[Jonboy]

What would happen if players set the prices of commods, instead of GMs? Some rather dramatic game changes would have to be implemented, which I'll touch on later. If I was building Jumpgate from scratch, I'd try to put in a player-led economy, although i don't think it would have been possible on the computers that Jumpgate Classic was built on. Anyways, here goes:

All factional and neutral stations are each given an independent auction house.

The auction house is like e-bay. You put an item (or group of items) up for auction, with minimum and buyout prices, and a time-limit. The highest bidder at the end of the time-limit gets the item, and you get the cash, unless the item is bought for the buy-out price before the limit is up.

The item is then held at the station where you bought it for you to arrange collection.

The stations no longer set the value of the items. The only value of the item, is that which you can get from another player - a market value.

The auction house would charge you for using this service.

[edit]If an item doesn't sell, it is held at the station until you arrange collection.[/edit]

[Jonboy]

Notes, advantages and disadvantages:

This would hose 'matter farming.' There would be no market AI to exploit into selling and buying. It's harder to exploit players.

There would still be market differentials, e.g. if a commodity is much more available at one station than another, people will move it, *IF* they believe they can sell it on at a profit. If you haul (say) uranium from QC to SC, players at SC will be able to choose to buy the uranium at the price you are selling it at, or haul it themselves. If it was easier to mine uranium at QC than at SC, such a differential would exist.

Haulers would be able to make money from players by making tiered gear and equipment for them.

Mining would be as valuable as the commodities.

Obviously, the price the market can bear will be dependent on supply and demand - availability from mining (or other) and how much it is useful in production.

Large changes would be needed to the hauling mission system, but not insurmountable ones. I'll discuss suggestions later. The problem is that currently TRI pays you for the commodity when you deliver it, at the station price, plus a bonus. You'd have to create a new reward scheme/method.

Changes would be needed to the mining mission system. Again, TRI pays you for your commods, this wouldn't be so bad, as you actually get paid for ore. TRI could pay you to refine ore, and let you market the commods gained from refining.

Factory modules on POS would not be as unreasonable as in Jumpgate Classic (they were unreasonable, as the TRI prices were partly dependent on hauling time, so would have created short-cuts, and also you could have made matter-farm factories).

There might be problems with production meeting demand. If TRI is unable to sell goods without tieing the price to that which TRI sells them at, we would be dependent on player-only production. I don't KNOW if we could handle it. It may also require removal of control of production from the stations (i.e. when u dump mats at a station, the station turns them into higher tier commods, this is a price-tied mechanism).

New players would be encouraged to make money by mining, as the mined commods could be sold to richer players for the market value.

Most of the money in the system (i.e. everyone's total money) would recycle a lot more. Instead of coming from sale of commods, it would come from fluxing, mission payouts and MT rewards.

It may require more computer resources at the server end to make it work.

There would probably have to be limits on how the AH stores items between purchase and collection.

I would have no problems with paying someone else to collect gear I had bought.

============

I don't know if I'm actually ADDing something to the game here. In fact, I'm removing a huge chunk of hauling for cash. IMO, this would remove problems of MUD-inflation from new players, and remove mat-farming as an exploit. Development time IS put into the pricing schemes of the stations, all that work would be replaced by work for this new system. I AM adding to player responsibility, I can't guarantee that we'd meet it.

[Dolia]

I thing that can be great but :

like other mmo which have auction, it could be better that some station stay group on a one same auction.

i explain my idea :

You dock on a X station and go to the auction. Here you see all the item that are auction in stations that are at 3-4 (more) sectors around.

You want to buy an item which is on an Y station, you can do but when you buy you need to go to the Y station to take the item.

If there isn't this system i think some station have nothing to present at auction and that can be boring.


imo, it's a good idea (the auction) but i think that can be a real challenge to devs to do it

[Tim]

How would you handle the commods that the station produces? Would there be a base rate for these?

[Jonboy]

Originally Posted by Dolia

It could be better that some station stay group on a one same auction.

i explain my idea :

You dock on a X station and go to the auction. Here you see all the item that are auction in stations that are at 3-4 (more) sectors around.

You want to buy an item which is on an Y station, you can do but when you buy you need to go to the Y station to take the item.

I wouldn't have too many problems with remote buying. As long as the material didn't magicly move itself to your ship from another station. Hauling is one of the most fun thing about Jumpgate and it does separate it from other games.

With remote buying, however, there's less of a race to get to the commod. Would that be fun? I'm assuming you could access the data of other auction houses remotely, even if u can't buy on them. However, you can get a friend to buy stuff for you, so maybe remote-buying will be moot.

[Jonboy]

Originally Posted by Tim

How would you handle the commods that the station produces? Would there be a base rate for these?

Personally, I would not have the stations produce anything for market.

Things would be produced AT stations, but by the players, and the players would sell them, or not. I realise there are problems with this, that's why I want to discuss this....

It may be possible/desirable for the stations to collect sales data occasionally so that the stations could buy and sell at player prices. The data collection isn't too hard computationally, and you may be able to avoid player-created price-spikes, by random-sampling. But it's something I would prefer to avoid.

[Tim]

it seems like you are almost working toward some sort of a stock exchange setup.. Player driven trading creates a market price, and then brokers (the stations) would trade in the product for those folks who don't want to try to adjust the market price.

That is to say, once a price is established, a pilot could sell to a broker (the station) at whatever the market is, and that would then be held in inventory until another pilot came alone and purchased it at whatever that price was.

Then, pilots who want to try to move the market price could use the auction and take their chances. This would, of course, tie up their product indefinitely.

If their price were higher than the stations, nobody would buy it intill the station stock were depleted, but then they would have to buy it (at the higher price) if they wanted some. On the other hand, if a pilot wanted to make a quick sale, he could offer it at a lower price, thus selling before the station stock was touched.

Or at least, that's a thought

[Tim]

So how about 2nd and 3rd tier commods, as well as equipment? Would a player dock with the necessary commods and pay to have the manufactoring done? Or would everything be done in space with CP type buildings?

[Jonboy]

Tim, are you presenting an alternative to what i'm suggesting? It looks completely different.

In my suggestion stations wouldn't have stock.

The only things for sale would be put there by the players. The players would set the price. I'm TEMPTED to allow stations to find a BUY price for items, so that the stations can use the information to create missions, but I don't think that's necessary. It may be that the stations are FORCED to sell things, but only if the game is poorly balanced when it comes to rewarding the players to get enough stuff to market for themselves.

[Jonboy]

Originally Posted by Tim

So how about 2nd and 3rd tier commods, as well as equipment? Would a player dock with the necessary commods and pay to have the manufactoring done? Or would everything be done in space with CP type buildings?

Either/or. I'd use a mixture. Forcing production to be at CPs creates a bottle-neck.

I've just added this edit to the first post...

[edit]If an item doesn't sell, it is held at the station until you arrange collection.[/edit]

[Tim]

Ahh.. yeah, turns out i was adding something, then.. I threw in a middle man/broker.

Which, of course, may certainly not be necessary. A good broker, though, in theory provides a convenience rather than just a markup.

My thought tho is that if you let us all put stuff at a station at whatever price we want, then make the station hold it until it sells, then we've all got a really handy storage facility wherever we want. On the other hand, if you don't let the stations hold stuff for pilots, then some poor rub has to sit there and wait for somebody to come along and buy his hold-full of commod/equip. Ouch.

This broker thing, though, might clean that up.. if a pilot doesn't want to wait or pay holding fees or fill up his allotment of station space (whichever) then he can just sell right to the station at the player-created price.

It seems to me that the bigger goal here is to make product price and creation player driven. So as long as that goal is achieved... ?

[Jonboy]

There's a time-limit before the auction expires. There has to be a time-limit, otherwise noone can win the auction.

Yes, storage of stuff on the station-floor without it being up for auction *IS* an issue. I haven't quite got the right idea for it. I don't think charging per day would cover the all problems, but you never know.

Brokers aren't something I'd thought of, and I think I like the idea.

It seems to me that the bigger goal here is to make product price and creation player driven. So as long as that goal is achieved... ?

Exactly.