Store Prices/Rent calculation.

[Bodger]

Basic idea: To make less "desirable" shops to still able to stay open while giving larger stores a decent expense to pay so they don't get excessively rich.

First off, the "startup cost" should be calculated based off:
1) A base cost from how good the property is location wise and how big it is.
2) Additions from the choice of permits for initial stock to be given.

So somewhere like Victory-3 could cost (Depending on the permits/Price of stock from the permit) anywhere from say 250 to 800.
While Indigent-1 could be 150-400.


As for rent, each permit should be assigned a value based off how much of a demand there'll be for the things on the permit. Things like Alcohol or Clothing would be at the high end, and something like the writing permit would be near the bottom. Here's an example of what the values may be

Spoiler: Example List

Permits Prime:
Clothing 80c
Alcohol 100c (Lower if regular alcohol is removed and made illegal)
Tools 80c
Ingredients 80c
Printing 50c

Permits Second:
Electronics 60c
Snacks 50c
Non-Alcoholic 60c
Storage 50c
Writing 40c

Luxury 100c

Using this, we can start to make the basic formula for rent. Half of a persons startup cost + their permits + 10% for security.
The exact details of what things cost can still be changed, the values used here aren't definitive.

 

[Gazzpacho]

ok ok

 

[AdamCF]

I made a sort of formula thing that gets you these results for the current stores we have

Spoiler: Rent prices"[COLOR=rgb(20, 20, 20)]

[/COLOR]
The Summit pays 220 rent
Quill pays 80 rent
Helena's pays 110 rent
Ludwig's pays 185 rent
Royalty Apparel pays 215 rent
Mark's general store pays 115 rent
Bonfire pays 240 rent
Maryam's pays 90 rent
Monte pays 275 rent
Spencer's pays 100 rent

So, it's the same idea with a different process and result. I'll explain how the formula I came up with works, but it's just a suggestion. It's less complicated than it sounds.

Spoiler: math

The main equation thing is rent = 35 + (25 * the number of employees) + the quality of the store + the total quality of the permits

Amount of employees is just the amount of employees. A store with 3 people + the manager will have an additional 75c, whereas a store with no extra employees will need to pay no additional money.

The quality of the store is more subjective, but it's based on location, size, and versatility. A small store with limited uses, such as Indigent-1, would be considered a low-quality or low-value store. This means it's worth only an additional 25 credits per week.
A medium-sized store, such as Triumph-1, would be considered a medium-quality store and worth an additional 50 per month.
And lastly, a large store such as Indigent-2 would be worth 80 credits per week.
Obviously, you can change these values as much as you like, but this is what I have them set to for my examples

So, assuming we had 2 employees and we're using a med-value store such as Victory-4, we would have 35 + 75 + 50, totalling 160 per week. but that still leaves permits


Permits follow the same system of more quality = more price. The quality of the permit depends on the cost of the items included in the permit, the amount of items, the range of items, and is again a mostly subjective value that the business leads can change as they wish.

Let's say our example store has an Ingredients and Non-Alcoholic permit. Ingredients, in my system, is a mid-value permit while Non-Alcoholic is a high value one. That's 20c + 30c, which is 50c.

Our old total was 160, so we'll add 50 onto that and we get our final weekly rent total of 210.

I got a quick codey thing working to do all this for me though, so I used that to get all the rent prediction things above.

 

[Sagsworth]

More complicated is not better, honestly having a rent system is already disentive for people to own shops. Making it awkward and weird beyond that just puts more people off. Running a faction already can feel like a second job, keep it as simple and easy as possible for the people running the faction and managing stores.

 

[Bodger]

More complicated is not better, honestly having a rent system is already disentive for people to own shops. Making it awkward and weird beyond that just puts more people off. Running a faction already can feel like a second job, keep it as simple and easy as possible for the people running the faction and managing stores.

This is hardly "complicated", not to mention, store owners have nothing to do with rent both under the current rent system or my suggestion

 

[AdamCF]

More complicated is not better, honestly having a rent system is already disentive for people to own shops. Making it awkward and weird beyond that just puts more people off. Running a faction already can feel like a second job, keep it as simple and easy as possible for the people running the faction and managing stores.

I wouldn't say it's complicated, and having rent set at a single specific amount causes problems (e.g lower-income and RP-focused businesses unable to pay rent, higher-income businesses getting insanely rich)

 

[Atle]

@Pineapple

 

[AdamCF]

Pretty sure pineapple's gonna wait until after launch to think about all this

 

[Deleted member 624]

Isn't this a problem that the Administrator should handle? I don't understand why you have to use OOC means to make it easier for yourself.

 

[Bodger]

Isn't this a problem that the Administrator should handle? I don't understand why you have to use OOC means to make it easier for yourself.

Yeah lemme just hop on and ask the administrator in-game

 

[Sagsworth]

I wouldn't say it's complicated, and having rent set at a single specific amount causes problems (e.g lower-income and RP-focused businesses unable to pay rent, higher-income businesses getting insanely rich)

It's more complicated than flat rent
It's more complicated than just handing out business licenses and letting people do their thing

I just see no benefit to doing this at all at the cost of making things more difficult. What outcome will come from this suggestion that is good? Sure it may not seem like much, but every small change you make to make things more complicated will add up, so you need to see some actual gain from it rather than "well the system seems kinda neat"

 

[AdamCF]

What outcome will come from this suggestion that is good?

Rent will be lowered or raised depending on how much money you're predicted to make. Right now, stores like the Quill and Parchment (a newspaper company) are very unlikely to make their 125c weekly rent, despite creating RP and newspapers. The current system restricts stores to ones that are highly profitable, which are pretty much just clothing stores and bars. The rent should change dynamically to give each business type a decent chance at survival regardless of how much profit they're expected to bring in. RP-Focussed businesses aren't expected to make much money, so having a high rent pretty much dooms them.

 

[AdamCF]

Plus, this is as simple as putting a couple numbers in a calculator once every month or two to change the rent prices.

 

[Gazzpacho]

man, the server didn't open, don't get fucking upset over how expensive the rent is, for real

 

[Sagsworth]

Right now, stores like the Quill and Parchment (a newspaper company) are very unlikely to make their 125c weekly rent,

It sounds like you picked the wrong shop considering rent can be 30 or 50 a week. If you pick a giant storefront, your rent will be big, even in this system.

 

[Bodger]

It's more complicated than flat rent
It's more complicated than just handing out business licenses and letting people do their thing

I just see no benefit to doing this at all at the cost of making things more difficult. What outcome will come from this suggestion that is good? Sure it may not seem like much, but every small change you make to make things more complicated will add up, so you need to see some actual gain from it rather than "well the system seems kinda neat"

The benefit is to take money out of the economy so we don't have as much inflation.

It sounds like you picked the wrong shop considering rent can be 30 or 50 a week. If you pick a giant storefront, your rent will be big, even in this system.

Ah yes, those sweet low 30 credit rents. The point is that we want rent to be more with bigger stores, as bigger stores will more likely be popular, and therefore make more money. If that money is never removed from circulation there'll be massive inflation to the point where money doesn't mean anything.

 

[Gazzpacho]

my gosh this debate

 

[Sagsworth]

Bruh I have been terribly misinformed about how expensive rent is jfc

 

[Bodger]

Bruh I have been terribly misinformed about how expensive rent is jfc

Lmao you were probably told about startup costs which are between 30-50c

 

[Pineapple]

You've stumbled right into my trap - enjoy getting robbed blind!

In all seriousness, I'm unlikely to change it in much of a major way before launch - all this 'we can't make enough money' is purely anecdotal; if it turns out the first-week rent is far too high, it's as easy as changing one number in a spreadsheet and one number in a PDA to make it all alright again. I might consider lowering the rent for all of the shops by 25-50 prior to launch, but I won't be implementing any funky maths systems until after launch (if we even need them).

I'm more than happy to take criticism on the issue, but without any real evidence to back it up we're making changes that might not necessarily solve our problems - that's something I want to avoid if we're using a system that has us whip out the calculator every month.