Economy on zoric island

[Serdal]

Heya just registered here at the forum, love what you guys are doing with the game a tractor.
But its a fact that the economy on the zoric island isnt going well. Many people are working real hard to even get a bit of money. And this is all because of players inabilities to sell any goods to buildings, because most buildings are uninvested and therefore cannot take any goods.
As a solution to this, there should be a somesort of "bigmarket" which buys a huge arrange of products that people produce at their farms, factories etc. This bigmarket should of course be owned by zaroba, because it will need lots of money to be sustained. But to avoid the other smaller markets etc to go bankrupt, the prices in the bigmarket should drop when lots of people are selling goods to it. And there should be a maximum ammount of goods that the market can take in a certain time limit; say one day realtime.

Just a quick idea (and i hope its a good one), on how things could be made better


Greets,

Serdal

[Magicfinger]

uh-oh supermakets !! diminishing the rural traders... look at the economy of U.S and UK (dont know bout other countries) but the livelihood of small traders has been virtually wiped out by exactly what you are describing

[zaroba]

But its a fact that the economy on the zoric island isnt going well. Many people are working real hard to even get a bit of money. And this is all because of players inabilities to sell any goods to buildings, because most buildings are uninvested and therefore cannot take any goods.

woulden't it be better for the economy to solve the problem by getting people to invest in thier shops etc instead of providing compitition?

[Mattizme]

The bigmarkets you describe wouldn't really do the economy any good at all.. it's that kind of thing which encourages people to rely on governments.

I knwo you're only making suggestions, I'm not flaming, but it may cause people to just sell to the bigmarket because they know they will be able to (and they wont havre to traipse about for hours) and so the competition would die.

[Rueges]

i agree with zar

[Knight]

So.. lets see, everyone thinks we can make economy better by raising prices... O wait, we all make more moeny now, but everything costs more too... SHoot that wont work...Lets see, what else, O ya lets invest in our buildigns to make even mroe goods we cant sell... As long as theres even slight profit and you play your cards right, you can become wealthy, but, wanna really fix the economy? Bring newbs in, and make sure they dont get ripped off. (ex. 500s+ teepees, selling cars/planes to them)
a newb needs

House- 200-250s
Steaks, tea-50-70s together
Tractor (not needed but strongly recomended)- 90-100s
1 skill, 2 jobs- 1d
And a building that can actually get them to learn the game and still make them a profit (ex. Cow farm, butchery perhaps, drink shop)

O well jsut my input... its 4:30 am and i felt like babbling...

[zaroba]

yep. thats even better.
739 buildings devided among 196 people....wow...10 hours ago it was 729 buildings.
only need at most 2 of each farm, a few refs, a few drills, a few stores to sell what the farms make, one of each car fac, parts fac, ore mine etc.
not including houses, less then 50 buildings could probably support the 200 living players.

get alot of new players in the economy, sell them some stuff thats already built.
decrease the average number of buildings per player and the economy will balence out a bit.

[Mattizme]

Nobody wants to buy off anyone else... they want to make their own stuff.

Maybe houses should have vegetable patches, which grow a small amount of foo when you stick fertilizer in.. That might stem the flow of people making farms etc.

No-one *needs* to own a house straight away - I walways used to rent a cheap one and get a job. Do you buy a house straight away in real life? Bearing in mind we don't have the option of mortgage.

The economy shouldn't be dependent on new players. If a supply of new people dries up, so does the economy.

As for invest? if 1000s was invested in 2/3 of buildings (guessing that about 1/3 is houses) that would put about half a million into the economy. An owner should also have the option to demolish their own buildigns to get something like 50% of the materials back - it gives them an incentive instead of just leaving a building on sale.

I still like the idea of raising prices a bit. Stuff may cost more, but you also make more money as pointed out. Higher prices wille ncourage undercutting - competition, more availability of stock, and the prices will start to drop again.

[Mit]

i always love these communists vs capitalists vs oligarchs threads :]

[zaroba]

i don't really think its possible for an economy here to not depend on new players.

for the economy to be self sufficient and not depend on any players comeing in, then some players need to have businesses, while others need to buy from those businesses and never own/rent anything but a house. thats pretty much impossible unless you force it like that. in which case i doubt many would want to play on the island. an alternative could be to make production of items so slow that one of each building would only support a few people. which i think would result in either a very hard island or a very easy island. might be hard because stuff would be hard to get, might be easy because anybody could make money.

but in either case above, you'd have to prevent people from freely building stuff. the players aren't blind. if they see somebody making alot of money off something, they will jump in that market, after a while, it floods and either some leave the market, or more players comeing in balence it out. but guess what, those new players that are once again seeing the now profitable market might go into it resulting in flooding again.
a good example of this was....i don't remember what island it was...last june. me and i think knox and matt were the only ones in the ore business and had something like 4 ore mines total. we were stockpiling ore for royalty. a few observant people noticed the fact that we then built 3 more ore mines to speed up the collection. so what happens? we logged in one day to see that 2 people built 6 more ore mines. of course, then we got royalty and had no more use for the ore mines. ore was then a dirt poor business to be in.

a forced economy could easily work, but you'd have to have some way to force people to play it and accept being dirt poor or filthy rich. in real life, thiers not really any choice, if your dirt poor, thiers not really much you can do but struggle to get money. in the game, if your dirt poor and struggling to survive, you can just give up, and stop playing the island, resulting in lack of players to support the businesses. after a bit, the businesses would start to fail as the market floods (which oddly, new players comeing back in would solve)

[Mattizme]

I don't think I made myself clear, Zaroba.

An island shouldn't be wholly dependent on new players. While new people will inject money into the economy, it shouldn't be the whole source of business.

Maybe lowering the overall amount of buildings being allowed would reduce the ratio a bit on further islands - lowering it a lot would encourage people to either push things far apart or specialise, and would also prevent large chains owned by one person (good ol' McMattizme's and QwertyMeat) unless they form a family all dealing in one thing.

It might slow down the growth of an island, but that may be needed to create a stable economy.

[old-man style reminiscing]
Mur did this a lot - At first, there was a small row of houses and some buildings - no-one came into the island rich enough to buy stuff straight away, you had to rent. You didn't have seperate vehicles then, and (even though there was no restrictions then) All the industry buildings were up a hill, all in one group. Past them were farms - The organisation of the island was brilliant.

If I can ever get my slippery litlte paws on the island software and some way of keeping it online 24/7, I'll build this again.

[/old-man style reminiscing]

[zaroba]

ahh, i see what you mean. sorta like what zion has going on.
don't start with much money, low buildings per a player, forced specialisation

[Tom]

But then, you have to have gov owned buildings for people to transfer to and from... which ruins the capitalists ideas of players relying on each other and not the gov

[Serdal]

i always love these communists vs capitalists vs oligarchs threads :]

Under which category would you put me under?

[Mattizme]

But then, you have to have gov owned buildings for people to transfer to and from... which ruins the capitalists ideas of players relying on each other and not the gov

The thing that happened on Mur (begin the reminiscing again) Is that there was a fuel stop, a food shop, and that was all. Everything else was gov. owned but buy/rentable. Once the food and petrol stores ran out, they weren't refilled - The island inhabitants had to get their arse in gear and do it themselves, or they wouldn't eat/move.

[Mit]

well, its a simplification.. but you're basically a communist, serdal

[JustJonny]

Hmmm after some staring at the screen JJ has an idea. Probably even better than having an ice cream van in the game

1. All buildings are gov owned
2. every1 starts poor with only enough cash for food, rental of house, 1 skill
3. first skill 1d but only allows for working in low payed jobs
4. skill upgrades cost money but ppl can get jobs in better payed industries.
5. All the gov buildings are for sale but at prices that means ppl have 2 spend time on the game stocking etc

a few tweaks and u could have urselves a great island.

plz cud sum1 who knows tell me if this sounds like a good idea or not, and if it works (im off 2 australia for 6 months so i hope 2 see some amazing things have happened to the game ) and to be made an op when i come back, and be given a free ice cream van

[Tom]

well, not a bad idea... although i'm sure someone already said that

the thing is, only someone like mit would make that kind of a world, as this would be a very slow island with not many people on it (and world owners get their kicks from players being on lots and lovin the world they made) also the fact i can only have 1 world and would like a populated one, if i could have aother one then i'd have one like this (which is also a lot like zion)

but yeh nice idea...

P.S. mines a 99

[Mit]

Dont see why that needs to be done slowly Tom. Theres nothing in that idea that requires any sorta time-scale - It could even be done in a way so the entire game takes a couple of hours for someone to 'win'. (Perhaps have the map recycle regularly so theres a continual challenge).

JJ, dude, can u pick me up a 'Fab' and a magnum for the missus?

[Tom]

Well assuming everyone starts poor and can only afford to rent a house... it would be slow... but i suppose if theres gov buildings to transfer to and from and then eventually buy out like on zion, it could speed up. I guess i was thinking it would be slow like zion because of the same basis, but thinking about it now, it wouldn't have to be, thats just the way you made it.

If the island had a big enough bdat it would be quite fast i suppose