Markets on CVRs

Ok, here's a new "game design" discussion topic for you...

As always, when getting a CVR you get a report of what's on a city's market and how much they're asking for it.  And remember that I've mentioned that through the game system, CVRs can optionally be "shared" with other players.  However, the new system provides for an extra mechanism in markets whereby the CL can place very flexible (and potentially complicated) restrictions on their marketplace.  For instance, you might be selling swords on your market but you don't want to sell them to anyone in your opposing faction.  So you can put a restriction on that item so that the other faction can't buy them and can't even get to see them on their CVRs.

I like this flexibility, and coding it is easy enough, but it presents me with a reporting problem.  How do I show restricted marketplaces on CVRs?  If it's only for you, that's fine because it's showing you what's available to you.  But if you share the CVR to someone else, it may show something to which they're not otherwise entitled to see.  The opposite is also true - you may not be seeing something because you're restricted, but the other player then wouldn't see it either even though it's available to them.  (This can be a particular problem when someone has hired you to get a CVR for them.)

What should I do about this CVR conundrum?

Maybe within the process you have a question...In which faction is the person that your sending the CVR too, this way the system will send the details, call it a "flag" tag question.

Yeah, but you get it as well. And you may decide to share it to someone else later. So it may need to be appropriate for multiple destinations simultaneously.

Does the CVR get saved into a file or table, if so you could have a subroutine that always checks what "faction" your clan is in, and then provides the details that you can see. Plus if it is being sent to another player, it also asks what faction they are in or it checks too and then sends the details that are available for that clan to see.

Basically when a <clan> enters a specific city and requests a copy of the CVR for that city, have a data file added to a table with that CVR full details at that date stored. Then have a subroutine run that checks that clans faction number and only the details that it can see will be presented in the clan's turn results. Now if a clan then sends that same CVR to someone else, then have the subroutine check the clan faction number that is getting the CVR and send to that clan the details that it can see. So if their is different data that they both can/can't see they will only see what their specific clans can see.

Technologically, this is quite reasonable.  But it presents problems when the players don't have the same reports and they start discussing and comparing them.  That also means there's a loophole about what data is revealed to players if they can then trade hidden information in the old-fashioned way.

This way Black Markets could be handled that way and etc.

Now how long will a CVR be stored for a clan? How many copies will be stored as well, like if you are in a city for (6) turns/cycles, and requested a CVR for that same city each time then you would have (6) different copies of the same CVR but from (6) different cycles/turns. These details might be important depending on what your looking for. Now over time this data will build up for a clan, how long will the details be kept for?

At present, I'm planning on saving CVRs and all other reports indefinitely (and buying more hard disk if needed to support that).  I may eventually end up trimming stuff that gets to be more than several years old, but I'll discuss that with the players if the time comes.

Black markets will be handled internally in the same way as a regular market, and will share the same reporting structure and procedures.  It'll just be accessed a little differently.

I'm also trying to come up with some other way to handle black markets besides a password, but all my ideas so far have fallen short in one way or another.

You know you could just resolve the CVR issue by just allowing only the data that the clan be see be sent as the CVR. That would be like copy a CVR and snail mail or scan it and email it. What is wrong with just doing it that way. It is more realistic.

Ok speaking as bot a DBA and Solutions Architect, try to avoid "data creep". The build up in space and performance hit will kill you and the game. I would think store the CVR off in a archive table, and have just a pointer to that same CVR in a table within the clans data set. This way the clan data sets will NOT become so huge. Now granted I am guess that a CVR can be a rather large datafile/data set on it's own.

Black Markets should have a subroutine that look for your faction (SOA only) and Clan number, then as to password...well that is the only way to set it up

Ok what about with Black Markets, a player runs the command to get the Blackmarket report and the systems checks (3) things:
- What faction the clan is in (SOA)
- What is the clan number that started the Blackmarket as they are the only one alloyed normally to access the BM
- The password, this could be a (6) digit code that is defined by the system and readable on the turn results by the player. Thus the code can be changed but the system can read the field and the Password can be given via the code/system.

At present, the contents of CVRs are just disk text (XML) files and are pretty cheap to store.  The original plan was for CVR files to be just marked as "owned" so they could be downloaded, and sharing was done basically in the same way as paper copies, with no differences between them.  It wasn't until I got into allowing market restrictions that I gave myself headaches.

My current thought on restrictions is simply to list everything on the CVR and then mark items in some way to show the restrictions in place.  That gives you all the data, as before, but the CL may not want you seeing what restrictions they've applied that may be contentious.

Alternatively, we could just ignore all restrictions on CVRs and you don't find out if something is restricted until you get there and try to buy something (which may have changed in the meantime anyway).  This benefits the CL but the clans may not be so happy.

Has anyone else got any ideas to consider?

[quote=Davin,I like your "Alternative" plan to just  ignore all restrictions on the CVR.]
Davin
My current thought on restrictions is simply to list everything on the CVR and then mark items in some way to show the restrictions in place.  That gives you all the data, as before, but the CL may not want you seeing what restrictions they've applied that may be contentious.

Alternatively, we could just ignore all restrictions on CVRs and you don't find out if something is restricted until you get there and try to buy something (which may have changed in the meantime anyway).  This benefits the CL but the clans may not be so happy.

Has anyone else got any ideas to consider?
[/quote]

We could also just mark "*" items that have any sort of restriction, just so you'd know that something is potentially going on there.