I was there last year, it is a well marketed event but I am sure fluffypony can do without me this time  

The problem with that level people is that everyone is already hands full of work. I did not have the resources to start any projects with anyone there, but it was cool to shake hands with Roger Ver, Erik Voorhees, Brock Pierce, Vitalik Buterin etc. I pitched Crypto Kingdom in the main venue, but to my knowledge nobody bought in. CKG is up 1,000% in one year measured in fiat, 500% in BTC, but that would be peanuts for these guys anyway.

There will most probably be no video.

They may be able to recover the funds from the rogue shorts, but I would not count on that.

As a non-borrowing nor lending customer, I am very happy that the lenders are the next in line, which should shield the ordinary users from any risk as naturally no more funds can be lost than what the lenders have provided.

Thank you.

VEG has come to market!


Note on Sickness: It seems the pre-announced sickness was too easy for the old guys (the only ones who can be affected are those with physical age of over 200 years). So with regret I have to inform that from now on the sickness will not be announced: sometimes you just feel an agonising health challenge that does not go away (it does, but seems it does not, because sickness has added to the brutality). This is not the most fun GM decision to make, and since it is a bit unfair cause I cannot unknow my own characters' sickness, I will add 50% more brutality to all of those, to compensate for the preknowledge. So, sickness because of old age, from now on, is just a normal health challenge, more challenging than usual, and requires the old characters pay a bit more attention to it and possibly accept the health hit (which most seem not to do, at present all just take it to "none", which does not work in the long run )

Sorry about that.

Note on NPCC Suits: I have been wondering how the NPCC have been spending lavishly like sailors on drinks. It must be because they did not notice that they should buy clothing, because the clothing formula awards 10x points for the closing balance. The reason why this is so is naturally to incentivise spending on the clothes, otherwise the 3-year quest would end in everyone selling their clothes for foie gras


Note on building Collapses: The repair_depreciator script was insidiously run 20 years at once, causing large drops in the recorded building condition. Three buildings collapsed, one belonging to Zechariah and two to Soul.

Sorry about that.


ADD: VEG has again come to market. The cold is here surprisingly early this year, so the "Manor VEG" (S-VE2) got spoiled in transit. If the roads were better, the manors could transport the VEG in springtime as well. Now it is interesting to see what happens to the price when a big portion of the supply did not come.

AFAIK (correct me if wrong), Poloniex does not hold the account owner personally at risk if the short game goes bust. All they can do is to liquidate the collateral. In the illiquid markets, this can cause anything to happen. So the real risk is on anyone who holds any value there. It is tempting to operate this kind of platforms but the black swan has a long, fat tail...

And when you calculate that someone is short X coins and "has to cover", don't forget that it is at least possible that he is a legitimate (covered) short. Someone might for tax or other reasons be shorting (instead of selling his position) to skim some profits while waiting for m00n.

Quarry and Building Company resourcing formula


Quarry

It is possible to quarry chapelries which have their geology assigned (eg. "343" in /Map). If you zone a chapelry, the geology is annulled, and no quarrying is possible. Farming does not annul the possibility to later quarry a chapelry.

The quarriers need to manage their companies themselves, including annual creation of stone (STO1) extracted, and the corresponding reduction in the geology.

The formula requires WP (work points) conversion to removing of tranches of soil/stone.

WP is created as such:
- Count the workers (WOR-1, WOR-2, WOR-3, WOR-4), each does as much work as the id suggests.
- Managerial need is 1 MGR point per each (starting) 5 workers (not WP). In addition, 1*MGR-5 and 1*ASS-3 are required for general management.
- Assistant need is 1 ASS point per each (starting) 5 workers PLUS per each manager.
=====> The properly managed and assisted workers then do the work and create the WP.

Tranches of soil are removed as follows:
- 25% penalty to WP, first year when the team moves to a new place
- Each starting 70 WP removes one tranche of soil.
- There is no maximum, how many can be quarried per year.

Stone is got as follows:
- Each 70 WP gets 300,000*STO1 from soil tranches, or 1,200,000*STO1 from stone tranches.
- If the number of WP in the last tranche is a fraction of 70, the stone yield is reduced accordingly (the rest of the stone from the tranche is lost).

Example:

We want a force that can do 7 tranches in a year ("Q3 style"). So, 490*WP is needed.

Assume we have 150*WOR-2, so 190*WOR-1 are needed in addition.
340 workers require 68 MGN, and in addition the MGR-5 and ASS-3
This 68 points requirement can be fulfilled eg. by 2*MGR-4, 10*MGR-3, 10*MGR-2, 10*MGR-1
So we need 68 ASS-points to handle the workers and 32 points to handle the managers. This totals 100 points.
A possible resourcing is 20*ASS-3, 15*ASS-2, 10*ASS-1.

In total, 33 managers, 46 assistants and 340 workers, costing 458.5 mil per year.
The maximum stone produced is thus 7*1,200,000*STO1 and variable cost 55 m/STO1.
(Costs excluded in the calculation are eg. setup costs, capital costs, workforce replacements, slack from changing sites, other inefficiencies, and topsoil removal (220 m/STO1 in the example)).


Building Company

Number of WP is calculated as in the above, but treatment is simple. Each WP just creates 120*BLD, putting BLD cost at about 10,000 m.
S-BLD will be split to BLD so that BLD price becomes 10,000 m, from the latest S-BLD issue price.


King moratorium on buying workers and managers from the market

I have great needs for me and my companies to utilize the info above and some types of NPC may be in high demand. I won't be buying anything today, and will set the Labor sells so that others can act first.

It is also possible to keep the pelts for the future, and new opportunities to make items will come in a few decades So please convert now if you want the items when you are still young.

Some luxuries such as Ming China and SFS (raw and itemised) are subject to spoil. Porcelain breaks in use (especially the ones that are used daily) and while fur is more durable than wool (suits), they can also be destroyed by wear and random factors. These spoil rounds will occur infrequently and without warning, accumulating the (about) 1% annual spoil probability to larger chunks.

It's not every day I am called sexy so better qft...

Tomorrow (May) the NPCC will not get any money since they today got 137*MUS each, easily more than the 25 mil.

Marquess smooth added.

smooth, HE The Marquess of CryptoLuna, is given King's Hero

"smooth's constant and neverending pursuit of creating financial products has not gone unnoticed"

In addition to the decoration, King's Hero is a 50 CKG medal. Previously these were made from King's gold, but this was changed to emphasize the principle that "your effort (not the King's) is required for King's Heroes to be created". So the KH may use whatever treasured gold items he has, to create this eternal token of heroism, the King's Hero Medal.

Update on Building conversion and new Module

Lot table has been downloaded to the "sheet edit mode". This means that changes to the Lots in the game do not have any effect, and will be discarded when the new version is imported. Same goes with the Buildings, which used to be in the google DB. They have also migrated now to a secret editing sheet, and soon back to the Ultima DB.

Builder Controls

Currently it looks like that the builder needs to specify only 11 things, which will allow all the building to be constructed, its statistics and costs etc calculated. I will list them here so that you can start to design buildings in your mind In addition to these stats, the buildings have information fields and a picture. No floor plans! The mandatory info is below:

1. Yard - Which area of the lot is left unconstructed.
2. Footprint - What is the ratio of a single floor area to the constructed area of the lot. This is given as "airy, dense, very dense, max" type controls.
3. Shopfront - Does the building have the first floor designated for commerce.
4. Number of floors - How many floors (above the possible shopfront) does the building have.
5. Room height - Inside height of the rooms.
6. Window ratio - What is the ratio of windows area to the floor area. This has 10 choices to fit every style.
7. Window type - Finally, different window types increase the status of the building!   
8. Finish - Elaborate, Most, or Very Elaborate facade.
9. Roof - New roof options are 1. flat/terrace, 2. flat/roof garden, 3. sloping and 4. sloping/copper.
10. Lux - Percentage as usual.
11. Usage - To which pool the building submits shares. Pools are Residence, Villa, CUL, SCI, Headquarters, Commercial, Office and Apartment. Any building can be assigned to any pool, but there are usually a few pools where the building performs best. It can be changed against a fee.

Mold growth found in buildings 28 years without windows - old buildings demolished

One cause of our sicknesses was discovered, when the scientists realised that mold is bad. And we have been having much of it because of long times without proper care of the buildings. All buildings still without windows were ordered destroyed (and to keep it equitable, none was spared, although there were a few worth sparing). The owners suffered rather little, though. A building has 4 valuable things: stone, windows, lux and labor. These buildings had no windows and generally no lux, and 100% of the stone was refunded. So only the labor was lost and that would have been lost anyway as the buildings would have needed repairs because of the same condition that now prompted their demolish.

Economically, the benefit of lending is the following 4 components:

* Opportunity cost
* Interest income
* Default risk
* External factors.

1. Opportunity cost is that when you lend moneros, you cannot do anything else with them. This is very low for most people, because they would anyway not do anything.

2. What the investment promises to pay.

3. How likely it is that you don't get the money back, or don't get it in full, or have insecurity or delay in getting it back.

4. Helping someone with the loan is a positive externality, as is getting XMR markets bigger. Getting someone into debt or "giving ammo to shorters" are negative. These factors compound in value for big players (such as loaning out 1,000,000 XMR cheaply and then buying them on the market, trapping the shorters - this may wreck the market (exchange defaulting) or kindle much new interest in XMR. (Example of a short squeeze IRL.)


In altcoin markets, I think it is preferable to think of returns as weekly. Annual returns require difficult compunding in every stage, while weekly percentages are so low they can just be summed, without loss of much accuracy.

1. I'd say opportunity cost per week is between -0.10% or 0.10% for most (between -5% to 5% APR). It can be positive if loaning out the money saves you of trouble of storing it for instance.

2. Don't know in Poloniex, but in CK if you buy the bonds with weekly return (consols) the return is 0.57% (in addition, they have increased in value but they may also decrease so let's not account for that).

3. Exchanges have a quite short life expectancy, and the probability of losing all your money is staggeringly high. Even if we expect an exchange to live 5 years on average (which none of them has done so far!), the weekly risk of loss is -0.40%. Estimating the default risk carefully is very important and very difficult. Scam exchanges live a few months and scam lenders have no interest in paying back at all. Even good borrowers, such as governments, corporations and upstanding people, have an annual historical default risk of 1-3%, with some recovery value from guarantees (put -0.02...-0.06 in weekly).

4. Every action in market is good for growing the market imo so participating in the loan market (or investing in CK) is a net positive, but for a small player this is only a small factor perhaps 0.05%.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
( 0.0 + 0.57 - 0.4 + 0.05 ) % = +0.22% per week positive return. Calculate yours!

RWWC production: MKT, PIS and WIRL

RWWC did not spend the last 2 years doing nothing. The cannon production was closed due to abruptly crashed demand, and instead the most functional production method for muskets (MKT) and pistols (PIS) was experimented.

The most timely battle doctrine can be borrowed from Gustaf Adolf (to get the full bonus, a few advances (eg. Combined Arms) can be researched):

- Light cannons will fire 1.5 kg cast bronze balls (reusable!) to the enemy lines, terrifying weak horses and killing soldiers.
- Light cavalry does not have any armor, they charge near the enemy lines, to pistol distance, and fire their pistols, coming back for reloading.
- Musketeers are in the line, shooting at the enemy from musket distance (much more than pistol, but less than cannon). A hit from a "musket ball" does not usually kill directly, the velocity is so low.
- Pikemen/swordsmen/etc protect the line from cavalry coming to melee distance, or go to melee if the enemy infantry charges against the muskets.

So a Regiment would consist the same things as in HKM GA Army:
- Officers (as usual)
- Cannon section (3*CANN, etc)
- Hakkapeliitta section (10*H2 or better, pistols, riders)
- Musket section (10*MKT, soldiers)
- Melee section (soldiers)

If LTC and Aquila are in use, a 5th section makes sense for extra power. We already have 6 LTC.

We now have both MKT and PIS for sale to add to your inventory (starting at 12 mil; having a musket is like having an NCO that is one level higher but without the cost). Since there is no war now, but d20 never sleeps, the prudent ones buy their supplies now.

The mercenaries have grown old during their time here. They accepted my last offer of becoming regulars, which meant the following:
- Each mercenary was graded to their regular rank (pay halved).
- The musket was given as a dividend to the "owner" of the merc.
- 5 million was charged for the musket changing owner.

The officers gave their horse dividends, so now when calculating mobilities, no NPC includes the horse, nor the good weapon, they all need to be had separately.

WIRL

RWWC has 3 factories, and one of them at least will start producing the new upscale product WIRL window set. It has larger pane size (33x33 cm vs. the usual 13x20 cm) and gives better payouts to the building owner. It is of course more expensive as well. (The Building module allows selection of Window type including all ancient window types that give bonuses. Doors and other such things are not implemented so the patient ones will just hold onto them.)

Golden Age starts with Building module coming online

NPC payouts given and Rental double-year is only one fix away from complete.

CON dividend paid.

Laborer prices updated. New Quarry and BuildingCO will use the same basic formula as PRE is using
(do not confuse NPC with points, the number of points is the "x" in ASS-x, MGR-x, WOR-x):

- One ASS-point per 5 workers and per each manager needed
- One MGR-point per 5 workers needed
---------------------------------------------------------------
- Labor produced according to how many points of managed and assisted work

While the exact formula is not yet ready, "Q3 full quarry" had a 8.4 million stone output in cracked/hard stone at the annual labor cost of 420 mil. You can get the idea how many workers are needed. Only 100*WOR-1 will come to market in the normal way per year so it is about time to think how to man the quarries, BuildCO and Counties at the same time. Luckily there is still some S-BLD for sale. When the Building opens, S-BLD sales will end, and only BuildCOs will produce BLD.

Good News to gold holders! After years of lousy dividends, the boom in construction is already picking up. The devfund has more than enough for the current month payment, so even after saving a few billion for the Town's new Headquarters Bldg in B-22, we can pay 8 billion in gold dividends.


New features in Building module

Each character gets special bonuses from Residence, so it makes sense to live as loftily as possible. It is even possible to have a Villa, a second-home, whose pool shares function is specially tailored to reap the benefits of privacy (most building types enjoy a central location). The third building of the "one-per-character" type is Headquarters, which will work the best in a most central location, produce SCI and ORGanization points. The previous idea of having a minimum count of managers and assistants according to your magnificence, does not work because the NPC retire and promote, and weekly optimising a feature that is a penalty to begin with, sucks. Now, you get to make a nice building - the bigger, the more magnificent you are! And the organization points are automatically deducted from the payout and you still get some SCI so it does not feel bad.

There is a common misconception that 1) I cared about XMR price and 2) traded it and 3) participated in the discussion to further my own goals.

The reality is 1) It is a very small deal in my life wherever XMR price goes, or even any other price. My next milestone that requires money needs $10 million (extra) so even if I got $5 million, it would not interest me a bit. 2) in this context the idea of spending time to - at best - gain $10k here and there by trading is stupid, I don't remember when last traded XMR. 3) and therefore you can read my wisdom without fear.

County+PRE update

The deadline for county changes is Saturday 23:59.

But before that, it's important to know what you should do!

1. Have SCI in the county, which the admin will consume.

2. Have WOR-points in the county, which are produced and consumed automatically (WOR-x, MGR-x, ASS-x as previously).

3. Have a garrison in the county, or better still, mobile troops. All troops that are pacifying the area, but are not in the county account, need to be told to me separately.

4. You can move all stone away. It is needed in other purposes. It never left the big stone pile in B.9 anyway.

5. Tell publicly in the thread, how you want to treat the locals. Use imagination. Telling nothing will not attach you to the county, also it will not yield much either loot or trade goods.

6. Have patience. In 1522, six Quarry companies started, but after a few years they were 4, then 3, 2, 1 and finally none (who continued quarrying). King recently bought 6 chapelries in the wastelands of CryptoTown for 4,500 mil. Compared to this, the opportunity to get your own County - which is not a chapelry, nor borough, nor farm nor manor, but a whole town (+ all of the others) for a few billion is just so ridiculously cheap!

If you cannot take the cost side, team up. Do something. It seems reality that even if we now enable building and even if you press the building stone from the peasants, we cannot profitably start 10 new towns. Negotiate. If your army costs 20 mil per year, you can take the risk of cutting the size and wishing it will still be enough, or being creative.

I do not have the luxury to let bad preparations count as if they were good. If everyone received the same regardless of their effort, nobody would soon spend the effort. Every PRE-point has been and will be calculated with 0.1 precision and rounded in the end.

7. Have a CLXII, COH, some DOM+FOIE or whatever you prefer. Take a bit distance. A county in a few years is likely worth either more than CK is now, or both the county and CK are not worth much at all. If you do not want to aim for the big prizes, nor do what it takes (it takes a lot), consider organising the financial burden, or the administration away from you. It is not a shame even to close down your preparations (many a present duke had a quarry in the 1500s, but closed it down).

There is the rule that if you do not advance your county, you may lose it, and the most likely time for this to happen is when you die. The reason for such a rule is that it is well known that people cannot be expected to participate in an internet game for multiple years. IRL comes first for most people. It is not a big deal if buildings in town are left to rot, but whole counties cannot be given to such a freehold as they are too important from the game perspective. (I just felt that now is the opportune time to open up the reasoning behind this rule that originally appalled people and idk - may still do -but it's not going to change anyway. Manors can possibly be freehold, I'm thinking of the ramifications...)

8. Counties will start popping up manors when they are advanced/pacified enough (and yes the army does count extremely much in this, you just don't see it yet). That's quite sweet considering each manor brings thousands of meat per year and there is no lack of demand.

9. Despite this exhortation, it is likely that the focus with the game is now on the new Building module, and then I will move on to specify the Skills. Countryside will happen in the "slack time". It is realistically needed when we have much more players, and we will have them when Skills is online, as that is the first interesting new player module in the whole game! (Health is not interesting, and new players can scarcely play anything else.)

10. If you want to involve me in the negotiations concerning what to do with your county, I am concentrating heavily on Building-related aspects, and therefore it might make sense to involve someone else. You know well enough what is coming to make deals!

Quick Update on Buildings

The Building module (second major iteration in the game, previous one being from 1432) is now specified. It takes 1-2 weeks to put it into production, and the time will be spent actively by the admins to make all the necessary gradings and conversions and cleanings in the DB.

1. The cleaning will be done equitably by several admins. The owner of the lot does not matter in decisions. If there are for instance abandoned buildings with no stats and windows, these will be deemed ruined in the 27 years since the Earthquake, and the stone will be credited to the owner. On the other hand, some buildings may enjoy upgrade of eg. stonecount, if they were originally built with less stone than the new average formula suggests. Window types in a building with several types, will be normalized, etc.

2. The new Building Editor requires the building to be paid with the following items:
- STO1
- BLD
- WIxx
- M

In resourcing, 1.3 million stone are always needed per 1,000 sqm, so this is easy to calculate. The number of BLD needed is 10,000-30,000 per 1,000 sqm based on the majesty of the building (room height, total height, facade). S-BLD will split to 1,200*BLD.

Window ratio choices are many from 0.1 to 1.0 window-sqm per floor-sqm. Calculate accordingly (historical average is about 0.25).

M is only spent on luxuries that cost 200 mil / 100% / 1,000 sqm. As before, luxuries are a major cost (and benefit) driver in buildings. Some of it will actually be paid as BLD, so they are very much needed.

3. Building Company produces BLD, from the work of WOR-x with MGR and ASS. Also Quarries need these same workers, so it is not necessarily a bad idea to start preparing even now before the salary round, because Labor will take it into account in pricing.

Or buy S-BLD now. They will still appreciate 2% per year as promised until the module launches. After that, BLD will depreciate (by SPOIL) 2% per year, so that it could not be stored indefinitely, rather the building companies must sell them.

4. Double-year will be paid tomorrow. After this the Lot and Building tables will go offline for an approximate 2 weeks with no changes possible online.

5. NewCorp will zone and price all its properties when the formulas are final, so that the builders can take advantage of all the information. Other similar corps will probably do likewise.

The whales always win. Up=good. Down= good. Even if the whole position turns sour, they just write it off and continue.

I know because I have so far made 2 successes in 15 years and way more have turned sour. (XMR/CK still going on)

CK has looked good all the time:

In my understanding, it's possible to speculate on short term price movements, but then you are prey to manipulators who eg. see information that you don't (margin call levels, ..)


&


Longer term the manipulation does not matter and both of the above quotes are both true in their own scenarios. I still believe Monero will more likely fail than succeed in its mission, but since the success carries a 1,000x profit tag and failure is only -1x, investing and holding is an easy decision, with the amount being the only variable.