Get Paid To Rule Your World

As the initial slogan implies, @drugwars is a place to earn money given a system of strategy. You have to dominate the game in a mathematical competition to earn value. The strategy in @drugwars clearly relies on the battle system, so we sit on our hands waiting for battles to reopen.

However, what actually happens when battles reopen? We are still giving 3% of the reward pool per day to accounts that are simply producing resources. These accounts don't have to play the game to get rewards. These accounts aren't incentivized to put more money into the game. The payout structure is still completely unsustainable.

The object of a game like @drugwars is to keep players active and spending money. What is the advantage of having one large account that is getting blocked by logarithmic soft caps as opposed to running a bot army of multiple accounts? That is the ultimate problem that @drugwars will need to solve.

If the battle system becomes complicated enough running a bot army will not be viable because the bots will not be able to make the correct decisions. However, the payout structure needs to compliment the battle system.

New Payout Structure

Obviously, getting paid simply for producing drugs has got to go. We can't be paying accounts for zero skill and zero interaction. This means 100% of the payout needs to go to the Heist (or some other mechanism yet to be invented).

Unfortunately the Heist in its current form doesn't have any strategy to it either.
You can simply add drugs to the Heist without being at risk of theft.

Point System

This is why we need to incorporate a new point system into the Heist. In this new system you are awarded shares based on how many drugs you donated in a single lump sum. I assume this needs to be some kind of quadratic equation. For simplicity, lets say the point system equation is x^2.

By squaring x times x, where x is the number of drugs you put into the Heist, accounts have far more incentive to hold drugs for as long as they can and then add them to the heist for rewards.

For example, one account that only donated 50,000 drugs to the Heist would get 2.5 billion reward shares, but another account that donated twice as much (100,000) would get 10 billion reward shares.

Delay that order!

We can also add a delay to being able to actually get the drugs into the Heist, so that if a player starts attacking someone with a big stash they can't just ditch that huge stash at the first sign of trouble.

For example, once you announce your intention to add a huge lump of drugs to the Heist, only 1000 drugs cross over every block, giving players enough time to attack your account and steal some of the drugs that haven't been sent over yet. For point of reference, it would take someone five minutes (100 blocks; 300 seconds) to add 100,000 drugs to the Heist.

It is in this way that we can continue incentivizing big accounts to spend more money, because while the account is experiencing the hurt of soft caps on overall production, getting just a few more drugs in a single lump sum will provide far more reward shares because those shares are being squared.

Strategy

Using this payout structure, the foundation of the game then rests on how much strategy there is in the battle system. The harder the game is to play and win, the more incentivized players will become to play and spend money on their accounts without trying to Sybil attack with multiple accounts. I certainly hope something like this gets implemented.

Rake 10%

In addition, the @drugwars team ultimately needs to reevaluate the 20% rake. I would strongly suggest reducing this number to 10%. You've already gotten way more money and users than you were expecting. You've already received much more funding for the game than anticipated. By reducing the rake to 10% you further encourage users to reinvent their winnings into a loop where you will still be making just as much as before.

The positive feedback loop of lowering the rake will pay for itself.

In conjunction with a rake reduction and the ability to stop the prize pool from bleeding into the hands of incompetent/inactive players, these changes will bring another wave of activity to the game. How can we bring even more activity?

Multiple Heists

Instead of a 3% production / 3% Heist payout once a day, I suggest we do one Heist every 4 hours with a 1% payout. This way, we are still draining 6% of the prize pool per day, but it keeps players more active because a payout is happening every 4 hours and that payout is dependent on how many drugs are given to the Heist in a single lump sum.

The object of the game will become to make sure no one is getting too big of a lump sum that they could then use to take a huge percentage of the reward pool.

Raise the minimum share value.

To reduce the size of these big numbers that have been squared. I think we should have a minimum value that can be donated to the Heist. Let's say 1000. For every 1000 drugs you give to the Heist you get a single share in return. These shares get squared when you give more than 1000. Giving 2000 drugs would give you 4 shares (2^2) while giving 10000 drugs at one time would give you 100 shares (10^2).

This will create scenarios where big accounts will dump a massive amount of drugs into a single Heist and they'll fight anyone else trying to do the same. No worries, it starts all over again in a maximum of 4 hours.

Conclusion (TLDR)

• Square Heist shares received, giving incentive to hoard drugs and attack hoarders.
• Raise the minimum Heist share from 1 to a multiple of 1000 drugs.
• Delay the ability to add drugs to the Heist by 1 share per block.
• Remove drug production payout.
• Split 6% Heist payout into six 1% payouts per day.
• Lower development rake from 20% to 10%

These changes will extend the life of the game significantly.