Fake Forum Economy

[Metaliturtle]

Hey all, I've been given some strange authority over the FFM or Fake Forum Money.  There is a somewhat game worked into it (right now everyone has the ability to buy beer ).  The game would work better with active participants, and as BUNCLE pointed out in another thread it's really easy to manipulate right now.

The 'game' I'm proposing could revolve around the trade functionality already built into the shop.  It would be a buying/selling/scarcity type game allowing the moderators of the forum to 'release' limited items and then members could use or sell them amongst each other as they see fit.

A different but almost as feasable idea would be to use the FFE to create a stock of parts and do some kind of in-forum AC base-building type game.  We would need someone good at graphics to make things purdy, and I'd probably want to create some kind of war/battle mechanic too in order to give a competitive flair.

Regardless, any overhaul would necessitate a reset of the EC at some point.  What I would like to see is a sense of how interested everyone would be (so would you play) and a way to level the playing field (so insomniac lurkposters don't run roughshod over everyone).  In the meantime as I test things, please ignore my EC it is meaningless.

[Buster's Uncle]

I bought and sent him a beer the other morning - he added that to the Shop.

I'll observe that I'm currently a gadzillionare -and I'd be 100x richer if hadn't reduced the EC of the top of the Bank list by an order of magnitude twice over the last three years- and I'm fine with starting over.  As far as it goes as a measuring contest, I figure I'd still easily win.

I'm the proud owner of three Rocks, BTW.

EDIT:  Oh yeah - if only we knew anyone who rocked the forum graphics...

[Rusty Edge]

I have no objection to buying virtual beers for folks. Or re-sets, or whatever.

Or trying a game.

[Dio]

If a reset occured, then I would prefer to keep the Energy Credits I have earned.

[Buster's Uncle]

We could always make a list and reinstate everyone not worth ridiculous amounts.  I wish I knew a way to see the Bank rankings below top ten, but I guess we could clean out the top five, take another look and write down, take those out and take another look and write down, etc...

Making everyone down to ariete worth only one more than whoever's next might be the way to go...

[Buster's Uncle]

...Aside from the Trade Center not seeming to actually work, at least for selling Rocks, it could also really use a field for the seller to put up at least a line of sales pitch.  I just spent 500EC on a Rock to reward a good sales pitch, but he had to start a thread to do it, and we had to trade gifts to close the deal.

Eadee is on to something, though.  A more reasonable 10x markup of 50EC for the value of a decent joke might be really honestly viable...

[Valka]

Well, I'm not into beer, real or virtual, and SMAC-based goods aren't that meaningful since I don't play the game (would if I had a way to get it to work on my computer).

However... there's something that I Can Has Cheezburger?/cheezburger.com did several years ago that had people completely absorbed: Collectibles.

Every week they'd release different Collectibles in one or another category, and the idea was to get the full slate of them. You could do this by just logging in, or by trading for them. If you were really serious, you could buy Cheezcoins (for real money) from LolMart (that part of the site has been shut down for a long while now) and buy that extremely rare one that never seems to appear.

These are the collectibles: http://profile.cheezburger.com/Klea/Collectibles

What resulted was that some of us made lols making offers or proposing trade deals: http://kleas-trading-post.cheezburger.com/

These are just three of the lols I did during this time, wheeling and dealing for these little images...

Sometimes we had many more of some than we needed, like Ironic Mustaches:




And others were hard to find:




Never thought I'd be asking for one of these things:



(as you can see, I use a different name on that site)


Would this kind of activity work here?

[Buster's Uncle]

Like Dr. Strange's extradimensional girlfriend.

[Valka]

Sorry, I don't understand that reference.

[Buster's Uncle]

Clea, daughter of Umar the Unspeakable, niece of the Dread Dormammu and Ruler of the Dark Dimension.  Google Clea (Marvel Comics) and read the Wikipedia article if you're curious.

[Eadee]

How about making unique items. It only exists one  of ervery kind, and you don't buy them, you invest in them and gain controll over them for a month or so.

I'm thinking of items called like secret projects here.

So every month you are allowed to throw EC into any of the secret projects. And whoever invested the most in this month gets Controll of that project for the next month.

Each project will record how much EC in total were spent on it and controll of it rewards the User with some other points (not EC because that would create a loop) maybe its called Fame-, Glory-, or Transcendence-Points. Each Project rewards a number of those Points based on the ranking (total of 37 secret Projects, am I right?) so 37 Points/month for the top ranking Project. 36 in the second one and so on.
Finally those points grant bragging rights like nothing else and are otherwise completely useless.

I know it would be some effort to implement all of this, but the idea formed in my Mind and I just needet to share it, no matter how much of this might be realised or not.

So this suggestion is open for discussion / adjustment / implemention if you like it.

[Valka]

Clea, daughter of Umar the Unspeakable, niece of the Dread Dormammu and Ruler of the Dark Dimension.  Google Clea (Marvel Comics) and read the Wikipedia article if you're curious.

I hadn't known about that character. My username came from one of my Fighting Fantasy campaigns.

[Geo]

One can't gift a beer purchased in the shop? Or is there some button/procedure for that I haven't seen?

[Buster's Uncle]

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=shop;sa=gift

I don't drink, BTW.

[Buster's Uncle]

Would this kind of activity work here?

It would have to be thread-based advertising, absent someone gaining mastery of .php coding and doing some mods.  But thread-based would be pretty awesome...