gold bar market : boom, now bust?

[Most Lee Harmless]

Well, we have had the gold bars going for some time now : I fear there is something a bit broken in the way the market pricing system is working currently : today, I see that one port, Newland, is now giving a buying price of below the making cost for a level 9 Gold smith. But that price has been reached with under 15k bars in stock. Which is hardly flooding the market. Most of the other ports are tracking closely behind that price and most will hit those stock, and thus price, levels very soon : I think it safe to say that even owners of level 8 Goldsmith's will be selling at a loss in most ports these days. Well, supply and demand and all that, guess they can always switch them off until better days.

I havent seen any example yet of a price differential between 2 ports that would make trading (as in buying cheap in one port, selling for profit in another) bars between them worthwhile : I doubt it will ever arise as the margin built-in to the pricing structure within ports for buy/sell price will rarely, if ever, be exceeded by the buy/sell margin between ports. Indeed, the very act of buying your first load in Port A will push that price up for the next purchase, and selling your first load in port B will push that price down and between them destroy any margin that may have existed. Okay, set your global prices, but that will just be a recipe for the same gold bar shipment to be travelling back and forth until the buying port prices change in you favor, and there's no profit in that, is there?

But its a bit broken : a level 9 Goldsmith is about a 500million gc investment in coin and resources, plus 400 credits : at basic speed it can produce 2400 bars a day : to make the bars cheaper, you end up making more of them per day, after investing another 50 million or so : that's the economics of it : but making more bars is not going to help the problem when demand doesn't seem to exist for the bars already made. And that's for a level of goldsmith few will achieve and fewer surpass.

Maybe its time to stoke the demand fires with implementation of new uses for gold bars : or tweak the market prices mechanism to be a little less dynamic so that trading your bars doesnt need to you log-in every four hours to switch the route to another port, turn it off, turn it back on or just plain pause the GS and give up for the day.

[Loki]

Trading is a bit of a waste of time, firstly its a risk for very little return, as Danik points out there is very little difference in the ports prices, and often its a straight loss on many routes..

I see the fact that there is no demand for Gold other than hideout buildings as a major source of the issue and even with gold bars potentially being required for 2 ships I don't think its enough to generate a market economy for it.

Perhaps it could be improved by creating greater demand for the bars, and most ships requiring them to be built except the base ships.
Howker no bars , Cutter no bars , Sloop no bars
Fluyt 2 bars , Sloop of War 2 bars
Galleon 3 bars , L Fluyt 3 bars , Merchantman 3 bars , T Gall 3 bars
Brigantine 5 bars , Large Merchantman 5 bars , Brig 5 bars
Brig Of War 6 bars , War Galleon 6 bars
Frigate 8 bars
Flag Galleon 7 Bars
LFrig 9 bars
SOTL 10 bars

This is very rough and there are better mathematicians out there who could help further on this
The constant changing of port prices is another way this could be looked at and perhaps changes every 12 hours based on stock level, with guaranteed prices on a sliding scale. so we could have 21 prices with a variation of say 10 coins between port 1 lowest buy price and port 21 highest buy price, this would create a 200 coin per bar difference between lowest and highest working as the system does currently so the port with the largest stock buys at lowest price. This would then create a reason for players to take the risk and trade between ports.

[Captain Jack]

Step to Conclussion at the end of the post if you want few meaningful words:

Regarding TRADING:

First, a quick way to calculate total cost quickly is the following:
#1) Get the total cargo (600 at my example)
#2) Divide the total cargo with 25(24 in my example). This is total price change per cargo.
#3) Divide this by 2 (12 in my example), to get the difference for market price to get average value.

Second, facts:
Right now, you can buy at New Land at 2462 and sell at Prote for 2572.
1st trip will give us 52k profit: (2572-12) * 600 - (2462+12) * 600 = 1536000 - 1484400 = 51,600 gc
2nd trip will give us (2572-24-12)*600 -( 2462+24+12)*600 = 1521600 - 1498800 = 22,800 gc
3rd trip will give us 1.2k profit.

So, it worths to make 2 trips on this route for a total of about 75k profit.
As a fact, that's a very good yield.

Second, potential:
Potentially, this profit can be harvested by various ways and the players are called to find them. What we can do, is to improve these ways.

Right now, I will agree, that trading gold bar requires a lot of planning and involves pain at some times. So yes, I agree with the author that something needs to be done.

Solution:
The solution however is easy. We will simply update the formula to allow slower degradation of price. Right now, it changes at approximately every 25 crates. We can make it to change slower. This will allow larger resources holds in market, more trading and more income for Goldsmiths.

Right time:
However, we need to ensure this happens on the right time. Perhaps we could even agree when to do this so instead of waking up one day to see the formula has been updated, we will all know when this will happen so you can all prepare.

Or, we can update the formula gradually, with small steps, so that no one really notices it.

How?
The current formula is:
Gold Bars Price = -0.04 * Market Stock + 3000

Which means that in New Land now, where are about 15k crates, the price is: (-0.04 * 15000) + 3000 = 2400 ( http://s2.piratesglory.com/index.php?pa ... on=goldbar )
If we change the formula modifier to 0.02 it will become: (-0.02*15000) + 3000 = 2700 while price will not change every 25 gold bars but every 50 thus allowing instead of 2 trips as we had in our example above, 4. If we make it 0.01, then we will allow 8 trips and if we change it to 0.0075 we will allow 12 trips of profit.

The good thing is that these examples were unavailable back then. Now we have them. So now we can decide. Our decision will affect:
-How rare gold bars will be, a smaller modifier will also allow bigger stocks to be hold by the market.
-How easy gold bars trading will be (profitable too). The smaller the modifier the easier and more profitable it becomes.
-How dangerous gold bars trading will be, a smaller modifier means more gold bars circulating the fleet network which means more gold bars in trading fleets so more targets for skirmishing.

Ultimately, remember that no matter the formula we choose, the breaking point will be met again. Then, it will only be up to supply and demand. Which is a good thing.

What?
Truth is that a formula tweak has even been announced before the future implementation. The formula tweaking is INEVITABLE. We should not rush I believe; If we rush, sooner or later we will need another formula update. The best would be to make 1 formula update and stay with that.


Regarding Goldsmiths:
These are the ones who currently define gold bars price at most. Goldsmith operation right now, has a big risk as no one really knows how things will unfold. If we step in and change the formula now, we are favoring all goldsmith owners. Truth is, that since we are going to do it at some point, it would be better to do it now.

Nonetheless, despite the momentous costs a goldsmith (or a bank) requires, this does not mean that we should ensure profit for them. We have created a free open market defined by the players out there. Win or lose at your own risk.


Conclussion
When we created the market formula for Gold Bars we said that we will need to revise it in the future. Perhaps now it is the time to do it. We will need to decide how deep the change will be. If you are interested to participate in the workings of this decision, then you will need to read the full article.

[Captain Jack]

Let's focus on market formula in this topic rather than gold bars usage. With so few gold bars at ports right now (15k at the highest) it is too early to add more uses.

However, this is also inevitable. More can be found here: Gold Bars further uses

[Redjack02]

We have a goldsmiths who is melting our precures goldcoins into goldbarrs.
Should nations be allowed to buy up goldbarrs and remake them into goldcoins fo there treasury ? To have a Mint ?

[Mohammed]

or they could just be stored as gold bars in the treasury and be used for buildings later

[Redjack02]

Or both. Fort Knox and a national Mint.

[Most Lee Harmless]

I wasn't demanding auto-profits for goldsmiths, actually, I made the point, they can always switch it off until better times : I was also pointing out that even a lvl9 goldsmith could not make profits selling into a port whose stock was only 15k bars : that's fewer bars than will be required to upgrade the lvl9 into a lvl10 goldsmith : that port stock is 6 days production for said lvl9 Goldsmith. And all the ports are seeing their stocks rising to that level, thus my conclusion that there is a problem growing.

I take your point, CJ, on the trading prices : but that slender margin also depends on nobody else acting upon the market while you travel : and it does reinforce my point about having to be online constantly to oversee the routes : 3 trips takes it into losses (6-8hrs) : but if another player drops their cargo of 600 bars in the hour before you arrive with your first trip, you are already in trouble. Never-mind, that's the inherent risk of trading, but its also the risk that must be considered before you decide to move a fleet and go for it. Add in the skirmish risk of total cargo loss : the trader has to find and succeed with an awful lot of such opportunities to cover even one skirmish loss. Our notional trader might get the occasional hot route show up, but for daily play, meh, leave those 5xLMM's trading on the usual phat routes, or fishing and selling into a high-price port ; those are profits the trader can rely on.

I like dynamic pricing : I think its a more realistic depiction of how real markets operate : but they also need, in a persistent game-world, to reflect that players cannot be on 24/7 to monitor them and change things to suit. So, I think we need to be looking at the speed of price-changes, both up and down, and how we can retain a window of opportunity to encourage port-to-port trade for most players, if they choose, which in itself will create demand : those bars in holds travelling got there by stimulating upward prices when bought and will push down prices when sold.

PS : I'd also like to say, I'm not kvetching here out of some self-pity for being a poor oppressed goldsmith, down to his last Rolls-Royce : I've already planned and am executing an alternate strategy to mitigate the issue for myself : but its a plan which requires even more vast wealth to be able to function so wont be open to all players; if the market continues in its present form, only the truly major GS's will be able to function profitably, and the cost of entry for any competition will be horrendous and I dont think that will be good for the game, overall.

[Psychodad]

What is the logic behind gold-bars? Please understand this is not a critique rather a question about how the gb fits into the "story". Gold coins are the currency, other resources have a logical application (lumber, iron, cotton and tools build ships. food, rum and tobacco feed people) They cannot be converted back into gold coin so the value is only what the market says. Are gold bars destined to become a fiat currency?

If a quantity of gold bars are required for acquisition or building etc, how do they factor into the equation? Tools, lumber, etc have a logical place in construction as well as gold coin, but what does the gold-bar do?

[Most Lee Harmless]

Historically, gold, and silver to a lesser degree, have always acted as 'currency' : coins were just a way of carrying it in recognisable amounts with a guaranttee by the mint, which could often be dubious, that each coin was of a standard weight and purity. So, at periods, certain coins, due to that consistent weight and purity, have set a standard for value ; spanish doubloons, genoins, sovereigns and so on. But each had a value which was decided by its weight and purity : bluntly, it was the weight of actual gold, or silver, in it that gave it its worth in a transaction : thus practices like 'clipping', literally shaving the sides off coins to accumulate actual gold from each, or even cutting coins in half or quarters to make the transaction value right : Bullion itself is still used for settling international debts or transactions : the original film of 'The Italian Job' was based on such genuine usage between China and Italy.

Fiat currency is a different beast : that's when the actual intrinsic value of the currency, coin or note, has no direct relationship to its 'face value' : that value was set by its link to a nations physical reserves (the Gold Standard, for example) and thus places like Fort Knox where the physical gold itself had to be stored. The promise on an old UK banknote to 'pay the bearer' was once real : it could be exchanged at the Bank of England for its face value in gold itself. Today, it's even more arcane, some 90% of 'currency' doesnt even exist in physical form, its electronic and a nations fiat currency is linked to ever more obscure measures, like GDP, balance of trade or plain old smoke and mirror accountancy. Thus every banks present dialemma ; if all their customer withdrew all their funds, there would not be enough physical notes and coins to cover that.

So, no, gold bars will not be a fiat currency as they retain an intrinsic value, its quite the opposite, they are a 'currency' in its actual real form : transportable and transferable wealth.