All good in my book.

Also wish there was some way to create transportation costs -- they're such a huge factor in RL economies -- but I don't see that happening. It'd mean rethinking so much of the code that was inherited from the other IRE games, and so many of the luxuries players take for granted.

The other thing I'd wish for is bringing the non-player characters into the economy as consumers, not just producers, because the player base really can't sustain all the would-be craftsmen by itself, from such a narrow range of professions.

Actually what I learned is that transportation isn't the BAD thing....the whole storing is what costs most and all. That's the reason nearly all industries work just-in-time, and only certain don't do it.

Cwin = -> ->

I LOVE IT! The whole bit of it!

But oh god the confusion. The novices shouldn't have too much trouble since most will stick to their own nation: all they would need to know is "bring all 'gold' over to the bank and type "bank convert all". They won't need to worry about conversions and the like until they head to other places. The trick to make it work, though, is to make it as painless as possible to the average person, make the commerse folks somewhat worried and make the tweakers/Ministry of Commerse cry like babies.

Of course, there's always the old standby as well: nation with the most expensive currency gets a Power gift (money = Power? No more crazy than writing a poem can give it. I figure Power is life energy and activity).

Villages, for sanity's sake, would use typical 'gold'. Different currencies reserved for Nations.

As for a Stock Market...welll, I'd like it, but how would it work? It can't work like a RL market, I think (Shopkeeper sells ownership, people buy stock, cash going to Keeper) since it'll just ask for people to start a ship, grab the money, give it to another, and RUN. Blah...

Just imagine....Guild and City officials getting paid a small amount, enabling them to buy something for themselves...of course Magnagoran officials would get more out of that deal because of not high inflation and all, but that could make Celest try to go against inflation and conquer a bit or something....

Make inflation raising and sinking quests, too....*daydream*

Some officials already get paid.

All of 'em SHOULD. If I can afford to pay a stipend to every member of my Pride, a guild or commune can afford to pay a stipend to any official worth keeping on as an official.

I still can't believe the bru-ha-ha over paying the Serenwilde council a lousy one-time award of 5 credits each. :-P

Warehousing is a killer cost, to be sure. But transit is always a factor.

This assessment of transportation costs is especially true in an economy that uses planar magics to teleport goods effortlessly across an entire continent...

*Coughcough* I was just saying..

We already have a shortage, of wood even though I think it's getting slightly better lately, or at least people are paying attention and hoarding more *shrug*

I don't like that that punishes people who hunt and hunt and rewards people who sit around and do nothing.

Too bad we don't have a larger player base to sustain a stock market. A "Basin War I" followed by a stock market crash á la Dirty Thirties would be kind of interesting. Wierd, too. I'm just seeing a mugwump version of Steinbeck chronicling poor furrikin bums on the open road .

Economics could lead to different political movements. How about a Serenwilde commune Communist movement and such (please, don't hurt me!).

Did you ever see how much Glomdoring pays their officials? Wow...talk about self-serving.

I haven't been paid since that one time originally, and I got, what, 40 creds out of it? I'd been working regardless of the position in the commune back then. And the majority still went to the commune, IIRC.

That is part of what prompted this change, as well as some oddities I was seeing in bug reports. In normal real life markets, shortages result in producers moving more resources to producing that thing, unless there is something outside the market causing the shortage like a crop disease. So right now the villages are producing a lot more wood than before. Though it is worth noting that according to some admins, there could be a flood of wood on the market if a certain OPEC-like bloc would start harvesting some trees......

I don't get why they don't..

Protecting a forest doesn't mean you can't make things outta wood. Same as protecting animals doesn't mean you can't eat meat.

Don't look at me. I don't care if we cut the trees down.

It's not us, Bau. We've been harvesting ours since Celest and Serenwilde decided to let us know that we couldn't keep letting 'em grow. Thank Hajamin for that one.

This is just sort of the inherent luxuries I'm talking about that make it so hard to incorporate. But an imbalance of goods or services from location to location, and the challenge of redistributing them, is really the heart of every economy. Cutting out transportation costs as we do is a serious blow to any economic simulation.