Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Proposal: the lone contractor

Self Killed. Failed by Derrick.

Adminned at 25 Apr 2019 11:19:54 UTC

Add the following after the first atomic action listed in Contracts

If it has been 60 hours or more since the last bid on a project with only bids from 1 contractor, the Great Eccentric may “Award” a project by taking the following atomic action:
*Make a blog post stating the name of the project being awarded. This post is known as the project’s contract.
*In the contract state which contractor had the lowest bid. This is known as the project’s winner.
*List double the amount of the lowest bid. This is known as the project’s prize
*Resolve the resource ranges in the project’s estimation, and list this in the contract. This is known as the project’s cost.
*Change the status of the project to “contracted”

It’s probable that a contractor might be the only one to ever bid on a project. perhaps the others don’t want to lose their infrastructure by changing sites and so on.

posted by card at 23 Apr 2019 05:23:00 UTC Comments (7)

Comments

Kevan: Concierge he/him

23-04-2019 08:34:20 UTC

against It’s very likely. But double the bid is a huge bonus for that player - usually you’d expect second place to be only slightly above your own bid. This would add back weird incentives for everyone to bid on projects they didn’t want, to stop another player from getting too big a reward for them.

derrick: he/him

23-04-2019 11:30:58 UTC

against

If only one contractor is bidding, its probably an indication that the project isn’t ready to be bid on yet.

naught:

23-04-2019 14:31:02 UTC

against Per derrick and Kevan

card:

25-04-2019 01:47:36 UTC

against
What would be a good amount then? You can’t have then earn only what they put in, since you’re losing net funds via resources. A fixed number doesn’t seem right since the other contracts are determined via bidding.

Kevan: Concierge he/him

25-04-2019 09:15:47 UTC

Not sure what you mean by “put in” here. A sole winner would be picking a number out of the air, and being given that much money. Even having the prize as 5% of the bid would allow a lucky sole winner to bid $99999B and do very well out of it.

Kevan: Concierge he/him

25-04-2019 10:23:49 UTC

Although in reality you’d be second-guessing against rational just-high-enough bids from other players, to avoid handing someone else that $99999B.

I think the pick-any-number project auction probably needs an overhaul to avoid lucrative edge cases, but my suggestion failed.

derrick: he/him

25-04-2019 11:17:26 UTC

Its possible that a blind auction is the wrong mechanic and that players should be able to see what others are bidding.

I don’t think that a contract with only one bid should be awarded. Though really, all contractors should be bidding on all contracts. If you have to bid really high to make a project worth it, bid really high.