Join the new world

A History Lesson (skippable)


Literally almost right after v1 came out I recall quite distinctly people griping about how there was a recent change in the economic module which (among other things I may be unaware of) was a change of the grain production equation that slowed down the production of grain. This was due to an overproduction of grain and caused a sharp inflation of grain prices due to the production of grain capacity change.


This was short lived, however, and while I have not kept up on grain prices since I left the game for a period of time, I suspect that as it was back before I left for awhile, grain is a market with a slim margin of profit for companies.


Also less recently, before what has been aptly named “WWIII”, or particularly before Romanian attempt to take Indonesian territory (particularly WSR) within the United States there were no government run iron or weapon companies. These were needed due to a shortage of proper weapons especially within the higher quality ranges to support our high end military within our own market and the relative expense of these weapons compared to foreign markets.


While the creation of these companies was controversial and due to lack of proper oversight did result in some rough bumps in their origin, they have and do help provide weapons at cheaper costs to soldiers and signaled the beginning of an era where weapon companies would no longer have to starve or only be run by people who could afford to stockpile weapons.


That era of struggling to be able to dish out weapons on demand to buyers is over with the majority resolved of the fight for North America. While hopefully the eUSA and Canada can push out Hungary, this battle is certainly not as heated over a period of time as with Russia or Indonesia and our fight to push them out.


Thus, weapon companies’ production has increased to the point where, even here where beforehand during wartime there was a lack of production, we have a case of overproduction. I never thought we would see weapon prices at an all time low of less than 4 dollars for a Q1 weapon.
Attempting to run a profitable weapons company at this point in time is very hard.

One battle will not solve the issue as the backstock of weapons sitting ready to go out will waylay any progress made by the need for weapons. The case is chronic to where Manufacturing Jobs have dropped wages by 3 dollars in higher skill level pay grades and multiple gun companies have run out of funds.



All this to say… (the juicy stuff)


The problem that we are currently facing is one with an upside and downside. While our economy is shrinking it is doing so because it’s coming off of a “high” from the war economy. However, it is primarily (and sooner or later indelibly) caused due to the level of player’s skill within the game and the proportion of production per what a person needs per day has become unbalanced.


When the admins ‘fixed’ the grain module, for example, all they did was scale the equation down so that the production was less. While a temporary fix (if temporarily an over fix of the situation) this fix was doomed to fail at a certain point due to increasing skill level of players over an average and increased health averages due to a war economy.


In the general sense, over time skill levels increase and players become more than self-sufficient for their daily needs vs their production rate on average. This is supposed to be tempered by the incoming new players that do not produce enough to maintain a proper ‘diet’. Scalar reduction merely slows down the process which always heads towards over production, not fixes it (again, a simple rough draft to explain the concept).


Simply, the current equation is not balanced according to the number and production expectation of new players.


If the admins change to the economic module is merely another scalar reduction of the productivity formula, then the temporary fix will one day wear off. It will not truly address the problem of overproduction in the long run unless it is comparative to the added duress on productivity from new players.


This duress over time is variable, however, because the more new players you have now means more experienced players later. Over time, you will tend to have a heavier weight for activity from higher skilled workers with optimum production than from those that are a strain on the market.


-In the long run incoming players work against the ‘bet’ on the economic module for a higher strain on the market.


Compounding this is high quality houses tend also to be in possession of such players making the demand for high quality food among high quality workers much less. Therefore a scalar change, again, will not fix the problem.


Certainly, some over or under production in different markets is to be expected as a healthy part of the game, but it is not merely the weapons industry (although that is the shining start example) nor the eUSA which I understand has this problem.


Conclusion being that, right now is a hard, hard time for businesses and businesses especially in lower quality industries (and even much more acute within low quality land businesses) to survive. This will cause most new businesses to immediately fluster. The time before a person can properly fund a successful business will become excruciatingly long before someone can sink the money necessary for say, a successful Q3 land business and even then overproduction is chronic.


Solutions?

Possible #1

I wish I could say I had a down pat answer, but the creation of a new market that was a need not a luxury such as houses or weapons may help create the additional damper needed to keep production at relatively proper levels. While this is also simply a scalar change to the economy in one sense, it’s a proportional increase of markets and thus as the market gets bigger so will its effect.


Not a full proof scheme, but I think we are all ready for a more intricate economic model anyways (many complain about price being the only competing factor, for example).


Possible #2

Also, a productivity equation that made higher skill levels more modest relative to newb production levels will help create a stronger focus around the average production rate and cut down on fluctuations within markets, though not perhaps “fair” to those workers in the upper level of production.


That is, just like with productivity equations involving how many employees you have, add a level of equations per employee such that, say, health over x amount or skill over x amount is judged by another equation such that it is not less than the upper limit of the lower skill equation but increases in a manner that is slow. This decrease will be an slower linear increase that could possibly be the ticket.


Possible #3

“Famines” Within certain industries which would temporarily make it harder to produce x product could be interesting indeed. Granted, how these would occur would have to be random and no doubt the admins would end up accused of favoring someone with these types of scenarios. And, of course, those people in said industry would always be ticked off.

I suppose this was the idea with the trivia games that you had to play to some degree…


Not really an option but it needs to happen

Products need more differentiation than just quality and price, there needs to be a third element that throws of the balance so that there is healthy competition beyond price gouging which will relieve pressure on all of the markets.

For example, an election, say, between two people (we’ll call them Price and Quality) is ‘unbiased’ since both can be judged against one another directly. However, an election between three people (we’ll call them Price, Quality, and item Z) can be biased since, say, Item Z may tend to veer towards the same appeal as Quality, but then Price becomes the deciding factor even if, say Quality itself would have had a majority decision appeal without the presence of item Z because its voter base has been “halved” by the introduction of a third Romeo in this romance, Item Z.

Easier said then done, but admins, if you can find an Item Z, it’d be amazing.


Aren Perry,
Budding Mathematician