acka-research Digest Tuesday, December 22 1998 Volume 03 : Issue 304 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: K 2 Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3956 Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 01:46:49 -0500 (EST) jtraub@dragoncat.net wrote: > {{ All players who own a The Really Big Blue Thing That Doesn't Do Too > Much, Really become Zzimsy players. All The Really Big Blue Thing That > Doesn't Do Too Much, Reallys are destroyed. }} All The Really Big Blue Thing That Doesn't Do Too Much, Reallys have already been destroyed K 2 ------------------------------ From: jobollin@iumsc4.chem.indiana.edu (John Bollinger) Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3957 Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 17:19:48 -0500 (EST) >Proposal 3957 >taking the oomph out of it >Trent >Due: Mon Dec 28 18:17:32 1998 > > >{{[I highly doubt that this will pass, but I really hope it does. With the >repeals of so much going on right now, and the big shifts in emphasis, i >thought the time was ripe for a repeal of A$. This first change is not >radical, and is very preliminary... it doesn't repeal trinkets, etc... it >still probably won't pass, but oh well...]}} I have some problems with this, although in general I support removing one of (points and A$). I have omitted the provisions with which I am not taking issue, even though I don't particularly care for some of them, either. >replace 'A$' with 'points' in rule 401 [salaries] This would lead to some rather enormous point gains for those players who hold multiple functional offices. >remove item c of rule 427 Only part of this item bears on A$; the other part is an important responsability of the Org-Harfer which should not be removed. >repeal rule 516 (Auction) >repeal rule 520 (Auction 'em Entities) Auctions could certainly be converted to use points; I don't see why they must be removed. If Auctions stay then so can Auction 'em Entities, which does serve a useful purpose. >in rule 607, remove item b and renumber You might as well remove nemesis eggplants altogether if you are going to do this. There is absolutely no point to them otherwise. >in rule 666, remove items e and f (tax and end-of-cycle money) Thus there will be (almost) no persistent scorekeeping token. More on that later. > remove the paragraph that begins 'The Mad Hatters are permitted' [it can >be fixed better later] If you leave in auctions then you can leave this in instead of fixing it up later. >repeal rule 821 If we are converting to using points for currency then we can convert Real Estate transactions to the same basis. I see no need to dump land. >in rule 825, > remove section I ii > replace section II with > 'i) Buildings may only be constructed as defined by the rules' > remove section V iii and V iv I think we should keep land, and the associated attributes of buildings. I particularly think that there should be some compensation for those players who have accumulated A$ and other entities that this proposal would eliminate. Consider points and A$ for a minute. Both are scorekeeping tokens of a sort, in that accumulations of these things represent achievements in the game. Points disappear at cycle's end, but A$ do not. A$ are used as a medium of exchange to acquire other entities, but points are only redeemable under rather limiting conditions. A$ are much more manipulable than points -- that is, you can do things with A$. My preferred model for a unified currency would be based on the A$ schema instead of on the points schema. A$ would work just as they do now, but players who accumulate enough of them would be able to redeem them for cycle wins. Players who didn't care to win could instead use their A$ for other things, or could just keep accumulating them. There would be no need to eliminate most of the many of the A$-based things that the proposal on the table now dumps. This scheme also makes cycle wins more accessable to less active players who are willing to build up to the threshold slowly. In the end, the principal differences between my suggestion and Trent's are that mine has the scorekeeping tokens persist from cycle to cycle whereas his has them disappearing at the end of each cycle, and that mine keeps almost all of the things we currently do with A$ whereas his eliminates many of them. Whether we call the scorekeeping token A$ or points is really immaterial. One way to approach this more slowly might be to establish the possibility of two-way conversion between points and A$. This would give us a chance to balance things out a bit before wholly eliminating one thing or the other. ThinMan ------------------------------ From: JT Subject: Re: Acka: Proposal 3957 Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 17:27:12 -0500 (EST) On Tue, 22 Dec 1998, John Bollinger wrote: >Consider points and A$ for a minute. Both are scorekeeping tokens of a >sort, in that accumulations of these things represent achievements in the >game. Points disappear at cycle's end, but A$ do not. A$ are used as >a medium of exchange to acquire other entities, but points are only >redeemable under rather limiting conditions. A$ are much more manipulable >than points -- that is, you can do things with A$. > >My preferred model for a unified currency would be based on the A$ schema >instead of on the points schema. A$ would work just as they do now, but >players who accumulate enough of them would be able to redeem them for >cycle wins. Players who didn't care to win could instead use their A$ >for other things, or could just keep accumulating them. There would be >no need to eliminate most of the many of the A$-based things that the >proposal on the table now dumps. This scheme also makes cycle wins more >accessable to less active players who are willing to build up to the >threshold slowly. Amusingly enough (and rather unsurprisingly) this is something I had considered and have been slowly working on a draft for called 'experience'. I would have replaced the currents points system with an experience points system that was persistant and tied 'level' to the number of cycle wins with a level achievable by gaining a certain amount of experience or doing a certain thing (like agenda hats). Given this discussion, I will probably finish this proposal at some point and RFC it or just propose it depending on how comfy I am with it. One thing that mine wouldn't do would be to remove A$ as I see the need for a transferrable and a non-transferrable 'currency'. (with points/exp being the non-transferrable and the A$ being the transferrable). --JT [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. ] [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ] [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] ------------------------------ End of acka-research Digest V3 #304 ***********************************