Product prices?

[Witski]

How do you guys set prices?
Basically this, we want to play with economy ( we are in 3 ) and we are thinking a lot of things to set prices like starting at 0.50 per basic products and add 1$ per labour/crafting steps etc.

[Kite Sumane]

Setting good prices is rather hard. In my case, I try to set something like hewn logs to a value of 1 so that i can compare it to all other things. If something costs 10 hewn logs for example, setting the price to 10 would let me break even. At that point I can set my profit margins based on what kind of good it is, such as making a small profit from consumables like food which will be bought constantly versus making some serious profit from selling a truck which most people will only buy one of.

Another thing I do is I always buy goods at a higher price than other stores sell them. For example if one store is selling plant fibers for 0.05 each than I will buy them at my store for 0.07 each. This gives other players an opportunity to make some easy money while also giving myself a constant influx of raw materials. If most players on a server set their stores up in a similar manner it leads to a number of "Truckers" making a living by circulating goods in the economy.

Overall, if you can keep your stores profitable and actively used then things should work out.

[Chickon_20]

I just set it to the raw material cost and still get a profit by using upgrades

[Decius Brutus]

In order to set prices you first have to identify the costs. For charred food, that's almost easy, the cost is the cost of the raw food plus the cost of the labor plus the cost of the fuel plus the cost of the campfire amortized over the total production of the campfire, plus the cost of any upgrades amortized over the lifetime of the upgrade, minus the residual value at end of life for the upgrade... All of those things can be converted into currency fairly simply.

For any product that needs a specialization, you also have to include the cost of the specialization and the amount produced. That's super hard to quantify in terms of currency.

In a strict economic sense, if there isn't a server-wide shortage of specialization stars, you can find the effective cost of those stars by auction; the price of goods that nobody is eager to jump in and start competing can be used to determine the value of a star converted into currency.

In most high-collab servers there is in fact a serverwide shortage of stars, which means that 'economically rational' agents will all try to extract rent. This should end up perfectly offsetting and just causing inflation in theory, but what happens in practice is hard feelings and death spirals.

[Rathelm]

The easiest way to set prices is also the hardest way. It's to have a large enough player base where people can choose to enter and exit the market at various price points, So if people are willing to log for 1 per log then that's the price of the log. If people are willing to mine for 1 per rock then that's the price of a rock.

Basically what people are willing to do the work for pricewise is how you set pricing.

Originally posted by Decius Brutus:

In order to set prices you first have to identify the costs. For charred food, that's almost easy, the cost is the cost of the raw food plus the cost of the labor plus the cost of the fuel plus the cost of the campfire amortized over the total production of the campfire, plus the cost of any upgrades amortized over the lifetime of the upgrade, minus the residual value at end of life for the upgrade... All of those things can be converted into currency fairly simply.

For any product that needs a specialization, you also have to include the cost of the specialization and the amount produced. That's super hard to quantify in terms of currency.

In a strict economic sense, if there isn't a server-wide shortage of specialization stars, you can find the effective cost of those stars by auction; the price of goods that nobody is eager to jump in and start competing can be used to determine the value of a star converted into currency.

In most high-collab servers there is in fact a serverwide shortage of stars, which means that 'economically rational' agents will all try to extract rent. This should end up perfectly offsetting and just causing inflation in theory, but what happens in practice is hard feelings and death spirals.

This is also true, though I do think that even if you have a glut of stars what tends to happen is people will try to do everything themselves instead of pay for things then complain the game is grindy.

[Witski]

We are only in 3 on out server and we just decided to set prices to base materials and multiply that cost per material and add 2$ per labour and that's it, just for fun and somehowe balanced, we will see when we do the mint , banks etc.

1 log 0.50$ , 3 logs for crafted/cut ones + 2$ labour is 3$ per crafted/cut logs and so on.
Food we start at 0.25 and waste materials 0.05$.

[West Taiwan]

To any future person reading this (or yourself if you're still playing) excel works great for this.

Figure out your cost per calorie. The food you buy on the world.

You then have a number for how much it costs to build any product from a calorie perspective.

You also need to take into account calories spent collecting the actual good (mining, logging, farming, etc).

Then you take the rarity of the item, and set an arbitrary value for that. Usually starting at something simple like hewn logs, you can figure out pricing going outwards from that (starting at like maybe .5 per hewn logs, you can get a relation to other likewise goods in world). If it's something like gold bars, and no one has a reliable source of gold ore, charge an arm and a leg. If you don't, some greedy bastard will eat up all the gold bars before someone else gets a chance to buy any.

Then lastly I always price in how annoying it is. If it is a pain to make/collect the resources for it, I make it more expensive. I also put in buy orders for mats that are pretty high to encourage someone else to become my supplier and drop prices once they get going. This is arbitrary though, and depends on world pricing. I usually charge 20-50% extra depending on how annoying it is.

But tldr -- get a calculator/spreadsheet going or cheat off the other nerds in world. Just be careful you don't get into a price war and make both of yourselves unprofitable.

[SLG-Dennis]

We have no intention to provide any pre-pricings. What we do plan to add later on is a easy way to see what similar things sold for elsewhere, though. The general economic setup cannot be predefined, though - it depends on what players set up.

[SLG-Dennis]

That feature would not make sense, as the economy depends totally on the economic setup of each server. A feature to copy prices is no help, as prices aren't the same on different servers. Has nothing to do with basic math operators.

[Decius Brutus]

What would be useful to me is access to a spreadsheet that has every recipe's inputs and outputs, along with the weight and stack size to calculate the cost in raw materials and labor and transportation.

[SLG-Dennis]

Originally posted by Decius Brutus:

What would be useful to me is access to a spreadsheet that has every recipe's inputs and outputs, along with the weight and stack size to calculate the cost in raw materials and labor and transportation.

I think there is multiple community made pricing calculators doing that, they should be linked in our Discord.