BLACK MARKET

They mess the game up.

1st thing, why do we usually avoid black markets? Are they hard to set up? I`d like to know that first before I suggest events that can be done.

A.miner is incredibly powerful and easiest race to make money. spam chlor when you have time and lyth when you dont have time. make huge income. etc

OK some decent ideas so far now that we have soem things cleared up.

If you have an idea do a basic format so we can read it and understand it real easily and the reasonings behind the suggested changed. Try to think about the gaem as a whole, not just your own pocket server, be it RT or TB. If it`s for a TB based idea phrase it so people not familiar with TB based issues understand it.

Maybe then we can start to hash out somee ideas.

Or we could actually make taking the ranks mean something.

Maybe we could have a Weekly NPC Piñata Event =) and remove the raffle or at least make the raffle specific to new players only... =)

That way people will either naturally smack those NPCs because they are hoarding the top 5 spots and sell minerals to climb pr

or

We have 5 piñatas looking pretty with no one actually bothering about them and no minerals are sold

I think it`s funny how Evil is very quick to start suggesting radical ideas (giving out 50 infra, I`d say is pretty radical) to improve gameplay on RT...but when I (jokingly, mind you) bring up the possibility of a black market on fast, I get lectured by you :P

Why not extend this idea to TB servers when there are market imbalances then Evil? An offer of 33 instant infra for new food producers joining fast!

I obviously know that my fix will never happen :P

But I still think that it would be the most fair way of going about things. TB is fine....you seem to forget that artis need to be fused. There`s an opportunity cost for everything on TB. If someone is willing to spend the artis to decrease my mineral reserves then so be it. There is rarely ever any mineral shortages on TB and minerals aren`t always used as a means to store cash anyways :P

Considering the situation, the 50 infra for miners isn`t bad. They`re supposed to be the best miners so with their mineral generation, I could imagine them having an advanced mining infrastructure. Honestly, since we can`t exactly alter the coding and all, we`re left with very few options. So I will go ahead and say I like it. I just wonder how much of an appeal that`ll give people.

Ceelo: again, needs stephen to do, and if done will be buggy and such. And no, staff are not going to go around looking at everyones minerals every day and edit it down to 500 mill or whatever. It would take hours every day and simply isnt going to happen.

Any change has to use what is in the game right now, not changing anything. Any change to codeing, adding new code, new parameters, new modifications (within reason some can be done I guess, but not really worth it and only racial income modifiers could be modified anyways) will not happen so there is no point in suggesting `oh lets make a new cap of minerals` `lets have minerals auto delete after 3 months to a new preset arbitary max`.

If you have any idea to fix teh problem using the game as it stands now with no modifications, say so now, anything that requires game modification will be ignored from here on in, so don`t waste our or your time. Sounds like an a pain, but it`st he brutal reality of the framework we have to work within.

I hope you all now understand.

@MD:
That proposed artifact falls under changes required with the coding and will not be done. Also note, IF it ever did get implimented, it would be game wide so your precious TB based empires with minerals will magically find they are all gone if you annoyed the wrong person. I don`t think you would really like that, nor would the other TB people. Please think aboutt he game wide ramifications of your ideas and not just pidgin hole it to RT. Thanks.

Edited by EvilAbadayos on 2011-07-27

@aba: i went gaurd because i was sick of food fluctuations

And to add...my idea for fixing this constant mineral issue on RT, would be to implement artifacts that destroy a fixed %age of someone`s minerals. All of a sudden, storing your cash in minerals doesn`t seem that enticing anymore. Should be enough minerals for everyone :)

Doesn`t change the fact that miners are extremely OP right now. Maybe even the best race on GC. People can make bad decisions based on flawed logic, but that doesn`t mean that you should start handing out free infra research :P

why not just lower the max minerals to like 500mil, give the player base a deadline to sell off excess minerals "In 3 months the max mineral amount will be changed to 500million, minerals in storage over 500million will be reset to 500million after the change"

for 3 months you would have people scrambling to get some kind of returns on what they payed for (after the last bout of large empires restarting im sure the majority of those minerals were bought for 0-500 each lol)

people don`t like miner when you compare them to teh change to play any of the paid races whoes combat prowess `seems` to be better. That`s one reason.

The stigma of miners being bad at combat still remains, even though they are quite capable if given time to learn how to use their ships effectivly.

Also to many, making money is a means to an ends, IE: make money to fight effectivly. Not just to sit in DP making billions upon billions of creds an hour and making a money bin to swin in, ala Scrudge McDuck.

To sum up: People don`t like to go miner cos of the races stigma of being a punching bag from years of being less capable at fighting than say a viral or a guardian empire.

Put it this way, given a choice of ANY race in the game, with no need to thing about buying paid status, I can bet most people would go Guard or Viral, the least would proberly be collective, seems people are afraid of playing coll not sure why, and miner

How is mineral miner not good enough? It is like the most OP source of income that exists on GC.

Ceelo: Impossible without stephen doing some coding changed, and about a year of bugs afterwards that don`t get fixed.

Here is a thought, though I don`t know how popular it will be:

Every new miner for XYZ amount of time gets 50 free mining infra levels to encorage people to go mineral miners. To claim the free infra levels they have to PM a staff member. The infra levels will be set up to 50 for mining, regardless of how many leveling in mining they already have (thus preventing people from spending 3 hours getting to level 30 mining , requesting it and bang...having 80 mining off the bat.

Doing this will also have your other infra levels zeroed, for the same reason as above, to prevent people gettingt he cheap easy levels and then 50 levels that would cost 750 turns per.

This may make it more lucrative tog o miner. If it can be done, I`m unsure and I don`t know if BW would really enjoy the job of manually forcing the infra level changes but it`s a thought to remidy the mineral shortage, without resorting to an NPC posting or the Black Market.

Another way to get more miners is to recruit your friends to come and play. Tell them A Miner is easy money, and with money they can learn the basics of the game whilst adding their small amount of minerals to the market for other new and older players to munch up.

Thoughts?

PS: This is an idea, not soemthing that`s going to be done, so don`t get your knickers in a knot if you think it`s unfair/unbalanced or whatever. If you do think it`s unbalanced/unfair/whatever, propose your own valid idea, or keep quiet please so we can discuss how to go about working around this issue. Also the 50 free infra idea is for RT only, so Slow players, you can stop complaining now.

how bout -15% mineral generation when the mineral you are generating isnt for sale on the market, this forces you to sell something in order to have 100% generation

It is not the idea to make them more viable, it is the idea to get them not to hoarde them.

I will rather have all miner ship except lyth and chlor to have additional 5%hull.. Lesser tax income 10%.. Industry additional 10%.. Just a rough figure.. This should at least make aminer more feasible without making other races less feasible..

If all else fail.. Give aminer extra 1colony space..