[MOD 0.16] Trade empire

[Gust]

Type: Mod
Name: Trade Empire
Description: An attempt to add economic system to the game - you start with a loan that you need to repay by sending valuable items to automatic Trading stations in space. After repaying the loan you will be able to purchase useful items.
Status: Proof of concept/MVP
License: GNU GPLv3
Version: 0.16.009
Last release: 2018-05-05
Category: Endgame extender
Download: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Trade-Empire
Installation: Standard (Put it into your "\AppData\Roaming\Factorio\mods")

WARNING: I have never ever developed anything before. Expect game-breaking bugs, migration issues and other stupid mistakes from me.
Also, most likely it WILL NOT WORK in multiplayer correctly. Otherwise, should be compatible with any other mod.
Please report bugs here.

Lore:
You took a loan from Intergalactic Exploration Bank to finance your risky project. Money was spent to acquire rights for resources of a remote uninhabited planet and to pay for the trip to this planet. Unfortunately, you crashed upon landing, loosing most of your tools. Not that your Bank cares though =) Now you need to survive, build a base and start sending rockets with valuable Trade Goods to automatic Space platforms in order to pay off the debt. But be quick with your rockets, unless you want to be overwhelmed with the interest that Bank charges you daily.

Concept:
Factorio is the best game in the world, except for endgame. This is an attempt to fix this.

Implemented mechanics:
1. You start with 1,500,000 credits loan (can be changed in startup parameters).
2. Every local day (25000 ticks/~7 minutes) interest is charged on your debt at a rate of 1% (can be changed anytime in runtime parameters) Lore: your Bank really wants it to be convenient for you and even considers the length of your local day.
3. Interest is added to your debt, i.e. next day interest is charged on the main debt and on interest.
4. You can load mod into existing game, it will recalculate debt based on the time you played on the map (may not be wise to do so for maps with time played more than 2-3 days - for default interest rate setting).
5. To reduce the debt you need to build rockets and send valuable goods to space. These are marked "Trade goods" in description, separate category in inventory is created for them.
6. Paying off the debt as soon as possible is the target for now.
7. You can now send Marketing Beacons to space to permanently increase the price of the Trade Goods.
8. Saturation mechanic - sending a lot of the same Trade good will reduce its price.
9. GUI to show current price of Trade goods, considering all bonuses and penalties.
10. (New!!!) A shop for end-end game, when you already paid off the debt and have spare money. As of now only the following is available:
- Pest Control service (aka Orbital strike) that reduces Bitter evolution by 5%.
- 100,000 Credits Token that can be exchanged for useful staff via crafting (can be auto-bought).
- Productivity Module 4, that can be only purchased with Credits Tokens. I tried to make it balanced.
- (New!!!) Ultimate item to purchase (Space ship to get you off the planet), like an end-end-end game goal, requiring you to launch around 200-250 rockets. For now it is purely decorative.

Changelog:
v0.16.009:
- New ultimate item to purchase, like an end-end-end game goal, requiring you to launch around 200-250 rockets. Purchased using Tokens,
It is purely decorative for now, not even placable. I hope to get good graphics for it in the future.
- Minor graphics redesign (I am not very good at this, help will be appreciated)
- The game now limits the amount of debt you can get when loading mod into existing maps to 365 in-game days.
- Bug fixed: Mod sometimes incorrectly calculated saturation
- Minor rebalancing of default parameters and Prod module 4
v0.16.008:
Shop GUI for the times when you already paid off the loan and want to spend the money.
Pest Control Orbital Strike in the shop (-5% bitter evolution).
100,000 Credits Token in the Shop (with autobuy function).
Productivity Module 4 (can be exchanged using Tokens).
v0.16.007:
Nice GUI table added, showing all possible trade goods, bonuses, penalties and prices. With tooltips that provide a bit of in-game help. Opened via new button in the top left of the screen (near your balance).
v0.16.006:
Critical bug fixed when launching items without any Marketing bonus
v0.16.005:
- New Trade Good: Nuclear Space Battery (expensive, stack of 20 - have fun putting this into rocket before it flies away)
- Market saturation mechanic added: sending a lot of the same Trade good will reduce its price. Either switch to another item (saturation penalty will diminish over time - i.e. price goes up slowly over time) or launch more Marketing beacons.
- Balance changes (prices and default loan parameters) due to saturation.
- Saturation can be turned off in parameters. In this case different price table is used to keep the game balanced.
v 0.16.004:
- Additional clarification was added when interest is charged/earned.
- Modded items were moved to separate group in inventory.
- Marketing beacons added.
- (Internal change) All text was moved to locale, i.e. mod now can be fully translated.
v 0.16.003:
- New Trade Goods added
- If you repaid the debt, interest is charged in your favor now (like deposit), but at a rate 10 times less than your initial loan rate.

Balancing (not fully tested - mostly theoretical for now):
Current default mod parameters are easy. Player should send first rocket within ~24 hours of gametime and be sending ~10 rockets per hour within 30 hours. It will take up to 60-70 rockets with Power Armor MKII to repay the loan (much less if you are faster).
If you want a challenge (like "send a rocket within 12 hours"), change the starting loan to 2500000.
I do not recommend increasing interest rate a lot, unless you have "Anti" or "rain" parts in your names =P.

Backlog (upcoming features, prioritized):
1. More Trading goods with different sale cost and complexity of production:
- Something closed behind new infinite research technology, but it will provide more income per rocket vs existing trade goods.
- Repair kits and advanced solar panels for Space ships.
- Uranium-based (nuclear) electric generators for long space travel.
- Etc. Suggestions are welcome.

2. Filling the shop with purchasable items (Options - for discussion, please provide your feedback here):
Option 1 - fancy decorative items that do not affect balance and are generally sarcastic in nature:
- Supergalactic MegaSpaceYacht that can take you off the planet (cost around 100kk, will be the end-end game target after paying the loan). Partly implemented.
- Golden statue of yourself, for bitters to be jealous.
- Fancy, but useless set of melee weapons - katanas (should have infinite ammo but work in very short range).
- etc.
Option 2 - Very expensive one-time bonuses like:
- Order Orbital strike to reduce Bitter Evolution by 5% (Implemented).
- etc.
Option 3 - Very expensive way to get infinite resources
Possible implementation: I introduce optional dependency on Angel's Infinite Ore, but you cannot mine it with normal drills. The only way to do so is to pay off the loan and then buy "Deep Mining Drills" using your earned credits.
Option 4 (least favorite of mine) - Ability to purchase OP items like Power Armor MkIII, God-modules, buildings with triple speed or beacons with now power requirements etc.
Option 5 - Ability to purchase new Science flask type that will open techs for items in Option #4.

4. In the long term - possibility to build your own Trading Platforms in Space to increase income permanently at the cost of huge investment.

Conclusion:
Your feedback wanted!
Please criticize everything - concept, my very messy coding, backlog priorities etc.
If you want to help with translation, please take the file "mod location\locale\en\locale.cfg" and translate it to your language (constructs like "__1__" should not be deleted or moved). Attach the result to this forum. Thanks!

[pjf]

This looks like a great concept! Have you considered having a building that allows you to repay or at least reduce the loan before reaching space capabilities?

This might be a trading-pad where you can sell resources at a vastly discounted rate (since your bank is providing the transport to space). It could be reasonable to cap the amount you can repay so players don't use it as their *only* source of revenue (perhaps capped to your interest repayments), but it would mean that slower/newer/inexperienced players will have more breathing room overall.

[Gust]

This looks like a great concept! Have you considered having a building that allows you to repay or at least reduce the loan before reaching space capabilities?

This might be a trading-pad where you can sell resources at a vastly discounted rate (since your bank is providing the transport to space). It could be reasonable to cap the amount you can repay so players don't use it as their *only* source of revenue (perhaps capped to your interest repayments), but it would mean that slower/newer/inexperienced players will have more breathing room overall.

This may be interesting, but I am not sure. I deliberately planned this mod only for end-game, as other parts of the game are already full of features and I do not feel the need for more content there =)
Additionally, my initial concept was to give a player some sort of "soft" urgency, to motivate the player to play fast, but not to punish him harshly for failures (i.e. even if you are slow in the beginning, you can still always catch up). If I add a way to trade before the rocket, this will diminish the value of being fast.
But let's see if there are other opinions. Thanks for the idea!

[BHakluyt]

This actually seems like a quite cool idea until space platforms and other planets gets to be reality for vanilla or dlc Factorio in the far flung future. I had a chance to check out Surviving Mars for a few hours the other day. There it seems the limiting factor become concrete, something that can mostly only only be mined from a fininte few points on a very small map.

So what I am trying to convey is that scarce resources would be a good incentive to use rockets to get more, like in Surviving Mars you need to get some more polymers, metals and whatever ASAP, and then buy some from Earth and get themback with your rocket.
So maybe very neat lategame techs and items could be moved to the international space market. Or implement another ore, or better lategame tech, or dependency on bobs or angels ores, or whateverore thats needed for better tech. Maybe add ANOTHER science tech/tier/bottle....yeah

[Gust]

This actually seems like a quite cool idea until space platforms and other planets gets to be reality for vanilla or dlc Factorio in the far flung future. I had a chance to check out Surviving Mars for a few hours the other day. There it seems the limiting factor become concrete, something that can mostly only only be mined from a fininte few points on a very small map.

So what I am trying to convey is that scarce resources would be a good incentive to use rockets to get more, like in Surviving Mars you need to get some more polymers, metals and whatever ASAP, and then buy some from Earth and get themback with your rocket.
So maybe very neat lategame techs and items could be moved to the international space market. Or implement another ore, or better lategame tech, or dependency on bobs or angels ores, or whateverore thats needed for better tech. Maybe add ANOTHER science tech/tier/bottle....yeah

Hi! I finally completed key features for the "early-late" game and started thinking about advanced "end-late" game features like ability to get more ore. What do you think about the following (it should be relatively easy to implement):
- You can buy special "Extreme" Production modules from Space Market that increase Miners' productivity by 100% without any major penalties. These modules cannot be produced locally, cannot be inserted anywhere except miners and are very expensive (like 2-4 per rocket launched).

[safan]

have you thought about paying licences and rent and such?

like for each assembler you have to pay a licence fee, and for each sq area you use you have also a fee, after al you are using company property. So you get bonus for having a small base and not having many idle assemblers.

[Gust]

have you thought about paying licences and rent and such?

like for each assembler you have to pay a licence fee, and for each sq area you use you have also a fee, after al you are using company property. So you get bonus for having a small base and not having many idle assemblers.

safan,

Actually, supper cool idea! I always thought that the game has no major mechanism to motivate the player to build efficiently. Let me think about possible implementation.

[Xagros]

Hi! Gust.

I found a nonparametric part of your mod localization.
I confirmed that there was a comment, but did you leave it as part of it?
I've parameterized it and created a corresponding locale file.
Use it if you need to attach the file.

[alexgor]

is someting else that should i do to reduce loan, except sending rockets with trade goods ?
just sent a 20 nuclear space battery, and loan not reduced, is im doing something wrong?