Kalzul`s long term problems

A aTOMsisOP

OP 07/09/2006 · 07:26 PM #1

I am sure that many people are very happy that there`s infinite supply of minerals right and consumer goods now due to Kazul acting as a mineral bot. However, I feel that this is only a very short term solution and certain steps should be taken to prevent Kalzul from unbalancing the economy.

I propose forcing Kalzul to sell its Consumer goods at the price of 5 and minerals at the price of 1500 or higher. My explaination follows:

in the long term, Kazul acting as a mineral bot will cause long term problems on the economy of space fed

With an infinite supply of minerals and consumer goods, the A miners will be forced to price their minerals and consumer goods at a lower price than Kalzul. This may not affect the mineral market much, as A miners can price their minerals at the price of 999, but its not the same for consumer goods.

A miners now have to price their goods at the price of 3 and this drop of 1 will decrease many of the miners` income.
Hence I propose that the Kalzul be forced to sell its consumer goods at the price of 5 per consumer goods.

Another problem with Kalzul is that it is a short term solution and it is in no way solving the problem. By using Kalzul at a mineral bot and producing minerals and selling them at the price of 1000, many people will stockpile the minerals produced by Kalzul and will have no need for the minerals produced by A miners.
Sales of A miner minerals will decrease and it will certainly decrease the population of A miners.
Hence the economy will be unable to substain itself without Kalzul, and there will be less A miners in the game.

What i propose is that Kalzul is forced to sell its minerals at 1500 or higher as this will discourage players from stockpiling Kalzul produced minerals, preferring instead to buy Player-produced minerals, hence giving piority to player produced minerals.
This idea is not new, there is some kind of black market in UC which is similar.

Thank you, please correct me if wrong

K Kusari

14/09/2006 · 11:57 PM #34

My point exactly athunc.

A athunc

14/09/2006 · 10:23 PM #33

I am a A.miner, and in the ultra server I have based my economie on the minerals.
the problem of all this is that minerals are requierd for building ships, and you need ships so much that a high price wont stop you.
But wat people forget is that the price will stay down as human players will post their minerals cheaper, in an order to make money faster.

so bots will not solve the problem but make it worse as less A.miners will concentrate at the minerat generation.

K Kusari

11/09/2006 · 08:33 PM #32

Well, we can always hope.

S StormofBladeZ

10/09/2006 · 01:17 AM #31

Nothing will ever change in this situation fyi. It will always remain the same sad to say. No matter now many suggestion posts and crp posted up. Notin will change.

K Kusari

09/09/2006 · 01:34 AM #30

I know, I know, to many posts, but I just came up with the ultimate argument as to why price caps should be removed. The food market. If you observe the food market in RT over a long period of time you will observe that most of the time, prices range between 12 and 20. I`ve seen it go as high as 90 and as low as 1 but 90% of the time the price is somewhere in the 10-20 range. Now why is that? There is no magic price cap preventing food prices from going above 20. And food is actually more constantly in demand then minerals since everyone but guardians has to keep at least some food on hand so their population doesn`t starve.

The answer is that the price cap for food (if there even is one, I`ve never seen food go high enough to find out) is so high that it is virtually never reached. When food prices rise, a point will eventually be reached when it simply is no longer profitable for a given empire to buy that food. As the prices go up, more and more empires stop buying from the market and either make their own food or wait for a better deal. Eventually the food producers wind up with a lot of food going nowhere and have to sell it for less in order to maintain their cash flow. In other words, the food prices self regulate based on supply and demand.

That`s not to say there are no food shortages, but there are far less of them than would occur if the price was capped at 15 or 20. In short, supply and demand keep prices in check without any forced regulation.

K Kusari

08/09/2006 · 08:27 PM #29

As for the price caps, its simple economics 101, infinite demand and finite supplies. In the real world there are plenty of rare commodities. No one looks at emralds and says "poor people can`t afford emralds, let`s cap the price at $50 so that everyone can own an emrald". The result would be chaos. If everyone can afford them, then everone will try to buy them. When the supply of emralds gets low and more people want to buy than supplies can satisfy, what do you do? There has to be some system to decide who gets the emrald and who goes home empty handed. Normally, the suppliers would raise the price. Those who can afford it buy and the rest wait. When the price goes up it becomes profitable for more people to start producing emralds. Eventually the supply increases until it catches up with and excedes the demand. When that happens, prices come back down.

Look at game consoles, in the begining, everyone wants one but there are only so many, so those who can afford it buy the new X-Box for $500 the first day it comes out and the rest of us wait until the price falls to what we consider an acceptable level. If the new X-box is something you really want, you save up and find some way to get the necessary cash. Those of us who have to wait gripe and complain that it isn`t fair. But would you rather have the X-box sell for $100 the first day it is released? Assuming that having more than 1 X-box was necessary, people would mob the stores. The strongest and fastest would grab all the X-boxes they could and the rest would not be able to obtain one, no matter what the price. The system still disriminates, but instead of using money, which we can make more of, now the determining factor is your connection speed and how much time you are willing to spend watching the market for that tiny little scrap of mineral.

K Kusari

08/09/2006 · 08:11 PM #28

since they have to fight to survive, collective and maruader would be exempt

K Kusari

08/09/2006 · 08:09 PM #27

First of all, limiting the amount people can buy a day only punishes those who are active and using large amounts of minerals. A more effective solution to hoarding would be to have a per turn tax paid by terran, viral, and guardians (the primary hoarding races). The tax would be based on the amount of each mineral you have over a certain limit, and be paid every turn you use while in dp. Miners would either have no tax or be able to reduce it by doing mining research.

A Achilles

08/09/2006 · 01:38 PM #26

I would go one step further and say there should be 5000. Many people with large planet counts and gordo infested U large can easily buy 500+ million minerals a dy at current max price. Increase the cap than you increase profitiers who will become Miners and also place more of a finacial burden on mineral hoarders

C Clemens

08/09/2006 · 10:45 AM #25

hm i agree with basin...set a limit to the amount of mineral we can buy per day so the rich 1 will not be always getting all the minerals for themselves

B basian_[S]

08/09/2006 · 09:22 AM #24

Why does everyone skwak at a higher price cap? because they will lose money.. duh

The mineral shortage isn`t because there arn`t enough producers... who the hell needs 10 10million stacks?? and dont` you dare tell me that you use that many a day...

If the price cap was increase to 1500 for KZ minerals, then people using bots to spend turns and purchase minerals to hide their incomes will purchase at 1500, but only be able to resell at 1000, meaning they loose 500 a mineral... or 1/3 of their income while doing this...

A more realistic solution is to create a mineral cap of say 2mil or 20 million, with the exception of miners, so that way people can`t buy 100million of each mineral a day...

but hey, whatcha know, these ideas have been proposed before, and will be again... good luck getting anything done about it =P

C Clemens

08/09/2006 · 09:05 AM #23

if the minerals are selling at 2000 i don think it make any different many will still buy it...

E EvilLoof

08/09/2006 · 06:30 AM #22

how about cg`s at 4.5 lol, 5 would be pointless

B Bmmnox

08/09/2006 · 05:34 AM #21

thats definitely a brighter idea than the current situation.. or we could just lower the mineral costs of all ships proportionally and increase the mineral production rates of all races and more so for the a.miners

K Kusari

08/09/2006 · 04:40 AM #20

Just reduicing the mineral caps for empires wouldn`t solve the problem. In fact it mich make things worse by further reducing the number of mineral miners.

A AlphaRED

08/09/2006 · 04:31 AM #19

Another solution, ignore this price cap thing, and reduce mineral cap on all races except miners. (as they produce them), yes people will be at max cred/mins everything else, but large amounts of minerals on te market. Perhaps increase max cred value??

K Kusari

08/09/2006 · 04:27 AM #18

Thanks. Being the lone voice tends to be quite..... lonley :)

D DrunkenMasters

08/09/2006 · 04:22 AM #17

Kusari, you are COMPLETELY right about the market and the price cap ;)

K Kusari

08/09/2006 · 04:01 AM #16

In the long term I would also suggest changing the stats for A miners to prevent them from going tax, and increasse their CG and mineral production rates to compensate. It does no good to have more miners if they put all their infrastructure and research into housing.

K Kusari

08/09/2006 · 03:57 AM #15

I agree, that the mineral bot is only a temporary solution. However, I don`t see why people skwak and cry everytime someone suggests a higher price cap. The idea that higher prices will make the game harder for new players is ludicris. I`ve restarted my empire enough times to know that being able to buy 20 of a mineral for 2000 is far better than being able to buy no minerals for 1000 because the market is empty. The problem in the past has been that the price caps are increased, but never enough. even if you double or quadruple the price cap, it still won`t be enough. Rich empires will still buy out the market and so you end up with a market that is still empty 70% of the time, but now the minerals that do come up cost 4x as much. The only way to actually solve the problem is to remove the price caps entirely, or set them so high that they will almost never sell for max price. Once you do this the law of supply and demand takes over. As minerals become scarce, prices go up until the market reaches a point where the prices can`t climb any higher and so they peak and begin to fall. Miners are then forced to under sell each other until demand drives prices back up. The final result is a market that swings between high and low but spend most of the time somewhere in the middle (like the real world).

The best part of this is that the solution is very easy to implement from a programming point of view. Depending on how busy he is and the nature of the code for this game, prices caps could be removed with just a few hours work.

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