Hello together!
Let me introduce myself first. I'm neither a game's player, nor a modder. I'm one that tries to create stuff around games to be a help to other people. Out of that, I was trying to do a commodity register where you can see which good is sold on which bases. After having finally found a possibility to 'decrypt' the binary .ini-files so I can actually read them, I was able to set up the register. I'm trying to do this register for the Discovery Mod 4.85.3.
Now, after having had some difficulties in understanding the given values and treating missing ones, I had my database set up and all, and found out: Sometimes the prices in-game and in my table differ. I tried to find some reason behind that, but when I couldn't find any pattern in that I decided to drop the matter due to the fact that the difference was [ingame-price]-[calculated-price]=-1 at maximum.
Now I discovered that for example the commodity Gold has a price of $400 on a certain base in-game, but in my table it displays $500. I tried to find the error, but the base price is $250 and the price modifier says 2.0000000. As far as I know, that gives me $500. So, I figured, there has to be another possibility to set prices for bases and commodities. The fact that other commodities like all the ores are missing altogether, in the goods.ini as well as in the market_commodities.ini, is supporting that guess.
Since I actually couldn't find any further references in the .ini-files, I decided it has to be hidden in the .dll-files. I looked into them with some trouble via FL Explorer and Ressource-Hacker, but I couldn't even find the string 'ore' inside of them. Either there is a place where I can't look into in the .dll-files or it has to be hidden in some other file inside the freelancer directory. Since there is loads of files, I don't know where to start. It appears to me that you even can hide information in the freelancer.exe itself.
Please, can anybody give me a hint?
I don't want to spoil the game for everybody, just for a few friends who know how to handle that kind of information without destroying their fun of the game, and, to be honest, to satisfy my own need to know how it works.
Best regards,
Keeran
PS: Why am I posting in here? Because FL Companion is the best program I encountered for traders that exists so far. So there has to be some genius that is able to help me
AND it *has* the correct price for the commodities!