In the interests of brushing up on my college education now that I'm out of it, I'm tempted to school this place by setting up and running a company in a legitimate and intelligible manner. That includes full use of accounting, the publishing of financial statements, and an approximation of corporate stock for casual investors. I would do this even if the company ends up being just one trade ship, by myself, and even if I spend a bare minimum of time and therefore generate chump change by Discovery's horrendously inflated standards. The server is so utterly dead that the occasional pirate would make for a quaint "piracy expense" account.
Give me a good reason why I should bother, considering I doubt half of you know what a "stock" is and couldn't understand a general ledger if it was stapled to your faces.
Mainly because when cannot bother finding a more appropriate word are the only ones willing to innovate and put work into breathing life into the place, in the face of all complacency and hypocrisy, it says more about the ones rejecting those attempts than the cannot bother finding a more appropriate word himself. I have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, whereas every new (or better) idea that gets shot down here is one more nail soundly pounded into the coffin. People rejected plenty of my ideas years ago when I was emotionally invested in this place, when I was courteous, when I tried bending over backwards and being 'too' respectful to people who didn't earn that respect. Now that I'm not emotionally invested, you think I'm going to care when they shoot it down again because I'm acting "rude?" All I lose is an audience for some spreadsheets I've already finished. I'll be furthering my knowledge and my career whether people here cooperate or not. But on the other hand, a proper demonstration for this sort of thing doesn't come that often... In fact, I dare you to look up "stock market" in the search bar. It comes around "but once a year," from people without working knowledge of the topic, and is always shot down because it's "impractical." Well it isn't, and if all of these glorified "corporations" want to continue flying in circles and calling it a business then it's no skin off my teeth. Heaven forbid someone actually 'plays the role' they claim around here.
But hey, tl;dr, right? Right.
(11-09-2014, 12:11 AM)Tal Wrote: disco is literally the bonneville salt flats and nobody cares about roleplay anymore
Fair enough, though there's nothing even remotely admirable about leaving it that way while still claiming that it still works that way.
How about instead of talking down to a community of hundreds of people and making yourself look incredibly bigoted and burned, you go use that pro busns knowledge to make a company IRL instead of wasting your time here.
Unless you can't put your money where your mouth is.
Ok serious answer I guess, I personally have no problems with you trying it and would actually be interested in how you try and go about even if I have no real real life knowledge on such things. However, the game was not really set up for such a system and forcing one on it probably won't work but I wish you luck if you try.
I highly doubt that you would find many people interested in participating. This is a space pew sim, not a space stock exchange sim.
While you might get a few economics students, the majority of people would probably have no idea what you're talking about.
Also, I doubt you will find many economics geniuses among the people who roleplay the corporate factions, which would create the odd situation of none of the corporations actually being involved in the stock market...
(11-09-2014, 12:31 AM)Technogeist Wrote: How about instead of talking down to a community of hundreds of people and making yourself look incredibly bigoted and burned, you go use that pro busns knowledge to make a company IRL instead of wasting your time here.
Unless you can't put your money where your mouth is.
I'm shaking in my boots. Also, thanks for admitting that you utterly waste your time here.
(11-09-2014, 12:31 AM)Loki557 Wrote: Ok serious answer I guess, I personally have no problems with you trying it and would actually be interested in how you try and go about even if I have no real real life knowledge on such things. However, the game was not really set up for such a system and forcing one on it probably won't work but I wish you luck if you try.
I can appreciate an answer like this.
The game is so lacking in coded mechanics that Discovery "itself" is really the rules which must be enforced at every turn by admins. At that rate there's nothing about the game itself that limits anything: You're free to set up your own guidelines as needed. That said, a functional business would require a shift away from "let's transport the most expensive cargo on the most expensive route so we can trade the money to our battleship accounts" and actually involve acting like a business, where the in-game currency reward for each player is far less important than the overall organization that they build and the exploits of the whole, within the game world, rather than how many zeroes you can tack to your level 90 flying boxcar. That means working from scratch, having company-owned transports, asking other factions and individuals for financing, and so on. Supposedly there are trading and mining factions that do it "for the love" but they seem to play it like every other mute powertrader, so I never saw what the difference was. You can't stat-bloat (inflate the money supply) forever and call it a rewarding experience, no matter what the original Freelancer engine emphasized or not.
Quote:I highly doubt that you would find many people interested in participating. This is a space pew sim, not a space stock exchange sim.
While you might get a few economics students, the majority of people would probably have no idea what you're talking about.
Also, I doubt you will find many economics geniuses among the people who roleplay the corporate factions, which would create the odd situation of none of the corporations actually being involved in the stock market...
OTOH, if you think it'll be fun, do it.
Another response I can appreciate.
It's hardly a "sim" even in the combat department, even by the standards of the fictional genre. That said, why is it that the mod entertains trading, mining and factions based on finance and insurance if none of that is explored beyond "Let's look special" and "let's buy ships we barely use?" No chance that it can be even 'slightly' educational? No chance that people can put some backbone into the roles they play? Don't answer that one.
The stock market issue is solved by basing it around individual companies. Once you have a basis for company operations and valuation, just dump a bunch of shares into the community and provide generous dividends. The initial value of the stock can be based on the shareholder's equity, and therefore the dividend paid would be a percentage of it. Like any real company, you can issue new shares, split shares, or offer to buy shares back. Either way, the actual "stock market" for each company is composed of players already owning stock selling it off to each other at discounts or premiums. That's entirely 1-on-1; all that's required is to send proof to the company so they don't send dividends the wrong way.
Honestly you could cut a lot of corners when it came to that equity calculation and still arrive at a nice approximation of this, even though it would be impossible to truly compare companies unless they operated under similar standards like GAAP or IFRS.