As some may have noticed, there has been quite a bit of consternation about the copper industry in November. This post will attempt to cut through this.
tl;dr - prices for SCN will continue to drop towards 3000, BCO and PCB should begin to show up on the CXs as good prices, and we hope to tackle IND soon.
A brief history:
Copper Ore (CUO) is a pain in the butt to smelt, and Copper (CU) is a bigger pain to ship
As a result, the market has been very slow to form. Historically, there has been very very little of either CUO or CU traded on the exchanges (CXs) with the Montem CX coming closest to a real market.
When Populous hit, one of the critical products that required CU, Multi-Purpose Scanner (SCN) required a new building. This meant some of the people who made it stopped making it.
A handful of mostly wealthy players started jacking up prices on the CX for SCN in particular.
Our Corp - GDP - took action with a massive plan to create a cartel for Copper (CUOP), announced by our Dear Leader Prdgi that involved taking the planets by dropping 9 Administration Centers (ADMs) simultaneously and installing a single government across all 9 planets that jacked taxes to the maximum.
This action, launched two weeks ago, generated a lot of consternation - mostly vocally from those players that we previously seeing massive profits from the Copper industry. Now there’s an Independent COU Association to challenge CUOP.
Since then, prices on SCN have dropped by more than half. CUOP has ramped up SCN production, with prices at 3400-3500 on all three exchanges. In the next week, we are targeting prices at our below 3300 for SCN. Our goal is to see prices right around 3000 for SCN by the time of the next elections for the CUO planets. We’d like you to decide for yourself whether you’d rather see a return to the prices you were getting from the independent producers.
Prices start to drop right at the mid-point of this chart, when our CUOP was “installed”.
Like other big corporate adventures, there are a lot of other spin-off benefits, which I will attempt to describe here:
Reliable shipping revenue. Now that CUOP has ramped up production, we have started to establish reliable shipping channels. For newer players this can mean a steady 15k/day in revenue. If you’re interested in getting involved, let us know!
Over-production, both from CUOP and ICUOA will benefit everyone else. Prices will probably never go back up to where they were in early November on SCN, which is good for everyone. Whether CUOP maintains a monopoly or not, prices will stay down.
We are starting to establish a market for products that, before CUOP, were rarely traded on the CX. These materials are critical to opening up the game - and the electronics industry in particular - to newer players, and will likely be essential to shipbuilding. To start, this means:
Budget Connectors (BCO)
Printed Circuit Boards (PCB)
Indigo Colorant (IND)
If you are newer to this game and wondering what all of it means, it really comes down to this: there are different ways to play this game - if you appreciate solving big challenges with a team, you might want to consider GDP, and check us out on discord here. We take on big crazy projects that make PrUn better. If you want to develop the game solo and build a vertically-oriented empire, you can do that too, and do it well, but GDP might make you salty from time to time and present some roadblocks along the way.
Either way, it’s a game about economic exploits, and CUOP presents an interested chapter in that history. Elections for the 9 planets that this new cartel “took” in the middle of the night will all be happening in a little less than two weeks’ time. If you’d like to join us in keeping the CUOP going, don’t be a stranger. If you don’t like our approach - vote against us!
One last item - SmartDog’s buy price on BCO (350/u) is very reasonable. We will try to stay there on Montem at least. We have no plans to make PCB in Montem space but will let you know if that changes. For now, look to Prom for first batches of PCB later this week.
I’m curious: is CUOP open to “Preferred Producer” arrangements, where someone strikes an deal to buy CUO or CU for some reasonable price at scale?
Has anyone done that yet?
Lot of teeth gnashing, I’m wondering just how closed this trade wall really is.
Our door is always open! We see a lot of potential for collaborations on Berthier, Vallis, Katoa, etc where GDP has less of a presence. More CUO and CU in circulation, rather than held in small private stockpiles, will be better for us all - especially with shipbuilding so close.
I would like to see CUOP beat this price
I’m sitting on so much CUO rn that my base is getting full… Also, if possible, I’d like to see the CUOP use more meaningful metrics than saying that the CX is changing.
The CX is subject to the will of empires. Any day of the week I could make the decision to put hundreds of SCN on the market, or buy all of the SCN on the market. In fact, most empires can do that with most products. The CX does not accurately represent the trade of low-volume commodities.
Pencil, it seems like you’ve helped prove Comrade’s point - that established players have been keeping the price of CUO products high by stockpiling rather than selling. This hurts players like me who are trying to break into being able to do T3 work - buildings that require Techs, who need HMS & SCN as Consumables, which is hard to make, because it requires CUO, which is only found on miserable Planets, which require INS, which can only be made in a T3 building (chicken/egg thing). Your story - you gave SmartDog 20 CUO - is nice, but private deals between Whales don’t help the rest of us. Why not just sell a bunch of your CUO at CX, to smaller players who really need it? Heck, sell it for 250…
I hate to say it Konvolut, but the reason why we don’t sell CUO is because it doesn’t make economic sense to sell it. Economics is all about profit, I only sold that CUO to SmartDog to see if CUOP would be willing to match my price. If you want CUO, you can easily get it yourself. To build a 1 EXT/1HB1/1CM base on YO-312e, you need a mere 600 ins, which costs less than 120k. That’s nothing… if you are trying to break into techs and you can’t afford that, then you should stick to setts and pios. And there is a t2 cuo planet near katoa if you don’t want any egg/chickens.
This is not a battle of economics, it’s a matter of egos. There are no more bad or good guys, just annoyance at the pests who get in our way.
Also, I’ve been approached by several players younger than 1 mo asking for the resources to build a base on yo-312e or any of the other cuo planets. If you want to break Konvolut’s chicken/egg thing just ask someone who has figured out that the egg actually came first - i’ll add a proof at the end of my statement - I am willing to provide the necessary resources to acquire the materials to build on said planets.
Secondly, small players don’t need cuo… only the empires use cuo, use it in house, and don’t sell because they use the consumables in house.
Now, the proof for egg/chickens. A simple matter of how evolution works. Let’s go back 3.5 billion years to the unicellular organisms who didn’t have eggs or chickens, instead reproduced by mitosis. Eventually, multicellular organisms would evolve, but it wasn’t until much later that we would see egg-laying creatures(not chickens), such as fish and other sea life. Chicken’s did not evolve until much later, and although organisms were present before eggs, eggs were here long before chickens.
If you want to build on a T3 planet, there are 3 ways to do it.
buy ins/hse from someone who already can make it
build a base on BE-796c as it is a T2 cuo planet and serves it’s purpose for building tech cons, then build some pols on apo to make epo, then you need to build a pp3 and get the necessary materials to build rse, once you can build a hbc(i might be wrong on which one it is, but it’s the one that gives u 75 techs and 75 setts), then go build some labs and begin making thf(we can build hbcs and tech cons so it’s easy now), afterwards, use thf to make ins and then you can settle t3 planets.
ask me for resources so you can settle belzers specifically
So now CUOP was all about lowering the price of SCN? That’s laughable. There’s clearly an alternative motive (since I’m making the assumption GDP are not stupid). What is this alternative motive?
Or is this perhaps an out trying to be retroactively gained?
Thanks. Tried that. Then then the prompt said I needed to have more than 20 chars to be able to post. So I did that. My other choice was to “heart” the post. That is not what I wished to do.
Pencil this is total nonsense. Your argument comes down to: “There are things in this game that are tough to get. New players - you are single-celled organisms and must evolve slooowly. Don’t get ahead of yourself… we know better”.
This is a game where we buy and sell stuff, because we have - wait for it - evolved beyond barter systems and hunter-gatherer societies. CUOP is a mechanism that will allow our corporation to buy and sell more stuff by exercising a controlled market. It is how things like oil, music, and anything that needs is patentable gets developed in the real world.
Newer players: GDP doesn’t see you as single-celled sea life. Our goal is to help you advance your game more quickly by putting tough-to-get stuff on the exchanges at reasonable prices. All this other non-sense is just propaganda that doesn’t hold up. If accelerating your game sounds interesting, check us out on discord.
comrade, it seems like you missed the entire point of that statement, which tells people not to overextend themselves, and instead opt for something that won’t take as much resources, and will provide return much more quickly. I’m not telling you to evolve slowly, I’m telling you to plan ahead, and make decisions logically quickly.
Don’t try and strawman my arguments to further your agenda.
CUOP allows only CUOP to operate on copper planets and greatly restricts anyone with a base on said planets who are not CUOP. You even said it yourself, you allow your corporation to buy and sell more stuff in your controlled market. What happens to the others?
I think the only upsetting thing here, is that cuop could easily do what they wish to accomplish(low cx prices) without enacting crippling taxes. If cuop was willing to coexist with us, then we would be as well.
I wish for peace, but I am prepared for war.
To all the new players who don’t want to be single-cell/single base sea-life, my advice is to take shipping contracts, plan ahead, and never give up. We all have to start somewhere, and a unicellular sea creature is as good a start as any.
Yeah, I agree with that completely. Building out the copper market is an insanely expensive undertaking without the ADMs and extra CMs. It is likely that we would have been successful in doing it without the tax/govt move because of the high capital costs. If we weren’t so close to the reset, big players in GDP might have gotten behind it anyway, like they did for the Ironforge project, without the cartel aspects of it.
Doing it through a controlled market is simply a business decision. It’s like if a country decides to invest 10’s of billions in building an oil pipeline and decides that they (a) want to engage in a price fixing scheme and (b) exert economic/governmental control over the country that the pipeline goes through. Did they need to install that puppet government in Kazakhstan? Probably not? Did it ensure that their pipeline wouldn’t be sold off our nationalized by someone else’s self-interest? Yes.
Hopefully that explains it? It’s like trying something that has 80% chance of success versus 95% chance of success. I think Prdgi said in one of his early posts - we wouldn’t have tried something like this if we weren’t so close to reset, because the longer it works, the bigger the industry gets and the more people use CUO, the more likely we lose the monopoly and go back to only that 80% chance of success.
What nice people. They went out of their way to build a monopoly so that they we could have high supply and low prices. I am sure that all this time, effort, and investment was all just help us out. Real generosity from good folks who really care about their community. I even heard they were giving away free beer and corndogs to celebrate their grand opening.
Sounds really good. Until you pull back the curtain. Production taxes are 9999 Nobody outside CUOP and GDP will ever produce a single unit of CUO. Nobody. Zero. We won’t even get the free beer. They can’t post it on the LM with LM fees at 9999. Nobody can pick up their free beer. You can’t get a WAR because they’re all rented at 9999/month. Kinda puts the lie to this bullshit about the good kindly production association. This is a locked down locked out fully closed monopoly.
Everybody associated with the cartel is so surprised at the anger, resentment and disappointment that they have encountered in reaction to their underhanded creations. Like, you had no idea that people were going to feel betrayed? I can assure everyone involved in perpetrating this debacle that you are only hearing just the beginnings of the real real anger and betrayal in our community. People who will never buy a unit of copper are angry. There are old players who are beyond angry. The feel betrayed. I can assure you that this will follow each of you personally for a long, long time. There are people who are trying to make you to coliq. There are people who want to drive you from the game. You only hear just the beginning of the resentment that can be expressed in polite company. There is more. Much more. You actions are in no way considered any form of entertainment. Memory is long. You will not be forgotten.
I hope that the members of GDP do not think for a moment that they are in any way insulated from the anger and resentment this situation has created. Oh, you’re probably surprised too. Well, suurprize! Anybody in the know is just as angry at you at they are at the cartel. You’re going to pay for this too. For a long, long time.
Then there are our developers, they consider themselves completely blameless when the truth is that they are actually just completely clueless. They have no idea of the anger and resentment, of the loss of trust and respect that their actions have created. They have no idea the anger that is directed at them or the depth of respect they have lost. And all this happens at the exact moment that they need our help. In the post mortem they will look back at this as the moment they lost this game. What they really lost was trust and respect.
Y’all might be economic geniuses. But you are all social idiots.
