I’d like to propose a method by which control of the current NPC market makers can be transferred to faction government control once that is added.
Currently, the NPC MMs act as infinite money supplies on one end (the bid MMs) and infinite resource supplies on the other (the ask MMs). Each of these is also a resource sink and cash sink, respectively. My proposal is to take that “infinite”-ness, and make it more reasonable.
To start, all factions would gain the ability to pass a motion setting which goods are held at what prices. This would allow for an expansion of the current selection of MMs. As a balance, every MM the faction declares costs a flat fee of reputation to maintain, potentially expanding as more MMs are added. In addition, they would either need cash or resources to maintain the MM. ie if it is a bid MM, then it needs cash to maintain. If there is insufficient cash (or material) to maintain the MM, reputation is used instead. The exact numbers would need to be decided on, but something like “for every 100 IDC at 11,000 sold, use 1 reputation”. If there is insufficient reputation to maintain the order, it is deleted. These checks would be made every time an order executes, and in the event that reputation is exhausted all orders would be deleted, being reinstated in the order they were created* as reputation comes in.
Pros:
Adds a balanced way to manage MMs
Moves the “infinite”-ness to people’s opinion of the gov, not some random NPC
Gives faction govs a reason to collect taxes and reputation for their own faction’s betterment
Cons:
None (please discuss!)
*This could be made into a priority list, where the government decides which orders go down and come back first.
This is a terrible idea. Mainly cause it requires the devs to pick a good rep : value ratio to not destroy the economy, which the devs are incapable of doing.
I don’t really see any benefits over the current system except that we can set MMs. It would require fine tuning from the dev side to balance the influence availability and good planning from the gov to not damage the economy. This is imo to prone to errors.
My proposal for the MM system is that the ask MMs (bfabs, RAT, …) become completely faction managed and have no endlessness sso they need to be stocked by the faction while bid MMs (AIR, LOG, …) get bought on the CX from the faction and then get fed into a “faction market” which monthly consumes wares depending on the population of the faction. It consumes a base amount of wares, if there is too much sold to them the price decreases and if there is less than the base amount sold to them the price increases. (max buy amount is 2x base, max increase/decrease is 20% per month, actual price change relative to the amount of wares put into it so 120% input would mean a 4% decrease in price)
Maybe keep the endless ask MMs but set by a faction as fallback and to discourage disruption but the faction has to pay for everything that is being sold through them (7d average universe or their set price, whichever is higher) which means that they want to buy and sell these goods from and to players to generate income instead of just paying.
Target of ask MMs: keeping basic materials available during shortages
Target of bid MMs: provide a market for advanced materials
Effects of this proposal:
no endless MMs, all are managed and supplied by players
all bid MMs will pay a fair price according to the market so that it doesn’t require fine tuning from the devs
price for bid MM wares on the CX will be set by the faction to have a protection against big players just dumping a huge amount of something and crashing the price for the next months and then moving on.