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[Fedor]

So, as per the thread "Changes to rocks, metal, gems, jewelry, and currency?", I'm working on a Masterwork mod. I've finished the gems, and am making good progress on metals, minerals, and reactions based on them, but trade ... I need some advice on trade. By which I mean trade via reactions in workshops, not at the Depot.

Humans, and also dwarves and orcs, have access to a lot of powerful trade reactions. Turn stuff into money, and money into stuff. I am changing the value of gold (and other coinage metals), and adding a number of Earth resources (and deleting a bunch of others), and all this means a whole bunch of revisions to trade reactions.

But I don't have a very good sense of trade in Masterwork. It's clear that humans trade the most, followed by orcs and dwarves. It is not clear to me how much profit traders should demand. Does this depend on the species? Does it depend on the value, the rarity, or bulk (difficulty of transport) of the goods being traded? What else should influence profit margin? I'm also not clear on how complete the trade reactions ought to be: should most things be freely tradeable, or only selected things?

Basically: I want to keep the trade gameplay dynamic as Meph (and Smakemupagus, etc.) intend it to be, or as they desire it to become. Yes, I'm planning big changes to currency, etc., but not to the power, the scope, or the design of trade itself. Doing this, however, requires me to know rather a lot more about Meph and Co.'s thinking than I do. Can you share your thoughts here?

[Fedor]

#
# Gold is the basis of valuation, internally, and for most (but not all) races. It has almost doubled in value.
# All metals are traded strictly by volume (multiply by density to get weight).
# The value of coins in various metals:
#  Copper, rusty iron: 1/16th of gold
#  tin, brass, iron, (bronze): 1/8th of gold  (billon is no longer present, but would also have this value)
#  silver: 1/4th of gold
#  aluminum: 1/4th of gold, except for gnomes, for whom it is 1/8th.
#  electrum: 1/2 of gold
#  platinum: 5/6ths of gold (except for orcs trading in the Shadowbroker, for whom it is equal to gold)
#  gold: material value 48
#
#
# Most metals are not actively used in stores, due to the inconvenience of exchanging one type of coin for another.
# However, human and dwarven stores use both gold and silver, orcs use rusty iron, silver, and platinum, and so forth.
#

Currency and currency names will be discussed later. Basically, we need to decide whether to keep coins, or use "tool" items with special names. The biggest advantage of the former is ease of coding and special stockpiles. The biggest advantage of the latter is the ability to name currencies, with each species having its own names.
#

[Amostubal]

generally speaking the most complex is the orcs:
1. you have copper, silver, gold, bonemold, and platinum coins.
2. very few things that can be bought from the vendors can be sold back to the vendors.
3. what can be sold back is almost always sold at 1/2 what the buy value is.
4. each purchase and sell has its own reaction, the fact they are linked to skills(negotiation generally) cause the coins to have "quality" levels, making some coins of the same type extremely valuable for depot trades.
5. the value is set in stone and unidirectional, you can't break down from say bonemold to copper.  end products are bonemold and platinum
  2500 c->1,000 b
  500 s->1,000 b
  500 g->3,000 b
  5,000 c->1,000 s
  5,000 s->2,000 g *which directly would of been 10,000 b but through this makes 12,000 b
  5,000 g->2,000 p

6. there are 3 fake coins that can be converted into bonemold coins... zinc, lead, tin at 1:1 ratio.
7. a lot of orc society revolves around the movement of coins.  you need bonemold coins to raid, raids earn you coins in silver and gold which get dumped back into bonemold coins.  you need coins to buy certain things to advance your base, such as seed packs for the orc fort only crops that are used in making colored bricks from clay which are magma safe.
8. it takes a lot of work to understand the system and the incapacity to revert the coins into lesser coins, leave some players high and dry when they need say copper coins or silver coins and their entire stock is in bonemold and platinum.
9. In the base set up you can't mint bonemold coins at a forge.

Dwarves and Humans are very different.... most people don't even get involved in the dwarven shops, other then minting coins for guilding characters.  I personally don't have a lot of experience with the dwarves.

Humans have only 1 coin in their setup and a voucher system.  They have I think 15 shops(don't quote me its been a long time).  I just remember I could make a square room 25x25 and all the shops + a depot would fit around the outer edge leaving a 15x15 space in the middle.  I'd ring that with 3x3 shops then I'd have a quantum stock in the middle 9x9.

basically if you can buy it with a coin it generally sold at 1/2 the price unless it was considered "common"... the common items could be traded 1:1.  generally anything purchased could never be resold at better the 1:1.  you could sell or buy just about anything, but for somethings a voucher system would become involved.

vouchers would be a tool item made of the same material as the item sold, so say you sold a copper sword, you would get a copper voucher, well if you bought a sword it would cost you 2 vouchers, and the material of the voucher determined the material of the sword.  you could directly buy certain material vouchers at set coin prices(I believe they were gold coins).  basically with enough raw materials to sell, a player could eventually buy decent military goods and equip an army... many human players will wipe out an entire forest and sell it, then dig an open mine, sell the stone, wipe out the new growth forest, fish out the rivers and ponds, create huge ranches, etc.  just to produce raw resources to produce goods.

the main thing coin is used for in human societies though is the guild halls.  a lot of coin gets sucked up in building and purchasing permits to build up the various guild halls, each hall has 4 special shops that require permits to build. these are then used to produce large quantities of goods at rapid rates.

there thats all the knowledge I have for you.

[Fedor]

Amostubal,

You are a fount of information, especially about Orcs. Many thanks for the details.

Orcs:
Most of this sounds very reasonable. If I wanted to make the minimum possible changes to orc trading reactions while using the new metal values, I *think* that we'd end up with an exchange rate of 2 copper to 1 bonemold; 2 bonemold to 1 silver; 4 silver to 1 gold. And platinum would get a boost in value for orcs, to be equal to gold (for other races, it is 5/6ths of gold).

The biggest issue I have with orcs is the choice of bonemeal as a coinage material. For multiple reasons: Bars of the material itself can be made out of infinitely replenishable ash and bonemeal, bonemold is inherently too cheap (and also too cheap-sounding) for what needs to be a medium-value coinage for "sneaky stuff", there's no obvious within-the-story reason why tokens can't be made out of bonemold, and counterfeiting bonemold out of base metals is just weird. I liked Smakemupagus' use of rusty iron, but that substance appears to have disappeared entirely in the present MDF version.

Now, there are alternatives. Orcs could use mounted skulls as drinking cups - and as currency. Silver, gold and/or platinum-mounted cups made out of the skulls of whatever got in their way.


Humans:
What you say about humans is also very useful. The fact that they use only one coin type makes their trade system a lot easier to manage. Now, while the 2:1 sell:buy pricing for most things sounds reasonable, I am having real problems with the /relative/ price of goods in their system. In my opinion, objects and materials within a given category (such as "wood") should have trade prices proportional to their material values. And this is often not the case.

I'd also like gems to be especially nice trade items, because of their ease of transport. What I don't know is if mass import of bulk goods is a feature. Historically, it was quite difficult - and therefore expensive - to transport bulk goods overland. But maybe we just assume humans always settle near navigable rivers and shores?


Dwarves:
Dwarves actually have a lot of trade reactions available to them in MDF. Not as many as humans, but still a lot. I'm thinking that, because dwarves often inhabit crags far from easy trade routes, merchants should demand a higher profit margin on almost everything than they do for humans, except for rocks, ores, metals, gems, and stuff made of either metal or gems. A question I don't know the answer is whether mass importation of raw materials outside the caravan system is an intended or desired feature for Dwarves in Masterwork.

[Amostubal]

yeah, I remember working a couple of times with the current system of dwarven shops, but the dwarves are very self sufficient. 

Humans can be played self sufficiently, but really are boosted by their shopping.

Orcs ... well I've been going through and making fixes, smakemupagus has been missing for quite sometime... I'm very intimate with the files at hand.  the fact you cannot produce bonemold coins through any forge keeps the cheapness down, add in that they are virtually worthless at the trade depot, (last I checked a no quality 500 stack of bonemold coin was worth less than 100).  Its only one minor change that makes them mintable at a forge.  Their silver and gold equivalents are actually worth a lot more at the trade depot.  I think the platinum thing is rather normal for most RPG games (the whole copper to silver to gold to platinum in a lot of game worlds).  I would personally like to exchange bonemold coins with bloodsteel coins in the code.  Its an extra layer of blood and ash to the construction, its a lot more work, increasing the number of reactions x 2 to produce, coins can already be minted without changing the code, and its on par with the normal price range (bloodsteel lands between silver and gold in value), it also sounds cooler, and they would be RED, lol.

I was thinking the group needed an Orc bank, the amount of coins becomes quite impressive after 3 to 5 years.  a general exchange location that could switch back and forth from coin to coin, and also provide mass storage(say through a voucher system where 1 voucher could represent 1 million coins).

[Fedor]

Given the choice between bonemold and bloodsteel tokens (coins), I'd agree with you that bloodsteel is the superior option, primarily because of its name and its color.

My basic objective is to only make changes acceptable to the Orcish community - the active players and modders. If they don't think it fits within "orcish canon", I won't do it.

That said, I think Orcs can do better for currency. Firstly, I see both bonemold and bloodsteel as battle metals, produced to make wargear out of, not as stores of value. Nothing used as a reagent in the production of these materials has any of the traditional attributes of coinage metals: ductility, durability, attractiveness, rarity.

Secondly, I'm not even convinced that Orcish "canon" ought to include bonemold and bloodsteel. These materials were originally used by necromancers, who added "dark magic" to mundane substances to create and arm armies of the undead. Life to death to unlife. And all of that made sense. For necromancers.

Wave-your-hand magic like that doesn't make sense for Orcs, IMHO. In previous versions of Masterwork, Orcs were all about the combination of hand-crafting and iron+steel mass-production. Mass production centered on iron, much of which was produced as inferior but abundant rusty iron, and steel. Rusty iron was also used as the low-end currency. At the low end of the Orcish economy, there was a Sparta-like vibe going on of massive hunks of iron being used as a trade good. At the high end, it was mostly about platinum.

I'm not sure why this got changed to stuff made out of bone+ash+(blood).

Sure I can't convince you to go skullcups?

[Amostubal]

I guess I'm not fully understanding what you are meaning by skullcup....  I'm thinking drinking goblet made from an animal skull... which means the money would be constantly getting picked up and used to drink grog.

I'm seeing a cross between this...

this...

and this...


reply so the issue becomes this....
1. are they going to be able to drink from them?
2. are we going to add reactions to create each one?
3. what kid of material costs are we talking about... If you need a skull for each one, then thats going to end up being a lot of skulls, or are we going to have reduced the number needed for purchases (1 bar =500 coins, so if 1 bar = 1 skullcup, then prices will have to be reduce by 500).
4. how does that work with the current raiding system...  Orcs raid other societies and gather their coins.... melting coins down isn't productive as soo much of the raid goods get melted down already.
5. further skulls already have some use as totems for a couple of buildings, a few reactions, and sell items to the market... this is beginning to look like a rewrite of the orcs from their current format.

On the other hand i understand the concern over bonemold/bloodsteel  I'm not sure when the decision was made... I really don't like how bonemold/bloodsteel has become a raid item received from succubus as they have very little capacity for the stuff.  they are more slade/obsidian/glass society.  The current format is rather not magical as its processed through a few actually devoted to the job shops, bonemeal from a dismembering theater where training surgeons occurs, then a boneforge is where all the bonemeal is turned into bonemold and then into bloodsteel.  I see it more along the lines of orcs from the lord of the rings movie their armors and weapons being forged deep in the earth beneath the white tower with all the local trees and wildlife used to produce the material.

[Fedor]

What sweet images. That's exactly what I propose.

reply so the issue becomes this....
1. are they going to be able to drink from them?
2. are we going to add reactions to create each one?
3. what kid of material costs are we talking about... If you need a skull for each one, then thats going to end up being a lot of skulls, or are we going to have reduced the number needed for purchases (1 bar =500 coins, so if 1 bar = 1 skullcup, then prices will have to be reduce by 500).
4. how does that work with the current raiding system...  Orcs raid other societies and gather their coins.... melting coins down isn't productive as soo much of the raid goods get melted down already.
5. further skulls already have some use as totems for a couple of buildings, a few reactions, and sell items to the market... this is beginning to look like a rewrite of the orcs from their current format.

1. We can do this, if we like. If the answer is "Yes, both drink from and use in trade", then perhaps the simplest solution would be to make a new material type to represent (for example) platinum-encrusted skulls, and then create a reaction requiring a skull (of civ-forming species only?) and a platinum bar to create a cup. Drinking would then happen automatically, and trade would accept cups of this material type. We can either allow such cups to have quality modifiers, or (by using a second, automatic reaction) force them to have no quality. I'm open to either notion.

2. Yes. Should be one (or two) reaction(s) per type of skullcup. We also need a way for Orcs to get suitable skulls (because DF doesn't always supply seiges, etc. in the current version). The big question is "How quickly should the average Orcish fort be able to get lots of skulls to make cups?".

3. Fairly valuable, if we're using skulls of civ-forming species. We're talking huge prestige goods here. Open to notions, but perhaps values of 20 for silver and 50+ for gold? (n.b.: the base value of silver in Wonderwork is 12; for gold it is 48, and gold's harder to get now)

4. Orcs come back with the head of worthy enemies, maybe?

5. It certainly does envision a major shift.

On the other hand i understand the concern over bonemold/bloodsteel  I'm not sure when the decision was made... I really don't like how bonemold/bloodsteel has become a raid item received from succubus as they have very little capacity for the stuff.  they are more slade/obsidian/glass society.  The current format is rather not magical as its processed through a few actually devoted to the job shops, bonemeal from a dismembering theater where training surgeons occurs, then a boneforge is where all the bonemeal is turned into bonemold and then into bloodsteel.  I see it more along the lines of orcs from the lord of the rings movie their armors and weapons being forged deep in the earth beneath the white tower with all the local trees and wildlife used to produce the material.

Yeah, I'm definately with you on bonemold/bloodsteel. In the Lord of the Rings - and, yes, I am influenced by this fantasy universe - Sauruman had his Orc chop down entire forests to feed his forges of war around the dark tower Orthanc. The Uruk-Hai marched out with good steel armor, and the ordinary orcs and miserable snagas made do with iron and rusty iron. That's one of the reasons why I was so fond of Smakemupagus' (or Meph's, not sure) original rendition of Orcish industry.

[Amostubal]

What sweet images. That's exactly what I propose.
1. We can do this, if we like. If the answer is "Yes, both drink from and use in trade", then perhaps the simplest solution would be to make a new material type to represent (for example) platinum-encrusted skulls, and then create a reaction requiring a skull (of civ-forming species only?) and a platinum bar to create a cup. Drinking would then happen automatically, and trade would accept cups of this material type. We can either allow such cups to have quality modifiers, or (by using a second, automatic reaction) force them to have no quality. I'm open to either notion.

I'm wondering if goblets can have definitions... lol... so many things you can't play with too much, looking at several things, I see that an actual cup would be listed as [GOBLET:NONE:INORGANIC:PLATINUM] or [GOBLET:NONE:CREATURE_MAT:DWARF:SKULL] (not sure, I've not been in the business of figuring out how to make bone gear, yet). in the first case any platinum cup would end up being counted as a equivalent to a skullcup, and in the later any skullcup would be considered equal value.  Only if you made them [TOOL:SKULLCUP:INORGANIC:PLATINUM] would it be separated enough to not be grouped with the other 2, but then it wouldn't be a goblet.

2. Yes. Should be one (or two) reaction(s) per type of skullcup. We also need a way for Orcs to get suitable skulls (because DF doesn't always supply seiges, etc. in the current version). The big question is "How quickly should the average Orcish fort be able to get lots of skulls to make cups?".
3. Fairly valuable, if we're using skulls of civ-forming species. We're talking huge prestige goods here. Open to notions, but perhaps values of 20 for silver and 50+ for gold? (n.b.: the base value of silver in Wonderwork is 12; for gold it is 48, and gold's harder to get now)

4. Orcs come back with the head of worthy enemies, maybe?

skulls would be easy to get off of animals, and there are several "civ" raids in the raid docks that you could add an item drop for skulls...

5. It certainly does envision a major shift.

yeah that would be a concern.  I'd rather have something that impacts the game play minimally... 

Yeah, I'm definately with you on bonemold/bloodsteel. In the Lord of the Rings - and, yes, I am influenced by this fantasy universe - Sauruman had his Orc chop down entire forests to feed his forges of war around the dark tower Orthanc. The Uruk-Hai marched out with good steel armor, and the ordinary orcs and miserable snagas made do with iron and rusty iron. That's one of the reasons why I was so fond of Smakemupagus' (or Meph's, not sure) original rendition of Orcish industry.

Yeah rusty iron hasn't been in masterwork at least since I joined the group in june last year.  Not sure what happened there, meph might know, but he is currently unavailable. and smakemupagus is beyond reach, he's not been online in 6 months.   There's actually entries all through the orc entity file saying rusty_iron was changed to iron, or rusty_iron coin was changed to bonemold coin, etc.  It would explain some of the other issues in the set up.  the molten forge has a 3 hematite(the rusty iron ore) to 10 iron bars which is rather sub par for iron, with the only benefit being chances for flux and copper ore to be produced beside it.  then its iron to pig iron, and pig iron to steel reactions are also sub par.  considering the smelter produces better and the metallurgist converts better.... there is no use in using these weaker reactions, unless your short on flux.... which you shouldn't if you have dwarf cells...  In either case rusty iron and bloodsteel along with all the leathers become useless once you get raiding going full steam.

Raiding is over rated since sieges can't be triggered/forced by raiding... Its also way unbalanced, dwarf outpost raiding will net you iron, steel, gold, silver, bronze... then you switch to raiding dwarf mountainhomes and ancient ruins.  the later 2 will earn you hundreds of metals, orichalcum and deep bronze gear, and ancient foundry blueprints.  Ancient Foundries let you make orichalcum bars and deep bronze bars.  With these 2 metals you can equip an orc with zero skill and he just about can survive against anything except lava, drowning, falling off a cliff, and 1 on 1 assaults on megabeasts/dragons (and the later he may survive by shear luck).

[Fedor]

I'm wondering if goblets can have definitions... lol... so many things you can't play with too much, looking at several things, I see that an actual cup would be listed as [GOBLET:NONE:INORGANIC:PLATINUM] or [GOBLET:NONE:CREATURE_MAT:DWARF:SKULL] (not sure, I've not been in the business of figuring out how to make bone gear, yet). in the first case any platinum cup would end up being counted as a equivalent to a skullcup, and in the later any skullcup would be considered equal value.  Only if you made them [TOOL:SKULLCUP:INORGANIC:PLATINUM] would it be separated enough to not be grouped with the other 2, but then it wouldn't be a goblet.

We'd be talking about a new material type entirely. It would no longer be platinum, or a skull, but represent the combination. DF has different names for drinking items and only those made of a "wood" are called "cups". It should be easy to set up a fake wood and give it whatever name, value, density, etc. we want.

yeah that would be a concern.  I'd rather have something that impacts the game play minimally... 

Well, going the minimum we can also do. Decide on the coinage metals, and their values, and revise the trade and raid reactions only to accommodate those changes.

That said: even if you (and others) are uncomfortable with anything more ambitious, I'd like to see iron and platinum coins used by orcs. The exchange rate would be 8 to 1 with the Wonderwork changes to metal values. I'd prefer named currencies. I'd prefer skulls. But I'll settle for two types of coins made out of honest orcish metal.

Yeah rusty iron hasn't been in masterwork at least since I joined the group in june last year.  Not sure what happened there, meph might know, but he is currently unavailable. and smakemupagus is beyond reach, he's not been online in 6 months.   

That's my biggest hang-up. When they were around, I wasn't. I'm back, but I don't know when we'll hear from them.

There's actually entries all through the orc entity file saying rusty_iron was changed to iron, or rusty_iron coin was changed to bonemold coin, etc.  It would explain some of the other issues in the set up.  the molten forge has a 3 hematite(the rusty iron ore) to 10 iron bars which is rather sub par for iron, with the only benefit being chances for flux and copper ore to be produced beside it.  then its iron to pig iron, and pig iron to steel reactions are also sub par.  considering the smelter produces better and the metallurgist converts better.... there is no use in using these weaker reactions, unless your short on flux.... which you shouldn't if you have dwarf cells... 

And now you know at least part of the reason why. Originally, all reactions that produced iron from ore also produced rusty iron. Orcs extracted more total iron from a given amount of ore than did any other race, but much of it was in the form of inferior rusty iron.