Colorian Fomalhaut

Learning Python

Everytime a game is about to be published, people ask about the economy of the game. If it has one, and how does it work. Normally what they mean by that is that they want to know how the player inventory interacts with the game’s market and itema collection, if you can trade, how fast can you get rich in the game and how this wealth becomes useful in further gameplay.

Many games have great answers for this questions and even relate the game’s economy to the real economy with microtransactions or the ability to turn cash into in-game cash  There’s people that play certain games just for the trading and there’s game that have an enormus focus on the trading part. 

I want ot build a game that focuses on the economy, and even when the main tool to get into this economy will be via trading, there will be bonds, stocks, options, fluctuating interest rates, different currencies and therefore, fluctuating prices. This will be both offline and multiplayer.

I want to call it space trader since it will be based in space and the player will have to warp from one star to the other (it will be a rather small number of stars when we compare it almost any space game available). So far I’ve planned that there will be 4 empires that will have changing diplomatic relations to one another, bringing wars and treaties for the player to interact with.

The game starts with the player in the initial planet (each star has one or more stars) with the player staring at a news stand. This stand will give acces to magazines and newspapers. Magazines will explain the mechanics of the game via different categories: finance, politics, science/tech. The newspapers will have news of around the galaxy, the further away it comes from, the higher the price the player will have to pay to fetch them in “real time”. Players later can subscribe to news servicies so they can get news without having to visit the news stands. The magazines can be bought for the same purpose.

The incentives to make money will be ship upgrading (defense, thrusters and aesthetics), access to more expensive equipment, news, trading goods and some space ports will have entrance fees and taxes. The player will be ablo to hire fleets for defense or to carry goods to other planets and stars, she or he will also be able to schedule these fleets flights. 

Players will be able to buy and sell goods from and to planetary markets and directly from factories and mines. The player will be able to set up ship from a mine to a factory to hurry the production process, but the player will have to find a buyer for the goods in another planet or star.

There will be a galactic stock exchange, where all the companies of the galaxy will issue both stocks and bonds that the player can buy. There will be huge corporations with concerns in many stars and other more local that may restrain to one planet or one star system. 

There will be all kinds of goods divided in materials/commodities, industrialized goods, information/knowledge and services. The player will be able to transport military intelligence, weapons and military equipment from one star to the other and with a big enough corporation, the player can have a huge effect on the outcome of a war or financial crisis.

The objective is to trade and grow a commercial empire in a galactic economy, upgrade and customize a ship and take advantage of wars, scarcity and the changes in supply and demand that the game will offer. 

The game is beaten when the player is economically powerful enough as to lead the galaxy through the control of good supply. its a supply side game. 

There is no ship manuvering per se, it will be a game with menus and a small window where you can see your ship flying through space or parked in a planetary space station and the lifeforms you interact with.