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Kiama

Stormfall: A New Nomadic Experience

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Grochar, Lv. 1 Stormguard, Cog, Whitesand, 4 x Sleeping Powder

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Onefox

 

Lvl 1 Stormguard  Knarr Stormfall, 4x sleeping powder

Edited by onefox
typo
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Well, here you have it folks, all the argument you ever need for a decent compass.

 

kA6Q3Es.jpg

 

 

Actually, this one looks kind of cool.

 

zleMO5K.jpg

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Otso, Lv. 1 Stormguard, Knarr, Stormfall, 4 x Sleeping Powder

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Moltenclaw, Lv. 1 Stormguard, Knarr, Stormfall, 4 x Sleeping Powder

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Worfeus , Lv. 1 Stormguard, Knarr, Stormfall, 4 x Sleeping Powder

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Is anyone interested in sharing deeds across different servers?

 

  Redmyst is going to be my main base, and I have a 21x22 deed (or something like that).  I was wondering if anyone was interested in a reciprocal arrangement whereby you are a citizen of my deed on Redmyst and I am a citizen of your deed on one of the other servers.  This would save everyone paying upkeep on multiple deeds, and help to promote deeds as way-stations rather than just individual small-holdings.  I would provide lodging with cooking and crafting facilities on Redmyst.   I have started a "last chance" farm for public use in the extreme south east (so next to the shipping lanes between servers) but plan to have a small active farm in my high valley.  I would not expect (or indeed want) you to terraform or construct buildings.

 

I already have a camp on Stormfall, but I would be happy for someone to take that over and deed it as long as I can be a citizen.  It is semi-remote though.  I really like the spot itself, but it isn't particular convenient for travel at the moment.

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I had hoped the restrictions of this cluster would encourage a cooperative group, so I'm glad to see this Lowkey.  I'd like to be part of it,  but I have to be honest with all that I have a history (14 years now) of Wurming for a few months then taking an extended break.

 

Not to speak for him,  but I think Grochar was willing to make his settlement on Whitesands a sort of traveler's rest.  I was planning to stop there on my roundtrip starting at the end of August.  I'll be on Redmyst before September comes.

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I am just a bit sorry I didn't suggest it sooner, before people settled on deeds.

 

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I am not going to make too frequent a habit of this because I don't want to compete with those who are limited to ground shots but here is a shot of Whitesand, with artistic license. I wish that eagle was above the horizon but it is super hard to catch.

Xm2ToPL.jpg

 

 

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Announcement: Ahead of Religion being made available in September, I am imposing two limitations on our cluster. I apologise to those who were counting on being able to do either of these but I have thought about it for a while and I believe it is essential to maintaining the cluster's concept.

 

1. I am disabling the "transform to resource tile" feature.

2. Courier/Dark Messenger will not be available as spells, preventing mailing.

 

I recommend taking advantage of the remaining time you have to be on Redmyst with these limitations in mind.

Edited by Kiama

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Thanks for the announcement.

 

1. Makes complete sense. It is already pretty easy to change some of the tile types, but at least some of the resources will remain only on their "native" servers.

2. I agree it is probably better this way.  I will try to cart my best quality trade stuff to Stormfall in my migration, but who knows, once I build my Knarr it might be my travelling gift shop!

 

I was going to trade pelts on my next time through but at the rate I am giving them away there might not be any market for them so I might just hand them out 😄.  I don't know how many people are playing on these servers, but I reckon I might have at least one pelt for everyone!  I found where the mountain lions AND the rats are spawning, both handy to my deed.  Oh, anyone want mountain lion rugs for decorating?  I have a couple of dozen.

 

I must say, I am enjoying the challenging aspects of this set up.  It's like starting out in Wurm for the first time again, working out how to solve problems and achieve the desired result.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

I don't know how many people are playing on these servers

 

I can tell you that there's 15 recently active regulars (on in the last 2 days and have been playing for at least about a week), in which I am not including my two brothers who are very infrequently on. It can feel like a lot less since we are on different servers, and of course at different times.

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On 8/21/2021 at 12:25 AM, Kiama said:

 

I can tell you that there's 15 recently active regulars (on in the last 2 days and have been playing for at least about a week), in which I am not including my two brothers who are very infrequently on. It can feel like a lot less since we are on different servers, and of course at different times.

Oh, than I might have three pelts for everyone  😜

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Procurement Offices have changed. Because I don't want to put people off or confuse them by having them read through the original idea, I am placing the whole original, somewhat ambitious idea in a spoiler at the end.

 

Procurement Offices are buildings that anyone can build on any of the Storm Islands (Whitesand, Redmyst, Farmarsh). They are built according to the specification below. Once built, I will place a Buyer in the Procurement Office, which buy ONE resource type of your choice (must be a resource like logs or planks, not a product like tools or clothes). The price to set the resource at is debated in the prices channel on Discord.

 

Specification

 

  1. The Procurement Office must be built on one of the Storm islands (Whitesand, Redmyst, Farmarsh)
  2. The Procurement Office must have exactly two floors, each being at least 9 tiles large
  3. The Procurement Office must be roofed
  4. The Procurement Office must be its own building, and players should be able to hover their mouse over it to see what it is.
  5. The lower floor should have a table and chair, ostensibly for the Procurement Officer to sit at while dealing with customers
  6. The upper floor houses the “office” proper, with at least a table, a chair, at least one coffer, and at least one cupboard.
  7. Place a Ledger of Custom on the table downstairs and a Ledger of Coin on the table upstairs. These are simply books named as such.

 

Note on Materials: It is up to you whether the Buyer is limited to a certain material. For example, you may want the Buyer to buy any kind of Log or just Cherry Logs. The reason you may want the Buyer to buy Cherry Logs is because you have a lot of them and they are worth more than Fir Logs.

 

Competition Bonus: Procurement Offices pay 50% more for each other Procurement Office within 12 tiles (a gap of 12 or less tiles between them), to a max of 200% more (triple, requiring 4 other offices).

 

Pricing: As our cluster evolves, prices may need to change. Discuss prices in the prices channel on Discord.

 

The Original Idea (No Longer In Effect)

 

Spoiler

 

Procurement Offices

 

Today I am introducing the concept of Procurement Offices to our cluster. Procurement Offices are a form of a more general Office concept that I have developed, but for now I will simply explain how Procurement Offices work. Note that this is not the monthly Stormguard reveal, that is still coming at the start of September.

 

First of all, it is important to be clear that not everyone needs to know how Procurement Offices work, only those who want to actually run them. If you just want to sell resources to them, all you need to know is that the Procurement Officer can’t adjust the price on any given day, and CAN refuse to trade with you (they may be manipulating the price, which is within their rights). So feel free to skip this post.

 

Second of all, it is important to emphasise the difference between a Procurement Office and a private business that you may choose to operate. I am sure many of you already have private businesses in mind, selling boats or pelts or iron or anything else. Here are the fundamental differences:

 

  1. Products vs Resources: A private business will tend to deal with products (backpacks, tools, etc.), while a Procurement Office only deals with items that can fit in a bsb, crate, or fsb.
  2. Buying vs Trading: With a private business, you will literally trade. Sometimes you will trade money for resources, sometimes resources for money, and sometimes resources for other resources. But a Procurement Office only takes resources and only gives money. As such, Procurement Offices are a mechanism for adding money to the economy and subtracting excess resources.
  3. Earnings: With a private business, you will be trading your own money and resources, and taking the entirety of the profit or loss of this activity. With Procurement Offices, you will instead be an employee (a Procurement Officer), and will be paid a percentage of each procurement you are involved in. Or rather, you will pay yourself out of the Procurement Office’s coffers, recording each transaction (including your percentage) in the Procurement Office’s Ledger of Custom.
  4. Pricing: With a private business, you can haggle or you can decide to give something away at your own discretion. With a Procurement Office, resources are bought at their precise current price, which fluctuates according to a system explained in the Ledgers section.
  5. Regulation: No one is checking in to review the private business ledgers that you don’t keep. On the other hand, you can expect periodic reviews of the Ledgers, Coin, and Inventory of your Procurement Office.

 

Designated Resource

 

Each Procurement Office buys a SINGLE type of resource, and it must fit in a bsb or crate or fsb. This can be logs or planks or sand or pumpkins, etc., so long as the full weight of a single item is at least 0.5. When a Procurement Office is built, it is certified for storing that and only that resource type (and note that the resources must be at full weight when bought). The Procurement Office should then be named according to this (“Log Procurement Office”). The owner of the Office becomes the Procurement Officer.

 

When that resource is bought by the Procurement Officer, it is placed in the Procurement Office's storage and considered destroyed (and indeed WILL eventually be destroyed by me). No one may take anything out of the crates/bsbs/fsbs, including the Procurement Officer. The precise quantity in the crates/bsbs/fsbs will be checked against the Ledgers.

 

Specification

 

As with all the Office types that I will introduce to our cluster, the Procurement Office is a building with a given specification. If you want to own a Procurement Office, you must build a building according to the specification below and then notify me of it. I will then stock the Procurement Office with coins totalling 3 Gold so that you can begin benefitting from it.

 

  1. The Procurement Office must be built on one of the Storm islands (Whitesand, Redmyst, Farmarsh)
  2. The Procurement Office must have exactly two floors, each being at least 9 tiles large
  3. The Procurement Office must be roofed
  4. The Procurement Office must be its own building, and players should be able to hover their mouse over it to see what it is.
  5. Resources that have been bought from players should be stored in crates, bsbs, or fsbs on the lower floor
  6. The lower floor should also have a table and chair, ostensibly for the Procurement Officer to sit at while dealing with customers
  7. The upper floor houses the “office” proper, with at least a table, a chair, at least one coffer for storing the coins, and at least one cupboard for storing the Ledgers
  8. The permissions should be set so that customers may only drop items on the ground and may certainly not take items

 

Beyond this, you can decorate/design it however you like. The choice of which table and which chair is also up to you. The building may be built out of any materials.

 

I imagine it would be appealing to have a receipt or two placed on the tables for roleplaying purposes, but I recommend that you make this a dummy or duplicate receipt. The receipts shouldn’t decay inside books but would when left on a table.

 

Costs

 

There are certain costs associated with running a Procurement Office, which are shouldered by the Procurement Officer in return for their payment. These costs are:

 

  1. The materials for keeping the Ledgers: books, papyrus sheets, and ink
  2. Crates/bsbs/fsbs, or the materials for making them – keep in mind that you will constantly need to make more as they will never be emptied, and will eventually be destroyed along with their contents

 

Ledgers

 

Procurement Officers will maintain Ledgers in which they record their duties to ensure all is right and proper. There are two kinds of Ledgers, Ledger of Coin and Ledger of Custom, and the Office will accumulate as many of each kind of Ledger as necessary, storing them in the designated cupboard(s).

 

A Ledger is simply a book that is named and given a roman numeral according to how many other of that Ledger there already are (so name it “Ledger of Coin IV” if that is what it is). Each Ledger can hold 10 entries, each of which is an inscribed papyrus sheet.

 

The Ledger of Custom

 

Each entry in the Ledger of Custom represents a receipt for a single transaction. The receipt is inscribed on papyrus, and is named as the date plus a number. The first receipt created for August 25th should be named “25-8-21 1”, and the second should be named “25-8-21 2”.

 

The contents of the entry includes:

 

  1. The quantity of resources bought from the customer (note that only full weight resources may be traded, and of course the resource must be the specific one that the Office is designed for)
  2. The total amount including the percentage paid to the Procurement Officer, calculated as (1) x [current price] x 0.05 (rounded up)

 

As you can see here, the Officer gets 5% of the value of the purchase, rounded up.

 

You may record this however you like so long as you are consistent. You can be wordy or brief. A brief version would be something like: “10, 1.26c”.

 

Receipts cannot be changed once written, so in the case of an error, write a new receipt and make sure you dispose of the errored one (place it in a trash heap).

 

The Ledger of Coin

 

One entry is added to the Ledger of Coin per week, ignoring weeks when the Storm is on the island. The Procurement Officer does not need to be on every week, but when they want to act as the Procurement Officer and a new week has started since they last wrote an entry, they will need to add an entry to the Ledger of Coin (multiple entries if it has been multiple weeks since they last wrote an entry). Each entry is named according to the date and includes:

 

  1. The amount of coin currently in the coffers
  2. The total quantity of resources sold last week
  3. The next week’s new price, which will generally be either 10% more or 10% less than last week’s price

 

Write this however you like, but again be consistent. Example: “Coins in Coffers: 292.8c. Sold Last Week: x30. New Price: 0.27c”

 

To determine the price, the Procurement Officer compares the total quantity of resources bought last week with the total quantity of resources bought the week before. If more were bought recently, the price goes down 10%, rounded down to irons. If less were bought recently, the price goes up 10%, rounded up to irons. If the same amount were bought on both weeks, or there haven’t been two weeks yet, the price stays the same.

 

The initial price for all resources is 1 iron coin x the weight of the item (and a minimum of 1). The price can never go below 1 iron per item.

 

When the amount of coin in the coffers drops below 1 gold, notify me and I will restock the coffers to 3 gold, then I will destroy the non-empty bsbs/crates/fsbs. The Procurement Officer should replace the storage and add an entry in the Ledger of Coin noting that the coffers have been replenished. Keep in mind that, as Procurement Officer, you have at least earned 9.5 Silver from running the Procurement Office up to this point (at least 4.76% of the 2 gold that was taken from the coffers so far went straight to you), so this should be worth it. And likely much more since you were probably buying from yourself too.

 

Management

 

Some details regarding the management of the Procurement Office:

 

  1. The Procurement Officer is allowed to buy from themselves and building a Procurement Office expressly for the purpose of buying one’s own supply of a given resource is entirely fine.
  2. A Procurement Officer may decide they want to split the work and the pay with someone else. This would be fine so long as the Ledgers continue to show correct information. How splitting work/pay is done is entirely up to the Procurement Officer. If anything is wrong with the Ledgers, the blame will fall on the owner of the Procurement Office.
  3. Procurement Officers do not have to show up to work. If they are absent, it simply means the Procurement Office is closed.
  4. It is up to the Procurement Officer whether to buy or not. After all, they can choose to not even show up to work. The Procurement Officer’s main incentive for doing so would be manipulating the price, which is fully within their purview.
  5. Procurement Offices may be given or traded so long as I am notified of the change of ownership and the new owner assures me they agree to it. The new owner is advised to make sure the ledgers are correct before agreeing so that they are not held accountable for anything the old owner did.
  6. It may go without saying but the Procurement Officer has to actually be at the Procurement Office to act as the Procurement Officer. So when they are on another island, the Procurement Office is closed.

 

Corruption

 

It is not inconceivable to imagine players pulling off elaborate forgeries. The main weakness of this system is that the Procurement Officer could rewrite the ledger to make it look like most the sales happened at a time that increases the Officer’s pay, with the extra sale amount either going to bribing the corresponding player or indeed the Procurement Officer’s pockets. In any case this forgery would be a lot of rewriting and it would be very easy to mess up the ledger, and of course if anyone has already seen the ledger the change could be noticed.

 

In the event of corruption being exposed, whether banning takes place would depend on whether the full amount has been recovered, in addition to a penalty fine of 100% (meaning the corrupt former Officer will have to pay twice what they stole). If this full amount is paid, the corrupt Officer will be allowed to continue to play but of course they would not be trusted to be a Procurement Officer again.

 

Nonetheless there would be no hard feelings. Any players who believe they would enjoy the thrill of playing the part of a corrupt Procurement Officer are very welcome to try their best to get away with it. Indeed, if enough players set up Procurement Offices, I will introduce an Investigative Office employing detective types who go around checking ledgers.

 

Minor Errors

 

Minor errors in the ledgers will be assumed to be honest accidents, and no penalty fine would be imposed (however the missing amount should be returned to the coffers, or taken from as the case may be).

 

 

Edited by Kiama

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Wow, that is definitely something new.  I don't think it's for me - I play to escape my desk job 😁.  

 

Have you considered any of Mthec's NPC mods?   The Buyer in particular could be very useful in achieving a similar end.  I have liked the Crafter when I have come across it on WU servers but it can tend to be overpowered and exploitable.

 

 

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6 minutes ago, TheTrickster said:

Wow, that is definitely something new.  I don't think it's for me - I play to escape my desk job 😁.  

 

Have you considered any of Mthec's NPC mods?   The Buyer in particular could be very useful in achieving a similar end.  I have liked the Crafter when I have come across it on WU servers but it can tend to be overpowered and exploitable.

 

 

 

Thanks for the idea - I have seen that mod and will think about it but probably won't use it. To clear I am not purely trying to get rid of excess items - I consider this a fun concept in itself and even if no one else ever cares to build a Procurement Office, I probably will. I originally developed the idea for Offices from thinking it would be cool if there was some incentive to build certain configurations of buildings for a functionality. The ledgers concept I developed as a side effect and I'm sorry, but I just love it. I honestly don't care if no one else gets it, it is a wonderful and unique Merchant roleplaying mechanic. And whoever doesn't want to do it is not only unaffected, but can still benefit if they want to sell there.

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Whoever might be considering the Procurement Office may be pleased to hear I have greatly simplified the Ledger of Custom, making it less work to keep and more work to check. Now each entry only has 2 parts instead of 5.

Edited by Kiama

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On 8/16/2021 at 3:18 PM, TheTrickster said:

Is anyone interested in sharing deeds across different servers?

 

  Redmyst is going to be my main base, and I have a 21x22 deed (or something like that).  I was wondering if anyone was interested in a reciprocal arrangement whereby you are a citizen of my deed on Redmyst and I am a citizen of your deed on one of the other servers.  

I am. Looking forward to it! 🙂

i have a deed on whitesand which i will be extending further after the storm coming month. You are welcome to become a citizen. 

Edited by Grochar
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6 hours ago, Grochar said:

I am. Looking forward to it! 🙂

i have a deed on whitesand which i will be extending further after the storm coming month. You are welcome to become a citizen. 

Wonderful!  My deed on Redmyst is already fairly large but I am already thinking of extending again in a different direction to make a docks/waterfront. (I am up in the hills)

 

I don't know if we have to be on the same server as the deed but I will have a look this evening when I am on and if possible send you an invitation.  The deed is easy to find - just find Worfeus' and Silvie's deeds first and mine is next!  😁

(Just sail down the eastern ocean look for the east coast of the biggest island).

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Ahead of September's Stormguard reveal, I am changing advancement so that you don't have to wait a month since your last Stormguard advancement - instead you simply get one Stormguard advancement per real-world month. So you could advance at the end of August and the start of September. You will see why this change is necessary - essentially the next Stormguard choice won't be voting in the way that the last was - instead you will be making a meaningful choice for our cluster that will preclude others from making a choice involving what you chose (trying not to give too much away). It will be first come, first serve for the most critical choices that there are to make, and while that isn't ideal, I believe it is preferable to the alternative.

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Thomas, Lvl 1 Stormguard  Knarr Whitesands, 4x sleeping powder

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