Logging players could sell with negative profits

One of the most common mistake you can do in Eco by Strange Loop Games is to apply real life economic concepts (or what you think you know about them) directly to the game. We should rather keep an open mind and adapt these concepts to help collaboration. Here is one tricky example: a logging players who sells with negative profits.

The basis for this article comes from a player named Lubois who played as a logging player on a server we shared. The odd thing about him is he was buying logs at 1 credit and selling hewn at 1.1 credits. Now, he was using basic upgrades 3, which means he was selling his hewn at a loss (-9.6%).

Selling items at a loss is considered an aggressive behavior in Eco. With such small populations and the possibility to have high inequity in gaming time, selling things at a loss is mostly a means to drive other players from business and keep a monopoly. 

But Lubois was an old server admin without an ounce of agression in him. I had seen him play with other skills and getting along well with many players. So why being such a ?*&$% right now ?

1. A question of balance between skills

The answer form Lubois was something like this : I am keeping things equal for new players. I should also say Lubois is one of these expert players who adjust his gaming experience according to his neighbors. For instance, he will play less or switch to his famous Angor Vat structures if he feels others around him have less gaming time. Also, you won't see him rush for upgrade modules unless they are plenty on the map. In fact, this is on his server that I designed my first upgrading contractions in Eco and made module distribution a community experience.

2. Simple scenario with a logging player

Let's make a small scenario with 3 players at day 1 to illustrate what he meant by keeping things equal.

You have one player with gathering, the other with campfire cooking and the third with logging skill. Campfire salads are very useful items at the beginning since they boost XP and make food management more efficient. Logging experts are also important players in this scenario and greatly improve the production of hewn for houses. The gathering expert also represents other players, like smelters, masons and engineers who cannot yet contribute to the main economy of the moment by using their skills, but can contribute by supplying basic resources. The gathering expert is also similar to what happen when players arrive few days later and do not yet have the modules and infrastructure to contribute to the main projects. 

The stores

There is not a whole lot of trade going around at the beginning, but here are the main trades going on at their stores :

You might argue these prices are common/uncommon but they reflect what I have seen in dozens of worlds, including experienced servers...except maybe for vegetables who tend to worth less. I often saw higher prices for crafted food relative to crops and wood: up to 10 credits. As a chef, I would sell basic salads around 1.55 or less, however.

If you look closely at recipes (3 crops per salad), you may notice in this scenario that the base cost for salads is 1.5 credits plus some calories and fuel (about 1.55 credits when using wood as fuel). Therefore, the chef is applying a profit margin close to 48%, which means each time the gatherer brings vegetables and buys a salad, the chef keeps almost a free salad for himself. He only needs about 2% of the price to compensate for calories and fuel.

The logging specialists also allows other players to bring wood and buy hewn, which is a good habit. In his case, access to a basic upgrade is pretty easy and the cost of hewn logs is about 1.8 wood unit plus some calories. This means his profit margin is about 8% if you look at the previous prices. Given the precious bonus of upgrade modules, it is not uncommon to see players apply high profit margin on them too. Here, modules only takes 65 wood logs to make and the profit margin is 17% if we take into account calories. 

Trading

Lets assume every players need to build 4 rooms for their house plus a larger room for a workshop/store. I have a simple design where each house room is a 6x6 interior space by 4 blocks high and the workshop is 3x5. This gives enough space for many furniture, including rugs later on. Without accounting for doors and special holes (that some servers prevent), each player will need about 876 hewn blocks to complete this project. 

We will also assume every player has a store even if this is a big project to make at this state of the game. This is only to simplify the scenario: what we want is to simulate one moment in the history of a typical server. We can safely assume the logging player will be the first to own a store.

The gatherer scenarios

With this trade structure, the gatherer can either make all hewn alone, buy it entirely from the logging expert or something in between. Based on 10 minutes tests where I calculated time and calories, I can safely assume getting 1752 wood will take between 45 and 60 min as well as 47 000 calories. Crafting hewn will further take 17 520 calories for a total of 64 520 calories. If the player doesn't want to be left behind in terms of XP bonus, he must buy his food from the chef. Basic salads give 900 to 950 calories and require 3 crops to make. He will need about 70 campfire salads so 210 crops. Given the fact the chef has a profit margin, he will need to bring 420 crops, which can be done within 8 minutes and will cost an extra salad for the calories.

Another extreme is if the gatherer tries to buy all his hewn: he will need 1752 credits. He can cut down all the wood and bring it to the logging expert (45 to 60 min + 47 000 calories) plus time of transport. He can attempt to sell 3504 crops to the chef, but it's unlikely to succeed : a chef can plan for the first day to make about 130 salads for each active player, so he doesn't need more that 1000 crops in this scenario. Also, many chefs gather crops themselves. A third option would be to get 600 crops to the chef, buy 100 salads and sell them to the logging player for 300 credits. This way, he only needs to cut down 1452 wood logs, which is about 40-50 minutes and 43 salads. To get these 43 salads, he will need to bring 258 crops to the chef. In total, getting the 600 crops for the trade with the chef plus the 258 crops for his own salads will take between 10 and 15 minutes of gathering time 

Basically, the gatherer is likely to cut most of his wood alone and perhaps even craft it himself if he lives too far from the logging player's store. As always in Eco, what he does is highly dependent on the distance between the logging shop and his house. The best scenario is to live right next to the shop and sell as much crops as he can to the chef and buy as much hewn as he can from the logging player. Doing this could yield an extra 80 hewn for the carpenter as profit and grant him up to 100 salads. The farmer will also need between 70 salads and 143 salads, which will yield an extra 67 to 137 salads as profits for the chef. Overall, the farmer is likely to work between 50 and 70 minutes to gather all resources for this project and leave a lot of free resources for the other players as profit. Obviously this would take longer in the game as transport, crafting and building time wasn't taken into account.

The chef scenarios

With these simulation parameters, the chef also has the choice of making every hewn alone or trade with the logging player. Hopefully, he is likely to make profit with the gatherer and could find up to 137 free salads in his chest. This amount of free salads is enough calories to cut wood and craft hewn alone. If the gatherer doesn't sell salads to the logging player, the chef can spend between 5 and 8 minutes in the wild and exchange salads for 150 hewn, which gives a similar scenario to the gatherer and cut the need for wood logs to 1452 and time of logging down to 45 minutes.

Basically, the chef scenarios are quite similar to the gatherer in the sense that he is likely to cut most of his wood. The difference here is the chef can quickly make his own food at cost price and he has a mean to get free food from other players by applying a profit margin at his store. Like the gatherer distance to the logging player is also a decisive factor. The best scenario is when the chef gets few crops alone and sell all of them. He can then spend less time cutting wood. In the process, he will leave about 80 free hewn to the logging player. He is likely to spend between 45 and 60 minutes to gather resources for this project and we need to add transport time as well.

The logging scenarios

The logging player will cut and make all his hewn, except if the other players use his store. If he does everything alone, his bonus on calories and axe strength means he only needs between 30 and 40 minutes to cut all the wood. Logging will require about 24 000 calories and crafting hewn around 8000 calories. I included in this calculation the 80 extra wood logs needed to make the basic upgrade 1. This amount of calories sum up to 35 campfire salad, which represents less than 5 minutes worth of logging to sell hewn in exchange.

If either or both the chef and gatherer buy hewn at the store, we have seen that the carpenter could end up with 100 salads and will have to cut wood for 6 to 8 minutes for them. If the other players use his store to craft the hewn, he can get up to 160 free hewn because of his profit margin. His best scenario is therefore to get 100 free salads and 160 free hewn, effectively cutting down total gathering time to 30 minutes or less. The extra salads are a bonus so he can make an entirely new project.

Basically, the logging player is in a prime position in this scenario since he is able to make his house in the least amount of time (around 30-40 minutes) and benefits further from his profit margin. His proximity to other players has little impact on his ability to build a house. With extra time and resources, he can contribute to government buildings and other projects that brings further individual wealth if he receives a salary.

Putting the numbers together

The gatherer will need about 50 to 70 minutes to get his house. The chef will need between 45 and 60 minutes. Finally, the logging champion will need between 30 and 40 minutes. Given the fact that profit margin in Eco can be seen as transfert of time, you can see why Lubois believed that selling hewn at a negative profit margin would be a way to give back some of the time he saved because of his skill. From his point of view, he had an "unfair' advantage and wanted to share it.

3. Discussion

This is just a scenario with logging as the main profit maker

Obviously, this is just a potential scenario and anyone who played Eco for a while knows that not many player rush to make 876 hewn blocks in the first day (!) and many others prefer to eat charred food as well.

I used this scenario to outline advantages that some players have, not because they play harder or smarter, but simply because their skill grants bonus at a given time. But in order to win the game, we can't all pick logging... So how can the logging player compensate for this privilege given by the community ? Selling at a loss was Lubois' way of attempting this.

We could continue this scenario and you would see the logging player is likely the first to trade for an upgrade module 2 and further advance in hewn production and potential profit margins. Things go even faster if he takes carpentry and make profits with upgrades level 3. The chef can only hope to have enough customers to sell salads to get an upgrade too or else has to hand out free resources like the others.

This is why the other players and new players are easy prey in a competitive server until they have something of value to offer later. 

We are beginner friendly...yes we are...

Of course, Eco has a cooperative structure and soon another skill will be in high demand (ex.: masonry). But this is not true for all professions and not every player has the time to get the infrastructure at the same time unless the server has community workspaces such as Fab Labs. 

If you have a good knowledge of this game, you may see how this scenario can apply to the advanced era with T2 materials and which type of player (ex.: carpenter, mason, tailors, cook) benefit from an advantage over the other players because of their crafting skill. This time, however, the other players cannot make hewn and mortared stone alone and must interact with T2 producers for their bricks, glass and lumber. And this is where many servers with active populations well above 20 players suddenly fail or end up with the 3 or 4 players who managed to get the most out of the first era or played for the longest amount of hours.

Inequity caused by skills

Crafting skills bring a lot of advantages, notably the freedom to craft what you want at any given time and the ability to transform basic resources into items that other players want. For instance, not everyone is interested in sandstones, but every player needs brazier, fireplace and statues for the best house early on.

Also, when you craft your own items, you can greatly reduce time spent on transport of resources and you get items at a fair price. Crafting skills in general yield huge bonuses in a game where not everyone is available at the same time and competitive players abound. If you are not sure about this idea, try to play a game with only gathering skills (except logging first), get on random servers and have a taste of what happen when you are completely dependent on others who believe in monopoly or prefer to gather their own resources.

The beauty of Eco is players have all the tools to discuss and find solutions in a collaborative manner. I would never ask the developers to adjust the skills in order to "balance" the game. The real deal about Eco, in my opinion, is to be able to notice various unbalance, recognize their source and act together upon it. The tools for this are many : graphics, custom variables to follow community indicators, paced research, incentives for players who arrive later (ex.: distribution stations), team gathering of resources, increased use of contracts and work party, improved availability of upgrade modules, public workspace, welcome residences, fixed prices on basic resources, etc. Sadly, many servers put their faith in a common currency that should magically balance everything or expect disadvantaged players to play longer hours to get what they want.

- I won't sell for less. I am the only player with that skill. You want things, work for them!

- I already work hard, thank you : Eco is for my leisure time.