Setting up a Towny Server with a healthy economy
Not a plugin guide, an economy guide!
Most towny servers out there totally miss the point of a towny server, its all about having fun like a capitalist. That is by making money, so when I see a server that has a town set up cost of $15,000 and then a daily tax of $50 I feel a little let down by the "hardcore economy" title on the PMC page.
The purpose of this blog is to think "aloud" about how a towny server should be run, without getting all complicated and adding in plugins that end up hindering the towny experience, I'll start with a few of my thoughts and I encourage all to comment, share and most of all let lose some criticism.
Local Economy
Towny is about making money, each player is expected to pay a tax each day and each town is also expected to pay an upkeep, but if the players struggle to make money then this ends here, with the player.
There is a plugin that almost all towny server are using called "jobs". This plugin lets players select a job and be paid for doing what ever that job covers for example the digger job pays the player for digging using a shovel. The problem with this for me is how unrealistic it is, and I think it limits the possibilities If a player can get all the money they need from a job then why bother joining a town, and if the player doesn't need to join a town then why are they on the server? in short they get bored and leave the server.
The alternative to this is much harder, the server admin and to a lesser extent the local mayor must create an economy that allows player to profit from one another. I'll cover server economy with detail later.
The local economy relies massively on the server economy, that is, the way in which all players earn money and the price of everything from food to town upkeep to plot tax. The local economy of two towns can be very different though. Just like how two countries in real life can have different economies towns in a towny server can be very different with more profit to be made in one town and cheaper housing (plots) in another.
The basic idea is a mayor will have to balance the amount of tax he charges with the amount of money his residents make, as well as protecting businesses and homes at the same time. A lot of small servers allow hundreds of towns because the cost of running a town is so cheap one person can do it - this is not realistic, does your mayor pay your rent?
My solution for the above problems
- Founding a new Town should be expensive - this is to make sure only players with experience of making money can be mayor.
- shops should be limited to shop plots by server rules - to many towns have shops dotted around, this is bad for a towns economy and whilst some are happy for mayors to decide to impose this or not I think it should be a server standard to add more realism to the server.
- A towns daily upkeep should be relative to the size of the town and not $50 for a town with 50 residents. It should also be more than one player can provide - when using the "upkeep per plot" method of upkeep, the formula is (upkeep X residents) so a town with 10 residents would be $500 for example this means large towns must be profitable for residents in order to charge the tax needed.
- Towns should not be limited on size or number of residents - this one is obvious
Server economy
The server economy is the cost of everything, this starts at the top and filters down until everything is effected by one cost. In towny this is the upkeep cost. The amount each mayor is charged for his/her town will dictate the amount they charge their residents and then this will effect the cost of the residents service or product. Here is an example to make things clear:-
- The upkeep of a town is $50 per resident, Richville has 5 residents so its upkeep is $250 per day.
- The mayor of Richville decides to charge each resident $55 tax collected each day at noon.
- The richest resident "moneybags33" has a shop that sells diamonds for $100 and he sell 3 a day, more than enough for his tax.
- The poorest resident "crazy_bill" sells bread for $1, he sells 60 a day so only just covers his tax.
- The server admin puts the upkeep cost up to $60 a day, Richville must now pay $300 per day.
- The mayor puts tax up to $65
- Moneybads33 is fine and ignores the change
- Crazy_bill is not fine and is kickout out of town when he cant pay his tax - he later leaves the server and tells his friends "the server is no fun because you cant make enough money"
- Without food the other residents start to die, making their work hard! also now they have to get their own food which takes up time and now they dont have time to make money. Eventually everyone is out of money and leaves the town, maybe even the server.
The above example shows a few things:
- How server economy can ruin a small town with a bad economy
- The small price hike has filtered down to a big rise for crazybill
- How a mayor can ruin a town with a bad economy
- if the mayor had charged a percentage instead of a flat rate moneybags would have payed more than crazybill and the town would still be profiting and expanding.
- How each member of a town relies on each other.
- without crazybill to feed the residents the town fell apart, even moneybags ends up in trouble without anyone to buy his diamonds.
- The cost of each town must be realistic, if not the filter effect will ruin all the town and then the server. Although as shown above this town could have survived, with better management.
The server economy effects everything that happens on the server, without a strong server economy the towns will fade away, and if the towns are not been charged enough the originally intended fun of towny is not there.
The single most important factor of server economy is how more money is introduced, most servers are giving money away for free thanks to "votifier", which rewards players with money for voting for the server. This is handy for getting free publicity and its not a bad way to give people money, but there is another more realistic way and I think more fun. "job" is not good as mentioned above, but if the server provides a shop to buy rare items like Diamonds, Emeralds and to a lesser extent Gold then the players can earn their money and after setting themselves up with a renewable income, such as a shop, they don't need to do this anymore. However new players will continue to do this and then spend their money at the shop and so on. The major problem with this however is you need a constant stream of new players, or you need some players to chose not to set up a shop or enchanter or what ever method others are using to earn cash which does happen.
To many servers have shops that sell everything and at such a low price that players cannot compete with it, making shops in a town pointless. Its a good idea to sell a few things to help new players get started, such as food or basic tools. But these should be at a higher then average price so players can set up a shop that undercuts the server shop.
The server economy should not be fixed, but often is. There are a few complicated plugins that actively raise or lower the cost of some key items, such as diamonds, that can be sold and bought from the server shop. and these are great but are open to abuse. In the real world a computer doesn't decide when to charge more for gold, people do, supply and demand control prices.
I have found all the current "stock" plugins to be flawed in one way or another, and most work off the same formula, so a team of three can make millions in a few hours if the wanted by buying one item and crafting it into another and selling it back to the server.
Generally speaking the admin of a server can set an average price for the key items and then never touch it again without major issue, but to add realism the admin could increase the price when demand for the key items is high and lower the price when demand is low. So if players have stopped selling diamonds to the server shop they are most likely selling them in their own shop of crafting them and selling the final product, now would be a good time to increase the price of diamonds at the server shop to encourage people to sell direct to them. This is a dangerous area though and playing about with a servers economy can make things hard for players, in the above example the players selling diamond armour and tools will now struggle to get a sale as everyone is buying from the server shop.
In my experience its best to set an average price using this formula
a = (b / c) x 10
a = Diamond sell price to the server shop
b = Amount of diamonds 1 person could hope to mine in 1 hour
c = Average resident tax
This formula means players can earn enough to pay their tax for a few days, and for the more devoted miner, set up a town in a few days. As well as giving groups a chance to set up a town in a few hours without joining a town - and that's an important note, some groups don't want to join a town they want to set one up ASAP.
I've worked hard using branch mining to get up to 64 diamonds in 1 hour (even more with enchanted pickaxes and a high mcmmo level) so for the example above at Richville it would be:
a = (64 / 55) x 10
a = 11.6
So a stack of diamonds will get you about $740. Which doesn't seem like much, but this is the point, if money bags is selling his diamonds for $100 each he's making a huge profit, but will have to deal with competition of course.
With these basic principles in place a servers economy should be healthy with a few small towns growing after about a week, depending on the setup cost of a town. It will always help to have a server town that players can join right away, to start making money towards setting up their own town.
I would everyone to comment on this economy guide, more short guides will be given soon. And remember the point is for me to think aloud - I have run a few servers and plan on setting up another soon with a new style of town/faction plugin. This blog serves a way of jotting down my thoughts and improving upon them!
