Obsidian and Orb of Confinement

Greys · February 2016

@Grandue part of this is a result of us hoarding our knowledge of how to evalutate lodes. When a typical player may hesitate to make a single alias, you and I have notepads of date accumulated from tracking mining rates and can easily evaluate the cost of a lode per commodity extracted, projected revenue, and profit per day. We cannot simultaneously keep that to ourselves then complain people are making poor decisions with how they sell commodities and construct mines.

It is something he may reevaluate doing or at least posting suggested prices so miners collectively stop losing gold. He is disciplined enough to only sell at a profit but it is frustrating to wait when another person sells for a loss, at first he thought someone in another camp was just trying to price everyone out of mining heh.

Grandue · February 2016

Aerek said:

That's a very educational treatise on price fixing and monopolistic control. You pretty much made the argument for why one entity should not be able/allowed to completely dictate the flow of a necessary resource, thanks. Monopolies aren't good IC any more than they are RL. Remember the old sigil bans? Oakstone minimums? Those weren't good back in the day, and your theoretical mining syndicate isn't any better, now.

If you want to form syndicates to keep prices high, that's still absolutely doable. Form groups, make policies. Band together to attack mines of non-syndicate members; that's all completely legit and part of the system design. But to have a mechanical stranglehold over specific resources because you've dialed in the game's spawning algorithms, to the point that no one else gets to play? While impressive, that's not a wise game dynamic, and your defense of it is pretty transparently self-interested.

I think you're missing the main point I'm trying to make.

People want to randomize spawns so people can't corner the market on a commodity. People also want the commodities they mine to be more profitable. I'm telling you that you cannot have both with the current spawn yield. You just can't.

We've run the numbers forward and backward, we've done tests, we've done surveys. The market is extremely fragile as is. Literally 1 mine can make the difference between turning a profit in an Achaean year or mining at a loss for two Achaean years. We tested this with carbon. When we stopped reserving the surplus and let it hit the market it went from 90g per to 8g per almost overnight. You think people whine now? What do you think is going to happen now that spawns have become unpredictable and three Joe McUndercut's grab a bunch of silver mines and throws them on the market to turn a quick price? Are you now going to ask Josoul and Grandue to not compete with price until the knuckleheads have depleted their stock so that the market doesn't crash and become unprofitable? Sorry man, we didn't invest all this gold and time to just sit on our hands and not see a return on our investment so that those who invested nothing can have their fun and make a quick profit. If the current annual yield is kept the same not that spawns are randomized I'm going to bail out of this sinking ship as soon as I can and try to recoup as much of the loss possible. We'll dump everything. It will be flooded, and not just a little bit flooded, but over 10 years worth of annual commodity usage flooded. It will crash and it will crash for a very long time.

Year 1: 30k silver mined. 15k silver consumed. 15k silver in surplus
Year 2: 30k silver mined. 15k silver consumed. 30k silver in surplus
Year 3: 30k silver mined. 15k silver consumed. 45k silver in surplus
Year 4: 30k silver mined. 15k silver consumed. 60k silver in surplus

This is the reality we live in with the current spawns. With this much surplus the ONLY way to ensure financial stability is to control all of a single commodity. You might as well feed the extra commodities to a humgii unless something changes and there is a massive requirement for that commodity because of some event or something, because you'll never sell them otherwise because there isn't a demand. If people are mining and giving the commodities to their city for upkeep this will only compound the problem.

Because we have to mine all of the extra commodities that will never sell just to ensure that someone doesn't enter the market and cut the prices to make a quick profit, the price of the commodity sold has to go up because our overhead is now double. Mining silver we make less than double what we could have made on a coal mine. If you factor in rare minerals that drops to about 35% more profit off silver than coal. It is basically the difference between making 3k gold per hour and 4k gold per hour, and the world loses its mind.

But why stop there? If we control all the silver what stops us from just raising it to 1000g per? I don't disagree with you there, monopolies are dangerous because of this very reason, however, we don't have the monopoly you think we do. Anyone can figure it out and snatch up the lodes and anyone can assault the mines, and I fully expect this to happen. We're also not always on top of our game, we've miscalculated the spawn and lost lodes and it was very costly. How many cities or mining organizations have offered to purchase a lode off of us, none. I have PURCHASED so many lodes off of other people, paying them gold and commodities for them to transfer their mine to me. How many times have Ministers of Trade inquired about creating an annual purchase at a discounted rate, none. There has been no IC response at all, everyone just flew to the forums demanding something be done. But to answer the question, early on we decided on a pricing structure that would make a respectable profit without being SO lucrative that cities couldn't afford it and griefers wouldn't target them because they're so shiny. We've structured it so that the annual upkeep costs for cities is LOWER than it was before mining was introduced. Do the math, your city is paying less gold in commodities than it was before mining.

I don't know how to put it into more understandable terms than this. Less than half the silver that has EVER been mined by anyone has been used. Does that not tell you something? It shows that the only way to mine silver and make a profit is to mine ALL the silver. I'm not saying this isn't broken AF. It definitely is, it is broken AF that in order to ensure a profit (even a small profit) you have to control all of a commodity and mine an extra 50% of it knowing you'll likely never be able to sell it. It is a crummy situation. It is set up so that half of all people mining will be forced to lose money and it has absolutely nothing to do with how they structure their troops or what size mine they build on a lode. You could do everything right and lose a shitload of gold all because the market is annually flooded with nearly twice as many commodities as are necessary. In order to form the "syndicate" you're talking about and not be able to keep track of the spawn rhythm would require a lot of assaulting, which would mean a lot of gold would be sunk into claiming storage at planned intervals to protect your investment, which means if you WERE able to get all of that commodity in a single year you would have to price it MUCH higher in order to make a profit because you lost 5% of it to claiming plus another 50-100k in claiming fees not to mention the loss of troops during the assaults (and the cost of leveling those troops in iron/stone mines at a loss). It would result in many more people being pissed off because they're constantly getting attacked and losing their commodities/gold and because the price of those commodities would skyrocket to compensate the added cost of procuring those goods.

So you're partially right, I don't want to just randomize the spawn because it would ruin everything we've spent the last 20 years working toward. Since the day mining started were were working on it and we didn't finalize it and "succeed" and start seeing a return on our investment until the last week of January. Sarapis told us that we didn't break anything, He just wants mining to be a low profit venture. Obviously it couldn't go on forever and it will suck to see the market go to shit now, but to just randomize the spawn without significantly reducing the amount of commodities spawned annually is going to crash the market completely. I recommend starting with lowering the annual supply and see what happens, other commodities will become much more valuable to mine. Allow other people the time to figure out the spawns, let the "gold rush" play out in Achaea and let organizations that have figured it out barter/war for commodity claims. There is no way to supply an economy with twice the demand and not see the price of that good drop below the cost to produce it.

Don't believe me? Look at ice. It sells at 119g. Do you know how much of a loss selling ice at 119g is? Ice spawns in large lodes almost exclusively. Even with max miners you're looking at a 290,000-340,000 gold LOSS. Why does it sell at this price then. Because there is too much of it being mined and too many people selling it trying to recoup some of their losses. It happened to obsidian. It happened to carbon. It happened to ice. It happened to gold. The same will happen to silver.

It was enjoyable but I'm jumping ship if spawn yields remain so high, the inevitable crash that is about to happen is an unfortunate result but don't say you weren't warned.

Valkyn · February 2016

People are not 'going out of their minds' because you are making x profit, it's because they're having to blow 10% of their entire city's yearly budget on ONE commodity for improvements. If there's a problem with too much silver being spawned, then that needs to be reduced a bit, sure. I'd rather see a bit less of it around than two people forming a monopoly on the market.

Sanna · February 2016

He's making the point that this is the only way to make profit mining. That if you eliminated the 'monopoly' the supply would saturate the demand and prices would crash, making mining useless.

Valkyn · February 2016

Sanna said:

He's making the point that this is the only way to make profit mining. That if you eliminated the 'monopoly' the supply would saturate the demand and prices would crash, making mining useless.

Personally I'm more concerned about cities being able to maintain improvements than miners making a profit. Both would be ideal, but one is more important IMO. Anyway, I haven't had issues making gold from mining and I often sell at below market prices to the city commshop, allies to help them build mines and such. With high level mining squads, rare minerals, etc, making reasonable decisions on what mines to put where, I'm still turning a profit. Maybe not on every individual mine, but in general.

Sanna · February 2016

Just to play devil advocate here, the reason you can still make a profit is because the price has been artificially inflated. Miners are working for their self-interest(except perhaps for cities) and the system dictates that they create artificial shortages. Grandue is saying that the system is broken if that's the case.

Edit: Also just to add: Any amount of supply would be fine if everyone mined according to their own self-interest. It's the people who are mining at a loss who are ruining the profits of everyone by undercutting those who put up resources at or above cost. The market isn't equalizing on its own, and thus if people want to make a profit they have to form a conglomerate.

Valkyn · February 2016

The price has only been artificially inflated by the commodities I haven't been able to mine (Silver, Bone) so no I don't think that's the case.

Most of what I sell cheaply goes into overkill mines for newbies, like a large mine on a medium coal or something, just to protect from attackers, they don't end up making a profit on those mines, only maybe breaking even, so I don't think it's breaking anything. If I were to take those mines with my high level troops I'd get away with a smaller mine and use less commodities.

Greys · February 2016

@Valkyn There is no commodity that is unpurchasable in quantities to build and maintain a improvement. I cannot fathom why people can and continue to mine for a loss other than addiction.

Atalkez · February 2016

I made my million gold on ice and got out before it crashed. It went from 400 per to 200 to now 119 like Grande mentioned.

Grand he is pretty on point with his assessment. It's how I viewed mining pretty early on, and it's seemingly still true.

Valkyn · February 2016

I don't know why anyone would mine at a loss either, if you can't afford it, stop mining. Don't sell comms at a loss as a habit, that's just crazy. I never put them on market at a low price, just hoard if there's too much.

Pushing the price of silver up to 300g is too far though.

Saeva · February 2016

@Atalkez you mined ice before the market established itself as anything. You know ice in commodity shops before was around 350-450 gold on any given day,and that was the major contribution to people being willing to pay for it. Then suddenly the miners knew their investment cost and lowered it over time. prerty sure Aerek nailed the point. Don't need to say anything further.

Grandue · February 2016

Valkyn said:

I don't know why anyone would mine at a loss either, if you can't afford it, stop mining. Don't sell comms at a loss as a habit, that's just crazy. I never put them on market at a low price, just hoard if there's too much.

Pushing the price of silver up to 300g is too far though.

Did you just skim my post? You seem to be trying to add 1+1 and get an answer of 57 or something.

Saeva said:

Then suddenly the miners knew their investment cost and lowered it over time. prerty sure Aerek nailed the point. Don't need to say anything further.

The miners didn't lower the cost of ice because they saw their investment cost and out of the kindness of their heart decided to lower the price so it could be cheaper. They lowered the price because the supply of ice is 50x more than the demand and that is how economics works.

Valkyn · February 2016

@Grandue that wasn't in response to you, I believe I was agreeing with you on that point.

Morthif · February 2016

Half the problem @Grandue is that not only are you Ashtani but you hold a small position of power there. If you wanted to do the whole Syndicate thing where people could approach you for comma then you might consider changing up your affiliations

Aerek · February 2016

Grandue said:

I think you're missing the main point I'm trying to make.

People want to randomize spawns so people can't corner the market on a commodity. People also want the commodities they mine to be more profitable. I'm telling you that you cannot have both with the current spawn yield. You just can't.

I'm not missing your point, you're missing mine. You're hand-wringing about profits, I'm pointing out that the ability of a small group of individuals (or indeed, one individual) to effectively control the supply of a necessary game resource is universally bad game design.

Grandue · February 2016

Morthif said:

Half the problem @Grandue is that not only are you Ashtani but you hold a small position of power there. If you wanted to do the whole Syndicate thing where people could approach you for comma then you might consider changing up your affiliations

I'm enemied nowhere. I'm the city leader of Ashtan and I'm positive this plays a part in places like Targossas from contacting me directly but who exactly do you think they're buying commodities from when they buy it off the Delos Market? Going for plausible deniability? Feigned ignorance? Grandue has been supplying Targossas with commodities for years through the Delos Market. If there was any inkling of desire to secure goods at a discounted price they could have easily gone through a middleman, it is what everyone does for purchasing things from enemies anyway. Just saying.

Valkyn said:

@Grandue that wasn't in response to you, I believe I was agreeing with you on that point.

I was referring the whole "if the market is too low just hoard" comment. I'm telling you that this is compounding problem. You MIGHT scrape a few extra coins immediately after a city makes a large purchase and the price jumps a couple coins, but after the next set of lodes collapse and the market is flooded with comms again it will always go back down. There is no "waiting for a sunny day". If 100 bananas grow a year but your village only eats 50 annually, that extra 50 bananas gets stored up every year... but the trees still produce 100 bananas the next year so it isn't like you're going to be able to sell them.

Atalkez · February 2016

Saeva said:

@Atalkez you mined ice before the market established itself as anything. You know ice in commodity shops before was around 350-450 gold on any given day,and that was the major contribution to people being willing to pay for it. Then suddenly the miners knew their investment cost and lowered it over time. prerty sure Aerek nailed the point. Don't need to say anything further.

It didn't get lowered by miners because of their investment costs. It got lowered because 10 people had ice, and instead of guy 8 selling his ice at 400, guy 1 wanted to sell at 375. And It just went downhill from there. That same progression has followed suit for every commodity, so far.

I do however agree that any group of less than 10 people being able to control a single commodity, is not a good thing to have in the system.

Valkyn · February 2016

@Grandue depends on the commodity, stone and iron for example will probably increase in use if the price drops because people build houses and work on their smithing titles when it's cheaper.

Medi · February 2016

In addition to more random spawn times, I originally assumed that the overall "production" (or spawns, w/e) would also fluctuate. I imagined years where there might not even be an iron or stone lode, to sort of eat up the excess that @Grandue is talking about. I WAS JUST ALL WRONG ABOUT MINING APPARENTLY!

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Categories

In this Discussion

Obsidian and Orb of Confinement

Comments