Plantations Expansion

[sXs]

CJ,

I may have missed it, but will there be trade pacts associated with Plantation release?

I know the groundwork was laid for pacts in previous diplomacy updates.

[Captain Jack]

There are no association with plantations to pacts right now. In the long term though, there might be pacts that could effect plantations in various ways but we are far from it. The leading feature that plantations want is the contract shipping one, if you ask me.

And no, don't listen to Jessica. Plantations must debut at June 1. Then, they have to be fully functional at all ports pretty fast too. It's very important to be successful. It will be Pirates Glory 2.0 and we need to earn all bets coming in June in an effort to bring back as many players as possible and keep them here.

[sXs]

Acres Rental
1)Basics

• Every port is assigned a pool of 20,000 available acres. Nations will be able to add more later, with Port Buildings (perhaps up to 30,000 more)
• The available acres are available to Plantation owners for a daily fee (rent) starting from as low as 1gc/acre.
• Rental price is based on demand from other plantation owners and their bidding.
• Income from acres rental goes 80% to the nation coffers, 20% to corruption.
• At Pirate ports, acres are divided equally based on the amount of workers each plantation has. No rent fee exists.

[*]Rental price is based on demand from other plantation owners and their bidding.[/*]

Quick question. Will the first round of plantation rentals be strictly bidding for price or will admin set a market rate initially? Right now there is zero demand so a market based system would set initial prices at zero.

Can we extend initial bidding for plantations? Maybe 72hr to a week? it would seems this would give time for all to bid and for a market price to be set.

If i am correct 21 ports, 20,000 acres initially. 420,000 @1gc each..... seems low. I guess the initial allocation is still a bit confusing to me.

[Captain Jack]

You are right, 1 gc is low. We thought that 10gc is a better low value.

You are bringing up a valid point. We will make all bids to require a time delay then. Perhaps we can retain 24hours for new acres when they come from players and 4h when new acres are taken by the port.

I assume that you want this delay to increase? So that you will not risk to lose your acres if you are inactive for a few days?
This should not be a worry as the players will have an automatic max.

If you are currently bidding for 10gc/acre but your max is like 1000gc/acre the following will happen:
Anomander Rake wants to get 1000 acres and bids for 500gc!
At the moment of your bid, since your max is 1000gc/acre, if you were going to become the target, a new bidding will be created: yours!

So Anomander, once he places his bid he will see this:

A bidding for 500 acres, at 500gc/acre will resolve in 24hours.
Your bidding for 1000 acres at 500gc/acre will resolve in 24hours
(Warning! You will be able to allocate 500 acres out of this)

Of course, he will be able to big again to ensure he gets all the acres he wants. In this case, your bidding might also change all the way up to 1000gc, which your max bid price is.

The reason he stills get 500 acres is because he probably overbid someone's else max bid.

[Jessy's Dream]

It's a hybrid bidding system that will allow both automatic and manual bids.

Automatic will be placed taking in mind your maximum bid. Manual bids will be used to get new acres or defend in case your maximum bid is defeated. But for defense, most of the time, automatic bidding will be enough.

[sXs]

You are right, 1 gc is low. We thought that 10gc is a better low value.

You are bringing up a valid point. We will make all bids to require a time delay then. Perhaps we can retain 24hours for new acres when they come from players and 4h when new acres are taken by the port.

I assume that you want this delay to increase? So that you will not risk to lose your acres if you are inactive for a few days?
This should not be a worry as the players will have an automatic max.

If you are currently bidding for 10gc/acre but your max is like 1000gc/acre the following will happen:
Anomander Rake wants to get 1000 acres and bids for 500gc!
At the moment of your bid, since your max is 1000gc/acre, if you were going to become the target, a new bidding will be created: yours!

So Anomander, once he places his bid he will see this:

A bidding for 500 acres, at 500gc/acre will resolve in 24hours.
Your bidding for 1000 acres at 500gc/acre will resolve in 24hours
(Warning! You will be able to allocate 500 acres out of this)

Of course, he will be able to big again to ensure he gets all the acres he wants. In this case, your bidding might also change all the way up to 1000gc, which your max bid price is.

The reason he stills get 500 acres is because he probably overbid someone's else max bid.

Thank you for clarification. Yes both were concerns. Artificially low price initially based on player activity, and the overbid scenario based on player activity. I think it is only fair that initially all active players have equal opportunity at available acres, and also, prevent being locked in to 90 days of very low rental agreements because of player activity.

On a side note........ Love seeing the rash of new players recently that seem to be sticking. Admin deserves credit here for increasing player base.

[Bomont]

Thank you for clarification. Yes both were concerns. Artificially low price initially based on player activity, and the overbid scenario based on player activity. I think it is only fair that initially all active players have equal opportunity at available acres, and also, prevent being locked in to 90 days of very low rental agreements because of player activity.

On a side note........ Love seeing the rash of new players recently that seem to be sticking. Admin deserves credit here for increasing player base.

But the rent is only locked in for 24 hr, right? It's the operating permission that is 90 days. The rents may change quite a bit initially as people figure out how profitable the plantation is.

[PhoenixKnight]

How will we access and make offers to governors?

[sXs]

Thank you for clarification. Yes both were concerns. Artificially low price initially based on player activity, and the overbid scenario based on player activity. I think it is only fair that initially all active players have equal opportunity at available acres, and also, prevent being locked in to 90 days of very low rental agreements because of player activity.

On a side note........ Love seeing the rash of new players recently that seem to be sticking. Admin deserves credit here for increasing player base.

But the rent is only locked in for 24 hr, right? It's the operating permission that is 90 days. The rents may change quite a bit initially as people figure out how profitable the plantation is.

Once operating permission is locked in I believe the rent level is set for 90 days. Only the initial bid has the 24 hour limit on it. Unless I misread. It makes no sense to bid and have your rent level change throughout the 90 day operating permission. once you are granted the acreage through operating permission, your rent must be set for the 90 day period. The way the mechanics are laid out would mean if you are overbid after your operating permission, you could lose acreage unless you are willing to raise you agreed upon price. This makes no sense. This would open it up to the "rogue" player that CJ claims should not be an issue.

[Captain Jack]

The rent is daily indeed. The rest will be a daily fluctuation and it has to be this way because plantations may wish to change their acreage daily.

This whole issue becomes complex due to the rogue example. Rogues however can be controlled by the nation officials by restricting them when they come for a new license. However, why do it, if such "rogues" can bring in most gold than all?

I do believe however that rogue situations are going to be similar to nation coups. They will be possible to happen but they will not happen frequently and at all cases, the prepared players/nations will have the upper hand. 20,000 acres are a lot and spending a lot of gold coin just to cause strife, is going to fail anyway in the long term. Why? Because a plantation that needs 5,000 acres will also produce coin to compete with the one trying to raise the rent. The one who tries to raise the rent, will get nothing back, he will just pay.

Also, with the possibility of adding up to 30,000 more acres, means that advanced nations will have plenty of room at their ports. In general, these are problems that we seriously take in mind, trying to figure out how to deal with this.

Perhaps, we should have a limit in how many acres can be bought at once. A limit of 1000 acres for example, it would mean that someone would actually have to pay for 1000 acres first, before trying to get 1000 more. With no limit, one could bid for 20,000, raise the rent without paying anything. That's not cool. Therefore, we will also use a limit. We will start with 500 acres per day. so, if someone wants to be a rogue, he will need to be determined and ready to pay.