Economy (gameplay)

There should be an economy in the mud likely based on a precious metals and resources. In order for an economy to to flourish, we must allow for innovation and for deterioration. Innovation will be very difficult to enable but important to an interesting mud environment.

production

item cost = (materials + labor) * markup

materials = requires AI to calculate, we need to know when to scale production and when to change prices. this is tough. when production is higher than consumption, lower prices or cut back production, when consumption is higher than production, raise prices or increase production.

labor = time to make * constant for the shop/person/item

markup = dependent on the shop (includes overhead)

demand changes with price. we need some way to synthesize this. Is reduced purchase from the shops enough for this? We'll have to work the kinks out of this system during beta testing.

I think newbie items should have an unlimited cache that needs to be replenished ASAP (as if the store owner has a private stock that he keeps in the back for emergencies).

Innovation

Many things are being discussed with regards to innovation. One is alchemy. Players should be able to research new potions (maybe just experiment with the system) to get new/better effects.

Deterioration

Items should grow old and become less useful and more fragile. That way we do not reach an economic fixed point where all characters have all the items they want and no one (save newbies) needs to buy anything. Granted people will always want to advance, but this does make certain items obsolete. Imagine swords if lasted forever. If some one created a new sword that was very good, all the characters would eventually get one until everyone had one and there would be no reason to make any more.