"In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is an asset's ability to be sold without causing a significant movement in the price and with minimum loss of value. Money, or cash, is the most liquid asset, and can be used immediately to perform economic actions like buying, selling, or paying debt, meeting immediate wants and needs." The term "Liquid" is an economic term which in layman's terms means: How fast your item can be traded for another. Trading bread for iron to trade that iron for diamonds to trade those diamonds for Iridium is not liquid. Trading your non-physical money directly for Iridium is very liquid. One of the reasons the old system wasn't used was because it wasn't liquid enough.
It's simply the honor system, i think. also like mad said, the mods help in case of a ripoff. as far as i know sk doesn't like sooo much control. (besides you can note misbehavoring players in those actions. ) about the trade-o-mats: well i didn't get them to work on old alice, so i imply, that a few more players first have to ask maaaany times before a trade actually is managed. ooon the other side it might be of course just me...<.<. i loved the nether shop, we built. besides an ice building in the nether is simply awesome ². but, nol, it was in the vincent nether. we handled it with craftbook. unfortunately kaitoyuuki (or something) overdid the craftbook advantages. not sure, if craftbook in a "safe" version is possible on the current alice. i think, building individual stalls along the nether path is a nice idea. something like a shopping mile . though we'd still need a shopkeepers friendslist..just to make sure Edit: in the very late old alice days i started to make a bank, but no one really used it. @ gk, the reason, we don't have the farbes ans chest shops anymore is also answered now. i would help to build and care for the claiming and signs. but first we need to convince sk AND wait until he gets to install. we know he is very busy. also questionable: would those chestshop sign farbes thingies work only for vanilla chests?
"also questionable: would those chestshop sign farbes thingies work only for vanilla chests?" I have thought about that and concluded (without running tests) why wouldn't they? I think it was made to work on storage items because I've seen it work with an Ender Chest ONCE.
I think it was made to work on storage items because I've seen it work with an Ender Chest ONCE. ender chest is also vanilla, though... My point was that it works on placable storage items, since modded chests are placed storage items I don't see why it wouldn't work. Again, without testing we cannot know for sure.
Now that we have a player marketplace "The Bazaar" I think that it's time to revisit fiat money. I really enjoy the barter system that Trade-o-mats offer but when it comes to high ticket items or large quantities they are severely lacking. Say I want to sell an Adjustable Energy Storage Unit. This is a late game item and it might be worth trading iridium for but if I'm crafting these to sell to other players I probably have all the iridium I will ever need. What I really need is raw material that I can't get through UU matter. Copper, coal, and believe it or not cobblestone. This is where fiat money is very handy. A player could sell all kinds of material for $k and then turn it in for an AESU. Now complete the circle; I just made a butt load of $k and I need to buy more raw material. This is a supply and demand system and prices can change. I am not an economist but I recognize the value that Fiat Money has to an economy. There is also the danger of corruption and inflation. I really like the idea in the OP about the server limiting the money supply based on the number of active players. I did not like the idea of a max cap per player, but after pondering for a while it does make some sense. But then you run into the liquid currency problem. Very rich players reach the cap and then they can't get anymore $k until they spend some of it. I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on this.
An economy needs regulation ... which we moderators would have to do, since we are the "state" on the server (not really, but you get the idea). We won't. Well, i won't, but i'm sure the other moderators would agree that we don't want to keep our eyes on that all the time. We come on skcraft to play and have fun, not establish an economy. Please try to solve it without our intervention - that way shit can't hit the fan.
A player driven economy (economy driven by one or more regular players) is different and that it doesn't need official help/support. I'm working on one but since I'm still grounded, I can't share what i've come up with.
It's still the same problem, gk. Fiat money is printed from nothing. How do you control/limit how much money is printed. Is it based on a real resource like gold? If you don't limit the creation of currency then inflation kills the economy. MadNess is correct that regulation is needed and I'm fine with the moderators not wanting to deal with it. What I would like to see is some discussion about how it could be handled. In this case it looks like the players will need to self-regulate. @gknova61 I really like the CC banking system that we were talking about on TS. That's why the underground areas beneath the shops were built. To provide space for this system. I know you are unable to implement this in game right now. So, this seems like the best time to talk about it and make sure the system that gets implemented has input from everyone. For everyone else, the CC banking system is a Fiat money system. It converts MC resources/items/blocks into credits. Credits can be used at any POS(Point Of Sale) in any shop that sets one up. This is not intended to replace Trade-o-mats. GK has worked on the code for this system. The items that are converted are stored and can be purchased back. The system will also allow for personal storage, like a safe deposit box. You can also use this as a warehouse to sell quantities of goods. Back to topic of inflation and regulation. How do we define limits for the generation of currency? I like the idea of the money supply being based on the number of active users. There is also the max cap on the amount of currency per player. Is there a way to get rid of the cap and keep the rich players in check?
Can you elaborate here? I would like have this stuff written out so we can clarify and define things.
Alright, here's an update on the conversation that I had with GK, Glitch, and Kris on TS. Central Database. Storage and retrieval of items via Interactive Sorter. The Database will handle all player accounts and transactions. It should be possible to retrieve reports from the database to determine the health of the economy. How these reports are generated and interpreted needs to be discussed. Quartz Ore can initially be converted into currency. We don't know what the exchange rate will be. Suggestions would be appreciated. Quartz Ore was chosen because it can only be obtained by players with silk touch. Several other ores were also considered by were either too rare or too common(iridium ore block and coal ore). We also talked about allowing multiple types of ore but then ran into the problem of exchanging iridium for quartz and the system would run out of quartz. Initially and for testing. There will be a limit on the total amount of generated currency. Eventually the limit will be removed or replaced with a soft cap based on the number of active accounts in the system. Glitch pointed out that players hoarding currency would not cause a problem as long as there are any players putting quartz into the system. This means there does not have to be a max cap on currency held by a player. Point of Sale Computers To be honest this part of the discussion went a little over my head and I also missed part of it. It seems there is a problem with securing the POS in a shop. I knew it would be a problem if the customer tried to be dishonest and hack the POS. But I hadn't considered that the shop owners might also try to cheat the system by sending false info to the Central Database. I had to afk right as Glitch and GK were talking about how to possibly secure the POS against this kind of hack. tl;dr Should I open a new topic for this? What should the exchange rate be for Quartz Ore? How can the POS be secured against tampering?
We have worked out a method of security for the POS. For obvious reasons, I won't be discussing that here Open a new thread, Buttons so we can have placeholders to update OP, and we won't have to comb through pages to see what's going to be used, etc. Infact, I might move backend development of this to a different site. Don't forget to migrate everything relevant here (mainly what you said) to there!
