Port Population Consumption & Growth Rate (Small)

[William one eye]

Using my addition of variable port production rate based upon population.
Mixed with port consumption rates base upon population and variable population rates based upon available resources.

Black Death and Transport Immigrants - become a lot more powerful.
They become both a tool of nations and of merchants as they would then control both production and demand in a port.

I would suggest that natural events generated nature NPC affect population and productions occur and
Should be regional or directional.

so a earth quake might affect New land, Sea Glory and Vassburg, a Tsumani might hit St Martin, Barahmas and Kanoni.
A hurricane could have a path and may hit Pasaral, caspian, Neapolis and goroum
A drought could affect the entire map, or the northern half, southern half, eastern half or western half.

There could also be cargo specific Nature events.

Tobacco - a wave of black shank rot could hit all tobacco ports
cotton - a infestation of bollworms could hit all cotton ports
Food - some sort of pandemic food pathogen like botulisim or coliforms
tools - heavy humidity could cause tools to rust
iron - heavy rain could make mining iron halt
wood - termites
Rum - might be affected heavy winds that ruin the sugar cane crop

However if these types of event occurred it should be balanced as to not hurt one region or cargo more than another over a balance of time.

This would also encourage nations to be product diversified.

[DezNutz]

I think I understand where Feniks is coming from. I think I also found an additional issue.

Port A consumes at a rate of W based on X from Supply Y at the cost of Z.

W is the rate of consumption/demand. The higher the population (X) the greater the demand/consumption.

X is the population.

Y is the available goods, supplied by traders.

Z is the cost of goods based on available goods (Y) to consumption/demand (W). Best values are when demand (W) is high, and the available goods (Y) is low.

If Y is greater than W, X increases, but Z decreases.

If Y does not meet W, X decreases.

When X decreases, W decreases.

As W decreases, if Y remains the same or increases, Z naturally decreases. (Demand over Supply If demand is 500 and supply is 100 5:1. If demand decreases to 400 while supply is still only 100 4:1)

Eventually, population will level it self out to a point where the supply will be almost equal to the demand. As each update is calculated, the supply (Y) will be either just below or just above the Demand (W). Population will increase or decrease in respect and the next day would being the opposite. It will cycle back and forth between updates.

The new issue that I find is that if consumption and supply are daily, how are prices going to fluctuate? I would assume that the prices would be calculated either right before or right after consumption. There is no room for price fluctuation unless you are constantly calculating the cost. You would either be at a constant low price or a constant high price.

[Captain Jack]

For the new issue you mention, Consumption and supply is calculated for our convenience here daily. The most probable scenario in the implementation phase is that this will take place every 3 days to support the current system.

For the rest, i think you explain it correctly, although in a hard to read way. Still, you mention that you see where Feniks comes from. What I still cannot realize is where you see the problem that Feniks mentions?

I mean, where is the problem? What's the problem? I am missing which the problem seems to be. Can anyone who has a problem, summarize it in a few lines? I need no explanations I suppose. I just want to read the problem. Not the explanations.

[DezNutz]

For the new issue you mention, Consumption and supply is calculated for our convenience here daily. The most probable scenario in the implementation phase is that this will take place every 3 days to support the current system.

For the rest, i think you explain it correctly, although in a hard to read way. Still, you mention that you see where Feniks comes from. What I still cannot realize is where you see the problem that Feniks mentions?

I mean, where is the problem? What's the problem? I am missing which the problem seems to be. Can anyone who has a problem, summarize it in a few lines? I need no explanations I suppose. I just want to read the problem. Not the explanations.

Tried to make it as readable as I could. Math to English doesn't always come out as you want it to.


The prices will eventually stagnate.

[Captain Jack]

How? Do you realize what affects prices?

[DezNutz]

How? Do you realize what affects prices?

In the sense of keeping it simple. I know that there are lots of factors, but

Supply vs Demand.

Give me a little bit. I'll try to write it out so it makes sense.

[sXs]

For the new issue you mention, Consumption and supply is calculated for our convenience here daily. The most probable scenario in the implementation phase is that this will take place every 3 days to support the current system.

For the rest, i think you explain it correctly, although in a hard to read way. Still, you mention that you see where Feniks comes from. What I still cannot realize is where you see the problem that Feniks mentions?

I mean, where is the problem? What's the problem? I am missing which the problem seems to be. Can anyone who has a problem, summarize it in a few lines? I need no explanations I suppose. I just want to read the problem. Not the explanations.

The problems come when we reach that "balance point"

The only way to increase price is to increase demand. To increase demand you must increase population. To increase population you need to OVERSUPPLY the port with goods. ie supply more goods to a port than the consumption rate. This drives down the price initially.

So to raise the price in a port to make a profit, you must first sell it for little to no profit or even a loss. How many will do that?

Same scenario to raise port population to increase tax revenue for a nation. You must first dedicate fleets at little to no profit it over supply the port. oversupply initially drives the price down because supply is greater than demand.

[Captain Jack]

Let me explain for a final time how this works, in a simple way, using a resource that currently fluctuates at +-3. Let's pick wood.

Based to the +-3 fluctuation and with a base price of 8:
Wood sells at a minimum of 5 GC and at a maximum of 7 right now.
And is bought at a minimum of 8GC and at a maximum of 11GC.

With the proposed market policy we can end up to this worst-case-scenario:
The 3 producing ports, all drop below 100M in reserves. This makes the minimum selling price to fluctuate in between 7-9 gc per crate.

In the same time, again at the worst-case-scenario all other ports are full with more than 1.5B of wood on their ports, each.
So the purchasing price fluctuates from 6 to 9.

So, in this worst case scenario, the routes which can generate profit to you (without warehouse bonus, duke bonus) are 3.

What this means, this means that you will either use different trade routes or you will have to consume the wood to help the wood routes keep going.
Since we are at the worst case scenario, we need to assume that not only wood, but all the rest resources are to this same position.
We also must assume that all ports are already at maximum population (thus their consumption is at its highest) and therefore there can be no correction.
The same must be said for Gold Bars, as this is another way to trade.
The last assumption we must make for this worst case scenario is that player consumption (ships,hideout,etc) is also low enough.

So, at this worst case scenario, there will still be about 3 * 21 - 21 routes, aka 42 profitable routes (if I estimate them right). Of course if you add WEST-EAST india, party cards, duke bonus and warehouse bonuses, these routes might be a lot more.

So, stagnation is impossible. However, if we ever reach this worst case scenario, then we must take into account that there will still be EASY ways out of it:
1)Less trade ships
That's right mates, since trading does not pay as much, time to raid these excess trading ships. Why should we care about it? Actually, why shouldn't we try for such?
2)More consumption
Time to start building more.

However, let's look how possible it is to reach this worst case scenario. As I wrote before, and I doubt you read it, you need 770M crates a day, just to feed the population to stay at 2.1B. If you fail to feed it, population will start dropping as you say. But this also means that it will EAT from THE RESERVES. The reserves in the WAREHOUSES. This means that BEFORE population starts to drop, WAREHOUSE RESERVES WILL ZERO.

Which brings me back to my initial argument, that you need to supply AT LEAST a total of 770M crates a day BEFORE we START the PATH TOWARDS the balance point. As it will still need time to reach it as all warehouses will need time to reach this point. How many more crates do you need? With 230M more crates, at 1B crates a day, you will need around 190 days before you will reach the balancing point.

1B crates, make the math. All trade routes currently move around 55M a day. It seems to be a great deal away from the 1B point.

Still, we have thought about scalability in the future, in the case that PG gets millions of users some day. The response is player consumption. New players need to build new ships. These need resources.

We also have Port Buildings which will be implemented at some point in the future. These will require resources.
We got plantations, these will require resources.
Who knows, perhaps at a point, player consumption might be larger than npc consumption. That's the target at least as this is mostly a PvP game.

[Captain Jack]

The only problem with the proposed consumption is what happens on ports that already have high population and low reserves and no production or little production.

I explain this issue at the first post If I remember well. And this is the key reason for the low consumption we chose. A 2.1B port will consume 5.25M crates, directly from the port.

For a port like Goroum, this can be an issue as due to new feature introduction, the growth rate will not be rampant negative as it should be. So Goroum could potentially face zeroing of its resources. This is why we are also thinking to implement a limit on port consumption for producing good, as a protection for trading. If the reserves of the producing good drop below 100M, then the port population will not be able to consume it anymore, with the relative population growth penalty.

This also gives us an idea on when this should be implemented and the hint is that these should come in effect after a few plantations are in line and producing goods.

[Captain Jack]

For the new issue you mention, Consumption and supply is calculated for our convenience here daily. The most probable scenario in the implementation phase is that this will take place every 3 days to support the current system.

For the rest, i think you explain it correctly, although in a hard to read way. Still, you mention that you see where Feniks comes from. What I still cannot realize is where you see the problem that Feniks mentions?

I mean, where is the problem? What's the problem? I am missing which the problem seems to be. Can anyone who has a problem, summarize it in a few lines? I need no explanations I suppose. I just want to read the problem. Not the explanations.

The problems come when we reach that "balance point"

The only way to increase price is to increase demand. To increase demand you must increase population. To increase population you need to OVERSUPPLY the port with goods. ie supply more goods to a port than the consumption rate. This drives down the price initially.

So to raise the price in a port to make a profit, you must first sell it for little to no profit or even a loss. How many will do that?

Same scenario to raise port population to increase tax revenue for a nation. You must first dedicate fleets at little to no profit it over supply the port. oversupply initially drives the price down because supply is greater than demand.

I think you misunderstood the limits proclaimed in market policy change with pop where the limits are for goods stored in warehouse.