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Inflation control


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Just a small suggestion while an asset wipe is probably not going to happen in the near future.

When introducing the admiralty store, expand it and make all marks, paints, etc. availiable for gold in addition. Appropriately expensive ofcourse... people would spend millions just for paints. Prices might need adjustment when hyperinflation decreases, but just that would be a success.

Ofcourse this would only affect the time until a full asset wipe is going to happen, but the effort should be very little. You could also test how good an inflation control based on those items would work with future inflation in mind (after release wipes are no option anymore). In addition people would have more opportunities to test the new admiralty items now.

 

Why reward exploiters? There is no other way, but all rewards are consumables and will be gone after some time nevertheless.

Why is inflation so bad, even if money exploits get fixed? Unless you raise all fixed npc prices and rewards, money wont recover its value. When items become expensive, only the labour value is rising. But labour is neglectable, because it increases your income in the same way. To show the dimension: If you own 100mio gold, thats currently worth the resource value of 5000 golden 5th rate duras. 5000 ships, even when you pvp much and loose a ship each day, thats 13 years of potential gameplay stored! The problem with inflation in general: When money looses meaning, so does everything directly related to it: Economy, trading, combat rewards, crew and repair cost. And so does the gameplay directly related to those.

Edited by Fargo
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Inflation is not only caused by NPC, inflation is caused by infinite source of gold. We receive gold from PvP fights, from missions (you don't pay for ammo / crew salary), from production of resources (you don't pay for the workers in the production buildings). Actually NPC can be coded in the way to not cause any inflation, as long as they remain the same amount of goods they transport from A to B and as long as have their buildings, they need to pay for everything, they got their balance etc. In Port Royale game, every NPC is like a players. They have their sum of gold, buildings, ships that they need to purchase and they trade goods. Buy from port, sell in other or produce goods in production buildings.

A game created 15 years ago has much better NPC & Economy coded / programmed, but it was done by Germans after all :) They pay lots of attention to these kind of things. That game even has automated trade routes with buying / selling rules, depositing stuff to warehouse, quantities etc.

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There are no abundance nor shortages.

As an example, mines of silver in panama vice royalty did cease to yield any for a decade until a new vein was found.

Now, a nation with 10k players all sucking the mines and forests. Compare it to a nation with 1k. Whom do you think would dry out the resources faster ?

 

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16 minutes ago, Hethwill said:

Now, a nation with 10k players all sucking the mines and forests. Compare it to a nation with 1k. Whom do you think would dry out the resources faster ?

this could be solved by a max number of player per nation and balance the game in many ways...

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Guest sruPL
2 hours ago, Hethwill said:

There are no abundance nor shortages.

As an example, mines of silver in panama vice royalty did cease to yield any for a decade until a new vein was found.

Now, a nation with 10k players all sucking the mines and forests. Compare it to a nation with 1k. Whom do you think would dry out the resources faster ?

 

Read my post, please. If you balance earnings and expenses, there is no need to control inflation. Inflation mainly comes from infinite sources of gold without expenses (from combat the only expense is replacing crew and repairing ship. I would rather see hiring crew as free and paying them weekly / monthly salary, or for Pirates they would take % of cash that's been captured). Paying for workers in buildings that we own, with the option to lower production efficiency or cancel production totally. At the moment there are too many ways to earn gold without losing anything, so these become infinite sources of gold causing massive inflation. Inflation is only good in the short time period as the rich manage to buy things before the prices go up, but then in the long term of the time it's terrible for everyone - not just new players. It hurts the whole economy.

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4 hours ago, Krists said:

Inflation = NPC

Too much bots who print money

1 hour ago, sruRUS said:

Inflation is not only caused by NPC, inflation is caused by infinite source of gold. We receive gold from PvP fights, from missions (you don't pay for ammo / crew salary), from production of resources (you don't pay for the workers in the production buildings). Actually NPC can be coded in the way to not cause any inflation, as long as they remain the same amount of goods they transport from A to B and as long as have their buildings, they need to pay for everything, they got their balance etc. In Port Royale game, every NPC is like a players. They have their sum of gold, buildings, ships that they need to purchase and they trade goods. Buy from port, sell in other or produce goods in production buildings.

What NPCs do you mean, we dont have NPCs that want to act similar to players. NA has players instead, much better, mostly more intelligent and easier to code.

We dont receive gold from resource production, thats actually the biggest money sink we have. If there are npcs buying resources for fixed margins its something different, but all resources needed for crafting are produced for money that flows out of the game. On the other side the npc providing your combat rewards is printing money, but thats it.

Nothing wrong with that as long as the balancing isnt too bad. Bad balancing would cause in/deflation, but even good balancing would result in slow inflation. What we saw is that changes can enable exploits that change balancing/cause inflation super fast.

This is not ment to discuss the causes of inflation, but ideas to control it and to pump money out of eco right now. 

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Guest sruPL

You can't pump money out, centrally planned economy or controlling the players funds is the worst idea ever that never worked. Deflation is yet another problem that might be caused by over-balancing economy too much. For the proper balancing economy this game needs massive changes that would take months. EVE has economy experts hired that analyze the market and balance it as far as I know. Lots of charts, diagrams, statistics and data tables presenting the whole game economy.

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8 minutes ago, sruPL said:

Inflation mainly comes from infinite sources of gold without expenses (from combat the only expense is replacing crew and repairing ship. I would rather see hiring crew as free and paying them weekly / monthly salary, or for Pirates they would take % of cash that's been captured). Paying for workers in buildings that we own, with the option to lower production efficiency or cancel production totally.

How should a new or bad player, who will probably lose his ship even in PvE missions sometimes, will ever get some money? How can they pay monthly salary if they have no money? Do they go bankrupt and cant play the game anymore?

Imo the economy has 2 big flaws:

1. NPCs producing too much goods = free money through afk sailing. That + fine wood is where the inflation comes from I think.

2. No moneysink. Most games have stuff like horses or armor which are very expensive and hard to get (mostly through RNG dropchance with different attributes). Will probably be even worse after the durability changes.

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Guest sruPL
1 minute ago, JonSnowLetsGo said:

How should a new or bad player, who will probably lose his ship even in PvE missions sometimes, will ever get some money? How can they pay monthly salary if they have no money? Do they go bankrupt and cant play the game anymore?

Imo the economy has 2 big flaws:

1. NPCs producing too much goods = free money through afk sailing. That + fine wood is where the inflation comes from I think.

2. No moneysink. Most games have stuff like horses or armor which are very expensive and hard to get (mostly through RNG dropchance with different attributes). Will probably be even worse after the durability changes.

One of the positives that make this game less economy-hardcore is the fact that your account balance cannot be negative. Therefore, we should keep in mind that a new player gets a free Basic Cutter, free guns and free crew to start with. If someone fails, he can always start all over again or he can receive a voluntary social help from other players. I don't know how it looks in Sweden, but in British nation there is and was bunch of players that their main goal was to help the rookies. Players like Brian Crayson, Tuck, Xyster and many others... There is no real need for any RNG like in other games.

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10 minutes ago, sruPL said:

One of the positives that make this game less economy-hardcore is the fact that your account balance cannot be negative. Therefore, we should keep in mind that a new player gets a free Basic Cutter, free guns and free crew to start with. If someone fails, he can always start all over again or he can receive a voluntary social help from other players. I don't know how it looks in Sweden, but in British nation there is and was bunch of players that their main goal was to help the rookies. Players like Brian Crayson, Tuck, Xyster and many others...

Yeah this works, but I dont like it. New players shouldnt start from 0 everytime they make a mistake and lose their new ship or rely on begging and gifts from other players.

And just to put that in perspective: Doing a trade run between Gustavia and Christansted gives you 2 million gold. Doing a mission in contrast brings you maybe 50k?

10 minutes ago, sruPL said:

There is no real need for any RNG like in other games.

What do you do in Naval Action with 50 million? You sit on it, because there is nothing worth buying.

Edited by JonSnowLetsGo
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Guest sruPL
1 minute ago, JonSnowLetsGo said:

Yeah this works, but I dont like it. New players shouldnt start from 0 everytime they make a mistake and lose their new ship or rely on begging and gifts from other players.

And just to put that in perspective: Doing a trade run between Gustavia and Christansted gives you 2 million gold. Doing a mission in contrast brings you maybe 50k?

What do you do in Naval Action with 50 million?

1. Doing a mission with capturing ships can give you from 300k up to 2-3m if you are really good at boarding. Rage boarding for gold farming is one of the things that I really dislike. Players should be benefiting much more from shooting / killing / sinking enemy ships. About a trade run giving you 2m, this just needs to be addressed and balanced. I suppose you talk about trading National Goods? That's just a stupid implementation into the game that does not add anything. National Goods are useless items in game used just for the income, with no other purpose to be used. Their initial idea was to be required for special national ships, which kind of failed in the process of implementation and testing L'Ocean with 200 French Wine requirement and players buying 10k of French Wine, 20-30k of Indian Tea etc. Also players stopped trading ship building materials, because trading national goods was much more profitable, that's another factor that killed the "normal" economy.

2. The question is not what I do with 50m, but how I acquired 50m? With hard work everyday, specially planned trading routes or other systems etc. then it's not a problem, but if everyone around has 50m on avarage then yes - it's a problem.

 

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Guest sruPL
7 minutes ago, rediii said:

tradegoods should be removed. They are just items to print money without pricechanges by players because the market is full.

That's exactly what I said :)

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what about a daily payment for each crewmember?

e.g  you sail  a frigate and need 280 crew,so you hire them and pay 100 gold each every day.if you don`t need them anymore or you stop playing,they can retire so you got no costs at all.if you loose plenty of men during a short period of time you will get a bad reputation(like butcher) and your recruting costs increase.

 

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15 minutes ago, sruPL said:

You can't pump money out, centrally planned economy or controlling the players funds is the worst idea ever that never worked. Deflation is yet another problem that might be caused by over-balancing economy too much. For the proper balancing economy this game needs massive changes that would take months. EVE has economy experts hired that analyze the market and balance it as far as I know. Lots of charts, diagrams, statistics and data tables presenting the whole game economy.

Of course you can, read my proposal. Just give people something meaningful to use the money for, thats a common measure to reduce inflation. 

Massive changes? We had a simple economy for about two years and inflation wasnt a noticable problem. We need something that is working/fun, it doesnt need to be perfect.

26 minutes ago, JonSnowLetsGo said:

2. No moneysink. Most games have stuff like horses or armor which are very expensive and hard to get (mostly through RNG dropchance with different attributes). Will probably be even worse after the durability changes.

Each ship sinking removes money equal to its resource production value out of the game, thats about 25k for a 5th rate dura up to 300k for a first rate. Crew and repair cost in addition. Basically everything you use is a consumption good and therefore a potential money sink.

24 minutes ago, JonSnowLetsGo said:

And just to put that in perspective: Doing a trade run between Gustavia and Christansted gives you 2 million gold. Doing a mission in contrast brings you maybe 50k?

18 minutes ago, rediii said:

tradegoods should be removed. They are just items to print money without pricechanges by players because the market is full.

Yes, no need for those items, but with proper balancing even this would be no problem. Its no matter how many different income sources there are, if each on provides roughly the same amount of money per time spend. 

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13 minutes ago, Hethwill said:

Wars should inflate taxes. Wars should influence availability of resources.

That alone is something worth looking to when thinking economy/political.

Could just depend on the amount of ports. The more ports you own, the lower the taxes+production costs/rates. Maybe its possible to track the number of ships sunk relative to the palyerbase of each nation instead. We need to keep it simple, dynamic taxes (that also cant be avoided unless you smuggle) would be fun to think about etc., but it probably would never make it in the game.

BOT: I guess this just became redundant:) #wipehype

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The more trees you cut the faster a forest gets depleted.

The more grunts you have mining the faster the veins dry out.

There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of information regarding a lot of particular events in every single region we play with.

Entire settlements were abandoned due to soil being completely messed due to intensive sugar crops for example.

Resources can be modeled dynamically without being strictly coded as a "punish/reward" mechanic but rather a deck of events that may be based on RL events.

So what is the problem is we have a Silver shortage !? Apart from crying on forum that is. It could be a game event thing.

 

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Guest sruPL
41 minutes ago, Hethwill said:

The more trees you cut the faster a forest gets depleted.

The more grunts you have mining the faster the veins dry out.

There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of information regarding a lot of particular events in every single region we play with.

Entire settlements were abandoned due to soil being completely messed due to intensive sugar crops for example.

Resources can be modeled dynamically without being strictly coded as a "punish/reward" mechanic but rather a deck of events that may be based on RL events.

So what is the problem is we have a Silver shortage !? Apart from crying on forum that is. It could be a game event thing.

 

You mean events like in Europa Universalis IV? I would support such RNG factor. Or like "week of" on Heroes Might & Magic games.

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1 hour ago, Hethwill said:

The more trees you cut the faster a forest gets depleted.

The more grunts you have mining the faster the veins dry out.

There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of information regarding a lot of particular events in every single region we play with.

Entire settlements were abandoned due to soil being completely messed due to intensive sugar crops for example.

Resources can be modeled dynamically without being strictly coded as a "punish/reward" mechanic but rather a deck of events that may be based on RL events.

So what is the problem is we have a Silver shortage !? Apart from crying on forum that is. It could be a game event thing.

Like this ideas.

Just make it the more buildings of the same type produce in one port, the lower the production rate becomes. Maybe -5% each 10 buildings and -30% at max, so ports never become useless, but people are rewarded to craft in further ports, in general owning further ports gets rewarded.

Events would be nice, just be careful with shortages. A storm destroying buildings, creatures reducing production rates, revolts increasing production costs, all fine, but a silver port suddenly becoming useless could restrict ship production. Its not realistic, but ship supply needs to be granted at any point.

 

1 hour ago, rediii said:

Would be the wrong way. If a nation gets bigger it has to get some disadvantages to avoid snowballing.

Yeah, but in the same way you should be rewarded somehow. There should be a cap of course, maybe +-15% for production cost. Right now sweden might be at +5%, brits at -10%. Nothing to worry about.

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Shortages can be tradesmen opportunities, as they were.

Abundance can see a increased activity of pyracy and privateering.

High taxes due to prolonged war can make a Nation vouch for peace and declare themselves defeated.

Regions can be exhausted while others, being unused for so long, ripe for exploration of resources.

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3 hours ago, Hethwill said:

Wars should inflate taxes. Wars should influence availability of resources.

That alone is something worth looking to when thinking economy/political.

Worth looking at, certainly, but what purpose would taxes serve in NA? Players pay for their own ships, and I dare say we'd happily pay for our own crew, gunpowder and ammo as well. The Duke of Wellington can go and forage for his own food as far as I'm concerned.

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Each resource has a multiplier tracked for how many labor hours (and perhaps also the gold cost) are required to produce the resource recipe.

The multiplier is displayed in the crafting menu, and warned as a little blurb in the general port view. IE, "The sugar fields are normal." and the multiplier is "1.0" in the crafting menu.

Any given resource at a port could keep track of how many labor hours were invested into it that week, with another figure to track how much "capacity" the port has.

Example:

Sugar, normal, 9,000 / 10,000. Multiplier 1.0

So 9,000 out of 10,000 hours have been spent in this port. That's everyone's hours, not just yours.

You spend another 1,000 hours and the field becomes 10,000. Uh oh, it was tapped out on the 'normal' level. Its now in the "poor" level, the multiplier is 1.25, and harvesting sugar now requires 20% more labor hours. The port's capacity is now,

Sugar, poor, 0 / 15,000. Multiplier 1.25

Still, another 15,000 hours get spent at this poor sugar port and now...

Sugar, failing, 0 / 20,000. Multiplier 1.5

The insatiable European appetite could continue to..

Sugar, barren, 0 / 25,000. Multiplier 2.0

Of course, players have a limited number of labor hours per RL day and will eventually catch on that other sources of sugar can be had at a lower labor hour cost. You will note that each step downward becomes twice as painful for the producer, and the capacity of poorer yields increases. This is to make it harder to go down to the bottom of the abundance scale. And as players grow tired of barren yields at a convenient port, they'll move their outposts to a more distant port, alleviating the problem.

However a resource will never be tapped out. Some nations may only have one source of X or Y, and can't depend on foreign imports.

On the other side, at the start of the weekend, the ports automatically tick up one rank. This includes going into abundance ranks.

Sugar, abundant, 0 / 5,000. Multiplier 0.8

Sugar, rich, 0 / 3,000. Multiplier 0.7

Sugar, pristine, 0 / 1,000. Multiplier 0.6.

This creates a strong incentive to find untapped resources, and the "gold rush" will occur at the start of the weekend.

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1 hour ago, Wesreidau said:

Each resource has a multiplier tracked for how many labor hours (and perhaps also the gold cost) are required to produce the resource recipe.

....

Sounds good - and I like it being a weekly update so as not to penalise those who cannot play every day - but I think you are using the wrong mechanism.

This game uses five types of resource in crafting:

  • Materials
  • Gold
  • Port Resources
  • Labour Hours
  • Building Capacity

Materials aren't needed in resource harvesting and I don't think we need worry about gold in this context: Spending twice the gold won't grow you any more Sugar.

Port resources are currently binary: A port either has a resource or it doesn't. The Devs tried adding a quantity limit to this (maximum number of buildings), but it was poorly presented, heavily criticised and quickly withdrawn. I think there is still scope for a quantity limit, but your approach sounds better to me.

You've targetting labour hours, but I think this is very much like gold; sending twice the number of workers to the fields won't bring in any more sugar, not in the long run.

But the Builiding Capacity limit looks ideal for the sort of control you propose.
A sugar plantation has a standard capacity of 180 units a day, which with building upgrades you can double this to 360 units. To me, these are the numbers to apply the port resource availibility multiplier. For example, after a period of heavy extraction capacity is reduced by 20%, 50% or whatever. With 20% reduction, a level 1 building will generate 144 Sugar a day instead of 180 and a level 3 building 288 units instead of 360. Gold and labour costs are unchanged at 208 gold and 1 LH per 4 sugar (level 2 and 3 buildings get a small LH reduction as they do now). The same limits apply to everyone, there is no case of first come first served.

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