Web API: Add endpoint for market and currency data

[oddiz]

I believe this would be trivial to implement and open up whole lot of possibilities for devs and servers owners.

Implementation

I'd suggest adding the endpoint into DataExport | Eco ModKit Documentation (thanks @thetestgame for the awesome doc). Also suggest returning something like this:

GET /api/v1/exporter/shops(or market?)

returns:

- All shops with info:
  - owner
  - coordinates
  - open-closed?
  - shop money
  - orders:
    - buy
      - Items:
        - identifier 
        - price
        - amount 
    - sell 
        ...

GET /api/v1/exporter/currency

returns:

- Currencies
  - Buy and sell orders
  - Reserve info

After the API implementation, you could look for implementing a market browser in the default server webpage which would be pretty neat.

Ideas

• I'm dev of ecofood.app (formerly ecodiet.kaansarkaya.com). I would use it to fetch available foods and prices from a server's API, even implement a map and put shops on the map since map is available in API already
• /r/wallstreebets 🚀 people could generate candle charts, volume charts for commodities and currencies for their servers.
• Same folks could write scripts for monitoring low prices, arbitrage opportunities. Which would result in more currency passed around and more stable economy.
• Shop owners could monitor and set up notifications for their shop's stock and money status outside of the game.
• Browsing market in a browser, as the name suggests, will be much better than in game. (No offence, unity is not the best for a complex UI)

Positives

• Convenience for players
• Possibility for cool external apps
• Livelier economy (hopefully)
• Once established and shop set up, players could switch themselves to "hybrid mode" where they monitor their shop and only log in when needed (out of stock, out of money, buy order completed, etc.). Which could result in healthier shops in server, especially if the cycle is long.

Negatives

• More traffic in a server's api
  • People might want to query the data frequently. If there is no rate limiter in place; probably good idea to put one after this, as it might return a good chunk of data.
• Reduced challenges of some aspects of the game:
  • Example based on my app; If I were to implement a way to auto import food data from servers and calculate best diets, would it be too convenient? 🤔
• Increased wealth gap and pollution:
  • Someone could find out that they are good at making money sitting all day analyzing the market and day-trading ~~stocks~~ items. Starts earning money off of actual workers without a meaningful contribution to society, gets rich, buys more money with money and arranges private space travels to meteor for themselves while irresponsibly spending valuable resources of the server 🚀

All in all my thought is that positives outweighs negatives, any QoL improvement is a good improvement. 🙂

[Borimino]

👍

[brignolff]

Increased wealth gap and pollution:

Someone could find out that they are good at making money sitting all day analysing the market and day-trading stocks items. Starts earning money off of actual workers without a meaningful contribution to society, gets rich, buys more money with money and arranges private space travels to meteor for themselves while irresponsibly spending valuable resources of the server

Since eco is a simulation of a human ecosystem, I don't think it's an issue that should be considered by the devs. It will be up to the players to address this issue. They could for example make a weekly or daily tax for players that have more than x amount of money in bank.