Resource Based Economy

(Just deleted my whole text by accident ... well then from the start)

Hello everyone,

I'm running a low populated Modified Bukkit Server. I've took over Administration of it after some intern conflicts and moved it to a v-server since then. It runs various mods and plugins. Info for who is interested.

After watching over this server for some months I didn't like how the social structure and the economy behaved. There where massive inflation or deflation giant imbalance between the players and it supported power-hungry people.

So today I came up with an great idea. Based on the possibilities of IC2 (has the least part in my idea but I like the forum, that's why I post here), RP2 (and it's future features) or ComputerCraft it is possible to create a nearly inflation- and deflation-free dynamic Resource Based Economy.

First we need an item that normal players can't obtain naturally trough crafting, mining, whatever. I choose the IC coin (with crafting switched off in the config). Another possibility would be to use virtual money like an account system, but it has the drawback that it doesn't interact with the world as coins do ... a combination would be also a good solution.

After we got our "Credits" (virtual or in item form) we create a (nearly) infinite pool of those credits. The central bank. The only source for credits. New RBE systems can be build somewhere else on the map/other world but they all use the money from the central bank. A closed system where only the bank can create money. No interest, no tax, no fees. The only hole in the system is when the coins are physically destroyed (dropped in lava).

Now how do people get coins? That's the work of the central trade facility. Depending on the possibility of the Mod (either RP control or Computer craft connected to retrievers and detectors (the more intelligent the retrievers an the detectors are the better (receive and send Block/Item IDs!))) and the size of the facility they can support trade up to ALL items and blocks.

Now how does that facility look like? Essentially a Trade Center is a huge storage facility with a Computer at the front end, the computer has data about the current stored objects and monitors and controls the input and output of that storage.
The computer runs a special program. The Resource Based Economy program. This program trades you "Credits" for objects. But not on a fixed price and not on the demand. It's based on the storage.

When the system is first build on the server there should be just one Trade Center and one Central Bank. Player can build their own trade facility and Banks and run the exact same program as the Central Trade Center but the only source for "Credits" is the Central Bank. You can only receive "Credits" if you trade with the Central Trade Center witch is connected to the Central Bank.
So at the beginning the Central Bank has all the money (∞) and the Central Trade Center is empty. Now we need the Base Price. It's the maximum an item can be worth. I choose 64 because it's a nice stack of coins. Another thing we need is the price/storage function. Ok ... was looking for good functions (2 hours) and came to to the conclusion that "64*1.01^-x" is quite good (1.01 would be good for small servers).

So the function would be: P=w*m^-s
Where "P" is the price, "w" is the max worth, "m" is the multiplier base number (Depending how steep the price should drop depending on the storage, good values are from 1.1 to 1.0001 try it here ) and "s" would be the number of items in storage.

So everything is set up. The first player comes to the trade facility and wants to sell one .

Now the calculation starts. First the system calculates the worth of every item separately (so you can't exploit a price difference)
There are zero in the storage. Using the formula the computer calculates the price. The end result is 64 witch are outputted and can be picked up by the player or is stored on his bank account.

Another example. Now someone else wants to sell 4 . He inputs them into the system.
What the system calculates:
64*1.01^-1=63.4
64*1.01^-2=62.7
64*1.01^-3=62.1
64*1.01^-4=61.5
Results is: 249.7 ... 250

The values for the storage database is updated during the calculation, but the items are send in stacks after that to reduce lag.

So what do you think. Has this potential?

Also sorry for wall of text. I could have made it a bit more "compressed"

Quote from FenixR

If you want some real Resource based economy on a server, the first step its to forget about frigging automation. You need to have an eye on the whole thing for it to actually work out.

Why forget about automation? Isn't that the key to reach post scarcity?