I'm seriously thinking of building a space opera game which would share some of Machiavelli The Prince aspects regarding commerce: each player will be able to extract/build/buy/sell/donate a wide range of products (from ore to spaceships roughly).
However, I'm struggling with the economy aspect of it. Should the game define the prices once and for all? Should each player be able to determine his own buy/sell prices, and if so, how? How can I avoid over engineering this game economy mechanism, while still making it attractive for users?
Edit: thanks to your very nice input, some more information about the setup:
- it's a "player only game," with no "computer managed player."
- players start with a planet and some resources/units and then (try to) expand
- players can be of multiple "species" with no proper relationship apart from the one they might make up => no possible notion of "central bank" or similar in the first place
- consequently, I would prefer "not magic" on the economy, by that I mean a standard currency whose value would be determined by the system. However then I don't see how trading would be appealing, since bartering would be the only way, which feels a bit clumsy for the players. I was thinking of having some rare metal as the standard exchange medium, but then I wonder how would to include other basic economic attributes, such as the population's wealth...
Hopefully it doesn't look too daunting...
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