Money, trading, economies

[Pongo]

Ack, I've been thinking about how to set up a working economy in game, and its hurting my head! It's hard not to create systems where gold becomes too plentiful, or where players can game the system somehow.

At a basic level, I'd like to avoid players earning too much gold by selling items at their purchase price. So, is it possible (or could it be possible) to change purchase and sale prices for items?

Eg, an expensive sword has a value of 1000 gold; but a shop would only purchase the sword from players at 50% of its value (500 gold) and some expensive shops would sell the sword at 20% higher (errr I think that's 1200 gold). I guess this could be set up so that the shops do this for all items (eg, shops always sell at x% of value and always purchase at x% of item value).

[slowdive]

Yes, I have thought about this a few times, but haven't implemented it yet. I would add a property to shops for buybackPercent and sellPercent. These properties could be adjusted in game by a gaModifyBuyBackPercentage(shopTag, +-or=, amount). Also adding modify property to effect class so that traits could adjust those percentages. Maybe charisma would adjust as well.

[youngneil1]

Excellent idea and solution proposal by both of you. I would enjoy having this implemented, too .

[Pongo]

Yes, that would be great. I like the idea of traits or charisma influencing the price of items as well!

[Dorateen]

Different coin denominations... gold pieces, silver pieces, electrum pieces, etc.

No, I don't seriously expect to see that implemented. But it's fun to think about, for world simulation.

[Pongo]

[Dorateen]

One of the things I liked about the inclusion of rations in Elderin Stone, is that it adds another resource to spend money on. The approach I've been taking to building an economy is once items are introduced to the game world that the player will have a need and desire to purchase (ammunition, consumables, etc.) then I start thinking about strategic placement of gold drops or other valuables that can be converted into funds.

[youngneil1]

While I really like building an immersive world, weight of coins and different coin values would indeed be a bit overkill imho . It has a strong atmospheric notion though and certainly reminds me of old pen&paper days.

Reasons to spend money are vary important indeed though. As Dorateen already started to list various channels to take gold from the table (and therewith making it a joyous reward for the player) a few more ideas including those you guys mentioned already:
- One time consumables (e.g. Rations, Torches, HP and SP Potions, Status effect remover potions of all kind, Scrolls with all kinds of spells)
- Ammunition
- Cost for recharging chargeable items (like wands)
- Cost of proper resting in Inn or donation in shrine which both could grant additional long time buff spells (besides rear/heal effects)
- Extraordinary cost for a raise dead in shrine (if allowed at all)
- Cost to hire a companion, maybe even an upkeep cost a companion asks for each week
- Cost to learn a trait or spell from master (this trait or spell is not included in the usual level up lists)
- truely mighty equipment of magic or high tech kind at specific vendors, so the party has a reward to look forward for and save money for
- quests that require spending huge cash amounts to be advanced forward
- cost for using quick travel options (e.g. coaches, passenger boats)
- cost for buying a player home which in turn might grant acces to pc roster (allowing exchanging party members), max size of roster might depend on quality of the home

Hehe, now reading this I feel the need to immediately look for a huge pile of gold

[slowdive]

I just added buyback and sell percentages to shops. The default value is currently set to 70% for buyback and 100% for sell. Each shop can have different values. Currently, the values in the saved games will overwrite the values in the module file. That way if you change the buyback and sell prices in the game (maybe a completed quest changes them) they will stay that way upon loading a save. The down side is that if you decide to change the values in the toolset, all previous saved games will continue to use whatever values they had in the saved game. Maybe there is a solution for this, but I'll need to think about that (or if any others have a solution). Next, I need to add modifier ga scripts, effect properties (useful in traits like maybe diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, barter, etc.), and attribute (cha) adjustments, as mentioned before.

EDIT: added "gaModifiyShopBuyBackPercentage.cs" and "gaModifiyShopSellPercentage.cs" which can be used in conversations or triggers or IBScripts. I also created properties in Effect class for "modifyShopBuyBackPrice" and "modifyShopSellPrice" which can by used for passive traits or any effect. I also added all the code to actually use these features so they should be all ready to go.

As for attributes modifying the buyback and sell prices, should we use a module flag for allowing it and when used should we use charisma to modify by a certain amount (maybe 3% for every cha bonus...ex. 18 cha would grant 4 * 3 = 12% modifier).

We probably need a check so that buyback value never exceeds sell value so no infinite gold exploits.

[youngneil1]

Awesome - glad to see this in !

Each store could have two additional modififier variables influencing buyback and sell value. The value of these modifier variables would always be read from the savegame. As these are only modifiers, the base percentage of buyback and sell could be read from toolset only then. This way there's a toolset part (base buyback and sale percentage of this shop) and savegame part (modifier to these values, eg influenced by quest).

Edit: Yes, a cap to 100% for buyback is indeed reasonable. We could have a ruleset editor option for charisma influencing prices - it could simply ask to enter the percentage point amount as an int that each charisma bonus point influences the prices. It would default maybe to 0, like off.