Defining the costs of items (currency mod)

[Gael de Sailly]

Some servers, for example VanessaE's Vanilla, in which I play, uses Dan Duncombe and Casimir's Currency mod. But, it's not easy to define a price for each item.
There is a draft of it here, but it's not complete enough, there are only the ores and the metals.

I would like to talk about this for others stuffs : wood, papyrus, saplings, wool, dyes, building materials, etc. How do you define the price of a specified item ?

Don't be shy.

[Sokomine]

I would like to talk about this for others stuffs : wood, papyrus, saplings, wool, dyes, building materials, etc. How do you define the price of a specified item ?

In theory, that's something for the market to decide - based on offer and demand. In practice, almost all Minetest servers have too few players in order to make that work.

When I set up shops, there's of course the hope that someone will buy things there, but sometimes other considerations (which price would *fit* to that shop?) take priority. Other factors that may play a role are effort of producing more of those items (rare materials? lots of crafting involved? long cooking time?), likely demand (items nobody's likely to need a second one from are more expensive), prices used by other shops...

And then there's also the consideration of the...value...of a currency. If there are no other shops that offer intresting material, a shop may end up beeing more of a decorative building which happens to have sale chests inside because those fit well into a shop-building - and a shop-building was what the location called for.

[aldobr]

You are hitting the problem my mint mod was done to solve. Abstract currency has no real intrinsic value.

My mod makes coins from gold ingots so the in-game value of the coins is inherited from the in game value of gold ingots itself.

besides that the abstract money system has the added drawback of the constantly increasing money supply, because money is abstract and has no real root in the game world.

you might say that in my mint mod the players can mint coins (and be afraid of that capability), but this is done on porpuse and has no negative effect in the economy.

Theres a economic theory that says that the value of every object is based on the work done to build that object (instead of the austrian school value based on supply x demand). This means that the value of the coins is already "paid of" by the work done to find gold, smelt it and turn it into a ingot.

Each coin so holds the ammount of "work" equivalent of a gold ingot divided by the ammount of coins you get from a single gold ingot. This means that when a player mints a coin he is not creating value out of nothing, but converting the value of the work done to harvest an ingot into the value stored into the coins.

[Sokomine]

My mod makes coins from gold ingots so the in-game value of the coins is inherited from the in game value of gold ingots itself.

The Landrush server uses a similar approach, except that the conversion is done with a chat command.

I'd love to see *silver* beeing used as a base for currency instead of gold. Gold blocks are relativly nice and distinct blocks and may be part of a building, while silver does not look that intresting and could easily be replaced by other materials with a similar texture (i.e. steel). Plus gold is used to a tiny degree by mods (especially technic), while silver has no usage I'm aware of.

Theres a economic theory that says that the value of every object is based on the work done to build that object (instead of the austrian school value based on supply x demand). This means that the value of the coins is already "paid of" by the work done to find gold, smelt it and turn it into a ingot.

The work needed to build something may certainly be a factor. Especially in such a game as Minetest. In a way, the only thing of real value is what you build with all the stuff mined and digged. And that can't be sold at all - it's a creative work that was done by its original creator, no matter who bought the area/house/construct later on. Looking at good buildings and exploring them brings a lot of joy to the visitor. That's what's of value. The rest...may well be exchanged based on a mixture of supply&demand and effort invested. Those economic models are not independent - they supplement each other.

The ore-based economy has the advantage that players who got more of the ore-based material will also have more of all the other ores, so it does represent "wealth" of materials the player has at hand.

[Gael de Sailly]

Abstract currency has no real intrinsic value. […] money is abstract and has no real root in the game world.

I think this is not completely abstract, because for Casimir and DanDuncombe's mod, we get 5 MineGeld per Minetest day.
Oddly, it's written 1 MG/day here. I think it's an error because I've studied the code and it is 5/day.

income.lua from line 19 :

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

earn_income = function(player)
if not player then return end
local name = player:get_player_name()
if players_income[name] == nil then
players_income[name] = 0
end
if players_income[name] > 0 then
count = players_income[name]
local inv = player:get_inventory()
inv:add_item("main", {name="currency:minegeld_5", count=count})
players_income[name] = 0
print("[Currency] added basic income for "..name.." to inventory")
end
end

But your ideas are interesting. I've not read all of these 3 replies, because i'm not very good in English.

My mod makes coins from gold ingots

Interesting, because gold is rare and precious, but it is nearly useless in the vanilla game.

I'd love to see *silver* beeing used as a base for currency instead of gold. Gold blocks are relativly nice and distinct blocks and may be part of a building, while silver does not look that intresting and could easily be replaced by other materials with a similar texture (i.e. steel). Plus gold is used to a tiny degree by mods (especially technic), while silver has no usage I'm aware of.

If silver is less utile than gold, why not ?
But it require to have Calinou's Moreores, while gold exists in the vanilla minetest_game.
It is a choice to make.