/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | a golden mean girl | | the Eternal Ikons common character | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Initiative: 2 Cooldown: 0 turn(s) Power: 0 | | | | She causes 2 point(s) of spirit damage. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | This Ikon is empowered. | | This Ikon ignores group restrictions in gestalts. | \-----------------------------------------------------------------------------/
See previous posts (in another thread) on what to do about people buying out comm shops for no reason. The only solution was "Make people unable to make profit on it, by jacking up the costs.".
See previous posts (in another thread) on what to do about people buying out comm shops for no reason. The only solution was "Make people unable to make profit on it, by jacking up the costs.".
If my memory is correct, the max you can boost the prices for anyone is 200%. Even at half the price, most of Seren's prices are prohibitively high. I've always been comms greedy, so I understand the sentiment, but - consider that you are charging foreigners 600+ gold for steel, when you can make it with 1 piece each of iron and coal - both of which are under utilized. You're charging 600 gp for something I can make for significantly less.
Advised to Edit to clarify that you cannot make huge profits doing this, you can simply produce a commodity for yourself, if you know how.
It can, however, also be reduced by 90%. So if we assume 600gp is 200%, then 10% would be 30gp.
I would hazard to guess that is not the case. That seems like a tedious amount of simple math to do when ban all orgs but Serenwilde accomplishes the same thing (nobody buying) with considerably less effort.
Afaik, Astrasia handles everything with a commodity module she wrote that deals with prices and stocks with minimal input on her part. No effort at all put in for the math, beyond what it took to code it (Ages ago).
Our steel costs for Serenwilders are significantly below 300gp, yes. Right now, it's at 126.
Pretty sure you can jump prices up 4x and give your org a 75% discount though. That way it impacts rogues as well.
Most orgs don't want foreigners buying their commodities these days, so it's meant to be prohibitive I imagine.
I can see your point if you substitute "foreigners" for "enemies," however you are aware that with the exception of a few isolated incidents where individuals found a niche to buy/sell between foreign markets (something which can be controlled by monitoring your available stock), the open sale of commodities can be a profitable and sustainable success for the orgs that offer it. I just don't understand the impulse to hoard resources that will never be used. It's never going to rain -that much-.
Pretty sure you can jump prices up 4x and give your org a 75% discount though. That way it impacts rogues as well.
Most orgs don't want foreigners buying their commodities these days, so it's meant to be prohibitive I imagine.
I can see your point if you substitute "foreigners" for "enemies," however you are aware that with the exception of a few isolated incidents where individuals found a niche to buy/sell between foreign markets (something which can be controlled by monitoring your available stock), the open sale of commodities can be a profitable and sustainable success for the orgs that offer it. I just don't understand the impulse to hoard resources that will never be used. It's never going to rain -that much-.
Problem is that when prices are low, even for "friendly" orgs there are always people who will buy from your comm shop to sell in their comm shop (for a profit, of course). This just makes life worse for everyone in your org, and the comm shop in the end is mostly intended for your own crafts-people.
It sounds like Seren just raised prices of all their comms by 6x and gave Seren-members an 80% discount.
It's not so much intended for a rainy day as to ensure that the things are always available for your org-members who need them. As for other organizations... well, unfortunately, there are people in those orgs who can't see a good thing without abusing the heck out of it, so everyone else suffers.
Personally speaking, I'd love to see lower prices for non-org-members again, but every time any organization does that these days their comms go on walkabout.
Proprietor: Gaudiguch. Commodity We Buy At Stock We Sell At Steel 1 gp 5204 1600 gp Wood 1 gp 4890 1100 gp Iron 1 gp 5112 8000 gp Leather 1 gp 5076 550 gp Coal 1 gp 4931 100 gp Platinum 1 gp 4981 700 gp Cloth 1 gp 10072 350 gp Gold 1 gp 4654 1200 gp Rope 1 gp 5104 100 gp Gems 1 gp 5472 1200 gp Silver 1 gp 4909 1400 gp Marble 1 gp 5736 800 gp Grain 1 gp 5000 300 gp Meat 1 gp 5520 50 gp Silk 1 gp 12469 600 gp Milk 1 gp 5208 100 gp Poultry 1 gp 5000 300 gp Fish 1 gp 3708 20 gp Fruit 1 gp 5000 100 gp Vegetables 1 gp 5000 150 gp Eggs 1 gp 5000 100 gp
That seems like a job for the trade minister - to limit available stock and be aware of foreign prices to ensure that no one is buying for more than you're selling - unless you're willing to part with that stock.
There are caps on the amount you can reserve. Even though there is a work-around for this, it indicates that the intention is trading, not hoarding. The way it looks to me, we are back in a situation where everyone is hoarding. The last time that happened Estarra made the decision to just raise all the commodities requirements. IMO, it was not this action that fixed the problem, but the threat of an even more drastic measure that made players change their behavior. That threat seems to have dissipated, and people have reverted to their previous behavior. I would guess that if the admin took a look at the markets and reserves now, they would find a similar case of the surpluses that prompted that first change.
Orgs have more comms reserved than their own people will ever use. If the issue is buying in quantity, then why do they not implement buying limits?
Even people within orgs are capable of exploiting a price differential between markets for profit, and this does happen. Since it's ultimately not something that can be regulated unless you block off all buying and selling, why do people not push for a better solution than all or nothing?
Buying limits are difficult because certain trades require a -lot- of comms (ie artisan). So what's a reasonable limit?
Players have asked for (many times) the ability to have a comm-shop-log so that we can try to self-police, but such has not happened. This ends up being the only real "control" the orgs can exercise, which is truly unfortunate, but it feels better than nothing.
While selling commodities isn't an issue, having thousands of them just vanish leaving you at zero (so your own crafts-people can't do anything until someone is around to release more stock) is just frustrating for everyone in the org though. Automatic releasing would allow the people doing it to abuse it even more heavily.
I suppose a more expansive shop-buying-limit could be introduced, with shop policies. You can set certain values for rogues / organizations (cap of 50 comms per RL day), and then set individual policies for people who request it (artisans, smiths, and so on) to allow expanded purchasing power- even removing the cap completely if you trust the individual.
It might help, but I'd still love to just see a shop log, I don't understand why it is something that cannot happen.
Also, you've missed the newest phenomenon in the commodity market world: there are now manses out there which generate more commodities than villages do (utilizing the dingbat farms), in the hands of individuals- which basically skews the market as well in a drastic fashion.
They were considering making commodities decay in shop rooms to deal with this excess glut as well, but even so; commodity production has taken a definite upward tick, but that production is all under the control and auspices of a very small subset of the playerbase and thus throws things awry.
Here's to the possibility of a future 'Trades and Economy' special report, hopefully clearing up long (LongLong) standing commodity problems, problems with trades, problems arising from patches to commodities and trades, and so on.
EDIT: Whoa, and Gaudi's stocks are WAY higher than ours. For the most part ours hover around 1k, depending on how much we have in reserve. Some of the more obscure useless food commodities are way higher because we have HUGE stocks. On that note: http://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/comment/5406/#Comment_5406
That's an interesting concept, though I tend to doubt they are actually outproducing villages on a consistent basis. I found a couple of shops that were selling commodities for prices higher than what I would like, and one shop that was selling for prices that resembled what I used to pay as a member of Glomdoring, during our comms hay-day, ie, just right. So, thanks for the tip, I suppose.
I'm not sure what you mean by increased supply in the hands of individuals skewing prices. RW economic principles are obviously not in play here, so I'm not sure what you mean.
It's strange that they would release a means of production at all, and then consider penalizing individuals who do not have in-game positions for doing the exact same thing that people who run the markets do - build up a glut of unused resources. It is consistent with Lusternia's set-up, which dictates that power must remain with city/commune orgs over rogue elements, but more than a little unfair. No backsies.
I know of one manse with >120 of the little things, meaning it can produce up to 1200 comms per RL day. It's definitely outproducing villages, even if not upkept 10x per day.
As far as what I mean by skewing prices: When all it takes is typing UPKEEP on the mines in order to get a pile of comms, you can pretty easily undercut organization shops. Now, if you're an organization shop such as, say, Magnagora, with no actual income- you're not just trying to compete with other organizations who have income from villages but also people who have immense production and no costs. You just can't acquire and sell resources at any reasonable value in that case.
Basically, it provides downward pressure on prices in order to be able to be "useful" to craftspeople. However, if you price them lower, you're just enabling mass-buying and commodity re-organization as it drifts to other places.
Thus, things settle out in their current state, where you can provide cheap prices to a very limited subset of people (who are less likely to try to * you over), and discourage others from interfering.
Hallifax, Serenwilde, and Magnagora can't compete. There's just no real chance, given basically zero income (so any commodity production has the cost of acquisition attached).
Gaudiguch, most likely not (just two villages, lesser reserves to fall back on).
That leaves just Glomdoring and Celest trying to compete, and neither organization really feels any great desire to expend the energy to compete just to feed their commodities out to the rest of the game instead. Because if someone comes in and wipes out the supply, suddenly none of their own people can do anything any more either.
An alternate idea could possibly be to have two sets of "reserves". I think this has been floated before (maybe even by you), where you can have one reserves limit set for your own org and another set for non-org-members. This would let you be able to sell to other organization's members while ensuring there's going to be a reserve left over for your own citizens even if the other is bought out.
Competition also generally requires value, I think. There just isn't any point in trying to squeeze out those few extra gold pieces by going to the trouble of competing with commodities. Like I said, with our uncompetitive pricing, we still rake in a million gold+ per RL month (about a million gold more than we need).
Everyone can compete. I buy commodities in low quantities from Hallifax because it is convenient to me, and their prices are reasonable. If they were unreasonable, I would go elsewhere. There are workarounds for everything, including price policies and bans. It's just a matter of what is worth anyone's time. In the end, the only one who can really defend your comms is the trade minister, via withholding reserves.
Even on a micro level, all orgs do compete against all other orgs and now, apparently, private enterprises. As they should. If you only have 1000 steel, what good is that steel if no one will ever use it, because it is priced too high, or not made available? It's as good as nothing.
It is players' prerogative to keep for themselves and deny others. I
happen to think that "way more than you need" is enough. That's been my
view for a long time, but I don't expect to change any minds here.
I suppose what I don't understand is the intent of the system. Why are there buy prices, if no one is ever forced to sell? Why are there reserve caps at all, if they can be easily circumvented? Why target individuals who have made massive investments for doing the same as anyone else, in lesser quantity? Why allow the production of much more than will ever be consumed?
A long time ago, I freaked out over one of these massive comm buyouts the first time it happened, and someone (an old Glom, the one with the crows. I'm sorry I've forgotten his name) commented that I should calm down, because it was a good thing. We made gold off an excess that we wouldn't have sold otherwise. He was right. There would have been no other use for that 20k coal or whatever it was. If it's sitting there and no one is using it, then its only purpose is to be traded to someone else who might utilize it.
It seems as though the intent is trade - which is something that
needs to be resolved somewhat on an in-character basis, yet as
indicated, there is no motivation to do so, and no penalty for failing
to do so.
It is problematic that the ultimate value of an org's conqests is a big shiny pile of stuff they will only ever look at, and maybe go "Neener neener, our pile is the biggest," but that joy actually is fleeting, and afterwards, you still just have have a big pile of stuff. Comms are meant to be used, right? So why aren't they?
Thus, if you run out of commodities (even if it's just going down to the reserve limit) you're running into problems; anyone who wants or needs those comms are SOL until the Trade Minister comes around to release more, or they go raid somewhere else's supplies (with their absurd prices).
The main point of these policies are to ensure that there is always a supply available for an organization's members; organizations don't particularly care about the members of others, because organizations do not care about gold.
They are essentially just massive gold sinks; I could go lift 50,000,000 gold from Glomdoring right now, and nobody would ever notice. There'd still be so much left over that we could do anything we would ever want.
So, commodity shops do not really exist to make gold or to be income at this point. They exist for one reason and one reason only: To supply an organization's members with the commodities they need to enjoy themselves and make whatever they'd like to make. If other organizations / people muck around with that, then things are adjusted to make them less willing to do such things.
There's no such thing as running out of commodities. That could only happen via admin intervention.
If you're talking about available stock, then that is a problem solved by expanding your trade ministry to include more aides capable of releasing reserves to available stock as required. Having to wait a couple of hours for someone to release more of your vast reserves is not the end of the world. It's the paranoia tax that everyone is forced to pay because we all so greatly fear our commodities getting into the hands of anyone not-us.
I don't really know what to say about the fact that orgs have no use for gold. I know projects were discussed that indicated we would have great need of it, at one point. I guess Pandora-glom never got going. Pity. Either way, you are supposed to want gold. The fact that you have nothing to spend it on is a different discussion.
Comments
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/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| a golden mean girl |
| the Eternal Ikons common character |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Initiative: 2 Cooldown: 0 turn(s) Power: 0 |
| |
| She causes 2 point(s) of spirit damage. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| This Ikon is empowered. |
| This Ikon ignores group restrictions in gestalts. |
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------/
Vive l'apostrophe!
Advised to Edit to clarify that you cannot make huge profits doing this, you can simply produce a commodity for yourself, if you know how.
Vive l'apostrophe!
Most orgs don't want foreigners buying their commodities these days, so it's meant to be prohibitive I imagine.
Vive l'apostrophe!
Vive l'apostrophe!
It sounds like Seren just raised prices of all their comms by 6x and gave Seren-members an 80% discount.
It's not so much intended for a rainy day as to ensure that the things are always available for your org-members who need them. As for other organizations... well, unfortunately, there are people in those orgs who can't see a good thing without abusing the heck out of it, so everyone else suffers.
Personally speaking, I'd love to see lower prices for non-org-members again, but every time any organization does that these days their comms go on walkabout.
Proprietor: Gaudiguch.
Commodity We Buy At Stock We Sell At
Steel 1 gp 5204 1600 gp
Wood 1 gp 4890 1100 gp
Iron 1 gp 5112 8000 gp
Leather 1 gp 5076 550 gp
Coal 1 gp 4931 100 gp
Platinum 1 gp 4981 700 gp
Cloth 1 gp 10072 350 gp
Gold 1 gp 4654 1200 gp
Rope 1 gp 5104 100 gp
Gems 1 gp 5472 1200 gp
Silver 1 gp 4909 1400 gp
Marble 1 gp 5736 800 gp
Grain 1 gp 5000 300 gp
Meat 1 gp 5520 50 gp
Silk 1 gp 12469 600 gp
Milk 1 gp 5208 100 gp
Poultry 1 gp 5000 300 gp
Fish 1 gp 3708 20 gp
Fruit 1 gp 5000 100 gp
Vegetables 1 gp 5000 150 gp
Eggs 1 gp 5000 100 gp
There are caps on the amount you can reserve. Even though there is a work-around for this, it indicates that the intention is trading, not hoarding. The way it looks to me, we are back in a situation where everyone is hoarding. The last time that happened Estarra made the decision to just raise all the commodities requirements. IMO, it was not this action that fixed the problem, but the threat of an even more drastic measure that made players change their behavior. That threat seems to have dissipated, and people have reverted to their previous behavior. I would guess that if the admin took a look at the markets and reserves now, they would find a similar case of the surpluses that prompted that first change.
Orgs have more comms reserved than their own people will ever use. If the issue is buying in quantity, then why do they not implement buying limits?
Even people within orgs are capable of exploiting a price differential between markets for profit, and this does happen. Since it's ultimately not something that can be regulated unless you block off all buying and selling, why do people not push for a better solution than all or nothing?
Vive l'apostrophe!
Players have asked for (many times) the ability to have a comm-shop-log so that we can try to self-police, but such has not happened. This ends up being the only real "control" the orgs can exercise, which is truly unfortunate, but it feels better than nothing.
While selling commodities isn't an issue, having thousands of them just vanish leaving you at zero (so your own crafts-people can't do anything until someone is around to release more stock) is just frustrating for everyone in the org though. Automatic releasing would allow the people doing it to abuse it even more heavily.
I suppose a more expansive shop-buying-limit could be introduced, with shop policies. You can set certain values for rogues / organizations (cap of 50 comms per RL day), and then set individual policies for people who request it (artisans, smiths, and so on) to allow expanded purchasing power- even removing the cap completely if you trust the individual.
It might help, but I'd still love to just see a shop log, I don't understand why it is something that cannot happen.
They were considering making commodities decay in shop rooms to deal with this excess glut as well, but even so; commodity production has taken a definite upward tick, but that production is all under the control and auspices of a very small subset of the playerbase and thus throws things awry.
I'm not sure what you mean by increased supply in the hands of individuals skewing prices. RW economic principles are obviously not in play here, so I'm not sure what you mean.
It's strange that they would release a means of production at all, and then consider penalizing individuals who do not have in-game positions for doing the exact same thing that people who run the markets do - build up a glut of unused resources. It is consistent with Lusternia's set-up, which dictates that power must remain with city/commune orgs over rogue elements, but more than a little unfair. No backsies.
Vive l'apostrophe!
As far as what I mean by skewing prices: When all it takes is typing UPKEEP on the mines in order to get a pile of comms, you can pretty easily undercut organization shops. Now, if you're an organization shop such as, say, Magnagora, with no actual income- you're not just trying to compete with other organizations who have income from villages but also people who have immense production and no costs. You just can't acquire and sell resources at any reasonable value in that case.
Basically, it provides downward pressure on prices in order to be able to be "useful" to craftspeople. However, if you price them lower, you're just enabling mass-buying and commodity re-organization as it drifts to other places.
Thus, things settle out in their current state, where you can provide cheap prices to a very limited subset of people (who are less likely to try to * you over), and discourage others from interfering.
Vive l'apostrophe!
Gaudiguch, most likely not (just two villages, lesser reserves to fall back on).
That leaves just Glomdoring and Celest trying to compete, and neither organization really feels any great desire to expend the energy to compete just to feed their commodities out to the rest of the game instead. Because if someone comes in and wipes out the supply, suddenly none of their own people can do anything any more either.
Even on a micro level, all orgs do compete against all other orgs and now, apparently, private enterprises. As they should. If you only have 1000 steel, what good is that steel if no one will ever use it, because it is priced too high, or not made available? It's as good as nothing.
It is players' prerogative to keep for themselves and deny others. I happen to think that "way more than you need" is enough. That's been my view for a long time, but I don't expect to change any minds here.
I suppose what I don't understand is the intent of the system. Why are there buy prices, if no one is ever forced to sell? Why are there reserve caps at all, if they can be easily circumvented? Why target individuals who have made massive investments for doing the same as anyone else, in lesser quantity? Why allow the production of much more than will ever be consumed?
A long time ago, I freaked out over one of these massive comm buyouts the first time it happened, and someone (an old Glom, the one with the crows. I'm sorry I've forgotten his name) commented that I should calm down, because it was a good thing. We made gold off an excess that we wouldn't have sold otherwise. He was right. There would have been no other use for that 20k coal or whatever it was. If it's sitting there and no one is using it, then its only purpose is to be traded to someone else who might utilize it.
It seems as though the intent is trade - which is something that needs to be resolved somewhat on an in-character basis, yet as indicated, there is no motivation to do so, and no penalty for failing to do so.
It is problematic that the ultimate value of an org's conqests is a big shiny pile of stuff they will only ever look at, and maybe go "Neener neener, our pile is the biggest," but that joy actually is fleeting, and afterwards, you still just have have a big pile of stuff. Comms are meant to be used, right? So why aren't they?
Vive l'apostrophe!
Thus, if you run out of commodities (even if it's just going down to the reserve limit) you're running into problems; anyone who wants or needs those comms are SOL until the Trade Minister comes around to release more, or they go raid somewhere else's supplies (with their absurd prices).
The main point of these policies are to ensure that there is always a supply available for an organization's members; organizations don't particularly care about the members of others, because organizations do not care about gold.
They are essentially just massive gold sinks; I could go lift 50,000,000 gold from Glomdoring right now, and nobody would ever notice. There'd still be so much left over that we could do anything we would ever want.
So, commodity shops do not really exist to make gold or to be income at this point. They exist for one reason and one reason only: To supply an organization's members with the commodities they need to enjoy themselves and make whatever they'd like to make. If other organizations / people muck around with that, then things are adjusted to make them less willing to do such things.
If you're talking about available stock, then that is a problem solved by expanding your trade ministry to include more aides capable of releasing reserves to available stock as required. Having to wait a couple of hours for someone to release more of your vast reserves is not the end of the world. It's the paranoia tax that everyone is forced to pay because we all so greatly fear our commodities getting into the hands of anyone not-us.
I don't really know what to say about the fact that orgs have no use for gold. I know projects were discussed that indicated we would have great need of it, at one point. I guess Pandora-glom never got going. Pity. Either way, you are supposed to want gold. The fact that you have nothing to spend it on is a different discussion.
Vive l'apostrophe!