Transactions and economics in a PBEM game From: thomas@clark.net (Mark Thomas) Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 00:00:00 +0000 I'm currently working on a PBEM fantasy/strategy game. Right now I'm focusing on the economy, and trying to figure out how detailed to make it. My current thinking is as follows: Various forms of raw materials will be available for harvest across the countryside. Once the raw materials are harvested, they generally have to go through at least one refining step to be useful (for example, a miner might harvest iron ore, which must be processed to make iron). Some items (for example grain or livestock) needs no processing. To make more complex items, additional steps might be needed (for example to make a greatsword, a weaponsmith would have to work the iron produced above). In order to refine most raw materials, a skill and some structure are required (for example to turn iron ore into iron, a unit must have the mining-3 skill and access to a smelter, to make a greatsword, a weaponsmith must have access to a forge and have the appropriate skill level). In addition to enabling units with the appropriate skill to carry out item creation, structures would also be able to make items on their own. For example one could sell all their iron ore to the smelter, and next turn it would have processed some of this ore into iron, which would be for sale. Finally, units could own various structures, and gain a small cut of the profits for the transactions that involve their structures. Now as I've envisioned it, most structures are within cities (obvious exceptions - mines, farms). This implies that most buying/selling takes place within the city. I'd like to eliminate shuffling units around between structures to carry out buying & selling (let's see, have to go to the smelter to sell the ore, buy some iron to take to the armorer so he can make some chainmail, then actually be able to wear it). Aside from the practical these-orders-are-boring-and-easy-to-make-mistakes point of view, its difficult to process all the moves/buys/sells in a way that makes sense in the context of a 2-4 week turn. Therefore I've pretty much decided that the transactions avaiable in any structure are visible outside the structure and anyone within the city can buy/sell from any structure. Also, structures can actually buy/sell to each other, meaning advanced items could automatically be created once the right raw materials are available (the smelter sells his iron to the weaponsmith who turns it into greatswords for example). Now for the questions: From the player perspective, does this economic model seem interesting, or is it to much work? As I see it, players interested in trade/production could have fun with it, and the automatic item processing provided by the structures makes it fairly easy for non-trade players to get the stuff they want without having to deal with materials processing skills. Is structure ownership interesting? Would players be interested in "setting up shop" instead of killing each other? My current thinking is to transactions by order of unit arrival (first in gets first shot at transactions). This reflects that those units staked the best claim or got in line first. However it would allow a player to blockade or artificially raise the price of certain products if they had enough cash to purchase all a particular item every turn (for example they could buy all available iron, then resell it at a much higher price - since they're first in the transaction list, they always get the best price, and others are forced to pay the higher price). What do others think? Any thoughts on a better way of organizing transactions? The two other schemes of processing I've come up with is random ordering and "fair" ordering (everyone gets a proportional share). Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? Note: I posted this to rec.games.pbm and rec.games.design followups to rec.games.design, or email if you'd rather. Mark ----- Mark Thomas thomas@clark.net http://www.clark.net/pub/thomas/home.html You can't manage creativity. All you can do is give it a place to work. Up