Re: [MUD-Dev] Containing automation?

[Laurel Fan <lf25+@andrew.cmu.edu>]

Excerpts from muddev: 19-Jul-99 RE: [MUD-Dev] Containing au.. by Charles
Hughes#bigfoot,c 
> and scarcity. If a bot is continually buying material and creating a good
> then the material will start to increase in value as it gets consumed, 
> and the good will decrease in value as it becomes more available. Eventually,
> it will cost more to produce the good than the good can be sold for, and/or
> the materials to create the good will no longer be available.

However, this doesn't fix the problem... the bot can continue to
buy/create/sell until it figures out that it impossible/undesirable to
do so. Since there is essentially no cost to produce these items
(because time is presumably the only cost, and a bot takes up no "human"
time (well, actually, not quite, if there are other bott-able activities
that are potentially higher value, but presumably these would be higher
value for non-bots as well.)), the best strategy for a bot is to do
this.  This also punishes non-botting players, nt only because their
"costs" are higher, but further because the bot will essentially have
ruined a sector of the economy, encouraging these players to write
competing bots or to give up on trade goods.







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