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Market, Contracts, and Logistics

Design Goals

The economy should feel regional, physical, and reactive. Goods should not teleport across the world for free, and prices should respond to actual scarcity.

Regional Market Model

Each major town should host a regional exchange with:

  • sell orders
  • buy orders
  • auctions
  • price history
  • tax and fee rules
  • storage or pickup rules

Why Regional Matters

Regional separation makes climate, travel, and town condition meaningful. Desert salt, tundra furs, coastal fish, and forest herbs should not instantly normalize into one global price.

NPC Demand Integration

Town needs should appear in the market as real demand pressure:

  • food shortages raise staple and ration buy prices
  • project upgrades increase building material demand
  • war pressure increases weapon, armor, and medicine demand

This ties the quest board and market together.

Dynamic events should act as short-lived demand multipliers. A plague should spike medicine, a bridge collapse should raise timber and stone demand, and a festival should boost luxury food and crafted goods.

It also keeps common materials alive economically. Timber, cloth, leather, salt, fuel, wax, rope, barrels, and iron fittings should remain high-volume commodities even when rare materials are valuable.

Player Contracts

The player job board should support templated, server-verifiable contracts:

  • hunt a target family or named elite
  • deliver a resource category to a town
  • gather a quota from a valid area
  • escort a caravan or NPC
  • survey a route or site

Escrow Rules

Every contract should lock payment up front. The reward is paid when the server confirms completion, or returned when the contract expires under its rule set.

Auctions

Auctions should support:

  • reserve price
  • minimum increments
  • anti-sniping extension window
  • item inspection
  • settlement history

Logistics Layer

Trade becomes deeper when transport matters.

Recommended logistics tools:

  • caravan shipments
  • pack animal or wagon capacity
  • courier mail for smaller items
  • warehouse storage
  • inter-town delivery contracts

Bulk crafting inputs should be one of the main drivers of this logistics layer because town projects, repairs, workshops, and food preservation all need recurring shipments.

Direct Trade

Direct player trade should remain available for social play, but the interface must clearly show final contents, taxes if any, and confirmation state.

Technical Model

Core Market Records

Store:

  • market_order
  • market_fill
  • auction_lot
  • auction_bid
  • contract_post
  • contract_escrow
  • shipment
  • warehouse_hold

Coordinators

Use one exchange coordinator per region or per major town. That coordinator handles matching, settlement ordering, and anti-duplication locking.

Shipment Flow

When an item is bought from another town, it should either:

  • remain in local pickup storage
  • convert into a timed shipment
  • require a player-run or NPC caravan leg

This creates real logistics gameplay instead of a flat remote market.

Events should be able to modify this flow by delaying routes, opening emergency lanes, or changing toll and risk values.

Contract Validation

Contract completion should reference server-validated sources only. A gather contract counts items only if they came from allowed sources. A survey contract completes only if the route or site entry was genuinely discovered or confirmed.

  • town supply and shortage simulation
  • gathering and material relevance
  • farming and processed food chains
  • guild taxes and treasury flow
  • exploration and map sales
  • unified board item and player contract model
  • expedition acceptance and settlement model