<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>frakkingcylons</author><text>Also something that might be interesting: the developer has recently started releasing monthly economic reports [0], (for example, see the most recent one for May [1]). These cover:&lt;p&gt;- money supply (for each currency)&lt;p&gt;- production of fundamental ores, minerals, gases, liquids&lt;p&gt;- production of consumables (for your workforce)&lt;p&gt;- balances of the market makers (MM). For background, for a particular material&amp;#x2F;commodity, a commodity exchange may have a MM that is basically the buyer&amp;#x2F;seller of last resort, so the bid or ask offered by the MM will be relatively low (for bid) or relatively high (for ask).  I don&amp;#x27;t know the details well, but I think the devs introduce a MM if there isn&amp;#x27;t a lot of organic demand&amp;#x2F;supply for something (more seasoned players probably know this better). Anyway, so if you sell to the MM, the MM balance goes up. If you buy from the MM, their balance goes down. So an increase of the MM balance for say the Antares Initiative (one of the factions which operates a commodity exchange) can be interpreted as a lot of people had to sell to the MM, thus not a lot of player demand for that commodity.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;com.prosperousuniverse.com&amp;#x2F;tag&amp;#x2F;economic-report&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;com.prosperousuniverse.com&amp;#x2F;tag&amp;#x2F;economic-report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;com.prosperousuniverse.com&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;default&amp;#x2F;original&amp;#x2F;2X&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;249a6a447f2d75caaad3856ae1aeec0c49c6d64c.jpeg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;com.prosperousuniverse.com&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;default&amp;#x2F;original&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>frakkingcylons</author><text>More details: this game is an economic MMO. If a major player that used to produce a huge chunk of the supply of coffee suddenly decides to quit, then everyone in the market for coffee will notice. Fortunately, almost everyone needs coffee (it makes your production times faster), so ideally someone steps up to fill that supply because they know the demand is there.&lt;p&gt;Things take hours to do. Fly a ship from Deimos to the commodity exchange at Antares Station? That&amp;#x27;s going to take 7 hours (like 7 _real_ hours). A smelter facility will take 10 real hours to smelt a batch of aluminum. You want to be a real good planner. Unless you like having to wait another day because you miscalculated the amount of flux needed to run your smelters, causing your aluminum production to run idle for half a day.&lt;p&gt;Where do you sell your goods? Well there&amp;#x27;s six commodity exchanges spread across the galaxy which accept one of the four currencies used in the galaxy (and yes there&amp;#x27;s FX markets). The bid&amp;#x2F;ask for goods varies so you&amp;#x27;ll want to decide where it may be optimal to sell (fuel isn&amp;#x27;t free!). You don&amp;#x27;t have to ship it yourself though, you can post a contract at your planet for someone else to ship your goods and deliver them within X days for a price.&lt;p&gt;This game is crazy. I have somehow ended up in a position where I now pay money to pretend to be a supply chain analyst and write my own ERP software. These are the scripts I use to run my company:&lt;p&gt;`csv.py` - converts exchange and inventory data to csvs&lt;p&gt;`production_line.py` - performs analysis of current production lines as described in `data&amp;#x2F;production_lines.json`&lt;p&gt;`analysis_increment.py` - Based on current production lines, gives a list of next building&amp;#x2F;recipe to invest sorted by ROI days&lt;p&gt;`analysis_multi_step.py` - Starting from current production lines, plots out the next several buildings&amp;#x2F;recipes to invest in based on their ROI days&lt;p&gt;`analysis_supply.py` - Gives a per-planet supply breakdown including planned productionn lines if included&lt;p&gt;`analysis_vertical.py` - Given a material ticker, returns an analysis of production lines with varying degrees of vertical integration to produce the given material.&lt;p&gt;`analysis_arbitrage_trip.py` - Takes origin, destination, capital, profit threshold, mass, and volume.  Will give a list of materials to buy at origin at ask prices which then must be sold ASAP at destination bid prices</text></item><item><author>Titan2189</author><text>A few months ago I&amp;#x27;ve found this browser-based game which ditches the whole 3D game ui directly and allows you to do all your spreadsheet planning right there.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prosperousuniverse.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prosperousuniverse.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>EVE Online: Add-in for MS Excel</title><url>https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/information-is-power-excel-release</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>chrbr</author><text>Huh, I had an idea recently to make an API-only game like that. Would let people build their own tools&amp;#x2F;GUIs and go as crazy as they&amp;#x27;d like with building their own AI to control their empire. Just feels &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; niche, even if it scratches my own gameplay itch.</text><parent_chain><item><author>frakkingcylons</author><text>More details: this game is an economic MMO. If a major player that used to produce a huge chunk of the supply of coffee suddenly decides to quit, then everyone in the market for coffee will notice. Fortunately, almost everyone needs coffee (it makes your production times faster), so ideally someone steps up to fill that supply because they know the demand is there.&lt;p&gt;Things take hours to do. Fly a ship from Deimos to the commodity exchange at Antares Station? That&amp;#x27;s going to take 7 hours (like 7 _real_ hours). A smelter facility will take 10 real hours to smelt a batch of aluminum. You want to be a real good planner. Unless you like having to wait another day because you miscalculated the amount of flux needed to run your smelters, causing your aluminum production to run idle for half a day.&lt;p&gt;Where do you sell your goods? Well there&amp;#x27;s six commodity exchanges spread across the galaxy which accept one of the four currencies used in the galaxy (and yes there&amp;#x27;s FX markets). The bid&amp;#x2F;ask for goods varies so you&amp;#x27;ll want to decide where it may be optimal to sell (fuel isn&amp;#x27;t free!). You don&amp;#x27;t have to ship it yourself though, you can post a contract at your planet for someone else to ship your goods and deliver them within X days for a price.&lt;p&gt;This game is crazy. I have somehow ended up in a position where I now pay money to pretend to be a supply chain analyst and write my own ERP software. These are the scripts I use to run my company:&lt;p&gt;`csv.py` - converts exchange and inventory data to csvs&lt;p&gt;`production_line.py` - performs analysis of current production lines as described in `data&amp;#x2F;production_lines.json`&lt;p&gt;`analysis_increment.py` - Based on current production lines, gives a list of next building&amp;#x2F;recipe to invest sorted by ROI days&lt;p&gt;`analysis_multi_step.py` - Starting from current production lines, plots out the next several buildings&amp;#x2F;recipes to invest in based on their ROI days&lt;p&gt;`analysis_supply.py` - Gives a per-planet supply breakdown including planned productionn lines if included&lt;p&gt;`analysis_vertical.py` - Given a material ticker, returns an analysis of production lines with varying degrees of vertical integration to produce the given material.&lt;p&gt;`analysis_arbitrage_trip.py` - Takes origin, destination, capital, profit threshold, mass, and volume.  Will give a list of materials to buy at origin at ask prices which then must be sold ASAP at destination bid prices</text></item><item><author>Titan2189</author><text>A few months ago I&amp;#x27;ve found this browser-based game which ditches the whole 3D game ui directly and allows you to do all your spreadsheet planning right there.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prosperousuniverse.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;prosperousuniverse.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>EVE Online: Add-in for MS Excel</title><url>https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/information-is-power-excel-release</url></story>