These two mods will attempt to make the economy of the Wasteland more realistic. This was a request made, which I am expanding on.

Realistic Economy

Essentially Realistic Economy will change the prices of items based on where they are, i.e. meds & chems will be cheaper in Rivet City, and for example food will be cheaper in Arefu. Ammo and guns will be cheaper in The Pitt and all items will have similarly varying prices. Everything will be more expensive in the Wasteland.

Trade routes will also be established between settlements, and if using Caravanery the less noble merchants may want to attack the caravans and sell on the stolen goods. . .

This mod has been put on hold for now. When FOSE catches up with BOSS a FWE and non FWE will be made.

Caravanery! (Name subject to change)

This will let you become a merchant, traveling with your guards and Pack Brahmin all over the wasteland, buying, selling and generally making money. You can hire guards, who you can negotiate a price with; will you pay them a set weekly fee, or will you pay them a share of your profits?? The more the guards get paid, the better they will be, naturally. You may occasionally find a fellow entrepreneur who you can send in your stead to buy and sell items, just make sure you know what to buy at the best prices where, otherwise he will be loosing you money!

You will also be able to set up your own store eventually.

This will require no longer require Realistic Economy, as it has been put on hold until FOSE catches up with OBSE (the scripting would be too dull and boring with the current FOSE comands, and I don't have the time or the energy for it)

More information and news to come, suggestions and comments welcome

Love the idea and definitly looking forward to both mods.

By the way, what I've wanted to suggest is maybe implementing general "supply" items. So instead of having to micromanage a ton of small items, the player could for example buy a misc item called "Medical Supplies" in Rivet City, which weighs alot (thus making pack Brahmin more necessary for transporting large amounts), but of course could also be sold for a good deal of caps in a town like The Pitt.
Many games, especially space sims, use this kind of system since you don't have to micromanage hundreds of items in your inventory. You could have "Medical Supplies", "Repair Supplies", "Arms and Armor parts", "Food Supplies", etc....

That is a very good idea, and makes things a whole lot easier!

It will take a while for the Realistic Economy mod to come to fruition; the only way I can do it is with endless SetBaseItemValue functions for every item for where ever the player is.

As I understand it you work on FWE; does FWE use all the ammo types included in CALIBR as I don't want to waste time adding those that aren't used just yet. So, if the count in the CS is 0 can I safely ignore them or are they still used??

Thanks

We use only very few: 14mm, 2mm EC, HN Needler Cartridge, .45 ACP, 4.7 Caseless and 7.62x51mm Round (basically only the ammo types that appeared in Fallout1&2 but weren't in FO3). Hope I didn't miss any, but like you said, any that have 0 count in GECK can be ignored.
Also we dont plan on adding any more ammo types to FWE, so you dont have to worry about us adding new ones in the future.

Ok, that's good to know.

All it is now is putting the time in to add all the items and change the prices for everywhere.

Any suggestions on varying prices per location??

Will draw up a spreadsheet at some point but for now I'm starting by making ammo more expensive in Megaton.

I would try to keep it simple and maybe have about 5 different settings for each supply type(Very Cheap, Cheap, Moderate, Expensive, Very Expensive) in every town.

Btw, if you do this via the Supply Types like I suggested, you could even make the less useful towns like Big Town and Arefu more interesting. All you would have to do is add a "Trade Supplies" option to one of the NPCs Dialogues(or add a new NPC, but I think using an existing one might be more immersive). For example Arefu could have very cheap Food&Drink supplies, since they have a bunch of Brahmin. So pepole could go to that backwater town, buy food and then travel all the way to the Pitt and make a hefty profit.

Another advantage of this supplies system is that it's easily possible for you to keep track how many supplies you traded and where. For example if you bought 20 Medical Supplies in Rivet City(which you simply keep track of via a Global), their price could go from "Cheap" to "Moderate", since you keep buying so much there

OK, that makes sense, so I should just not worry about individual prices of things as a mod on it's own and just concentrate on the supplies side of things?

Both! That's the most obvious answer I think

However we all operate under time constraints that life poses on us, so doing everything we want is rarely possible.
Just sit down, think very carefully about what exactly you want the mod to do and what the easiest and most stable way is to archive your main goal.

I personally would set it up like this initially (doesnt mean you have to do it that way). Implement the Pack Brahming and trade guards.
And then simply add dialogue topics to "Buy Supplies" and "Sell Supplies" to a certain NPC in each town.

This is a quick and easy solution I think.


I still think though that your "Realistic Economy" that affects the prices of ALL items is awesome and should be done!

Just my 2cents.

Caravanery is coming along nicely, made the start of the quest just now, and am about to add the mercenaries and the pack brahmin

I'm watching this with great interest! It sound like an excellent idea.

Why did I buy an Xbox 360, and not a gaming PC? This sounds like an amazing idea, and I look forward to seeing how it progresses, even though I won't be able to try it first-hand.

Long live the modding community!

This. I love FWE and I love the idea of becoming a trader.

I think this is a sweet idea too. I'm wondering if there is a different way of changing item prices than editing the price of the item. I believe there might be a perk entry point for adjusting the buy price. You could do something like setup FormLists for different groups of commodities (i.e. medical supplies, mechanical parts, electronics, etc...) and the perk modifies the buy/sell price depending on which group the commodity is (using a condition check). I'm not positive on this, but it might be a possible approach.

Just a small update, got the getting the Pack Brahmin part 99% done, and the mercs about 50% done. Once the mercs are done the next thing to do will be to add topics to the people you need to buy and sell things from, and then the first beta will be released

Love the idea! Hope to see this turn out soon.

Really cool mod idea. I'd say I agree with Kai Hohiro's suggestions about using generalized supply types as this would make things far easier. This way most of the time is spent traveling and not trying to sort through notes of what to buy/sell and where. Also I think there should be a way to have the caravan set up shop where u tell them to so u can go out adventuring again and not have to take them with you. This way you could leave them safe inside a town. Or, at least, let them park their brahmin somewhere. Not sure if you were already planning on that.

Also it would be cool to have the option to remove the pack from the brahmin, as well as being able to buy multiple brahmin. This way if one gets killed, or you want to give them a break to graze for a bit, you could remove the pack and place it on a different one.

Good luck, I'm really looking forward to this.

Already taken Kai's suggestions on board .

There will be a way to tell your brahmin to wait at certain destinations, and it will travel there in real time whether or not you follow. So you will have the option to:

Tell Brahmin to follow you.

Tell Brahmin to go to X and wait for you. The guards will always follow the brahmin, as that's what you're paying them for.

Tell Brahmin to wait here.

View inventory and exchange items.

Removing the pack will not be in the first release, but I may add it in at a later date to add realism. Likewise buying more than one brahmin will not be in the first release, but will definitely be included in further updates.

Hello there, nice idea by the way.
Once this mode work in stand alone, i may give it a try

Got a suggestion if you use the packages( ammo package and the like)
you could control all the prices with dialog, a bit like when you exchange scrap metal for various good from some npc like winthrop
or when you give ressource to the outcast commander, he give different amount of ammo for every item turned in.

this mean that you dont have to play with the price on every location, but just the script/dialogue for the npc at every location you choose to place them.

also, it would be interresting to add an item that allow to pack and unpack the content of every package into the player inventory, thus the player can use some of the supply he bought somewhere or make pack from all the extra he got...

seems like huge potential, hope it gets completed!

and I think vain had a REALLY cool idea - ability to hire a quartermaster or trader who can walk with you as part of your caravan but also set up a little tent and sell your inventory, automatically.

Perhaps ability to upgrade tent, modifiers to sales rates...know this is all going "above and beyond" but really think it'd be a nice feature for later additions. Obv. sell more goods in towns than in the wasteland but it'd be so satisfying to roam for a few weeks, clearing out baddies, then end up in Megaton chillin on a seat at the bar while my guys sell the goods we've collected.

Maybe multiple ranks of traders to hire, better and worse at selling?

and a cameo from Trader Vic?

am I the only one who in fallout 2 would clear out the Slavers Den and then set Vic up like a repair shop.

Sounds like its going to be a great mod.

Is there any particular reason why it will require FWE ?

(i dont use FWE and a bit disapointed that I want be able to use the Realistic Economy and Caravanery mod until a non FWE version is made)

Changed the first post to reflect what's actually happening. Realistic Economy has been put on hold and Caravanery will no longer require FWE, but a FWE version will be made as all that needs to be changes are 8x however many settlements there are

hope this mod didnt die. I really want to be a trader.. buying low in canturbury and then braving the wastes with my caravan... till i make it to rivet city and sell the goods for a big fat premium !

i started a thread requesting something like OB's real economy and this looks like a great step in the right direction! im really looking forward to the economy aspect. though from what i read, it seems prices will differ depending on location (settlement/town/city) and not per merchant? so in megaton, moira will pay/give as much for food, booze, and meds as will the lanter, doc and moriarty's? i was hoping for different prices per merchant too so weapons merchants will be the person to go to to buy/sell weapons, etc.

At the moment the FOSE functions don't exist to do what EE does, unfortunately, but I will try and make it sensible so weapons people pay more, which shouldn't be too hard will just make my coding a bit messy

One thing that I think would be interesting, it seems like the player is one of the most economically active individuals in the wastes - you're the one doing all killing, looting, and selling. It would be cool if bringing most of your considerable business to a single vendor had an effect. With a higher cash flow, businesses can afford to stock more goods and more expensive goods. They can also offer better prices through economies of scale.

I just found a way to continuously vary the inventories of vendors dynamically via script. Every vendor has a respawning vendor container stashed in a dummy cell and you can add entire leveled lists to them. If you also add a piece of non-playable dummy armor along with the rest of your stuff, you'll be able to tell when the container respawns by checking to see if its still there. If it isn't, re-add the leveled lists to restock your stuff. You could keep track of how much business a vendor has been doing lately, and stock more/better stuff (and caps) accordingly. It would work better with a faster vendor respawn time, maybe daily. There might also be a way to simulate and randomize the business that they get from NPCs.