Economy Subsystem

[abeiro]

Initial Economy Prototype

For the first iteration we should keep the system simple and limit it to a few commodities — for example ores and ingots.

1. Regional Traders

Add regional traders to the 7 major cities.

These traders represent the regional market supply and will maintain large stockpiles (for example: 1000 iron ingots, 1000 gold ingots, etc.).

Important characteristics:

• Their inventory is not accessible to the player directly
• It exists only for AI trading and economic simulation
• It represents the total regional supply
• Player can trade with them using AI actions

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2. Global Supply → Dynamic Price

We compute the global supply of each commodity by summing the inventories of all regional traders.

From that supply we calculate a market price.

Implementation idea:

• Change the base item value using
  SKSE Papyrus Form.SetGoldValue()

This means:

• The new price becomes global
• Every instance of the item will use the updated value

Pros:

• Realistic
• Simple implementation

Cons:

• Intrusive
• We should store the original base value somewhere in case we want to restore it.

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3. Market Manipulation Problem

Example scenario:

1. Player buys a large amount of iron ingots (e.g., 1000).
2. Global supply decreases.
3. Next price update increases the iron price.
4. Player sells the stock for profit.

This is essentially commodity speculation, which mirrors real markets.

However, without safeguards the player could exploit it too easily.

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4. Anti-Exploit Mechanisms

Price Smoothing

Prices should not react instantly.

Instead:

• Price updates happen at delayed intervals
• Price changes are smoothed over time

This prevents immediate arbitrage and forces the player to wait for market movement.

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Production (Miners)

NPCs must generate new supply.

Example:

• miners periodically produce iron ingots
• they deliver them to regional traders

Effect:

Supply slowly replenishes and pushes prices down.

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5. Emergent Gameplay

If the player wants to corner the iron market, must:

• buy most of the supply
• stop new production

Possible strategy:

• kill or disrupt miners supplying traders. (We must have real miners NPCs to disrupt)

Because miners feed 7 different cities, the player would need to disrupt multiple locations.

Since price changes are smoothed, the player would have to continuously prevent new supply while waiting for the price to rise.

This creates a dynamic economic conflict instead of a simple exploit.

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Example Simulation

Using Skyrim trading formulas (on a 24 lvl character with some modifiers)

Initial conditions:

• 100 iron ingots per city
• 7 cities → 700 total supply
• base price = 7 gold
• Global price formula: ideal_stock / current_stock * initial_price (skyrim vanilla gold value)
• 700 / 700 * 7 = 7 gold each ingot.

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Step 1 — Player Buys All Supply

Player purchases all 700 ingots. (7 gold is base value, player will buy for about 21 gold)

Cost:

700 × 21 = 14700 gold

Note: in practice this is difficult because price recalculations could occur while the player travels between cities.

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Step 2 — Price Recalculation

If supply drops to 0, the theoretical price spike could reach ~497 gold.

• 700 / 1 * 7 = 7 gold each ingot. (current_stock minimal value of 1) = 4900
• We apply a smoothing factor: previous_price + (new_price - previous_price) * 0,1 = 497 gold.

Selling all ingots at that value (497 is the base value, player is gonna sell for about 167 each):

167 × 700 ≈ 116,900 gold

Which would create extreme profits.

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Step 3 — Production During Waiting

To prevent this, the system injects new supply.

Example rule:

• each recalculation adds 1 ingot per merchant

After one cycle:

7 new ingots globally

Now supply is 7 instead of 0, which dramatically lowers the price.

Example result:

• (700 / 7) * 7 = 700
• We apply a smoothing factor: previous_price + (new_price - previous_price) * 0,1 = 77 gold.

player sell price ≈ 26 gold

Player sells:

26 × 700 = 18,200 gold

Profit:

18,200 − 14,700 = 3,500 gold

Still profitable, but far less extreme.

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Step 4 — Additional Production

While the player waits, miners may sell additional ingots.

Example:

• 2 extra ingots appear in Morthal and Markarth.

Supply increases again, pushing price down further. (applying formulas, to a 61 base value)

Example price:

21 gold (61 gold base value)

Selling all stock:

21 × 700 = 14,700 gold

Profit becomes 0.

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6. Consumers

We also need consumers to remove items from the system.

Otherwise supply will eventually overflow.

Possible consumers:

• blacksmiths producing weapons/armor
• city construction projects
• military supply chains
• generic industrial demand

These NPCs would periodically buy ingots from regional traders, reducing supply and stabilizing the market.

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Current State of the System

At this point we would have a functional economic loop:

production → traders → price calculation → consumption

However, the system is still global.

This means the player is encouraged to manipulate production and consumption, but not trade routes.

To encourage regional trading, the next step would be to introduce:

• regional price differences
• transport costs and caravans (manipulate prices by attacking caravans)
• local supply/demand
• bandits aware when you buy large piles of stock