» Fri Dec 27, 2013 9:58 pm Ever wanted to play as a traveling merchant, buying goods cheap where they're plentiful and selling them where they're rare for a modest profit? Or did it ever bother you that materials and ingredients are sold in the same quantity and for the same price everywhere, even if they come from only one mine or grow in only one area? Then you might enjoy...
TRADE ROUTES: SUPPLY & DEMAND
by taleden
OVERVIEW
Trade Routes dynamically adjusts the gold value and merchant supply of smithing materials, animal parts, alchemy ingredients, food, drinks, soul gems and spell tomes based on regional patterns of supply and demand. As the name implies, these adjustments are carefully tuned and arranged in such a way that they create a network of profitable trade routes -- in fact, two separate networks.
The primary trade loop visits every hold except Whiterun and can start turning a profit as early as level 3. This loop is made up of the highest-margin routes, carrying goods from where they are most plentiful to where they're the rarest or in the highest demand. But of course, the greatest price differential tends to involve the furthest distance, so each leg of the primary loop is quite long -- often stretching clear across the province. There is also a secondary loop which only becomes profitable to dedicated, skilled merchants later in the game; although the profit margin on each leg of this loop is lower, the legs are also much shorter, offering a higher profit potential for a shorter distance traveled.
Many mods which add new lands and regions are supported (but not required), so they can be optionally inserted into both trade loops. Supported regions currently include Solstheim from the Dragonborn DLC, Moonpath to Elsweyr (partial), Wyrmstooth andFalskaar, and support is also planned for Rochebere, Luftahraan and Issgard whenever they're released.
HOW IT WORKS
Trade Routes makes several adjustments which work in concert to add some regional flavor and create profitable trading opportunities. Each feature can be tuned or disabled using a SkyUI/MCM configuration panel, however this is mainly intended as a fallback option in case there is a compatibility issue with another mod. For most users, it is recommended to leave all options at their default settings, which have been carefully designed to produce the intended effect without breaking immersion or game balance.
Regional Prices - The most obvious adjustments are to the base value of ores, ingots, animal parts, ingredients, food, drinks, soul gems and spell tomes. These adjustments are specific to each region, so whenever the player crosses a hold border (or reloads a saved game), the mod will update all affected prices. This usually only takes a few seconds, but a warning will be displayed in the rare case that the player is able to open a barter window before the regional update is complete.
Ore Ratio, Minimum Ingredient/Food Price - Besides the region-specific pricing, small adjustments are also made to some items in all regions. Ores are set to a consistent percentage of their ingot prices, so that smelting adds a consistent markup; this feature is mostly aimed at Dwemer scrap metal (which is severely undervalued in the base game), but it is applied to all ores. Similarly, ingredient and food/drink prices are scaled up so that it doesn't require hundreds of them to make a trade run, since some of them cost 1 or even 0 (honestly, zero!) in vanilla Skyrim. The effect of this scaling is greatest at the low end (0->10) but diminishes smoothly (25->51, 50->71, 75->87) so that anything which originally cost 100 or more isn't affected at all.
Scale Speech - The range of merchants' barter "difficulty" is adjusted (via the fBarterMax/Min game settings) so that primary routes becomes profitable with the second perk point in Haggling (doable at level 3), and secondary routes become worthwhile at a specific level of Speech skill, perks and equipment (which I won't spoil here). This is also the mechanism by which Trade Routes supports many popular mods that alter the effects of the Speech perks, which would otherwise disrupt the intended tuning. Supported perk mods currently include the Unofficial Skyrim Patch (which includes a "bugfix" which increases the potency of Haggling somewhat),T3nd0s Skyrim Redone (SkyRe), Skyrim Perk Enhancements and Rebalanced Gameplay (SPERG), Skyrim Perk Extravaganza (SkyPE), andPerkUP. By default, Trade Routes will automatically detect the active perk mod and set fBarterMax/Min accordingly.
Regional Supply - Using the same patterns that produce regional pricing, Trade Routes can also disable the vanilla merchant stocks for affected items (except soul gems and spell tomes) and replace them with regionally varied supplies. Most items can still be found for sale in most regions, but you'll see much more of an item in the region(s) closest to its source, and none for sale in the region(s) furthest away.
Extra Goods & Gold - Although each trade route is based on the difference between an item's purchase price in one hold and its selling price in another, this alone is not sufficient to enable profitable trade. In order to capitalize on that differential, the player must be able to buy a sufficient quantity of the item wherever it is cheaper and sell it again where it is more expensive. To this end, an extra (de-leveled) supply of all primary- and alternate-route trade items are added to merchant stocks in the hold(s) where they are more plentiful, and all merchants are given a slightly larger gold supply with which to purchase goods from the player.
Quest Effects - There are several possible game events (in the form of quests) which can influence the supply or demand of various items in various regions. For example when the player liberates a mine, then the miners will get back to work and the corresponding material will drop in price and rise in merchant supply in the regions nearby. Conversely if the player causes some supplier to shut down, then those products will rise in price and drop in merchant supply. This feature is enabled by default, which will require the player to complete several quests in order to unlock all trade routes, but it can be disabled to make all trade routes available no matter the player's actions.
MOD STATUS
Trade Routes is currently in closed beta; I am still waiting for at least one or two people to double check that both trade loops work as intended in their games, and that no prices or merchant supplies seem obviously wrong. If you are interested in helping, please post here or contact me and I'll send you a link to download the mod.
As soon as Trade Routes is ready for open beta or final release, I'll link to its public download page and rename this thread to [RELz]. In the mean time, please post any questions, comments or suggestions!
