[DGD] player economies: npc clients

[Shentino]

Can you think of anything else that could go wrong that I haven't thought of?

So far it appears to be theoretically sound but I want to be thorough.

On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 8:56 PM, Noah Gibbs <noah_gibbs at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yeah, these things are all fixable.  "BGP with roads instead of wires" is a great image, but please don't assume it's trivial to do :-)
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Shentino <shentino at gmail.com>
> To: All about DGD and Hydra <dgd at dworkin.nl>
> Sent: Saturday, July 7, 2012 5:47 PM
> Subject: Re: [DGD] player economies: npc clients
>
> On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Noah Gibbs <noah_gibbs at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Some ways it can go wrong, off the top of my head:
>>
>>   - the buyers can look in a wide area, resulting in everybody winding up in the same place
>
> I'd probably restrict geographic seeking to consider transit
> time/energy to get there as part of the cost of purchase.  But thank
> you for reminding me as I had forgotten about this.
>
>>   - the buyers can spend enough money that it's not useful for players to stock a variety of goods -- just most efficient "calories" since that's how buyers react
>
> I'm assuming here of course that carnivorous orcs and vegetarian elves
> (for example) will have different diets.
>
> Races can be very picky...
>
>>   - the buyers can look in a very narrow area so players want to jack up prices and herd them into specific areas to fleece them
>>   - "seek store" could require a lot of CPU time or other resources, hitting your server
> hard at meal times
>
> My guess here is that members of the same group can explore and build
> a cache of routing information that is simply looked up on demand as
> needed.  Think BGP or OSPF with roads instead of wires.
>
>>   - "seek store" could require very little CPU time or resources, meaning buyers get stuck and starve to death frequently
>
> Perhaps, but I'm guessing that changes in geography or routing
> information are expensive to actually cause on account of having to
> engage in costly and time consuming building or road construction.
>
>> ________________________________
>>  From: Shentino <shentino at gmail.com>
>> To: All about DGD and Hydra <dgd at dworkin.nl>
>> Sent: Saturday, July 7, 2012 12:12 PM
>> Subject: Re: [DGD] player economies: npc clients
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Noah Gibbs <noah_gibbs at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> It's a neat idea, but hard to get right.  Basically you could do this, but expect to set aside a fair bit of time to make it happen.
>>
>> Besides implementation effort, what could go wrong?
>>
>> I'd pretty much have them "seek store" whenever their stomachs start
>> rumbling or whatever, and they'd use a map of the town for routing
>> information to actually get to one, and then
>>
>> Throw in a bit of casual window shopping and soon the soldier's HQ can
>> maintain a price list of what goods can be acquired the most cheaply,
>> and boom, capitalism rewards the efficient.
>>
>> I'm probably oversimplifying but I would like to know some of the ways
>> this scheme could go wrong.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>  From: Shentino <shentino at gmail.com>
>>> To: All about Dworkin's Game Driver <dgd at dworkin.nl>
>>> Sent: Friday, July 6, 2012 2:24 PM
>>> Subject: [DGD] player economies: npc clients
>>>
>>> I was just thinking if it would be feasible for NPCs to be
>>> participants in the market instead of just springing out of nowhere.
>>>
>>> Suppose that we have an orcish warder.
>>>
>>> Instead of having him magically be not hungry, what if he got to go
>>> around town and buy his meat rations from the cheapest store he could
>>> find, one of which might well be player run?
>>>
>>> I just thought of this and figured that NPC demand may help bootstrap
>>> a player driven economy.  Especially in the early days when you have a
>>> barren wasteland without many players.
>>>
>>> And of course, the NPCs would shop around for the best deals.
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