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[taleden]

FEATURE DETAILS (MINOR SPOILERS)

This section covers the specific details of how various features are implemented. If you are interested in these particulars, read on; however if you prefer a more immersive and spoiler-free experience, you may want to skip this section and see for yourself in-game.

First, a note about terminology. Trade Routes has five possible price/availability levels for each item in each region, based on supply and demand. In terms of merchant availability, these levels could be called Plentiful, Common, Average, Uncommon, and Rare; but in terms of price, the scale is reversed: Lowest, Low, Average, High, Highest. In order to more clearly convey both the price and availability implications of the five levels, a third set of terms are used which are based on the "trade balance", or the ratio of supply to demand: Origin (most supply/least demand), Supply (more supply/less demand), Balanced, Demand (less supply/more demand), and Destination (least supply/most demand).

The price multipliers that are applied at each level are calculated using two values: the Outer Markup (1.4 by default) is the price ratio between Supply and Origin, and between Destination and Demand; the Inner Markup (1.8 by default) is the price ratio between Balanced and Supply, and between Demand and Balanced. The Price Anchor option controls which price level has the modifier 1.0 (i.e. the same as vanilla pricing); the default Price Anchor is Balanced, so that i.e. Supply has a price modifier of 1.0/InnerMarkup and Destination is 1.0*InnerMarkup*OuterMarkup. If the Price Anchor were set to Lowest, then Origin would be 1.0, Supply would be 1.0*OuterMarkup, etc.

The fBarterMax and fBarterMin game settings are also changed via the Scale Speech option, which (by default) applies different values depending on the detected Speech perk mod. The exact values that are used for each perk mod are tuned so that primary routes have ~100-125 gold profit potential with 20 Speech skill and two points in Haggling, and alternate routes start yielding higher profit-per-hour with 60 Speech skill, four points in Haggling and +30% Fortify Barter from blessings and gear enchantments. The math behind the profit-per-hour calculations is somewhat involved, but it's based on the total main-road walking time of each loop, the Inner and Outer Markups, and the Extra Goods and Extra Gold options. The SkyUI/MCM menu's Tuning panel includes a built-in spreadsheet which performs these calculations, so that advanced users can preview the effects of tweaking the Markup and fBarterMax/Min values.

Most items only have one Origin, two Supply-leaning regions, two Demand-leaning regions toward the other end of the province, and one Destination which is furthest from the source. Within Skyrim proper, this leaves three holds at the Balanced trade level. Some of the more common materials have no particular Origin or Destination, but the 1-2-3-2-1 pattern is the usual arrangement.

The primary loop is made up of 8+ legs (depending on other mods) in which the player carries some item from its trade Origin to its Destination, since this is the largest possible price difference. This circuit does not include Whiterun because its central location means that nothing is especially cheap or expensive there, but it does visit every other region in a complete loop. The idea is that once the player discovers the correct sequence of trade items and regions (and, if Quest Effects is enabled, completes the necessary quests), then they can travel that loop non-stop, making a little profit on each part of the trip.

The alternate loop is made up of 9+ legs which each realize the second-largest possible price differences: either Origin to Demand, or Supply to Destination. Although each leg of this circuit yields a smaller profit margin than a leg of the main loop, the alternate legs are between neighboring holds instead of crossing the entire province. At modestly high skill, perk and equipment levels (detailed above), this actually allows for a higher profit-per-hour than the main circuit.

The additions to merchants' stocks and gold supplies are also designed specifically to enable worthwhile trade. Early in the game, each leg of the main circuit has a theoretical profit margin of about 10%. However, the actual profit potential of each leg is limited on both sides: merchants at the starting point will only have a certain quantity available to sell to the player, and merchants at the destination will only have a certain amount of gold with which to buy goods from the player. Accordingly, the Extra Goods options adds (by default) ~1000 gold worth of trade goods to merchants in the hold where they're most plentiful, and the Extra Gold option adds (by default) ~750 extra gold to all merchants (for a total of 850-1750 depending on merchant type). These changes allow for a 100-125 gold net profit per leg at the beginning of the game, which can grow to well over 1000 per leg later on.

At first glance the Regional Supply option looks similar to Extra Goods, but it has a different purpose. Extra Goods is intended to control the supply-side profit potential of every trade route, so it is calibrated by gold value (i.e. 1000 gold worth of Orichalcum is a lot more ingots than 1000 gold worth of Ebony). Regional Supply, on the other hand, is just intended to add some flavor, so it is instead calibrated by average item count (i.e. an Apothecary should have a certain number of each ingredient whose Origin is nearby, no matter how much each item costs).

The Ore Ratio option simply scans all (known) smelting recipes to determine the number of ores required and the value of the ingot(s) produced, and then sets the ores' price to (by default) 90% of the ingot(s). This calculation does actually inspect the smelting recipes themselves to get the input and output quantities (only the list of recipes is hardcoded), so mods which alter the vanilla smelting recipes (like SkyRe) should automatically be handled correctly. Supported mods which add smelting recipes (like Wyrmstooth) are also handled dynamically, by adding to the recipe list.

The Minimum Ingredient/Food Price options just apply a square-root curve so that lower values are increased by more than higher values. The exact formula is "P=max(P,sqrt(P+1)*M)" where P is the price and M is the minimum (10 by default); the result is that anything which cost 0 now costs M, while anything which cost M^2 or more is unchanged.