, then jump in your ship and head back to Coronet.

When you get there, there's still no reply to your email. Now you have to make a tough choice -- do you hang on to the fiberplast in the hope of selling it to the person who wrote the want ad? Or do you put it onto the Coronet Bazaar yourself to try to make back what you paid for it (and maybe a little profit in the bargain)?

Welcome to the exciting life of a freighter captain.

QUESTIONS

So -- would this work, or have I missed some obvious flaw?

Are there other features that would improve these ideas?

Would this be too hard for the developers to implement?

Is there some other entirely different (and better) way to get space commerce?

What do you think?

--Flatfingers

Thanks for the comments, folks -- they're appreciated.

In fact, they've reminded me of a few additions I ought to make, or at least suggest.

1. Limit the number of items that can be concurrently taken for delivery. We don't want someone coming in and taking every single freight item from a Shipping terminal -- would 5 items (no more than 2 from any one terminal) be enough?

2. Delivery from Bazaar terminals.Suppose you're using a regular Bazaar terminal in a player city with no starport. Does that mean you can't offer an item for delivery (since there's no way to pick which Shipping terminal the item should be shipped from)? Should the rules for how items are deposited be changed so that you could pay a fee (in addition to the delivery fee you're offering a freighter captain) to have your item transferred to the nearest starport's Shipping terminal when you put it up for sale on your Bazaar terminal? Or should we make players have to go to an actual starport Shipping terminal to be able to mark items for delivery to other worlds?

3. NPC delivery missions. We want to be careful with these.If it's just a matter of deliveringfreight,it would probably beOK to have"fake" items to be delivered from one planet to another-- freight items (per my original suggestion)are never tangible items; they'rejust marked on a ship's manifest. What we don't want is NPC cargo missions, since that suggests that there'd be NPC-created items on Bazaar/Shipping terminals that we could actually purchase... which would corrupt the entire player-crafting economy of SWG.

4. Smuggling. This probably deserves a thread all to itself! I've never played a Smuggler, so I don't know how this profession currently does its thing. But given the hugely iconic nature of Han Solo's character to the Star Wars literary universe, I can't imagine that the developers don't have some new featuresin mind for Smugglers in a post-Jump to Lightspeed world. So I don't want to go too crazy with suggestions here, but it certainly seems that smuggling ought to be involved somehow in shipping as I've described it so far.

My suggestion is to have Imperial ships in space be able to scan freighters (in normal space). Imperial ships within a certain distance would be able to "see" your ship's manifest. If you were carrying something illegal, that would give you a TEF to them and they'd be able to attack you. Or perhaps Shipwrights will be able to craft smuggling holds on certain ships (*cough*freighters*cough*) -- smuggled items wouldn't show up on your ship's manifest, but Imperial or Rebel ships that got close enough to your ship and had the necessary sensors (see my thread "Sensor Ops and You" in this forum)could perform a cargo scan. If the scan turned up any items that weren't on your manifest, or that were obviously illegal, or if the scanning ship was Rebel and the scanned items were clearly pro-Imperial, boom -- TEF time.

Any other comments/suggestions that would help make this concept a better candidate for implementation?

--Flatfingers

Message Edited by LAR on 07-02-2004 06:40 PM

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LAR wrote:

Player Contracts I'm pretty sure won't work. You'll have people breaking/abusing contracts left and right because there's no way to enforce them without letting people abuse them from the other side of things.

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I understand your objection -- I've made it myself. You're absolutelyright: for a player contract system to be accepted, contracts have to be reliably enforceable.

Knowing thatthis is the part where people will need convincing,I've addressedpretty comprehensively how it could be accomplished. This discussion isin my original Player Contractsthread (# 4421 in the Core Systems forum). I'm reasonably confident it can work, but if after considering my arguments you still disagree, I won't be offended. (And of course any constructive comments -- pro or con -- that you'd be willing to offer would be appreciated.)

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LAR wrote:

The functionality of Shipping Terminals shouldhave been part of the Bazaar at launchIMO. This is one of the few good aspects of Eve Online. Unfortunately, it's too late to add it now. Allowing players to place "sell orders", or"shipment orders" which can be used as "sell orders",for goods would essentially kill the Merchant profession and would hurt player cities.

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I'm curious about this. How would Merchants be injured by giving all players the ability tomore easilysell their items on other planets (instead of physicallytaking those items there themselves, which they can already do)? You feel that this would somehow cannibalize Merchant sales?

I guessmy perception of Bazaar sales is somewhat less zero-sum. As far as I can see,the main effect ofallowing shipping wouldbe toexpose Merchant sales to a much larger audience. The additional potential sales from expanding marketswould, I think,more than offset anypossible shortfall from increasednon-Merchant sales. In any case, expanding markets (whether Merchants profit directly or not) is usually a Good Thing for an entire economy and everyone who participates in that market over the long term.I suspect the SWG economy would not be an exception to that rule.

WRT player cities, there you may have a point. We've already seen a lot of consolidation of market activity into just two main sites (Theed and Coronet starports);allowingitem deliverymight reduce economic traffic into player cities even more.

I'll have to give this some more thought.

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AuleyDavyds wrote:

The way I understand this, part of the system is for anyone selling goods (a weaponsmith, for example) to be able to place his goods on sale at one place, but actually ask for it to be delivered elsewhere. Do you honestly think anyone would do this? It seems to make little sense. I don't see why anyone would want to sell something in a place besides where they are, and furthermore I don't think there are many high-quality items that would draw any decent delivery fees (considering max cost of items on the bazaar).

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The ideas I've suggested areprobably conditioned by thinking mostly of resource sales, rather than sales of crafted objects. Crafted objects can be made anywhere (for the most part), but many resources only become available on one planet.

SupposeI'm a crafter who needs a really good Polymer,but I've run out of my local supply. IfI can see units ofa better Polymer from another planet are available for saleon my local terminal because a miner has had it delivered here, that seems like a win-win situation to me. I get the resources I need, and the miner makesa sale he might otherwise not have made.

Admittedly, thinking mostly in terms of resource sales narrows the utility of a delivery function. But I suspect there'd bepeoplewilling to have objects worth 6000cr or lessdelivered to other planets to try to make sales there. Enough to make this system worthwhile? Possibly not, not on its own... but what if we added NPC freight delivery missions?

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The wanted idea sounds interesting, but my question would be expediency: if someone truly need some item (a TKA destroyed his VK by using it too much, needs a new one) he needs it now, usually, and can't wait until the person can actually "deliver" the item. I like the idea, just not certain it will be practical or possible.

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The idea of "want ads" is my initial solution to the question of how to create a cargo shipping game. To succesfully play the "buy low, sell high" game requires two pieces of information:

• what can you acquire for later sale


• what do people want to buy

The former question you can answer by browsing the local Bazaar terminal to see what's available for sale, so that feature's already implemented. The latter question-- finding outwhat people want to buy -- requiressomemeans by whichplayerscanadvertise what they want in some place that potential sellers can view.

Adding a Wanted category to the existing Bazaar functionality seems like an effectivesolution thathas the additional virtue of beingrelatively simple to implement.

I wouldn't be surprisedif there werea better way to accomplish this goal of letting potential cargo shippers know what people on other planetswant to buy... but if there is,I haven't been able to think ofit yet! If you've got some ideas for how else we might do this, I hope you'll add them to this conversation.

In fact, I hope everyone who's interested in a richer SWG and JtLexperience will offer up any ideas they might have forfeatures that will promote space-based commerce. A "deeper" commercial game ultimately winds up helping to create a more satisfying game for everyone. So if you have a suggestion for how the developers can accomplish this, let's hear it!

--Flatfingers