Take this 49$ towel, give me these 13$ antibiotics

[Nibelung44]

Just an example of how disconnected from reality the prices are for many items! I feel like cheating NPC 90% of the time (I refrain doing so but still…)

[Kadian]

I’m looking at the jsons ; a towel has a price of 4500 (in cents, so 45$.), while the Antibiotics have a price of 9000 (-> 90$) ; those 13$ you’re giving is might be for a single charge of Antibiotics? They come in charges of 15, and 90/15 would be 6$, so that’s definitely closer to your 13$.

What I’m trying to say: The prices aren’t really…bad, at least the base prices. There are, however, a lot of things that can influence how much something is worth when trading - mainly traits, skills and attributes.
Maybe the NPC likes you a lot, you’re a pretty person and your bartering skill is pretty high.

[Charlesilv4]

To be fair npcs is something they are working on…so i just dont care right now.

[Nibelung44]

The prices you indicate are ok. My bartering skill was 0, and I thought too that it was for a single dose, so I did the transaction and got the 15 AB for 13$. IDK why it was so low…

So the prices are ok, but it might be a bug?

[pabrams]

[quote=“Nibelung44, post:4, topic:13203”]The prices you indicate are ok. My bartering skill was 0, and I thought too that it was for a single dose, so I did the transaction and got the 15 AB for 13$. IDK why it was so low…

So the prices are ok, but it might be a bug?[/quote]
Sounds to me like the prices are NOT okay - antibiotics should be valued way above towels.

What do you mean it might be a bug? Do these prices not correspond with the ones listed in the data files?

[Coolthulhu]

Many items are priced only for the pre-cataclysm world because someone thought it is a good idea for it to be the case.
Some specific items have post-cataclysm prices and those tend to be sensible, but most don’t.

[pabrams]

Many items are priced only for the pre-cataclysm world because someone thought it is a good idea for it to be the case.

That’s a terrible idea. Why would post-cataclysm people want to pay pre-cataclysm prices? The price tag might still have the pre-cataclysm prices, but no NPC should pay that, particularly considering that the pre-cataclysm currency should be post-cataclysm worthless (well, I guess it does have some value, for use in vending machines).

Some specific items have post-cataclysm prices and those tend to be sensible, but most don't.

I don't see how you can even tell whether they're sensible or not, if most items are insensibly priced... (the only way to judge the appropriateness of the price of an item is in comparison with the prices of other items)

[condortaco]

Absolute nonsense that a towel would be anywhere near the same value as antibiotics in a post-cataclysm world. The real price should be something along the lines of towel-$5, antiobiotics-$500. A towel is likely not going to be saving your life and should be valued as such.

[Gnorse]

Absolute nonsense that a towel would be anywhere near the same value as antibiotics in a post-cataclysm world. The real price should be something along the lines of towel-$5, antiobiotics-$500. A towel is likely not going to be saving your life and should be valued as such.

a towel will dry you, dying off removes the moral penalty, morale penalty makes you unable to craft things, wolfs go weak prey with no weapons or armor, wolf bites are deep, deep bites give infections, infections need antibiotics

so yes, towels DO save your life

[pabrams]

[quote=“condortaco, post:8, topic:13203”]Absolute nonsense that a towel would be anywhere near the same value as antibiotics in a post-cataclysm world. The real price should be something along the lines of towel-$5, antiobiotics-$500. A towel is likely not going to be saving your life and should be valued as such.

a towel will dry you, dying off removes the moral penalty, morale penalty makes you unable to craft things, wolfs go weak prey with no weapons or armor, wolf bites are deep, deep bites give infections, infections need antibiotics

so yes, towels DO save your life[/quote]
He didn’t say towels DON’T save your life, he said a towel is NOT LIKELY to save your life, and your scenario, death by lack of towel, seems quite unlikely.

[Coolthulhu]

That’s a terrible idea. Why would post-cataclysm people want to pay pre-cataclysm prices? The price tag might still have the pre-cataclysm prices, but no NPC should pay that, particularly considering that the pre-cataclysm currency should be post-cataclysm worthless (well, I guess it does have some value, for use in vending machines).

Last time I argued against pre-cata prices, I got an answer like “but we don’t have any objective measure of prices other than pre-cata”. So I added the post-cata prices to some items as separate value, so that an item can have both (even if vast majority of them only uses the post-cata).

Some specific items have post-cataclysm prices and those tend to be sensible, but most don't.

I don't see how you can even tell whether they're sensible or not, if most items are insensibly priced... (the only way to judge the appropriateness of the price of an item is in comparison with the prices of other items)

A lot of items have relatively sensible prices: food, improvised weapons, weak guns.

[pabrams]

[quote=“pabrams, post:7, topic:13203”]That’s a terrible idea. Why would post-cataclysm people want to pay pre-cataclysm prices? The price tag might still have the pre-cataclysm prices, but no NPC should pay that, particularly considering that the pre-cataclysm currency should be post-cataclysm worthless (well, I guess it does have some value, for use in vending machines).

Last time I argued against pre-cata prices, I got an answer like “but we don’t hhave any objective measure of prices other than pre-cata”.[/quote]
That argument doesn’t make any sense - you don’t need an “objective measure” - prices could simply be a number indicating relative value. Pick some low-value item, give it a price of one unit, and then price all other items relative to that item.
However, if there is something about the post-cataclysm world that gives value to pre-cataclysm currency, (such as vending machines), then you DO have an objective measure that could make things easier.
I think the vending machine prices might be used for that purpose (except I’m not sure if they are smashable - see below). The prices of the contents of vending machines is your link between pre-and post-cataclysm prices. Those prices stay the same - all other post-cataclysm prices get adjusted around the contents of vending machines. However, is it possible to smash a vending machine to get its contents? If not it should be, and when it is, it should compromise the currency again, and you can no longer use the vending machine prices as a baseline. In that case, should introduce a separate currency (or a non-material currency, that doesn’t really exist, and is just a number to denote value for use when trading items), since then the pre-cataclysm currency really would be (nearly) worthless.

So I added the post-cata prices to some items as separate value, so that an item can have both (even if vast majority of them only uses the post-cata).

That’s good - it’s correct to have both: a static pre-cataclysm price, and a (potentially variable) post-cataclysm price, which is the one that would be used in trade. But I’m not sure that the distinction is clear in-game…?

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:11, topic:13203”]

Some specific items have post-cataclysm prices and those tend to be sensible, but most don’t.

I don’t see how you can even tell whether they’re sensible or not, if most items are insensibly priced… (the only way to judge the appropriateness of the price of an item is in comparison with the prices of other items)

A lot of items have relatively sensible prices: food, improvised weapons, weak guns.[/quote]

How do you know they’re sensible? Are you saying that the post-cataclysm prices of those items are already adjusted relative to the prices of the contents of vending machines?

[StopSignal]

I think sensible as “this could help me survive”.
For example, gold wouldn’t be worth anything to a normal survivor.

[pabrams]

[quote=“StopSignal, post:13, topic:13203”]I think sensible as “this could help me survive”.
For example, gold wouldn’t be worth anything to a normal survivor.[/quote]

Err, yes but I think you’re missing my point. This could help me survive how much? You have to compare it to other items or the value you assign as a price is meaningless.

For example, take the original question of the thread. Antibiotics are clearly not priced sensibly relative to towels. But which one is priced insensibly? Is $49 dollars for a towel wrong, or is $13 for 15 antibiotics wrong? The answer is we don’t know, because a price can only be judged as sensible when compared to other prices. We could either keep the towel at $49 and raise the price of antibiotics accordingly, or we could keep the price of antibiotics at $13 and lower the price of the towel accordingly.

(Unless vending machines are indestructible, as I mentioned earlier, in which case the prices of the contents of vending machines can be used as a convenient benchmark against which to compare the utility (or survivability factor) of other items).

I repeat, how do you know something is sensibly priced when most stuff is not sensibly priced?

This is a situation where a convention is needed, which contributors will follow. There are really two options in my opinion; either:

1. Use vending machine contents to give value to existing currency, and then price items in dollars accordingly (this option only makes sense if the only easy way to get the vending machine contents is to pay dollars for them), or
2. Decide on a low-value, common item to use as a benchmark, assign it a value of one unit for its price, and then price other items according to their relative post-apocalyptic values.

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“pabrams, post:7, topic:13203”]That’s a terrible idea. Why would post-cataclysm people want to pay pre-cataclysm prices? The price tag might still have the pre-cataclysm prices, but no NPC should pay that, particularly considering that the pre-cataclysm currency should be post-cataclysm worthless (well, I guess it does have some value, for use in vending machines).

Last time I argued against pre-cata prices, I got an answer like “but we don’t have any objective measure of prices other than pre-cata”. So I added the post-cata prices to some items as separate value, so that an item can have both (even if vast majority of them only uses the post-cata).[/quote]
There may have been some crossed wires here, pre-cataclysm prices can simply be looked up, so we have them for most if not all items. Post-cataclysm prices are both harder to determine and would tend to be extremely fluid, so we don’t have many of them. Additionally I personally have trouble convincing myself that working on determining a post-cataclysm ‘price’ is worth spending time on since I strongly believe that post cataclysm trade should be barter based. The requirements for that would be to develop a set of rules used by npcs to determine the value of items and to tag items with enough data for npcs to perform this evaluation.

[pabrams]

There may have been some crossed wires here, pre-cataclysm prices can simply be looked up, so we have them for most if not all items. Post-cataclysm prices are both harder to determine and would tend to be extremely fluid, so we don’t have many of them. Additionally I personally have trouble convincing myself that working on determining a post-cataclysm ‘price’ is worth spending time on since I strongly believe that post cataclysm trade should be barter based. The requirements for that would be to develop a set of rules used by npcs to determine the value of items and to tag items with enough data for npcs to perform this evaluation.

That would be perfect, as long as you can figure out the proper set of rules (maybe someone else in the open source community has already developed something similar?)

Post-apocalyptic prices should be fluid, as well as depend on factors that are particular to each individual NPC. Manually set prices would be an imperfect approximation, in case it’s too hard to determine/code the proper criteria.

I agree that trying to tweak all the post-apocalyptic prices manually would be very difficult and error prone - much better to code the criteria, if possible, and let the program do the tweaking.

[StopSignal]

It would also be great that if the NPCs that have high barter skills could realize that you are in need of certain things (like if food if hungry, antibiotics if infected, ammo and guns if you don’t have, etc) and up the prices accordingly.

[Kadian]

It would also be great that if the NPCs that have high barter skills could realize that you are in need of certain things (like if food if hungry, antibiotics if infected, ammo and guns if you don’t have, etc) and up the prices accordingly.

Another thing would be the distance to settlements or more widely used paths of caravans. Basically, the further away from civilization, the higher is the price. The mindset behind this is quite simple: You want to trade something, so you probably >need< whatever you want to get out of the trade, be it ammo, meds, food or something entirely different. Now, the further away you are from any ‘civilization’, the less chance you have to find someone else to barter with. This means your trading partner most likely is in the state of an oligopoly (only a few people have what you need) or in the worst case scenario (for you) he has the monopole (he’s the only one with what you need) - therefore he has quite the power over the market price.

on the other hand, places with a lot of traders and/or caravans would be in near complete competition with each other and their prices would be therefore quite low.

[pabrams]

That’s getting pretty complicated. Might as well implement a full economy.

[StopSignal]

That sounds quite dwarffortressy. The only thing we have for now are the survivor settlement things, those ones with traders, and i fear that I don’t know if it’d be possible to implement it the way you say, Kadian.