Dynamic Economy based on Supply and Demand

[inFamousMax]

 

Hi All! So this is my economy suggestion for ECRP, this ties in with the suggestions made here (PREVIOUS SUGGESTIONS ). It simply won't work without systems/features suggested there.

- Dynamic Economy

-- What is a Dynamic Economy

"Just like most countries around the world, the value of the local currency is based on value per currency. This is determined by MANY many many many factors of which is impossible to replicate in a game like this. However, we can take a very simple measuring solution and base our economy on that for a strong reliable and predictable economy that's also fun to manage and that is Supply & Demand. As demand rises so should the supply, at least that's the idea."

-- How do we track it?

"SQL is god. What I suggest if you don't already is to set a few passive trackers that manage resources within this script, for the purposes of this economy I will be using the examples in my previous suggestions. By keeping data of stock levels we can track the supply and demand without having to also track the monetary value of specific items as this would make it unmanageable and a full-time job. What I suggest is by tracking previous and current stock levels we can use some simple equations to predict the market growth and decline which is very important when maintaining an economy."

-- But why? I just wanna drive and pew pew

"Well, It's very important to have a strong economy in most games, you put time and effort into playing a game where at its core the reward is financial, it benefits you the buyer and the businesses as the supplier. If you buy a vehicle 1 week and it's price doubles the next is this justified or is it simply greed?

The most important thing about an economy in a game like this is that it can be driven by the population, which in a role-play game can be the most satisfying experience you will get. As i explain below you may not care about the figures but you'll surely care about the control.

Control will come from the S&D which is stock, pretty much anything can be measured by quantity and that's how this will work."

-- What does this economy offer?

"Two examples here, both criminal and non-criminal.

Criminal, Let's say I sell illegal weapons and have 3 workers. Now in week 1, the workers manage to sell 300 weapons, the next week 400, that's growth but in week 3 they only manage to sell 50. What's going on? I need that money. Well it turns out a lot of players where running guns in week 1 and the stock grew to 500, the next week however only 200 made it to the warehouse, with week 1's stock it was enough to cover week 2's shortfall but in week 3 only 50 guns made it to the warehouse, why was that? Well, the Police were running active stings pretty harshly in week 2 and 3 which meant supply simply slowed to a crawl. As a leader of an illegal gun empire, what are you going to do? what can you do? Throw into the mix rival gangs competing to sell guns, drug supply, vehicle supply, illegal parts supply, and you've got yourself a criminal underworld of goods.

Non-Criminal, Imagine you own a store on the outskirts of town, suddenly you notice you're not receiving as many goods lately. This is most likely because people are not doing the courier job enough, it might be because you're too far and most people give up before getting to your store. So you put your prices up to cover the problem, hey you're a specialist store now. However, if the demand in your area is not enough to cover this then you may have to ask for help. Perhaps made friends with some couriers and ask them to stock your stores first for a small reward. Or maybe, just maybe you seek help a little more direct, if another store wasn't getting stocked at all, well demand would surely increase for you right?

In both these examples we look at two businesses, Illegal gun selling and a store owner, as far from each other as possible however they both share a common realistic problem. How to manage and run a business efficiently and for profit. One is illegal by nature but one can be illegal by circumstance, just like real life. However for the smartest out there perhaps they can market themselves in a way that attracts the demand necessary without illegal measures. Add 10+ other jobs, 100's of stock levels, and you've got yourself a quite an interesting economy."

-- How would Jobs work with this?

"Well this is one of the great things about using a supply and demand system, YOU can be the supply. If we take the vehicle dealership, for example, a job can be created which is delivering vehicles to the store. Now if that vehicle is not in stock then you can't buy it and would possibly force people to go elsewhere to find it, not so good for the owner. But since this is a dynamic economy you can control that. Simply hop onto the Vehicle Trucker Job and deliver the vehicles, you'll get a nice paycheck and the dealership will become stocked with vehicles. 

It really is that simple, one of the most important and key features of this economy is it gives all players no matter how big or small and impact, a purpose, a mission. If all you like to do is trucking well this means that the hours you put in are very important. Hell if you were so dedicated you may be able to affect the prices of vehicles overnight! But be careful, you never know what motives other people have and how they will react to this influx of supply.

-- Server Development

"Quite simply when a new feature or system is developed a process should be used. Does this utilize the economy? if yes then how? If supply then how can we get real players involved in the role-play. For demand how can it be displayed? Sold?"

-- So what is needed for this to work?

"Ok this is the kicker, it's a massive change. Well, I say massive, the actual coding would not be much but the CHANGE to current code would be significant. How would this be achieved? For a basic economy, we would just need history. Businesses/Warehouses would need a stock level and this stock level would need to be kept for at least 3 cycles (whatever is decided to be the measurement) 

For example, the below data I've used is over a 3 week period, let's review it.

https://imgur.com/a/bt61u

So what you can see in this is a very simplest list of stockable elements, places that can be supplied by the public via a job or criminal event and the demand which is measured by previous stock and quantity sold. From there we can create a simple graph that shows the growth or decline of the market. We can focus on specific commodities like "Shop Stock" if we owned a store or the bigger picture if we were the LS Financial Advisor. This gives us a very powerful tool, both for the ordinary civilian and the criminal. This also provides a great resource for the police in hitting targets or predicting investigation cases."

 

-- Is this limiting?

"No, it's in my honest opinion how every single role-play server should base their economy, even if they use it at the most basic level and fluff the stock themselves in times of low-server population. The data you can extract is priceless, not only will you see your living economy but you'll be able to see potential problems or even things that are working as hoped.

So even if not fully utilized you can see what adding a few extra columns to a SQL table can get you. Now if a server does decide to actually have stock affected by jobs/events/criminal activity etc, then you get the living part of that economy based on your population's motives. Again fantastic role-play! oh what wonder, but also this gives the server operations team data on what's lacking in the server, is the civilian market low? how long has it been low? why has it not recovered? is the criminal market flourishing? why? how long? is that good? is it expected?."

-- Can it be expanded?

"Oh but of course. Am a firm believer in walking before you run, but if you think to the future imagine if real-estate prices were bundled in, imagine if bank robberies affected prices, imagine having a STOCK  MARKET. You may say "What!" a stock market? how though that's lots of work. Well not really, simply display the historical data of that businesses supply & demand and you have a commodity, whether it's good or not is the deciding factor but it would then allow people to buy stock in that business and of course if successful so are you."

-- Will this be implemented?

"In a normal server this far into its development, if the data is not already being captured then probably not, you're talking an overhaul of most systems. However ECRP is a little different, the population is already at a starting point of most new servers and can only grow, RAGEMP is around the corner and with new changes comes time for re-implementation of features not working or broken. most importantly, ECRP is in dire need of a financial reset, if suggested are implemented and then this economy is created along with the clean, dirty money feature from my previous post then after testing a financial reset is prime. Not only would this draw in new players that want a fresh start, it should bring back older players who have left and let's face it if you're doing well now there is no reason you can not do better with the above."

This will be expanded as the days go on, things added, grammar corrected. 

-- Commodities Extract Explained

"So I wanted to just spend a little time and discuss the eco-system of a simple and complex commodity and it's life cycle.

Simple. Let's take shop stock, for example, now this is fully regulated, taxed and abides by the laws (Yes you could be thinking right now, but what if they get their stock from an illegal supplier to save money because their demand is low! and they have made a deal with the wrong people!. WOW awesome :P, thanks for being awesome things like that are why this system is great, the richness of all these systems can be expanded later on in development as the server reaches maximum population! but imagine if that was possible! WHAT). So yes this stock would be delivered to the shipyard/train yard via huge containers (container job in RAGEMP?) so we can safely assume it would be a 1 to 1 commodity, this means for every 1 item there is 1 output. Phone battarys for example are just that and require delivering to the store for sale.

The Process life-cycle is,

Yard Warehouse is stocked (Import) > Player picks up Shop Stock (Player ownership) > Player delivers stock to store (Store ownership) > Items are sold and require re-supply

Very easy, very simple, any player can get involved as it's a simple delivery job and the shop owner can do as much or as little as they want to depend on how successful they wish to be.

 

Complex Stock. Let's take illegal Guns, for example, a highly sought after stock able to determine life and death, protection or survival. Now the server can decide to go as in-depth as they wish for this one, but let's face it I'm going to make this nice and complex :) as I want to include as many players as possible, why? well because it's a living economy, If something in the chain is broken I want everybody to feel it, I want action, I want business as usual role-play and then I want asses to the streets what's going on role-play and everything in between, but primarily the people on the streets will decide what that is.

The Process life-cycle is,

Gun Components store in import warehouse (Imported, Smuggled across the border) > Gun Components are transported to end warehouse (player ownership) > Gun Materials stored in the warehouse (Gun Material Stock) > Guns are collected by Illegal Distributors (Player Ownership) > Gun Dealers sell to Public (player ownership).

So a couple things here, without writing the gun selling system here quite simply we have a 1 to 1 to 1 relationship, Gun Components are taken to a warehouse where they become materials and then from there can become the weapon. 

We are taking the unprocessed materials and processing them for the output of "Guns". I will write a system in the original suggestions to cater for gun/drug sellers soon to explain this further. But you can see how commodities can be as simple or complex as we want. Adding additional steps decreases the output of a commodity which brings demand and also the added danger which is what we want for certain things like Guns. But for simple shop items, we don't want the problem to the actual commodity itself just the delivery and demand.

 

History

- Added -- Commodities Extract Explained

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Final words, I understand when it comes to peoples money it's a sore subject, and systems like this tend to be marmite you either love it or hate it. If you do hate this then please try to imagine the possibilities of a living economy and not only how it affects you but how you could affect IT. Please leave any constructive feedback below I would love to hear your ideas and any improvements you have to my above suggestion.

Once again this suggestion is about giving the tools to the players, and most of all respecting the value of your dollar.

Edited December 6, 2017 by inFamousMax
Update

[Kay133]

This is another great idea +1

[inFamousMax]

46 minutes ago, Kay133 said:

This is another great idea +1

Thanks!

 

Added -- Commodities Extract Explained

[SoloSmith]

This is a fantastic idea. Well constructed and thought out. I understand certain players would be upset with a wipe but it's for the betterment of the server. As it is right now, it's not sustainable. Very little balancing within the economy, very little space for competition. It will only get worse until a resolution is put in place, sooner rather than later I say :D 

 

Big +1

[InvalidSun]

Very good ideas, I will support it. I will say, I doubt they will be implemented. That's just my expectation of it.

[JAziz]

i really thought its a long suggestion but when i read it i enjoyed it and amazed by the idea.
+1

 

[Hitachi Knight]

This would make it more realistic so 

+1

[Flucifial]

Economy is already being worked on