Trading

Just lending my voice to this thread: I found the fixed economy of EV Nova ( www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/ ) to be extremely irritating. Nova's trading model is only entertaining when you're blowing things up and stealing their loot (asteroid mining included), or taking advantage of a really lucrative trade route of special commodities (e.g., the Gem->Serenity run). Nova includes a market "disaster" system which drives the prices down or up, but it's nearly impossible to take advantage of any of the deals because they're so rarely visible within the game, and so short-lived that the time and expense to make a trip to exploit them makes them meaningless.

Torn Stars' fixed economy also bugs me a bit. It's a little quirky, really, that the TS mod uses realistic ambient light levels but totally abstracts the trading experience. It just seems a little counter to intuition.

I have to say that massive market gluts and economic fluxes would make the experience far more enjoyable, however.

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"The art of flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss." --Douglas Adams

The economy is not dynamic on a pod by pod basis. It is dynamic on a station by station basis. It is just that right now the stations cannot be destroyed, so you cannot see the impact. Most real economies are not POD by POD dynamic. Instead, goods tend to move in flows. The nearer you get to a major source of something, the lower the price, reflecting the transport costs. Yes, there are long term fluctuations, but those are not much interest to transport captains unless you can store goods somewhere for a long time.

But back to game reality. The method of shifting around the economy in torn stars is to create or destroy stations. Having mining stations go off line due to depletion. Or having agri orbitals open up around emerald to reflect the harvest season would shift the economy dramatically.

Maybe someday....