[Galactic Milieu] Macro-Economics News...

[markm]

Recently the New Roman Denarius found its spot market prices had far exceeded their treasury-based calculated value.

While their most-immediate response was to drive down their spot market price to bring it closer to their calculated value, this has also opened up an opportunity to take a serious look at adding more assets into their treasury to increase their calculated value.

As readers hopefully are aware by now, the Galactic Milieu's treasury-based assets system is a kind of continuation of, or further layer of, the Milieu's policy of only tokenising half of the coins it actually has, so that half can be used if need be to buy back all its tokens while the other half can sit in cold storage to be the actual coins the tokens represent; that way even after buying back all its tokens the tokens can continue to represent actual coins rather than needing like many other systems do to in essence de-tokenise coins to buy back its tokens.

This policy means for actual coins on their own blockchains not only that trade in them can happen even if their blockchains get clogged up such as by driving their difficulty so huge it takes months or more for them to start moving again (as happened to FairBriX not so long ago for example) but also that for every token available to trade them with there are typically two actual coins rather than one stashed away; this helps keep coins off the market, increasing the relative rarity of "in the wild" coins that could potentially be "dumped" onto spot markets to manipulate prices or outright trash prices.

The treasuries system layers upon that by tying up tokens into "treasuries" from which the game calculates "calculated values" of the tokens.

It does that not only because the spot markets are usually massively insanely "inefficient" but also as another help toward increasing the relative rarity of "in the wild" tokens that could potentially be "dumped".

There is still some "dumping" that happens with various of the coins and tokens of course, but over time this approach should help mitigate that.

Nonetheless we still evidently have enough "dumpers" in the wild that for many coins and tokens the spot market prices have tended to be lower, sometimes quite a lot lower, than the calculated value used in the game.

Thus a time like this, when a Milieu currency has found that its spot market prices have been very much higher than its calculated value, is the proper time to consider adding more assets into its treasury, thus increasing its calculated value.

Accordingly, the proto-Romans (Romans by inclination but not yet having officially created an actual "civilisation" in the Milieu) are in negotiations with various other groups, in particular, apparently, the Ixians, about adding some of their currency into the treasury of the New Roman Denarius.

It should be noted though that most of the groups with whom they are in negotiations are not themselves in the fortunate position of having built up their own currency's buy-side on the spot markets to a value higher than its own calculated-from-treasury value, thus in most cases if a deal does go through the NRD they get from the proto-Romans for some of their own currency will not be eligible for adding to their own treasury; they would be receiving it into one of their "slush fund" accounts instead, hopefully to help them build up the spot market buy-sides of their own currency toward some future day when they too will succeed in building a strong enough buy-side to fully match, or even exceed, their calculated value.

This "slush funds" approach, wherein slush fund assets are not counted toward the calculated value of their currency, and in which ideally the total value of their slush funds should ideally match or exceed the total value of their actual treasury from which their calculated value is computed, acts as yet another factor in favour of viewing the calculated values as by-design under-estimations of value, increasing further the multi-layered depth of value upon value upon value by which the Milieu aims to enhance the value of its assets.


-MarkM-

[markm]

Today the character Scotty "came out" as the chief executive officer of the galactic repossession Corp GR28, which has finally after lo these many years completely paid off its startup debt, which was held by Galactic Financial Corp aka General Financial Corp (GFC).

At the celebrations he also announced that GR28 is tooled up to add an eighth planet to its holdings; a colony ship is, he revealed, already in flight.

Whether the target planet will prove a good addition to GR28's portfolio remains to be seen, but Scotty assured partygoers that should it turn out to be, for example, rather too small to suit its projected uses, the Corp stands ready to move on seeking a better candidate-planet.

As readers of "The Wyvern Street Irregulars" already know, the Scottish of the planet known as M4, of whom Scotty is a famous example, are played by NovaScotians; at the time chronicled in "The Wyvern Street Irregulars" most of them resided in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

As might be imagined, those Nova Scotian players are likely not unconnected with the major Milieu clan that calls itself the Canucks and plays (possibly among other civilisations) the Canadians of the planet known as C29.


-MarkM-

[markm]

It looks like the experimental Crossfire-RPG "PTE server" is starting to have some impact!

As an experiment, an off the shelf Crossfire-RPG release was set up as a "Play To Earn" server; not the latest release because apparently someone recently added some kind of "alignment" system whereby for example the citizens of Scorn frown upon the slaying of madmen, yet the quests involved in advancing in Scorn's nobility pretty much require wading through throngs of hostile madmen.

Since it looked like maybe the full impact of the proposed "alignment" system had not been fully adjusted to be the existing culture in off the shelf Crossfire-RPG, an earlier release was used, I think most likely the one you get if you install the Crossfire-RPG server in Ubuntu Bionic (18.04 I think?)

So far all that has been adapted to the needs of PTE is the closing of all "permanent apartments" and of course the setting of "permadeath" mode.

Eventually all the shops will be adjusted like in the "CrossCiv" server (the server running the Galactic Diplomacy planet), which is to say shops will eventually, a shop or few at a time, stop generating random new loot to sell but simply retain everything that players sell to them.

It is expected also that the Scorn Nobility system will have rabbitholes into the Milieu and/or the fantasy planet D'ydii.

Major factions are already in a race to snap up the "guilds" provided by off-the-shelf Crossfire-RPG, spending quite a bit of AMBerium in the process.

Of course the old factions still mostly use the HORIZON platform rather than the to-them newfangled Stellar.

The very very oldest, of course, consider the whole "crypto" angle itself newfangled, relying presumably upon agencies along the lines of how all those planets and worlds and heck maybe even universes got populated in the first place, which is to say rumours abound that such mythical civilisations as the Ancients and the Hackers must be behind at least the very existence of this "new" land to explore and claim and exploit...

As seems usual with Milieu-deployed Crossfire-RPG servers, the metaserver tends to drop it from the list of currently-available servers for your client to connect to, so as usual try telling your client to connect to Server1.Knotwork.net anyway even if the metaserver doesn't happen to be showing it...

By the way I noticed that I had neglected to make the earlier mentions of "The Wyvern Street Irregulars" clickable; I have gone back and corrected that omission now, also adding a link to the entry about Wyvern Street itself.


-MarkM-

[markm]

The long long era during which only General Mining Corp (GMC), rather than both GMC and General Retirement Funds (GRF) was buying DEUterium shipped in bulk to its Depot Moon has recently come to a close.

Already intergalactic mining Corps' fleets of delivery Deathstars have begun taking their DEUterium to GRF's Depot Moon instead.

It is expected that one side-effect of this changeover will be that the intergalactic mining Corps whose initial startup debts have been paid-off will begin being paid in GRF scrip rather than, as had been usual for so so long, in GMC scrip for their shipments.

For those whose initial startup debts have not yet been paid-off, the Finance Corp(s) to whom they are indebted can also expect most likely to receive loan-payments on behalf of their debtors in GRF scrip rather than, as had been usual for so so long, in GMC scrip.

Similar to GMC's policy of buying back GMC scrip in bulk using GMCF (General Mining Corp Financial) "shares" (assets implemented on the HORIZON platform and not on the Stellar platform, in order to try to help keep it clear that they are in-game assets not to be construed in any way as "securities" in planet-known-as-Earth terms, a confusion that some fear use of the term "shares" could otherwise potentially lead to), GRF will most likely usually buy back its GRF scrip using GRFF (General Retirement Funds Financial) "shares".

Just as had been the case when GMC was the active Depot, the buying-back will use the relative calculated value of the two assets (GMC and GMCF in the past, GRF and GRFF going forward) from the Latest Rates include-file that was in effect at the time of the buy-back.

Note that although crediting of payments for shipments uses the Rates in effect at the time of delivery, the buy-backs happen in "current time" thus use the Rates in effect at the time of the buy-back.


That is today's main news item, now onward to some comments on prior posts of this thread:


- Upon observation of actual play and actual checking of shops for interesting or useful things to buy, along with glimpses now and then of the heaps of loot players have been selling to the shops, it now seems possible / feasible that it might actually be better to leave shops in the Play-to-Earn Crossfire-RPG server as they are rather than converting them to only retain stuff not come up with new stuff "out of nowhere" as it were.

- By far the majority of the "guilds" provided in off-the-shelf Crossfire-RPG "bigworld" maps have been snapped up but there might maybe remain one or two still available.

- Apparently Annapolis Royal Crypto (A-R-Crypto on the HIVE platform) and the character known as Scotty have managed to get in contact, with what ramifications is yet to be seen.


-MarkM-