World curency of H&H

[spectacle]

Indeed. So far this thread seems to be more about price fixing rather than currency.

[juhubert]

Indeed. So far this thread seems to be more about price fixing rather than currency.

true, but due to the game mechanics of HnH, you have to start somewhere. and since there is no sight of a currency or banking system so far, you have to make up something on your own, that means, you have to get the global players on one table and agree to some fixing or exchange rates first. then you cn go on with establishing some kind of currency or at least a substitute for it.

[DatOneGuy]

1)If we make an exchange rate directly that solves one problem: average prices on items , it leaves some other problems however:
a)You still require far more barter stands for this system, which is why they need tot ranslate to coins to have a proper marketplace available.
b)Many people aren't interested in too many things. For example you may want to buy HQ Clay from A.D., or jewelry from Goons, but not want to have to sell anything. Now as a direct as I could put this, no one would sell things like this for coins unless it was gold coins for jewelry (equal the price of the jewelry or more, in which case you might as well nuggify it) and these never happen in stands anyway, although they could. This is solved by the '1', however is why things need to scale all the way. If I want to buy a pair of Thane's in Copper Ore, how much should that cost? It should scale properly. For example you might say "I'd never sell thane's for copper ore = =;", but why not? If prices scale properly you should be able to, if not you should be able to exchange things until you have enough with that copper ore to do it. For example exchange copper ore for cast with one person, exchange cast for unbaked goods with another, exchange that for thanes. If the end result however is that person wants X and wants to sell Y, he should be able to take it as prices should scale properly, plotting things on this point or selling them cheap because "Well it's hard to make a lot of X so I'll give you a discount" works nicely at first but quickly dies off. I often sold gold at 18 cast bar equivalent, that was a mistake. I know gold was valued realistically at at LEAST 24 cast bar equivalent, but I felt bad asking for 4LCs of DDD for one nugget, so I wold say "No that's fine, 2LCs are fine", and yes that got me more trades, but I wasn't happy with the trades, it wasn't a 'fair' trade on my side, I offered too good of a trade because otherwise it wouldn't work. Now if that person turned around and said I want to trade that in cavebulbs that'd be half the cavebulbs and a lot less effort, I'd say no, and they'd say "but you made it equal to 18 cast bars before!". Things should scale naturallly and have a base, if yo offer better ratios for certain goods that is normal per village, but the standard should stay the same. If someone really wants pepper, or cheese, or linen cloth it's expected that they'll offer much better rates than the standard price, but without a standard, there's nowhere to start.

c)Those villages who wish to use coins for general exchange rate it's a lot easier to keep track of than "We take 4 chants per cavebulb" or "3 cavebulbs per cast iron" and have to do exchanging ratios, you can easily post a chart somewhere of what your village pays and now anyone in your village can merchant in your stead.



The typical Marketplace is simply "I want these goods FOR these goods", however a real decent Marketplace should be more like:

"These are the things I want to sell" "These are the things Player B wants to sell"
"These are things I want to buy" "These are the things Player B wants to buy"

Now you can coins from either of these people and spend coins at either of these people's stands. So even if someone isn't interested in your wares you now have money from someone selling something to you for coins to buy from Player B, likewise you may not sell something but someone will get the coins from Player B to buy something from you.

Requires a closed marketplace for this particular thing to work (no random people walking in and whatnot)

--
Anyhow, yes 2 things are being discussed here but one needs to go with the other if we hope to accomplish what both A.D. and myself are trying to do and it seems other people are as well, that is a proper Market that stays stocked with items and you can pretty much find anything I'm selling X and buy it for anything 'm buying Y without me having to have 50 stands to do so.

[lokerrt]

Well,the only things that everybody would accept in a barter economy are things you can easily dispose of, that are in high demand and easy to store: precious metals, high q metals, bulbs, pearls, stuff like that.
The more down the ladder you go toward chants and common low q metals the less will people be inclined to accept them as they are difficult to store and can't be so easily traded away.

Also the only things you guys (the superpowers) can really set rates on are things that you produce like rates of exchange of gold, silver, high q steel, wrought, etc. You can try to set rates on foraged items of course, but supply and demand will make sure you'll have to reset them every now and then. E.g. 1 goonbuck used to cost 4 bulbs and 12 bb and now it's 3 bulbs and 16 bb. Prices fluctuate, you can't really set them in stone.

As for printed money, even if unique coins are introduced, you'd have to have a lot of trust in each other to actually value them for more than their nominal price (1/100 of bar). I understand most people in H&H are slightly paranoid, would you really trust your fellow superpower not to fuck you over by printing more coins that they can actually cover with their reserves?

[DatOneGuy]

We don't want to set them as more than their nominal price. For all intents and purposes 1 coin will cost just as much as it is 1/100 of a bar.


That is to say if had 100 coins it'd be the same as you walking in with 1 bar.

While I may not 'want' bars, and this does mean that yes people will occasionally come in and buy things for bars, that means that I have that many more bars.


The only real problem with the system overall is the same problem Buyan has (although they don't see it as one), the 'money' is obtainable by rather low amounts of labor, I can work for 18minutes and have roughly 400~600 cast iron coins, so if everything is worth it's regular value this becomes a rather simple thing, the person just needs a coinpress.

If coinpresses had stamps I could get around this to a small degree with personal coinpress to run each market but that would mean that you'd need to have faith in trading partners if you want to have exchangeable rates between you.

[lokerrt]

We don't want to set them as more than their nominal price. For all intents and purposes 1 coin will cost just as much as it is 1/100 of a bar.


That is to say if had 100 coins it'd be the same as you walking in with 1 bar.

Exactly. Right now coins aren't money, they are just smaller pieces of metal.

If coinpresses had stamps I could get around this to a small degree with personal coinpress to run each market but that would mean that you'd need to have faith in trading partners if you want to have exchangeable rates between you.

Do you think that can actually happen? The faith part I mean?

[DatOneGuy]

I have many trade partners I would trust with such a thing and have told me they'd trust me with it when I asked what they thought.

I don't want coins to be money the way they are, I want coins for one simple reason.


No matter what you need something as a midway point between stuff, I'll give an example because this is the only thing I wish to use coins for, for any other purpose I find them stupid.


List A: (Things I want to sell)
Gold Nuggets
Silver Nuggets
Jewelry
Cast Iron
Symbel Items
High quality items others can't obtain


List B: (Things I want to buy)
Cavebulbs
Chantrelles
Blueberries
Linen Cloth
Bricks

List A-> coins ->List B

Alternative you could end up with List A->Coins->They turn it into bars or They make bars->Coins->List B

However if you wanted to sell everything on List A for everything on List B that would be 6 stands (Each stand has 5 slots).

As opposed to with the coin system it would be more like 2 stands for selling, 1 for buying. Half the stands.

This scales better the more you want to buy/sale. If my buy list consisted of 20 items and my sale list of 30, that would take 120 shops. With coin system (or simply an intermediary step, doesn't HAVE to be coins!), that would only take 10 stands. As you see, a fraction of the amount.

[Koya]

Biggest citys here already have a trust between them, if all of them gonna take part in it, and there will be unique coinpress it will suceed.
We priced AD coin 1 bar and made coppercoin as 1/100 of AD coin just in case there will be no unique coinpress, and we will be must to run it on price of material. So the silver is our base of trade because we have a lot of it, and can easily change gold to silver for everybody who wants it.

If everything will be launched just on silver coins, and later will be unique coinpress implemented in game, we could easily make exchange stands to change 100silver coins for 1 ADC, because it have price of 1 bar.
Of course value-type model will be more interesting than material one, but in case it will not be implemented we will launch material one soon.

Anyway I see that devs don't wanna go anywhere with economics... stands can be thiefed fast, it needs just to make alt and thef marketplace and leave him to die... in case jewelry stolen he will be ready to spent this time, because his time will be payed out well. All stolen stuff will be on other alts who easily will wait for 2-3 days before scents dissapear. So I see no future of trade if trade stands will be possible to thief so easily.
There is a way to prevent it, if make theft skill used with stealth... for example to steal from trade stand you need 300 stealth, and from barter 150...
Or make possible to build unthiefable trade stands, in cost of 1mln of auth, so it will be possible just for big citys to make them.

[lokerrt]

I have many trade partners I would trust with such a thing and have told me they'd trust me with it when I asked what they thought.

I'm not sure you quite understand the level of trust involved. If you decided that one silver coin = 1 silver bar and several cities would make unique coins and they were all interchangeable you'd basically be trusting 99% of all your stuff (stuff that you sell at least) to the other cities.

[Potjeh]

The whole point of stamping coins is that they're not interchangeable, except when someone sets up a money-changer stall (and that's limited by coin supply).