Change store price mid-auction

[Nikolai]

Hey all,

I've played a little and been reading these forums and had an idea to solve the smithore imbalance / price fixing that has been bugging people.  What if the store's buying price for any commodity changes mid-auction as that product is sold?  Because, really, who needs 300 smithore at 230-a-pop?  Rather, as items are sold to the store, it's offering price gradually drops.  Given that the smithore market is a closted market, and ostenably all the ore gets used planetside (as the market price is completely affected by the local situation), this would make logical sense as well as perhaps improving balance.  There would be a more limited use to smithore hoarding and price fixing as a result of this.  The same could be done for food and power, although I doubt that would affect much.  Because the chrystite is mined and sold off-planet (to a presumably much larger market) the sales of chrystite may not undergo this mid-auction price deflation, and thus the balance would tilt back somewhat in chrystite's favor.

Just a thought.

-Nikolai

Edit:  As an aside, there is no reason the inverse could not also occur when buying from the store.  It would make the store act more like a real entity.

[JacksonAK92]

I agree.

[Intergalactic Mole]

The only problem with it is that it completely changes the way the game works. 

[GabrielPope]

Bear in mind that not everyone is really on board with the concept of the game being a crystite-mining-colony simulator. There's already a difference of opinion between those who think that the model of the game with crystite as the colony's major source of income is ideal, vs. those who think that all goods should be capable of generating similar profit.

I'm in the former camp, but I think this idea may be partially redundant. The thing is, the prices of food and energy at least already take players' stockpiles into account--if you have 50 food and everyone else has 0 food, you'll typically see a hit to the price of food (although it will still remain elevated, so you still make a tidy sum.) Buying a giant pile of food at a lower, flat rate is not as realistic as buying the first few food at a very high price and then going down from there, but it is vastly simpler. M.U.L.E. is an abstract game; I think simplicity wins out over realism.

There's no room in a reproduction of classic M.U.L.E. for any change to the way smithore pricing works, but if anything were to be done for an alternate mode I think the supply/demand calculations for smithore should simply be updated to work more in line with how food and energy are done, so the store looks at the 300 units of smithore floating around the economy and says "guys, we don't need 150 more mules" and keeps the price of smithore from ballooning.

[Big Head Zach]

There's no room in a reproduction of classic M.U.L.E. for any change to the way smithore pricing works, but if anything were to be done for an alternate mode I think the supply/demand calculations for smithore should simply be updated to work more in line with how food and energy are done, so the store looks at the 300 units of smithore floating around the economy and says "guys, we don't need 150 more mules" and keeps the price of smithore from ballooning.

Funny you say that, because if the intent is to keep the price of smithore from bouncing around so much, making it act like Food and Energy would be a step in the opposite direction

The only differences between the pre-auction valuation of Smithore and that of Food/Energy is:

• Smithore/MULE supply considers only the MULEs in the Corral and the Smithore in the Store, not the players' storage
• The smithore Demand/Supply ratio is hard-limited between 1/4 and 3/1. That means it's slower to react to shortages/surpluses (and recovery from such), where a complete lack of Food or Energy will instantly spike the price to $230.
• Smithore undergoes a slight random price modification usually between -14 and 14, just to make it "volatile" even when the late-game demand goes in the toilet.

I would be curious to see what would happen if we simultaneously:

• Had the Store consider players' storage in the determination of total smithore supply, and
• Increased the amount of Smithore needed to fabricate a MULE (up from 2).

Would we see less of a price fluctuation, and more of a "reliance" on smithore rather than speculation / wild buying habits?

[GabrielPope]

• Had the Store consider players' storage in the determination of total smithore supply

Er, yes. This is precisely what I was talking about. If the smithore supply was calculated in the same manner that food/energy supply was, taking the colony's entire supply as a whole into account, then you wouldn't be able to run up the price while stockpiling huge amounts and get an enormous windfall profit. You'd actually be considerably worse off compared to food/energy windfalls, because while players might try paying $300 or $400 for your food and buffer the market price up no one is going to outbid the store that much on smithore.

[Big Head Zach]

I haven't had my coffee yet. Ugh.

Right now the Colony needs 60 additional Smithore to provide for the entire game. As it stands, you can make a hell of a lot more than that throughout the game, so simply changing the Store to consider player storage would seriously discourage Smithore production (since it's only marginally more valuable than Food/Energy when it's being provided for).

Sounds like Dan/Bill/Jim/Alan saw this in testing and altered it to current spec.

In another way, though, it's different due to the way Smithore is actually consumed by players; in the secondary market...and I know you posted an entirely new topic on how this might be changed in a future version, so I'll stop there.

[Jaradakar]

It would be very interesting to see how the game would play if mules cost was changed/increased.

4 Smithore? 

4 Smithore + 2 Energy?

Very interesting indeed.

Granted increasing MULE cost early on will only increase the value of said components.  It's almost as if MULES should increase in cost over the course of the game -- sort of like poker blinds.

Granted I have no logical reason why costs would go up, but it might make the game very interesting.

[Big Head Zach]

Granted I have no logical reason why costs would go up, but it might make the game very interesting.

A Store manufacturing issue in which those that build the MULEs arbitrate for more money, effectively increasing the "multiplier" or adding a flat amount to the cost of a MULE over the price of its components. Realize that in the current game, there are no labor costs. Perhaps this should change, and become a value that can waver in the midst of global events?