The city commshops and how to keep them relevant

Greys

With the advent of the Delos comm market, it would seem the utility of city commshops is severely diminished. One of the biggest challenges during the mining era was runs on certain commodities. Now that the prices have stabilized somewhat, I think we can revisit it a bit.  

I think a couple things would help trade:

Have them function somewhat like regular shops in that you can refuse service to certain people, grant favorable or unfavorable prices to others.  This would allow it to be a service to the city.

Having some third person message when you look at the commodity shop indicating it is out of funds. Just would improve general quality of life and allow us to pass it along to the minister rather than having to pull something out, drop selfishness, and try to sell it.

Anyways, discuss.

Annwyl

The commshops are a convenience for the city. One may get a better price in Delos, but the price difference benefits the city, at least in Cyrene's case. We have no need to restrict people from buying from or selling to us in Cyrene. Only city enemies are prevented from dealing with us.

We've recently instituted a new practice. If you want to sell more than 100 comms to us, or any amount of particularly comms, you'll need to message Verrucht. He'll handle the transaction. This way, we won't have someone depleting the treasury by unloading 20,000 coal or anything else we don't need at the moment. There's a poster in our commshop that explains what to do.

Valkyn

I've worked pretty hard to make sure Hashan's comm shop is actually relevant, I'm not sure any of those changes are really needed, but I guess they wouldn't hurt.

Greys

Well it sounds that if you could set a maximum of a commodity you would buy per month, that could help prevent runs depleting the coffers?

Valkyn

That would be nice, definitely. I dislike having to be so careful with prices. Too low and no one will sell, too high and you end up with too much.

Aerek

Ability to set per-person limits seems like something that should have been added a long time ago. Come to think of it, I'm kinda surprised I haven't seen that suggested that in the last 10 years. Seems like exactly the problem with the whole system, comm shops are constantly out of gold because one person shows up and sells in bulk, wiping out the whole Trade budget until the Minister shows up to set things right again. (At which point that same person can come wipe it out again)

Verrucht

If the comm shop is set up properly, people won't be able to sell what the city doesn't want to buy. This is something we're looking at in Cyrene right now since we're good on most things, so we'll probably be adjusting the prices accordingly down to 1 for things that we don't want to be buying. Also, the Minister can't set things right, since only Treasurer/CL can allocate funds to Ministries and only the Steward/CL can consign money to the Treasury for this purpose.  Overall, the problem is user error, not a specific flaw in the system itself.

I will agree that setting per person limits might be worthwhile, but primarily that's still just addressing a user error on the part of the person setting the prices. If you have set a favourable price that will encourage people to empty their rift of a particular commodity, that should mean that you want as much as they can sell. If you do not, make sure to set your price accordingly. These functions already exist within the current system. Those who sell to Cyrene on a regular basis know to approach me personally if they want to sell in bulk, since I can actually withdraw and buy in larger quantities for things that we actually need.