Hmm..... do you mean that you can buy one commodity if you have the other one too?

Oh, i mean regardless of your cargo hold, you can only buy them one at a time. If you have perishables and buy 500 in one go they degrade only 1 per, say, 2 mins. But, i want it that they all degrade after 2 mins instead.

I think the only way to do that is to make the commodities perishable at a really high rate, id say, find out what makes them perishable, and crank it up, just keep changing it until it has the desired affect

Cheese On Toast:
Like the name
Beware the player

Thanks, but that isn't the same. You buy cargo for a base and it says" 20 mins to complete". The problem is with the current values after 1 commodity perishes the rest are still unaffected.
Can you limit the amount sold? Say a maximum amount of only one commodity sold of each type at a base?

i think in SP you can limit the # available

Yeah, it's in the market_goods.ini entry. Not sure which, but it is one of the numbers following the item. level...rep...????

Yeah, i did try playing around with those numbers. The last one is the modifier for how much, the other ones seem to be wether its sold or bought. Not sure about the second one from the end..

Err.. Bump.. Any ideas?

Open the Data\Equipment\Select_Equip.ini file.
(Commodities are in the middle of the file.)
Change the "decay_per_second = 0" value to whatever works for you.
(FL only uses 0 or 1, so I think its not per second, but off/on.)
Change the "volume = 1" value to limit how many may be purchased.
(A hold of 250 can carry 250 of the "volume = 1" items, or 125 "volume = 2" items.)
You can also add a line for each commodity, "mass = 1" which will affect the ships handling.
(Really slows how fast a freighter turns!)

Open the Data\Equipment\Goods.ini file.
Change the "jump_dist = 5" value to the number of jumps allowed before they're ALL gone.
(The "number that disappear per jump" = "start quantity" divided by "the jump_dist number." )
(Only works if the "decay_per_second" value is greater than (0) zero.)

BTW:
I've run combinations of these in various mods, many of them alpha, or beta versions.
Most people complained about losing money when items disappeared.
And quite a few complained about losing their ship because they could barely move when it was fully loaded.

Balance is the primary issue...
Trade routes need to be taken into account...
(Players like having at least a chance at big bucks.)
Survivability is another issue...
(To many/few pirates/thieves can be an issue.)
And, of course, your primary goals...
I was trying to recreate Privateer, which made getting everything "just so" very important.
I had so many problems, and no help, that I eventually abandoned the project.
(Never did get the commodities right.)

Watch your 6!

Edited by - warzog on 5/1/2006 5:29:10 AM

Thanks for your post, but i'm not sure about a few things.
I think the decay per second = is the rate at which it reduces. You still find though that only one unit is decaying at a time. I was hoping to have it so that all of the goods go at the same time. Or that you have to by each of them separately.
Another thing is to do with mass. I though Argh stated that mass values for commodities only affected how the loot crates behaved and it had no affect on how the ship handles?
I've not played around with Jump_dist, but i can't see how you could set it properly. I don't want to be too hard on light traders or to light on heavy traders.
I think the only way of doing it is to make it so that only a commodity is buyable at a time. Does anybody actually know what the values mean at the end of the market_commodities values?
(edit)
Still not getting very far, but the stackable commod thing does work, but it only affects goods bought separately. Meaning, some things you buy count up if they are stackable and the non stackable ones adds the same commodity to the cargo screen. This is what i wanted, i just need to limit how much is sold at any one time.
MarketGood = commodity_mox_fuel, 0, -1, 0, 0, 1, 0.500000
MarketGood = A, B, C, D, E, F, G
A = good nickname, B= level required, C=reputation required, D/E seem to control if the good is sold or bought, F not sure, G= Sold/bought price modifier
Any ideas?

Edited by - M-A-C-E_166 on 5/1/2006 8:06:36 AM

Yep

MarketGood = <commodity_nickname>, A, B, C, D, E, F

A = rank to be able to buy,
B = rep to base faction to be able to buy.
You can play with these to limit who can buy. Make it 99, 0.95 and nobody can!

C, D = should have been the quantity of the item that the base will have in stock to sell to you, and how many it will buy from you. But it's not been implemented, so I don't know for sure which is which - someone said it works in SP, I'll try but I don't believe it as I have used ships in SP with over 2,000 cargo and the numbers are always 10, 10 / 50, 50 / 100, 100 / 150, 500 for these 2 values. In other older games like Elite and Privateer the dealers may only buy or sell you a certain quantity, and this is where that would have been set.

As long as both C and D are more than 1 then you can buy as many as you want or can load into your hold. You can still sell the item if you have it in your hold, no matter what this entry is.

If either C or D is below 1 (even 0.9) then the item is not shown in the dealer's list and can't be bought, but can still be sold to the dealer if you have it in your hold.

E = 0 if item is sold on the base and
E = 1 if it's NOT sold on the base. More on this below.

F as you say is the price multiplier, F x the price from goods.ini is the price you will pay or get for this item at this base. You can also use this for weapons and ammo etc... (and maybe ships too but I haven't tried that), to vary the price on different bases. An equipment trade may be set up, I think... may be worth doing at some stage.

E is used for cheat detection! lol - I found out the hard way when I had mine accidentally set to 1 for a commodity...

I had bought a full hold of the stuff (Toxic Waste as it happens) and paid for it, and checked out from the commodity trader room with no problems. But when I launched, the dratted base police blocked me, forced me to dock again, and locked me up for cheat detected, item not sold on base!

Well, I tried to explain how I'd legitimately bought the darned stuff from this guy in the snazzy felt hat and sunglasses, who promised to load it up for me in time for me to leave on schedule, AND that I'd paid for it in full - 'course these days we don't get paper receipts and my TradComm records didn't convince them...

All they kept telling me was that the commodity just wasn't legally sold on the base, so how did I get hold of it?

'Course the guy on the hat and glasses was nowhere to be found - So it was contraband, and that, my dear, is... THAT!

Luckily the magistrate was quite sympathetic, told me it had happened before, there was some kind of underworld activity in town they were trying to trap, he said in confidence.

And he very kindly let me off, released my ship from the police pound, and put me in touch with this insurance company that refunded the money I'd given the guy in the felt hat, as my cargo was impounded - not sure what they did with it after that, as it wasn't legal - maybe they sold it off on the black market and put the proceeds towards fun and food for the annual Police Ball?

Darn! These black marketeers! Geez!

Keep the humour going,it's all the rage!

Roleplay: - the art of self-deceipt!

disregard

Edited by - warzog on 5/2/2006 8:16:49 AM