It's Not. Going. To. Stop.
Rigour6
About a month ago, I ran a series on the Erep Economy, explaining the phenomenon of chronic oversupply and the crash in prices that will inevitably follow. As players have noted, that collapse is more or less underway.
I am writing a quick note today to reiterate to those tempted to see this as a temporary downturn - don't kid yourself. Yes, there will be fluctuations in the market (the present downturn has been exacerbated by the missions completing, they siphoned up some of the market surplus temporarily, but didn't address the underlying supply glut, so now we are rebounding heavily downward) but the trend is inexorable until systemic changes are made.
For now, the drop in prices has already reached the point where any investment in new companies at this point is a bad one. Hold your gold and wait and see what comes next. Because unless and until the admins address the market fundamentals, it's not going to stop. There is no natural floor in prices above a very few pennies, and even that one might get surpassed by people willing to work just for XP.
It's gonna get worse before it gets better, folks.
N by NE Volume 6, Number 5
Comments
"....by people willing to work just for XP"
You hit the nail on the head. Unless you are working in your own high Q factory to resell, there is no point in working at your companies unless the XP are important to you. Even then, the XP is only important if you are hard up for that 1g OR you are a career politician looking for that tie-breaker.
Cheap raw materials are so abundant, you are much better off buying it and using that 10 health to fight instead of work.
Yup, that is the floor we're heading toward. More XP is not enticing enough to spare health and fights. Better to focus on self-supply mainly for food and guns...if you can afford to save towards that these days. I'm going into strength training now. It's the only investment that adds to a player's ability.
I don't think I understand correctly the value of "strength training" as stated above. It looks like the you are match in battle to your enemy by strength (+ or - a few points ). If this is so then the stronger you become, the stronger the enemy you are match to. What is the advantage of being stronger if your enemy is still somewhat equal to you ??. At what point do you gain any advantage in combat??
I produce the RM's needed to run my food factory and my two weaps factories. Still need to buy weap RM's every day though. I did have a 3,510 surplus of Food RM's, but I stopped producing all of those a few days ago.
@smoot: you don't gain an advantage in one sense. The "value" in strength training comes from the Super Soldier medals.
To add on, strength training also contributes to the ability to deal more influence in battle, the key component to the Battle Hero, Campaign Hero, Top Fighter, Mercenary, True Patriot, and possibly even the Resistance Hero medals.
It seems the game is becoming increasingly skewed towards the military aspect.