PC Trader and economy balance thread

Hey Madmole what if the general merchandise that the vendors sale would be what you could get from any vendor anywhere but the secret stash was all trader specific. I think that would be a cool and interesting way to set up traders. Thanks fro all of the hard work.

 
That is counter realistic though. The whole trading system was invented because of lack of specific resources. So people with no wood, traded with people who did have wood, so that they could sell it, because it is in high demand. I found out we can do trader specific inventory, so I'm going with the original design idea there.
Edit: If anything it would be the opposite, wood and water would be stocked high in the desert. Oil might be for sale in the other biomes since anyone in the desert can go find it easily.
I see your point, and I agree. I think some simple adjustments would make it both realistic and fun, if not too complex to implement:

Basically each biome trader would have 3 lists

1. Items that are frequently stocked for a decent price because they are abundant

2. items that are frequently stocked but really expensive because they are rare and valuable for the biome

3. items that are rarely stocked because they are not very useful for the biome. Items on this list the trader may not buy or might not give a good price.

Example

Desert Trader:

wood and water are rare, but valuable so they would be stocked at a high markup relative to other traders. You could then make a living as a lumberjack in the forest and caravan to sell in the desert. even more fun when bandits are implemented.

items that would be frequently stocked and you could buy at a reasonable price could basically be the original list (aloe cream, yucca juice, oil, etc)

items that would be not stocked and either not bought or bought at a bad price would be things like winter cloths and mods. maybe other items like axes and food items that give protection from cold that have limited utility in the desert.

Similar lists for snow/forest are pretty easy. The burnt forest and wasteland would need to be a bit more creative. Maybe increased stock of ammo due to high local zombie/bandit population in the biome.

Guppy likes it and thats what counts :chuncky:

 
MM I love the idea of balancing for RP, I like to build and mine and Zombies are secondary for me. although I love the new POIs.

here are my thoughts:

1. Specialized Traders - like others said some traders could be known for Acid/parts and others for Food/tools, etc. like in WOW where I have to travel to get something specific for a quest.

2. a PERK for crafters that removes the selling bottleneck so I can sell more then 3 clubs or XX stacks of resources. this should be a perk that maybe blocks out another so it does not get abused but lets a RP/crafter/wood/farmer to earn a living a also get the XP needed/funds needed

3. that same Traderman perk should also enable Purchase XP as another stage - maybe?

4. having a means of getting access to advance tools like Steel/mods/augers as a trader that can't be given to others so they are "Soul bound" this would only be part of the new PERK and could only be sold back to the trader or scrapped. again keeping the items from being abused.

the whole problem I am finding is getting what I need to be a miner/LB/Farmer means getting to 40-100 in order to be able to do what I want.

having this Perk that unlocks Trader abilities and tools that are bound to the player would be great.

 
Guppy likes it and thats what counts :chuncky:
Agreed. Basically you'd have 20 traders.

Desert-Medical, Forest-Medical, Frozen-Medical, Wasteland-Medical

Desert-Weapons, Forest-Weapons, ...

 
I guess you all forget a simple thing

Trader A is in desert, the local survivors Trade in Yuccas, Aloe, Gas, and the other local stuff and buy all the other stuff that is local not available

Then there are trader caravans that buy the local ressources (cheaper) and sell ressources from other regions (more expensive then there)

Means Trader A and trader B will have nearly the same stuff. The difference is only in the price.

 
Guys I appreciate the brainstorms, but its out of the scope of what I can achieve with xml editing. Mainly I'm looking for big exploits, stuff that is underpriced/overpriced. I will add specifics to each trader. I've already done this:

+Changed: Increased chance for rare medicine at traders (Joel)

+Changed: Increased the duke value of raw meat (Joel)

+Changed: Nerfed barter perk sell rates to half of what they were. (Joel)

+Changed: Cut sell rate from .2 to .15 value (Joel)

+Changed: Reduced amounts of food for sale at traders (Joel)

+Changed: Added acid to traders (Joel)

This helps a bit with selling stuff for a lot of dukes, but you can still earn decent money with no perks.

 
Guys I appreciate the brainstorms, but its out of the scope of what I can achieve with xml editing. Mainly I'm looking for big exploits, stuff that is underpriced/overpriced. I will add specifics to each trader. I've already done this:
+Changed: Increased chance for rare medicine at traders (Joel)

+Changed: Increased the duke value of raw meat (Joel)

+Changed: Nerfed barter perk sell rates to half of what they were. (Joel)

+Changed: Cut sell rate from .2 to .15 value (Joel)

+Changed: Reduced amounts of food for sale at traders (Joel)

+Changed: Added acid to traders (Joel)

This helps a bit with selling stuff for a lot of dukes, but you can still earn decent money with no perks.
Nice changes, but I still think we need more ammo, specially brass 7.62mm. Something I noticed: there is more casings and bullet tips for sale, but not much gunpowder (like 10, 20). Would be possible an increase?

 
Guys I appreciate the brainstorms, but its out of the scope of what I can achieve with xml editing. Mainly I'm looking for big exploits, stuff that is underpriced/overpriced. I will add specifics to each trader. I've already done this:
+Changed: Increased chance for rare medicine at traders (Joel)

+Changed: Increased the duke value of raw meat (Joel)

+Changed: Nerfed barter perk sell rates to half of what they were. (Joel)

+Changed: Cut sell rate from .2 to .15 value (Joel)

+Changed: Reduced amounts of food for sale at traders (Joel)

+Changed: Added acid to traders (Joel)

This helps a bit with selling stuff for a lot of dukes, but you can still earn decent money with no perks.
MM so maybe I am confused (and I could be - being an old phart with a scotch in hand...) when you say nerf the barter rates you mean in favor of the player who takes the perk? so for example, I buy for 100, but with barter perk 1/5 maybe 90/80/70/60/30 (perks 1-5/5) ?

right now as a miner they only way for me to level is with my farm harvest XP and my turning ore into tools to sell at trader and use barter perk + Cigar to help with prices and XP. the downside is the traders take 3 of each items.

QUESTION - is there any way to have the trader buy more then 3 of an item of you have barter perk?

 
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Guys I appreciate the brainstorms, but its out of the scope of what I can achieve with xml editing. Mainly I'm looking for big exploits, stuff that is underpriced/overpriced. I will add specifics to each trader. I've already done this:
+Changed: Increased chance for rare medicine at traders (Joel)

...

+Changed: Added acid to traders (Joel)

This helps a bit with selling stuff for a lot of dukes, but you can still earn decent money with no perks.

For a trader to have antibiotics and acid, they need a working chem station.

If the chem station is broken, have a quest for fixing it. Once its fixed, that will reflect things the trader both wants and sells.

Each online station will increase the supply and demand for some items:

-Workstation - Buy and sell weapons/ armor and common mods.

-Forge: Ores and wood.

Ect…

This can make each trader different, and the player can dramatically help the local economy by bringing trader stations online. This can start having other effects, like bringing more NPC's to the area (the good, the bad and the ugly). :)

 
So in a limited enhancement, some items should always be needed but not necessarily in supply.

-Antibiotics

-Gas (Maybe reduce the buy price if it gets spammed).

-Ammo

These would be items anyone in their right mind would want in a disaster situation.

 
Nice changes, but I still think we need more ammo, specially brass 7.62mm. Something I noticed: there is more casings and bullet tips for sale, but not much gunpowder (like 10, 20). Would be possible an increase?
I'm having the opposite experience. I just bought 230 gp, have about 400 brass casings in storage and I'm short on lead. Obviously if I mine some I'll have tons of lead, but just scavenging and buying I have more brass, some gp and little lead. I bust all the resource rocks I can and craft gp as well.

I had about 230 rounds of 9mm on me but 3 radiated spiders and a feral biker and a few vultures made me use up half my ammo on one T3 fetch/clear quest. If it gets pretty bad with ferals I'll add more ammo. But I found 3 traders if you make your rounds you can stock quite a lot as long as you have the money.

 
MM so maybe I am confused (and I could be - being an old phart with a scotch in hand...) when you say nerf the barter rates you mean in favor of the player who takes the perk? so for example, I buy for 100, but with barter perk 1/5 maybe 90/80/70/60/30 (perks 1-5/5) ?
right now as a miner they only way for me to level is with my farm harvest XP and my turning ore into tools to sell at trader and use barter perk + Cigar to help with prices and XP. the downside is the traders take 3 of each items.

QUESTION - is there any way to have the trader buy more then 3 of an item of you have barter perk?
I changed it so you sell for .15 of the value instead of .2. I also reduced how much you sell for with perks. It was crazy op, I could craft 3 sets of leather armor and make 300 per piece with green and no perks, imagine getting 50% more than that. Its literally thousands and thousands of dukes.

I still made about 1800 for completing a T3 quest. A 1000 wood sells for about 75 dukes right now with 0 perks. You can still make money, just not going to be a millionaire at level 20 any more.

 
One thing I would like to point out about "Beaker Rarity"

The medicine cabinets no longer show up in the majority of POIs, I believe I read they were being worked on a few experimentals ago.. When they are back chances to find a random beaker will improve alot, no?

 
I changed it so you sell for .15 of the value instead of .2. I also reduced how much you sell for with perks. It was crazy op, I could craft 3 sets of leather armor and make 300 per piece with green and no perks, imagine getting 50% more than that. Its literally thousands and thousands of dukes.
I still made about 1800 for completing a T3 quest. A 1000 wood sells for about 75 dukes right now with 0 perks. You can still make money, just not going to be a millionaire at level 20 any more.
Needs some testplay, but (even if it hurts ^^) i guess it fits

 
Another thing to keep in mind with Ammo is that once you get the rad remover mod on a weapon it drastically reduces ammo usage. As you start to perk up and specialize in whatever firearm(s) you use - that too greatly reduces ammo expenditure. Eventually, even if it takes some until later in the game - you will all start to get a continual surplus.

The mining is also much, much better now than it was at the start of A17 - I feel that few players know about this yet as I constantly read people talking about surface boulders still (much slower to accumulate now over the long-term in comparison to a proper mine) - once you get a few mines made and are perked in mining - you can go in something like your coal mine with a steel pickaxe early in the morning and come out and have a 6,000 stack of it before noon. Takes very little time to do it once you get it all set up and you've perked it a bit. It's not a tedious grind and there's ore everywhere..the veins go quite a ways-and most importantly no more cave-ins. Much, much better.

 
Another thing to keep in mind with Ammo is that once you get the rad remover mod on a weapon it drastically reduces ammo usage. As you start to perk up and specialize in whatever firearm(s) you use - that too greatly reduces ammo expenditure. Eventually, even if it takes some until later in the game - you will all start to get a continual surplus.
The mining is also much, much better now than it was at the start of A17 - I feel that few players know about this yet as I constantly read people talking about surface boulders still (much slower to accumulate now over the long-term in comparison to a proper mine) - once you get a few mines made and are perked in mining - you can go in something like your coal mine with a steel pickaxe early in the morning and come out and have a 6,000 stack of it before noon. Takes very little time to do it once you get it all set up and you've perked it a bit. It's not a tedious grind and there's ore everywhere..the veins go quite a ways-and most importantly no more cave-ins. Much, much better.
Yes and I don't think that many people know this, if you sample the gravel (watch the harvest) that is what you will find underneath. So if you get gravel/rock/iron when you dig the surface gravel spots you've hit an iron mine. If it doesn't produce a special ore, its a dud, move on.

 
In my mod, I make the following changes and they have worked quite well.

-changed <traders buy_markup="2" sell_markdown="0.2" to

<traders buy_markup="1.8" sell_markdown="0.3"

(better economy)

-changed rareMedicine count from 1 to 3

-changed medicine count from 1 to 3

-added beaker to medicine group

(beakers available at traders more often)

That's a good foundation to start with, but some individual item prices could definitely benefit from a little tweaking.

 
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In my mod, I make the following changes and they have worked quite well.
-changed <traders buy_markup="2" sell_markdown="0.2" to

<traders buy_markup="1.8" sell_markdown="0.3"

(better economy)

-changed rareMedicine count from 1 to 3

-changed medicine count from 1 to 3

-added beaker to medicine group

(beakers available at traders more often)

That's a good foundation to start with, but some individual item prices could definitely benefit from a little tweaking.
That makes sense, except beakers should remain rare IMO. In a 7D2D apocalypse, I'm sure people living in the area would be most concerned with ammo and medicine (they already would have protected gardens). So a trader would always want any ammo or meds a player offered to sell.

 
Please set the restock of the vending machines in the options. It very much disturbs the survival aspect of the game. It is also illogical that in buildings with zombies machines are filled.

Possible options:

Vending machine in general: Restock on the day 3, 7, 14, 28, never

Vending machine at the dealer: Restock on the day 3, 7, 14, 28, never

In the vending machine only durable things should be offered, such as canned food, water, tea, coffee and beer.

(Unfortunately, I can only speak very little English. I have used translation program German - English.)

 
I'm having the opposite experience. I just bought 230 gp, have about 400 brass casings in storage and I'm short on lead. Obviously if I mine some I'll have tons of lead, but just scavenging and buying I have more brass, some gp and little lead. I bust all the resource rocks I can and craft gp as well.
I had about 230 rounds of 9mm on me but 3 radiated spiders and a feral biker and a few vultures made me use up half my ammo on one T3 fetch/clear quest. If it gets pretty bad with ferals I'll add more ammo. But I found 3 traders if you make your rounds you can stock quite a lot as long as you have the money.
Yeah, normal ferals aren't much of a problem because a full modded compound bow/crossbow can kill them (well, at least the way I play), but radiated definitely yes. I'm on day 68 and to clean a POI ou quest I always need to go through the roof to have some advantage, therefore save ammo, but I'm still having problems because I need 7.62 for blood moon so I can't explore a lot like early game. As I said, I already got 3 full rotatios, all 5 traders and not a single bullet to buy...rng is killing me...haha.

 
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