We ran out of RC - Resource Credits 101

We ran out of RC - Resource Credits 101

Since we ran out of Resource Credits (RC), my son needed to stop playing for a while. Not only that, additionaly I was disrupted in publishing blog posts that were already prepared and it was impossible to think of answering your generous comments.

Nevertheless it took me onto a path of understanding RC. And this is what I want to share with you today.

The philosophy of RC and charity for the productive poor

I do not want to go deep into the philosophy of RC with you here. If you want to learn about the philosophy of RC, this is an article I found on it. Please make sure to come back here for the field guide.
https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/steem-basics-rc-system-for-beginners

If you already know a lot about RC, then let me lead you to a good article about why and how you may want to support users who have come short on RC here.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@surpassinggoogle/if-you-find-a-steemit-user-struggling-with-resource-credits-this-is-a-short-post-that-helps

When we ran short on RC, this is what @luegenbaron did to us. I again want to say thank you for this! Next to the benefits we have from it directly, it gives me the opportunity to show you what happens to your RC when your SteemPower (SP) changes without taking the comfort of postponing it to another story. So let us dive into a field guide now.

A field guide

As you can see in the graphic there are 35 SP, whereby zero SP are our own. So we can not provide SP for others, but we utilize the SP that has been delegated to us. 20 SP is from @steemmonsters after we had reached our RC-limit before. I suppose they delegated this somehow automaticly, because I only noticed it in the hindsight. 15 SP is from @luegenbaron, as you may want to look up in the account history at https://steemd.com/@anjadani

By the way, this is where I got all the data and took the screenshots, in case you have not seen this before.

So these 35 SP lead to 35 M of voting power. You can see this in comparison to the first graphic with 20 SP and 20 M. I have not figured out what exactly the M stands for, but I suppose it stands for Mana. You find the specification of Mana in the detail section on "Resource Credits" (same graphic, right handed side). But as you can see this time, no unit is given and the value differs.

Now with RC, below the percentage bar you find a 38 M total and you find a RC max_mana of 76,429,596,083 in the detail section. I chose to go along with what I found so far and have not taken this into question too much. In other words: I wanted to go along with what I already knew, without stoping to apply it altogether, just because there is something left that I do not know.

Now why is it 38 M RC and 35 M voting power at 35 SP? At some place I read about these 3 RC that every account may apply even if there is zero SP. So if there is no SP you still have 3 M RC for making transfers or posting comments.

These RC are needed for modifying the blockchain. Everything you apply calls for some resources. The more resources your activity requires, the more RC are needed. And these are said to be even different whether the blockchain is busy or idle.

I have found one website where you can see the actual resource credits you need for a particular action. Bear in mind that everything is estimated. The exact amount is calculated only when it is happening.

The website I took this screenshot at is https://beempy.com/resource_costs

With this table the specification G has been introduced to me. I again have no clue yet what this actually stands for, however from counting 9 decimal places I suppose it correlates to the first 9 digits of the max_mana and current_mana seen in the prior graphic. And I welcome any additional information for better understanding this numbers game.

Now, according to a field guide a good estimate can be given without all this detail. In the bottom part of the details on resource credits you find another small table that is introduced with your RC recharge rate per 24 hours given in M.

Bear in mind that these are estimates again. So as you have seen in the prior table the actual RC for a comment depends on its size in byte. A blogpost in this matter is equal to a comment. So this blog post is a rather large comment and used up 3 M RC or 6,430,861,817 current_mana. If my considerations are appropriate this is to be the equivalent of 6,430861817 G RC. And comparing this to the resource costs table means to be a comment of greater than 2000 bytes.

Additionally bear in mind that for inserting these figures I had to edit this blog post, and in the matter of RC this means to post another article completely (besides graphics), even if I only changed a single letter. (The first issue is available on the blockchain even if I would have choseen to "delete" it during the first 24 hours. It actually is only faded out from the frontend you are using and still present in the blockchain.)

SteemMonsters and RC

And now that we have examined the common practice I want to open up a perspective on how much mana is needed for playing Steem Monsters. For a ranked battle two records are written to the blockchain and these are "entered into match queue" and "submitted a team for battle" like you see them in the next graphic. Playing a turnament the third record is made, named "revealed their cards for battle". In the case of this screenshot these three used up 1.6 M RC as seen in the prior graphic. The left hand sided part is made prior to doing the records and the right hand sided is taken afterwards. And this is true for every single battle you do at a turnament.

For a turnament another onetime record is made in the beginning (apart from the registration) of the turnament and this is the following (the turnament check-in).

I enclose this here because it is a custom JSON record like it is mentioned in the resource costs table as you have seen above. So I like to ask you experts on RC costs, what kind are these "Steem Monsters" records in the graphic prior to this, if neither a comment, a vote, a transfer, nor a custom JSON?

Before you leave

Now I hope you were able to take some good insights with you, perhaps add something in the comment section, or even want to correct something I have misunderstood so far.

So please come back for more.

Our past blog posts

• 03/15/2019 We had our first rated internal monsters battle
• 03/13/2019 Introducing ourselves

Our past blog post in German

• 15.03.2019 Wir hatten unseren ersten gewerteten internen Monster-Kampf
• 14.03.2019 Wir stellen uns vor