Why aren't there any gold coins to trade for game money available? (Little Upsilon)

True, Marshall, but here we have an artificial system which has a 2-tier economy. Imagine if, in the real world, hypothetically, you had to pay for gasoline and food with gold bullion only. No one wants to sell their gold, because they cannot survive without it. Gold jumps from $300/oz to $2500/oz. Sure, there is no gold shortage, there are tons of it out there, but no one will risk selling. But you can buy it from the government at $3500/oz. A similar situation is occurring here. IMO.

very interesting discussion here

my primitive view is that the gm/game owner is trying to have its standard base on the gc.

now we have a system that goes like this

SC$GCUS$

i have been advocating to get rid of either SC$ or GC and just have two exchanging currencies in the game. ideally, get rid of gc as it isn't use in the buying and selling of goods (products and services) with the sc corps.

having a three currency system as i've indicated above is much like the US$ which is base on Fort Knox's gold as well as say a UN currency; as we all know, there is no UN currency on earth.

players pay US$ to get the game money, which now is gc. but their corps generate SC$, not gc?

if the gm/game owner relies on gc, but is not offering at the market situation (supply and demand) as some of you pointed out, then obviously the participants (players) will create their own market. eventually some of the better players will collect gc and not sell on the market, thus create a dis-equilibrium situation in the game.

and if in the real world such as earth, if i'm a chicken farmer and i want cows, then will just rade my chicken for cows with another cow farmer. eventually the monetary system just fail in the country.

why can't we keep this simple and stupid, so that we all can have fun?

the reality is that US$ is the real controller of whatever currency is in sc.

it will be challenging to have two controllers in this game, which are currently gc and US$.

US$ is the real world, and gc is just the virtual world. gc will be squeeze out, if there are too many collectors of it and if there are fewer and fewer players coming into the game.

why not just say set a base SC$ to US$, such as $1 per 1T SC$? and anyone wanting to exchange their currencies between reality (earth) and virtual (sc), can do so easily and more simple and stupid?

hope i'm not confusing some of you econ experts

I think I get your drift, xiong, but one of the original attractions of the game was that if you managed your countries and their economies wisely, and kept tweaking the settings for max econ efficiency as markets changed, no US$ would be needed to expand your countries/empire. Except for registration, which is reasonable. I must admit, I like you idea of being able to trade $sc for US$, as that could then be used to buy GC. The gamemasters could even get back into selling GCs and make actual money from this game. A win-win for everyone, if there was an accounting system added into the game, so that it would be easier to do the in-game exchanges. I know what they'll say, that provisions already exist for selling game assets for real money, but the conditions are practically impossoble to meet. What would end all this, as I and several others have said until we are blue in the face, is to let the players establish their own freewill trade, and everything would even out within a week. Instead, they shut down the VA trading sytem so no trades can take place.

maclean,
if one of the sc moneys (sc$ and gc) is not terminated, then we will continue to have this problem forever.

the only obstacle that player cannot physically trade cheese for eggs in sc is that everything is virtual, thus an intermediary has to be involved.

if it was in the physical world (i.e. earth), and you want a few nukes and i want a few precision bombers, we could trade directly without any form of money being involved. you just truck/fly over the bombers to me and i just truck/flyover the nukes for you.

my point is to eliminate one of the currency in sc, and rather that gc be eliminated since every thing in sc involves sc$.

that's exactly what i'm trying to get at. from the start, you pay us$ to get a premium membership. then you build your simcountry/empire which generates sc$, and you can have the option of trading your sc$ directly back to us$. if you want more sc$ for your country/empire, you can exchange at the gm rate or with other players who has plenty of sc$.

i haven't been here long enough, but i'm sure my vision is clear on this. the only reason i can think of having gc, is that the gm wants to control the exchange rate back to us$. but just looking at the many posts on this forum, players are bypassing that system.

I'm all for free markets with the checks and balances of a central banking system, and I think this discussion is very robust. I do think that there are a few factors, not being fully considered here.

New players, even smart ones, will take a while to become familiar with the mechanics and nuances of the game. The dangling of the opportunity to "play for free" with well run economies is a good incentive to keep playing the game and to learn how to play well. Even smart players, however, need some encouragement to stay in the game and be interested players until this steady state might be achieved.

I believe that experienced players benefit from this encouragment, because the SC and other items given as gifts, and the GC for game levels, is likely spent on products and population and game cash more often than not sold by experienced players in game. Of course, in game SC is spent on products produced by player and NPC corps.

If a cap on GC for cash, and GM pumping of new player economies is the price for not scaring away new players once they realize just how far ahead experienced players are in the economy, then that might be good for everyone.

Just my two cents.

it just seem like a very simple solution.

gm/game owner will always control the sc$ (if sc$) is chosen as the game currency. it's like the USA always control the us$, but the us$ can always be exchange with our earth countries' currencies as well. in sc, we do not have other sc countries' currencies; everything in sc is one currency.

trying to have the gc to be the intermediary or translation between sc$ and us$ is like earth is trying to create a earth currency to be the translation/intermediary between all the earth countries' currencies. earth is more complicated then sc, due to that each country has its own currency, which is base on the productivity/resources of that particular country. i have yet to see japanese trying to use their currency yen to trade/exchange for american gold yet; it's normally between yen and us$

free market can exist in sc too, but the gm trying to use two currencies to control the game is like you trying to drive two cars at the same time. yeah, one car will crash and become useless because everyone is on the other sc$ while only newbees are on the gc car.

it's beginning to seem like the gm/owner do not want to just have one currency such as sc$ in the game, then change/exchange directly with the us$, perhaps because the gm/owner is afraid that some players will become so good in the game that these players will have countries which generate a great amount of sc$?

since sc$ are generated base on a country's productivities, changing the formulas to reduce the production of sc$ would have great consequence on the game.

on the other, if you're going to create a product for the world market, why would you be afraid that it would go viral and that you may not be able to contain its growth? somehow the gm/owner seem to want a steady control of the game assets (growth/decay).

just a thought while i'm waiting for my country to produce more sc$ so i can buy weapons to take out the c3 around me

Wow

OK Xiong, no more Nobel Prizes.
Get out your plastic...buy CG...get on with it

rick,
i'm waiting to independence day to start

hehe