Virtual Market

Mod purpose 

Since Eco is highly playerbase-dependent game, when servers are lacking specialties progression stalls, making some of resources really hard to obtain or completely diminishing attempts to run a fair economy. 

Virtual Market core idea is to compensate for the specialties gaps and provide independent businesses, that could integrate into the society, offering the specialty products for a fair price.  Pricing settings are configurable so they could be fit hopefully any preferences. 

Markets does not generate anything. They are limited to real resources, require calories to add labor, and require workbenches to do anything. 

Warning: removal of the Markets resets it's inner economy data, saved calories and immediately transfers deed ownership to the person who removed the Market. Removal of the active market is possible during maintenance.

Who would need that

Solo player

With Virtual Markets even in singleplayer game could be extended to have usable economy, which player could be a part of. It is not limited to only deliveries. Player could arrange his own store and Virtual Markets would respect it's prices. While the player could specialise on one thing and handle resource movement. 

Small private server 

Virtual markets could fill specilalization gaps in the economy, providing the way to avoid self-sufficiency or play on higher collaboration settings,

Bigger servers

Admins could setup a virtual market for the server missing specialities, that nobody wants to take, or player abandoned current season. 

How it works

The mod introduces 33 specialized production markets and 4 resource resellers.

Each market is an independent business with its own inventory and account. All markets are operated by one persistent virtual worker, who provides professional labor, gains experience, and learns specialties.

Production markets

Production markets provide crafting labor for their corresponding specialty.

• Players supply the required ingredients.
• Players queue recipes at the connected workstations.
• The virtual worker provides the labor required for crafting.
• Labor consumes calories from the market's food reserve.
• The worker gains experience in the relevant specialty.
• Products remain physical items and can be traded through the native Store interface.

Normal Eco mechanics still apply, including skill requirements, crafting time, workstation requirements, room conditions, fuel, electricity, and laws.

The worker does not automatically choose recipes or acquire missing crafting ingredients. Production is initiated and supplied by players.

Resource resellers

Resource resellers buy and sell resources through native Store transactions.

Unlike production markets, they do not require workstations or calorie storage. Their purchasing behavior uses configured stock targets and discounts.

They operate with finite funds and actual inventories, rather than generating resources on demand.

Shared worker and economy

All markets share the same worker, including their learned specialties, experience, and selected perks.

However, individual market businesses maintain separate accounts and inventories.

New markets receive initial funds from the economy reserve. This is a transfer of existing funds, not unlimited currency creation.

The system is intended to operate within an existing player economy, where markets must obtain goods, food, fuel, and funds through actual economic activity.

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Server installation

Mod version: 0.7.1
Supported Eco version: 0.14.2.0 beta release-1099

Virtual Market is a server-side UserCode mod.

1. Stop the Eco server.
2. Back up the server's Storage and Configs directories.
3. Extract the distribution archive into the server root.
4. Verify that the source files are located in Mods/UserCode/VirtualMarket/.
5. Start the server and reconnect clients.

For upgrades, replace the entire existing Mods/UserCode/VirtualMarket directory instead of merging files. Obsolete source files must not remain installed.

Initial currency setup

On a new world, an administrator must either create a currency for Virtual Market or connect an existing one.

Create a new currency:

/vmarket createCurrency [NAME]

Connect an existing currency:

/vmarket connectCurrency CURRENCY

Creating a currency issues the configured initial supply once. Connecting an existing currency does not issue additional money.

Existing accounts, currency, reserves, and market state are retained during supported upgrades.

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Creating a market

1. Prepare a property

Markets must be placed on a player-owned deed.

The property requires:

• A Contract Board.
• No other store on the same deed.

For a production market, additionally prepare:

• At least one suitable workstation for its specialty.
• A storage container named exactly Calories.
• Optional storage named exactly Fuel to handle bench fuel demand.

Resource resellers do not require a workstation or Calories storage.

2. Place the market

Place the desired market on the prepared property.

A handover contract is used to transfer the property to the virtual worker.

3. Complete the handover contract

Accept and complete the handover contract.

Upon successful completion, the mod: