Price Changes...

[kalos72]

Three posts is my limit per night so here it goes.

Shouldnt prices for certain things be changing as the game goes on? The more rare something gets or the more useless it becomes.

IE - As fuel gets more and more rare, shouldn't its cost go up? As M1A1 tanks become more and more useless, shouldn't the prices come down?

Discuss...

[Legbreaker]

Absolutely! However I can only see armour becoming MORE valuable as time passes.
Sure they may not be in perfect shape, ammunition is scarce, fuel consumption prohibitive, etc, but just the threat value alone of having the only tank within a hundred miles has got to be worth something. Take Krakow for an example. Only about a third of their full tank strength is even mobile, however the immobile tanks are still worth more than their weight in gold as strongpoints, decoys, etc.

Aircraft are another item that could only increase in value. Fuel may be next to impossible to find, but just having one, and making it known to your enemies, forces them to adjust their plans to account for it, just in case you decide to burn the last few drops of avgas...

Supply and demand will always rule, no matter if it be T2K, the dark ages or even today, October 2009. Prices will usually be low in areas of great supply and extremely high where those same items are rare, provided of course there is demand (unlikely to be able to give away snow shoes in the tropics for example, no matter how rare they are).

[kalos72]

Thats true, but for the community with an M1A! sitting on the road outside of town, no mechanic to fix it, no ammo to fire and no clue how to run is pretty much worthless to them no?

Now buying it from a military unit or marauder group would follow your thinking I guess.

But for diesel the price should triple I would think...

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Thats true, but for the community with an M1A1 sitting on the road outside of town, no mechanic to fix it, no ammo to fire and no clue how to run is pretty much worthless to them no?

Most definately NO! It's worth an absolute truckload to them!

Just because nobody knows how to fix it and there's no ammo does not reduce it's value. How does a potential enemy know it's a non-runner and can't hurt anything that doesn't walk into it face first? Bluff value alone makes it worth the effort!

As a trade item it's also going to be worth a hell of a lot. Any military, paramilitary or even maurader group is going to want it, for parts if nothing else. Sure they might just come and take it, but if the community that "owns" it play their cards right and protect it from outright theft, they could come out of the deal a whole lot richer than they went in!

Value of oil based products (fuel, lubrication, etc) will flutuate, again through supply and demand. Diesel for example might become so rare that it's value as a fuel is almost nil. It could well be that everyone is set up for coal, wood, alcohol, etc and so when some diesel does come available, the demand (as a fuel) simply isn't there.

Also, fuel is still being brought in to Europe, albeit in a trickle. Take the Soviet counteroffensive that destroyed the US 5th ID for example - the Soviet units were running on a months production from the Ploesti oilfields in Romania. Some of this fuel was syphoned off and sold on the black market.

And of course that was just one months production from one area. There are still other fields producing (trickling anyway), so supply isn't likely to dry up completely. Demand as touched on above is likely to be the driving force in this case.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Shouldnt prices for certain things be changing as the game goes on? The more rare something gets or the more useless it becomes.

Yes.

[jester]

Ah love the tank sitting out front of the village theory, same same with the letting it be known you have a working aircraft.

Yes, it will make an enemy alter their plans accordngly. But, also, it makes you a threat and if there is a local maruader you are a threat to his control. So he will throw all his resources at you. Then, when you are under attack and your non working tank is found to be just that well you are crushed.

Or, they may just not bother and just drop a long barrage on you and your armor agaiin smashing all you have because of the percieved threat.

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by jester

Yes, it will make an enemy alter their plans accordngly. But, also, it makes you a threat and if there is a local maruader you are a threat to his control. So he will throw all his resources at you. Then, when you are under attack and your non working tank is found to be just that well you are crushed.

As a result, I'll be trading RPGs ammo and AT rounds. Your tank make them much more valuable: 3 RPGs rockets and 5 AT 100mm rounds for 3 vehicles (1 armored) and 1000 liters of diesel.

[Legbreaker]

It's definately a situation thing. The tank located a few hundred metres outside the village perimeter is likely to be more of a problem than a resource and it's probable the "owners" will seek to trade it as soon as they can.
Same tank located in or on the perimeter on the other hand.....

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by kalos72

Shouldnt prices for certain things be changing as the game goes on? The more rare something gets or the more useless it becomes.

Honest, I've never really thought of that, and I'm ashamed I didn't! But then again, I've always used T2K prices as a base -- an M-60 machinegun might be relatively cheap in a place like Krakow, while in a place somewhere that's lucky to have enough hunting rifles and handguns for half the fighting population, you might get a place to hole up for the whole winter in exchange for an M-60 and some ammo.

[General Pain]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Most definately NO! It's worth an absolute truckload to them!

Just because nobody knows how to fix it and there's no ammo does not reduce it's value. How does a potential enemy know it's a non-runner and can't hurt anything that doesn't walk into it face first? Bluff value alone makes it worth the effort!

As a trade item it's also going to be worth a hell of a lot. Any military, paramilitary or even maurader group is going to want it, for parts if nothing else. Sure they might just come and take it, but if the community that "owns" it play their cards right and protect it from outright theft, they could come out of the deal a whole lot richer than they went in!

Value of oil based products (fuel, lubrication, etc) will flutuate, again through supply and demand. Diesel for example might become so rare that it's value as a fuel is almost nil. It could well be that everyone is set up for coal, wood, alcohol, etc and so when some diesel does come available, the demand (as a fuel) simply isn't there.

Also, fuel is still being brought in to Europe, albeit in a trickle. Take the Soviet counteroffensive that destroyed the US 5th ID for example - the Soviet units were running on a months production from the Ploesti oilfields in Romania. Some of this fuel was syphoned off and sold on the black market.

And of course that was just one months production from one area. There are still other fields producing (trickling anyway), so supply isn't likely to dry up completely. Demand as touched on above is likely to be the driving force in this case.

I must agree .

I addition a M1A1 or equivilant would be very valuable as parts or bluff value - and from a GMs point of view it would be an excellent adventure plot

TEAM A : Ammo and fuel for a M1A1
TEAM B : MIA1 no ammo or fuel
TEAM C : PCs (party) who either is allready on a side or may choose....
TEAM D : need parts from the M1A1 for their M1A1....
let the game start......

[kalos72]

I can see the point about things like the tanks...but what about fuel?

Surely diesel would double or triple at this point no?

[Legbreaker]

See my comments in post #4 above on that.
As demand dries up due to other energy and fuel sources being increasingly used, value will decrease. This is likely to be countered by a possible decrease in supply thereby leaving prices relatively stable.

[jester]

Ah! But with fuel, you also have the issue of it going bad as well. So those with fuel have the ticking clock to contend with, how long before the fuel goes bad.

[Legbreaker]

Shhh, that's one of those technicallities we like to ignore!

[Targan]

I can relate to price changes in T2K through what happened during a segment of my campaign. Admittedly it was a micro version of the macro economics this thread is focussing on. Major Anthony Po, the CO of the party in my campaign, had been tasked with finding the NYC gold reserves and organising a census but he didn't like the idea of the second task at all so he came to the conclusion that a census would be much easier to conduct if most of the inhabitants of NYC were dead. To that end he started having representatives of his unit attend the regular street markets in NYC disguised as traders. Po instituted a strict trade policy - he bought food (more than he needed for his own men) and sold low-grade weapons and ammunition. The idea was that the inhabitants of NYC would eventually starve while shooting each other (I don't think Po had a realistic idea of how many survivors there were in NYC at the time).

Unfortunately Po's unit ended up in conflict with a CIA-led group in NYC that was also looking for the gold reserves and they had several shoot-outs in and around the markets. Eventually the shoot-outs became so regular and so violent that the markets occurred less and less frequently. Over the half a dozon or so markets that Po's men attended however there were defnite changes to the price of some commodities. Weapons and ammo prices came down and food prices went up.

[Legbreaker]

Here's a little something I wrote a couple of years ago I feel is relevant.


For the frontline soldier, the first two things they'll start to miss are Tobacco and Coffee. Now, any decent military will have a pretty nice supply of Ye Olde Java, but cigarettes will become more scarce, since smokers will probably be smoking MORE (Nuclear apocalypse is a pretty stressful thing), while non-smokers might just start. Civilians will want both of those, along with the stuff already mentioned, (salt, pepper, soap, etc.) I can see the guy who was driving a truck for Shoprite when the faeces hit the fan doing quite well on the growing black market.

Something that needs to be kept in mind is that globally, the war and associated diseases, famine and social unrest have claimed over 50% of the worlds population - that's in the order of about 3 BILLION people. Areas such as Silesia in south-western Poland had been hit even harder. From a pre-war population of 3 million, there are barely 100,000 by mid 2000. That's 29 out of every 30 people dead (though probably not buried).

So what does this mean for the luxury items such as soap, tobacco and so on? Well for a start the immediately available stocks of said items have a much lower demand. This is of course more than offset by the almost total lack of a distribution network. While many areas have a serious shortage, other areas (production regions or warehousing facilities) might just have more than anyone could dream of. The continued existence of these stockpiles could be put down to all the workers in the area having succumbed to the various diseases, moved away to a better area (take the mass migration in the US during 2001 due to the drought), or perhaps able bodied persons being drafted, enslaved or otherwise forcibly removed.

As time goes past of course, trade routes would begin to reopen as enterprising individuals and groups stumble upon these stockpiles or re-establish communications using animal drawn caravans and the odd alcohol powered vehicle. Items that originated in far-flung parts of the globe would remain in extremely short supply (spices from the orient in western Europe for example) with the occasional injection into the market from the aforementioned stocks. Small amounts would also be scavenged from the dead (cigarettes, soap, etc), abandoned houses and shops. Most of this "ready supply" would be quickly exhausted as people caught on to the benefits gained with looting.

Salt and sugar aren't too hard to produce locally. If close to the sea, drying pans filled with sea water can provide copious amounts within the space of a few weeks (much longer in colder climates or winter). Salt mines are also another option and would once more become profitable.

Sugar can be produced from cane (in tropical regions) or sugarbeet in colder latitudes. Other than that, there are plenty of sweet substitutes, honey being a prime example.