Trade and Barter (by kryptopyr)

[Yggdrasilion]

Discussion thread:
Trade and Barter by kryptopyr
Wiki Link

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This mod is brought to you by kryptopyr, who is responsible for such mods as The Choice is Yours and Thieves Guild Requirements - both of which are already part of S.T.E.P.

According to the author, it's highly modifiable, compatible with every mod that does not alter VendorGold or PerkInvestor leveled lists.

What Trade and Barter does is introducing Trading Variables, changing the way vendors behave towards you (including such immersive factors as racial bias and location); allowing to modify merchant gold, restocking time and trade-related perks; and allowing to modify how bartering works.

I don't see why we shouldn't at least check it out and see if it fits our project.

 

 

 

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Accepted for STEP v2.2.6
- Notes: Recommend installing the mod and activating the .esp, but not clicking "start mod" in the MCM options.
-- thanks to kryptopyre for adapting a solution for Core STEP to apply only the fixes at this time.
-- Thanks to Eliian for creating the mod page

[Kelmych]

I like a lot of what this mod does. ACE Speech is similar to part of what the mod does, but this mod to me is more complete. Another appealing aspect of it is that it is compatible with a number of other economic mods. I'm not sure that it should be in the current STEP list since it does change gameplay, but it seems to me to be one that should be in one of the initial gameplay packs that STEP adds.

[statmonster]

Agreed.

 

I like it a lot too but it seems to be fixing a fundamental design decision in Skyrim to make money easy to come by. I think this is a mistake and the game is more enjoyable if it's hard to acquire money or buy powerful items easily, but that's a change from Vanilla.

 

It's a great mod I will continue to use, but I'm not sure it fits in with core STEP. It might be very appropriate for Skyrim Revisited or other overhauls.

[Eliian]

This looks really good. Liking a lot of what it says it does. I currently use Economics of Skyrim so glad to see it is compatible with that as well. A lot more options to tweak to your liking with this mod. Does a little of the same and more than that mod too if i'm not mistaken (besides the regional values of EOS).

[Eliian]

Taking a look at this mod: There are no conflicts with any STEP mod. I've been using it while playing today. Will play with a bit more and see if any issues pop up. Liking it so far. Especially how configurable it is.

[z929669]

This is appropriate for STEP if it can be demonstrated that it 'fixes' anything or attenuates any obviously unintentional aspect of the vanilla barter system (of which I honestly know little about). It is especially interesting if there are some minimalist settings that we could recommend.

 

I will probably use this personally by the sound of it.

[kryptopyr]

If STEP decides to include this mod and comes up with some suggested settings, I would be happy to create a preset option using STEP's preferred settings (assuming I can eventually figure out how to add a preset selection menu).

[z929669]

If STEP decides to include this mod and comes up with some suggested settings' date=' I would be happy to create a preset option using STEP's preferred settings (assuming I can eventually figure out how to add a preset selection menu).[/quote']

I would guess that you are the resident 'expert' on the vanilla barter system and the problems associated with it. If you can pose an argument for some STEP-friendly presets to your mod, that would be very nice

 

Then we can test out this and related scenarios as due diligence in vetting for STEP.

[kryptopyr]

I'll admit, I'm a bit torn here. I absolutely feel that Trade & Barter adds to the game, and it definitely improves some of the features of the vanilla barter system. And while I really don't want to talk anyone out of including this mod in STEP, I'm really not certain that it corrects any unintentional mistakes.

 

I don't get the sense that the vanilla barter system was intended to be anything more than a simple, static, reliable way to accumulate hordes of gold. Obviously, I'm in the same position as many here in that I don't agree with this decision. But as much as I hate to say it, I do feel that Trade & Barter may be a better fit for a gameplay pack than core STEP.

 

As far as presets, the defaults I've used for the mod were balanced around the assumption of a fairly vanilla game. I've suggested a few additional settings in the mod description, but realize that I spend a great deal more time modding than actually playing, so while I think the settings I've suggested are a pretty decent starting point for people using the mod, they may not be the best overall settings for STEP to recommend. I do feel that a better gameplay balance can be achieved by changing the barter settings to make trading harder and speech skill less effective (thereby adding some additional incentives to actually take a few of the speech perks)...but again, this is a gameplay change that might not be in line with STEP's goals.

 

Having said that, however, I did discover a number of actual bugs in the Investor Perk and elsewhere. Some of these bugs have already been corrected by USKP, and I've submitted the other ones I found to the USKP team:

https://www.afkmods.com/index.php?app=trac&module=issues&section=issues&do=view&id=272

 

I assume that USKP will address these issues, though if they decide not to for whatever reason, then I'll probably end up releasing a fix for the issues myself. I may end up doing so anyway, since some of the corrections would also allow me to implement a few additional features that I would have liked to add to Trade & Barter, but have held off on due to concerns over compatibility...things like extending the Investor & Master Trader perks to include some of the merchants that were excluded by the vanilla game. These could also be considered bugs, since there are some obvious inconsistencies in which merchants are effected by these perks. However, in this case, I doubt that it's something that USKP will correct.

[z929669]

Thanks for the detail ... It will definitely be considered for Packs and watched for Core STEP.

[statmonster]

Kryptopyr - I agree. STEP would be better with this mod, but its a deviation (for the better) from Vanilla. That said, as someone who uses your mod, I would live to see you incorporate the fixes into your mod, who knows exactly when USKP will be able to fix these things. Plus I want to see what additional features you can add with these fixes - and I'm impatient!

[kryptopyr]

Alright, so are there any objections to including the fixes in with Trade & Barter rather than as a separate file? It would certainly make my life a bit easier, since otherwise I'll need to make the "fix" file mastered off of Trade & Barter (or create an additional compatibility patch) in order to fully integrate the features from Trade & Barter.

 

The cons to adding the fixes directly to T&B are primarily concerns over compatibility. I need to alter the merchant containers for the 3 Khajiit caravan merchants and the four spouse merchant containers. If I just stop with those corrections, I could make the Fixes a separate mod without mastering it to T&B and both mods will still work fine together.

 

However, if I also want to allow the possibility to Invest with additional merchants...such as allowing for actual investment with the caravans or allowing you to invest with your spouse, or adding merchants that seem to be omitted from the Investor perk for no particular reason (Ambarys Rendar, Lod, Zaria, Filnjar, etc), then things begin to get more complicated and either a compatibility patch or setting T&B as a master to the Fixes/Investor file would be necessary.

 

The pros to keeping them separate are that it avoids conflicts between T&B and any other mods that alter the merchant containers. There aren't a ton of mods that do this since it's better practice to avoid editing the containers if at all possible and instead adding items to the leveled lists, but there definitely are some mods that add items directly to the merchant containers. Economics of Skyrim would still be fully compatible since it doesn't alter the merchant containers. I don't think that any of the mods in STEP change merchant containers, but I'm looking for a more general opinion since I know that many here use other mods in addition to the mods in STEP.

[W3aponiz3d]

The way I see it, plenty of mods include fixes as part of the mod. At some point USKP may pick up the actual fixes for what is literally broken in vanilla, and any mod worth it's salt should be carrying forward fixes made in USKP anyway, as long as the mod doesn't need to change explicit things fixed by USKP in order to provide the desired functionality. If/When the USKP team merges the Vanilla fixes from the mod in question, it's obviously the point to drop those fixes from the mod as long as it doesn't mean dropping anything that the mod alters and thus depends on, in which case you leave it because at that point the mod is "carrying forward" those fixes that are a part of the USKP.

 

That's just my opinion on the matter, but I've seen it play out that way with plenty of mods already.

 

I would say, do whatever makes supporting the mod easiest Kryptopyr and if that means packaging in a few fixes with the mod then so be it. :)

[statmonster]

I think allowing investing additional merchants is within STEP - it's not altering the vanilla game just correcting oversights in it. As you point out Vanilla does say you can invest with all merchants so you are just implementing a feature that was incomplete in Vanilla. If you accept this then...

 

You could add your fixes directly into Trade & Barter. Then people who wanted pure STEP could use a Vanilla preset to Trade & Barter in the MCM that set the fmin and fmax to their Vanilla values and set all the other tweaks to 0%. People who want the full Trade & Barter experience could use a different preset (Easy, Medium or Difficult for example) that has alternative fmin and fmax values plus the default percentages from Trade & Barter. Everyone could then tweak their settings using the sliders in the MCM.

 

So I would vote to add the fixes to Trade & Barter, and allow people to customize their experience to Vanilla/STEP or something else using MCM. Fewer Mods/ESPs is better than more.

 

At least that would be my instinct.

[kryptopyr]

Thanks for the input.

 

Then people who wanted pure STEP could use a Vanilla preset to Trade & Barter in the MCM that set the fmin and fmax to their Vanilla values and set all the other tweaks to 0%.

Actually, it will be even easier than this. If people want only the fixes and none of the other Trade & Barter features, they will be able to simply install the mod, as long as the "Start Mod" is never selected from MCM the fixes will still apply but the other features of the mod will remain dormant. :)