[SUGGESTION] Player Station Auction (A fairly comprehensive idea)

[PapaTong]

The Problem

I have acquired several stations that I believe now to be completely useless and running them is just annoying me as they make so little money it's not even funny.

I would like to sell these stations.

I believe that it should be fairly simple and have been reading about scripting for a while now (I even tried my hand at it once in X3R but fell behind due to university).

The Idea

As the old BBS system has been removed, I believe the best way to make a script like this work would be literally to add an additional command to the station that "advertises" the fact that it is for sale.

This would generate random "offer" messages from pilots who are willing to buy the station. The price offered would depend on the type of station and the wares on board and they would include an "accept" "deny" and possibly a "barter" option where you get to suggest a price and they agree or disagree with it.

Another thought would be that the station owned ships (ships with that station as a homebase) could be included in the transaction for extra money.

This would give the offers the ability to vary, while one person may only want the station, some may want the ships as well to save them time.

When you decide that you wish the station to be sold the script would change the station name to "[purchasing pilots name]'s station" and flip the ownership to the race that controls that system. If ships are included in the transaction then their names will alter in a similar manner. If ships are not included then ships with that station as a homebase would have their homebase reset to NULL or whatever homeless ships are classed as having.

Upsides

This would allow you to regain some money from lost endeavours; or depending on the script, could allow you to setup an empire where you make stations and then sell them for profit.
You could possibly stabilise a systems economy, notice a sector has no energy available but can't be bothered running a station there yourself? Build a station, give it a few ts's and put it up for sale.

Downsides

Everyone finds faults in every idea, although I can't see any unbalancing here, someone will find something.

Possible Problems

I'm not sure if simply flipping a stations owner from player to npc works as I have not tested this.
I'm also not sure if the ships transferred with the station would work or just sit there.
I'm not sure whether complexs would work or not, hopefully so.

Ending Statement

Anyone with ANY ideas or information on this post is asked to please reply so that it is more visible and therefore more likely to be created.

Thank you for reading this and I will try answer any questions people may have about my idea as soon as possible

p.s. If you wish to simply insult the idea, feel free, just try to make it constructive so I can see why you dislike the idea and possibly alter it for your enjoyment.

[Nividium]

The heading of your post indicates that the goal of the script is to "Auction" off stations, but then you switch gears and describe a "For Sale by Owner" scenario. An auction would be much easier to script and create. "For Sale by Owner" as described in your IDEA section would be a nightmare to script. The goal should be to sell the stations quickly and easily.

Including ships as part of the auction is also not advised, unless you want to get into more complex coding and assign an NPC "job" for the sold ships otherwise they will just sit in space and do nothing.

Then you say, "The price offered would depend on the type of station and the wares on board", but later go on to say, "...depending on the script, could allow you to setup an empire where you make stations and then sell them for profit". Sounds like you are losing sight of what the goal is supposed to be. About the selling for profit bit, most things are sold at average market value. Whether you buy it and set it up vs they buy it and set it up, the value is still the same in the end. Why would they pay a premium just because you bought and set it up. Another way to look at things is, you buy a painting at auction and then turn around 5 minutes later and want to sell the painting at auction. Don't expect to make any profit from doing that. Concerning the 2 stations you have that are not selling worth a damn. Why would anyone pay a premium to buy 2 half worn out "used" stations that don't make any money anyhow. I wouldn't expect a profit from those either. Yes, I know it is a game and you can make a script do anything you want, but if you code in a profit on any station sold then it becomes more like a "cheat" script than anything else.

Under your caption of "Possible Problems". These are valid concerns, especially the selling of "complex" one. I don't think the NPC AI is set up to handle those as they are meant for the player only. You would have to test this thoroughly by making a complex and wait a very very long time to see if the NPC will service it properly. Come to think of it, how would you auction off a complex anyhow? It might just want to sell the Hub and ignore all the factories connected to it. I can see lots of problems there too.

[s9ilent]

There are some pro's and con's of this.
First up, every station is pretty much usable, unless you built an excessive number of a single type in a single place. They just need the right kind of transport.. or a station managing type thing (/ plug)


Cons
The player could use this to seed the galaxy with stations, which will buy it's wares. If I could make an AI mosquito missile factory (even if I had to pay full price and sold the stations for 0cr), I would totally do it x10, and make a fortune off supply these 10 new stations.

Comment
With a good enough logic engine, you can get around the above con (hehe, con, its a pun), but with the kind of logic engine you'd need to get this thing to a decent level, you may as well re-write god.



As for your queries, stations can be transferred easily, complexes... lets just not think about that.. at all.. ever. I haven't tested it yet, but technically, a complex is just the hub part, each constituent station still exists on it. So trying to sell of one of its parts may cause... issues?
Ship transferring is also very easy.


Idea
Perhaps however, when you sell them, they zap (whilst OOS) to a different sector or what ever. The old X3 BBS used to do it, and well, so can we!

[PapaTong]

I am currently reading this very quickly, I'll read properly when I get some time (mondayish probably)

To s9ilent: zapping to a different sector is a good idea then you can't setup a too good system, I'd probably want them to stay in the same species space.

The problem I thought about ships would be that it would transfer and just sit there without a command until something destroyed it...

to Nividium: the idea kinda evolved during typing so apologies to any contradicting ideas or comments. I'll try refine the idea later in the week.

I'm going to try and create a simple version of this where you simply activate the command and you get an offer that you can accept or deny and it'll just transfer the station, just to practice.

[Emre Yigit]

Given the possible consequences mentioned above, how about instead of a "sell station" command, a "scrap station" one?

[PapaTong]

Mainly because, whilst they don't make much money (I have downloaded a station manager to run them now) They have a lot of money dumped into them, i.e. several large SPP's and other expensive stations that I just don't want to lose the money for.

[PapaTong]

actually emre... that's a fairly good idea.

how about a script to advertise to scrap metal merchants that they can buy your station to recycle it into something else... obviously money gained would be a lot lower, possibly even set to 25-50% of the stations actual value. it'd remove my problem of micro-managing stations (although SFM does that aswell)

ok nividium and s9ilent, what do you think of this?

post an auction to scrap metal dealers advertising your station and they bids are about half the station price. the station is deleted after the transaction is complete...

it seems more in line with the idea... i.e. getting money back from an old worn-out station.

problem i can see is the prices being defined only by the hub and not the stations attached to it... or possibly only the hub being destroyed and therefore setting the connected stations free.. once again, would need to investigate the deletion of stations and also those evil hubs

[Nividium]

I like the idea of an auction better, but not for scrap. You can auction off used stations at "average price" ie close to what you paid for them. For complexes, just tell the player (in the readme) that they need to decouple the complex or remove the Hub first if they want to sell the factories that lie within the complex. Auctions are the easiest script to write and you should consider them as the method to sell off your used stations.

[PapaTong]

Ok, include a decouple station control for a base price could be a good idea... maybe comm the TL's to do it, or just another station command. will need to look into that.

As for the auction, I thought prices could be reliant on several things.

Firstly, how many jumps to a station that has the same product. Obviously same system would get you a minimal amount of money but a small bonus for every jump after that.

Maybe amount of jumps to nearest station that requires the product could also affect price. i.e. nobody wants a Cahoona Bakery when the nearest person who purchases these products is 10 jumps away through a Xenon sector.

Also, wares in the station could vary between average price and minimum price to also influence the amount offered.


In the command, you could set a time for the auction and during this time you get updated on the current bid and number of interested parties. Possibly even set a reserve for which you wouldn't let the station go for less than... (with an option to accept the offer if you wish)


While as s9ilent mentioned, it could easily be exploited, it could also stabilise the economy in certain areas.