Fulmens

867-5301 (x100) = 867,530,100
Jenny!

To add to my previous thoughts:

The 20million/HVM MAY make a significant difference in the generation:destruction rate. The generation side has a six year headstart, though...

Cipher: I simul-posted with you.

The basic theory is mine, and it goes like this:

1) Inf comes into the game, and leaves the game. Who it belongs to in the meantime will be brought up later, but this is a core measure for "inflation". If we, the playerbase, are generating more inf as a whole than we destroy, prices will tend to go up. Some things may get cheaper while other things get more expensive, but prices, as a whole, will go up.

2) There are three ways to destroy significant amounts of inf, that I'm aware of. You buy something on the market (10% of sale cost is destroyed), you turn Reward Merits into Hero/Villain merits (20 million is destroyed per H/V merit), or you convert influence into prestige (1 million inf -> 2,000 prestige.) There are things that don't seem to destroy much inf: costume changes (I haven't paid for one except maybe by accident since about 2006), crafting (unless you go for Field Crafter, which is sort of a 1-time thing, it doesn't seem to eat up much), buying SOs and inspirations and wentporters and things.

3) I've been on a inf-destroying binge for ... probably years. The challenge for me was to destroy more than 1 inf for every inf of mine. (Otherwise I could have just moved it onto a character and deleted that character, or even hoarded it. Same effect.) I did banking (side-to-side and server-to-server) - every time inf went from one server to another through Wentworth's 10% went away. [If you have the only level 36 Magic/Natural range DO on the market, you can sell it to yourself for hundreds of millions and it is very unlikely that someone will intercept the transaction.] I bought Respec Recipes, LoTGs, stealths, whatever, and resold them for slightly more. That always ended up being "noticeably more", so even after Went's 10% fee I still made a profit. And I came up with a plan to match influence-to-prestige, because most people on the base building side feel that 500:1 is outrageous. If I matched it, that became 250:1 (many STILL feel that's outrageous.) So for every inf I burned, someone else burned one too.

I've burnt, that I can confirm, 70 billion inf. Prices are still going up.

Obviously I need help.

So that's what I'm getting out of this project. Others may have different motivations, or multiple motivations, but as long as nobody's doing actual harm to anyone I'm happy with the results.

I realized that I have a thing going on here that I have to do, in addition to whichever project I fund...

I have to continue to match actual basebuilders. It defuses potential rage (and burns more, different inf than what you guys bring to the table.)

Seriously, on average it takes rolling 48 tickets to get whatever common salvage you want. That means you have a half chance of getting it in LESS tickets than that.

A person might want to think ahead and get 100 tickets for rainy days.

Hey! I was going to pick that nit!

Having done a [very little] bit of work with UnrealScript, a server with only eight moving things on it is still doing a whole lot of work every "tick" (30 per second is about nominal for Unreal. I don't remember what Arcana worked out as a tick for this game.) If you start adding things like, for instance, distance calculations to every enemy every tick after a hit, it gets to be a bit of extra work... and there are 500 people on Infinity every night, half of which are probably in a fight at any given time. There was "hamidon lag" when 300 people were in the same fight, and the server actually couldn't get everything done in a nominal tick so time really DID slow down.

Y'see, things like this are why I stopped my "firewall" project.

I used to have 10 of each midrange salvage up at "slightly high" prices (30K or 55K or something) and check 'em once or twice a day. I did that for a year and a half.

Sometimes random shortages would cause my supply of something to sell out. Sometimes random shortages would cause PART my supply of something to sell out. (I'd see 7 Inert Gas sold, 3 left in the stack.)

If you really want to do something for your friends, just log in to an underused character with 12 slots, pick a category (midrange tech, high-range magic, whatever) and set yourself up with 10 for sale of each and 10 bidding. When one sells out, flip the bidding over to the for-sale, put up a new bid.

Check it once or twice a day. If you're advanced, you set up four of these- midlevel tech, midlevel magic, high level tech and high level magic.

What's that? It's inconvenient? Well then tell your friends to shut up, cause you're obviously not willing to help them.

I did my year and a half. It's your turn.

It's kind of a poor way to rank SG's. As we're about to prove.

EDIT: Almost everyone knows this. On the other hand, curling is an olympic sport, so people will get competitive about ANYTHING. This includes us.

[Edit]
We've started on Virtue. Here is the new thread. There's also a one-person Guardian project.
[/Edit]

OK, after the success of the Loyal Opposition project, it has been suggested that we get a SG to #1 purely, or primarily, through the destruction of inf. It would require about 88 billion, on guardian, thus the Crazy 88's.

It was originally sort of assumed that it would be on Guardian. I'd rather not try this on Freedom or Virtue, but I'm willing to try it anywhere else.

A quick survey of what it would take, by server:
Pinnacle: Around 350M prestige, 175B inf
Protector: 178M/89B inf
Infinity: 254M/127B inf
Liberty: 226M/113B
Victory: 360M/180B
Champion: 452M/226B [!]
Triumph: 183M/91B
Justice: 376M/169B
[ Guardian: 176M/88B ]
Virtue: 353M/177B
Freedom: 580M/290B

Huh. Looks like some of the smaller servers have the more dedicated SG'ers.

We could totally take Virtue!

Starting a whole new thread for this.

If it lists at "xxx,0" I'm pretty sure that means it failed to connect with the market server (and thus failed to get the total back as a verification.) Pulling them down and relisting them seems to work for me, but I don't pay much attention when that happens so I don't even know if I've had to do it more than once.

How many individual Nevermeltings do you think sold in those 15 minutes? I want to know if destabilizing can destroy meaningful amounts of inf, or if it's just pure blackhattery.

We'd have to start a whole nother SG just for that. The Crazy 88s or something.

I'd put in a billion for sure.

Misaligned did commit heresy and/or blasphemy. That's ebil.

Persecuting the gullible with lowball bids: Actively ebil.

Cranking the low end up and the high end down on Reactive Armor, not so ebil.

Burning money and purples at the same time is THROWING MONEY AROUND and that's what is WRONG WITH AMERICA. Venial ebil.

Overpaying? THROWING MONEY AROUND.

Giving away money? THROWING MONEY AROUND.

Misaligned: You're trying to apply logic and sense to a world that has only inf and hunger for stuff.

The price of a crafted IO varies from "less than the raw materials" to "80 million, when the raw materials go for under 10M".

In an equilibrium situation you'd have the choice between paying (200 R-merits) or (100 R-merits and 40 million inf) for the same thing, so you can say that 100 R-merits = 40 million inf and therefore 50 reward merits = 20 million inf = half an A-merit .

There are other possible equivalencies: If it takes you an hour of playtime on the market to make 200 million inf [spread over a couple days] and it takes you an hour of slapping Freaks to make 50 merits, that gives you a time ratio of 4 million inf per merit; in that situation the 20 million inf is an invisible cost next to the 50 merits.

You might have to go back and look at how much inf you can get per hour farming, compared to how many merits, to find a more fundamental equivalence. Because the market just moves the money around (from the impatient to the patient), lowering the total number slightly. You have to know how much inf per merit is being generated. And that can go up VERY easily ("we're running this TF at +2/0 because we need the money.")

I always saw them as the "Time's up, run like hell" buzzer myself. But it's an awesome way to do it!

hey chaos! I just noticed you've got your market signature in your avatar.

I saw one of your bids the other day!

In a totally unrelated point, Zybron1: I agree with your most of your post, but I'm really getting grated on by the phrase "It's a closed system." That term means something specific and it's almost the exact opposite of what you said. In a closed system, nothing comes in and nothing goes out.

[/thermodynamic rant]

... also, I estimate that H/V merits have destroyed trillions of inf. The new inf sink is pretty good, but it's got a lot of catching up to do. It started six years behind the competition.

Pitho: we haven't moved in yet! It's gonna be cool!

Before GR, the +3% Resist PVP was available at level 50 for about a billion inf.

I'm guessing Billz doesn't want it at level 50.

I hate Mids' text blocks. Just sayin'.

I herewith give you the Parable of the Take-a-Penny Thingy. You leave two pennies in the thingy, or take a couple out, because it's not worth the trouble to keep track of pennies.

Figure out what your own personal "not worth the trouble" number is. Mine is around 5908 inf. That's a penny to me. If it's 5908 or if it's 1, that's the same number to me. (Considering that half a billion inf is therefore $1000.00 to me, it is perhaps best to avoid over-literalizing the metaphor.) So if I am bidding, I bid 5908. That doesn't get it, I may pay attention. I may go to 30,908. or 55,908. But I'm not going to take it seriously if it's totally not worth the trouble. If I'm selling and I won't get well over 5908 inf I list it for 1. Not worth the trouble.

Maybe your number is 500 inf. Maybe you're like Nethergoat and your number is five million inf.

But if you think of it as "fighting with people over a penny", it'll give you some perspective on your actions.

That wasn't it. Sorry for your loss.