Architect Archive

Bob the Builder and Why we need less ore.

I know the limited demand for durable goods, and supply demand curves are hard for some people to under stand, so I’m going to explain things by example.

Bob the builder is just like you or me, trying to build houses and make at least what he would doing delivery runs in the same space of time.

Unger the under cutter is the bane of Bob’s existence, Unger sells at cost because “he’s a nice guy” Unger has a PA behind him helping him undercut bob, and has the lots of four people getting resources for him.

Bob builds a master work of a large house, after two days of running his harvesters, and maybe even buying a few things off the commodity market, bob finely has enough for a large house, and because he didn’t focus on furniture , he makes the house just fine. So he goes to Theed to sell his house.

Unger, in the same time, builds four large houses, and also goes of to the market in theed to sell his houses.

In Theed there are four people (whom we’ll call Buyers) who have made a lot of money in the past two days, and want to buy a large house to prove it :-) Bob and Unger stand around yelling there price, Unger says “LARGE HOUSE 60k CREDS” while bob is saying “LARGE HOUSE 240K CREDS”, three people buy from Unger, leaving Bob with no cash, so Bob sees this and cuts his price to 60K w/ a free torch, and Bob sells his house to the last of the Buyers.

There are 3 three resources that are essential here:

1The resource of time, that both Unger and Bob have spent

2the resource of lots/harvesters, that Unger has by a power of four over Bob

3the resource of Buyers, these people are not unlimited, because this is a durable good (will not self-destruct like fire arms and armor). The number of Buyers that can afford a house in any given period of time is constant, no matter how many houses are actual sold.

Now increase time to get the resources by a factor of 10, that is harvesters work at 1/10th efficiency they did * my proposal, that contradicts the ‘give us more lots’ and ‘make the heavy harvesters do more’ idea*

In Theed there are forty Buyers who have made a lot of money in the past twenty days, and want to buy a large house to prove it :-) If Bob the builder had to wait ten times as long to build that one large house, he’s going to go to market with Unger, and now Unger has 4 houses at 600k, and Bob has his one house at 2400k. The moment they walk into town they are flooded with /tells asking them ‘how much for a large house’. Unger barks “600k for a large house”, Bob barks “2400k for a large house”. With ten times the demand Unger sells his houses QUICK, and after a couple min the rest of the Buyers realize that the stupid low price of 60k isn’t going to be back, but in 5 days, and even then only one house to fight over… so they go to Bob, Buyers realize that if they want the only house to come for days they will have to pay 2400k, and someone pays the 2400k creeds.

Unger the under cutter, although a nice guy, isn’t an idiot, and didn’t work for twenty days for no reason! So he decides next time he’s going to charge the rate he knows he could have gotten. And the market is fixed.

Or in economic terms

Lower Supply, paired with un changing demand, will lead to increase in prices, and make sure that the sale of this durable good can last for years, instead of capping out in a few months as the current rate of home sales is going to.

Economics is kind of hard to get a handle on some times, so I understand why some people wouldn’t initially see the benefit of having lowered production. But keep in mind there are a limited number of buyers out there, and as it is now, a nearly unlimited supply of houses.

The only thing with this is that if it was 1/10 production Unger would be selling Large houses for months before Bob could even make them. By the time Bob got into the market, Unger would have saturated it.

At this rate the market CANT get saturated, even if unger does build houses/advance faster.

now i'm not saying that 10x is the proper number, i'm just trying to show that a lower supply of ore would work wonders when it comes to filling out the economy, and making sure that new players will alwase be able to find demand.

also, we have enough master architects, masters of a line of architecture, and new architects; we want it to take 1-3 months to become master arch, at least... not 2 weeks.

bob should spend time selling small houses, not grinding his way to large houses.

**edit** no edit button.

This is the real kicker here. At 1/10 the rate a medium harvester would net about 500 units a real world day on a 80% vein. So Unger tells his PA buddys to pick up Novice Artisan for now. Every night Unger gets his4 PA buddies to macro mine when they go to sleep. You can net about 1K units an hour hand mining. So figure4 people for 8 hours is 32K resources a night. Unger now no longer uses harvesters because they're ineffective. Unger now has a 6 to 1 ratio of getting resources instead of 4 to 1. Furthermore his resources are all free because they are hand mined. Yours now cost about 3 creds a unit, 1440 maintence per day with only 500 resources gained. Unger will still undercut you, but this time by a higher margin.

yes, you will have to cut the rate that you get ore from surveying as well.

(Money spent)(Times it's spent) = (Price) (Output)

so price = (Money times Times) devided by Output.

Cost of production + Profit = Price.

Profit = Price - Cost of production.

Profit = ((Money*Time)/Output) - Cost of production.

as you can see, as you lower output, you increse Profit.

... but that's what the bob the builer thing was saying;

if money is the concern tell bob to sell the ore.

screw unger

"hands off" would eventualy allow the economy to correct itself, at the cost of theprofession of architect!

I understand that you're trying to increase the amount of time spent to make the item in order to increase cost, but not everyone thinks that way. That is why we're even in the issue we're in now. By making resources harder to obtain you're only increasing the price the resources are worth and not necessarily the price that completed goods are worth. Another guy said that he sells factories for 25K but when he sells resources on the bazaar he sells them for 7-8 creds a unit. By increasing the time it takes to get resources all you are doing is allowing him to charge 14-16 creds a unit. He can still sell his factories for 25K though.

This is what happened when they nerfed/fixed the harvestors..... resource prices went up. all crafter prices went up.... except architect. because architect makes thier own equipment. architect is currently geared for those with time. remove mining from architect!

It’s about supply, if his supply is cut then he’s 1.) not going to be able to afford selling at 25k, or 2.) going to sell, leave the market, and leave the higher prices to be sold as well. So yes Unger the under cutter can sell houses for 60k, at a loss, now but Bob the builder will now have buyers at 2400k… and when Unger finds out, he’s going wish he had made more money.

But you still have buyers with things the way they are now. I've never had a problem selling items atmy price points. They fluctuate between 4-5 creds/unit for non factory items and 5-6 creds/unit for factory items.

right, but that's way to low. we are selling a durable good, it should be MUCH more expensive per unit than a non-durable like a gun.

but as it is we're selling MUCH lower.