Consignment merchant code idea

[Halcyon]

I would like to suggest a new merchant object or modification to the current.  It would act as a consignment vendor, with a chunk of code accessible via verbs to:

1.  Reveal the % consignment fee that it would charge to a particular character.  This could vary based on comparative clan membership or citizenship. (75% of value for a House employee for a house only consignment vendor?)  (90% for a non-citizen, 40% for a citizen for a consignment vendor in a distant village?)
2.  Allow a merchant to place an item in its inventory for sale, and designate a price.
3.  Allow a merchant to retrieve an unsold item for a nominal fee. (10% of value?)

These merchants would not buy objects as the current ones do.  They might be limited to one of any item, rather than the usual five.  Note, they don't generate any coin at all unless a pc comes and buys the item.

They could be set up to directly deposit coins to the merchants bank account, or a house bank account, to simplify that portion of the code and interaction.

This kind of merchant could go a ways in making merchant pcs able to serve a population bases needs, and, a long way in making the GMH's able to skill up their crafters and offer a range of goods for shopping, while avoiding the tangle of rules about selling to their own shops.

[Ammut]

So in a sense, this would create more of a player driven economy since they only make coin if a player buys from them.

I like it, although I wonder what would happen if the game crashed and the store had not been saved.   

[Qzzrbl]

I don't know much about servers or coding or how much of a hassle it would be...

But would it be a stretch to have the entire game world automatically save every hour or so?

[tortall]

I don't know much about servers or coding or how much of a hassle it would be...

But would it be a stretch to have the entire game world automatically save every hour or so?

UBER lag is my understanding.

[Archbaron]

I don't know much about servers or coding or how much of a hassle it would be...

But would it be a stretch to have the entire game world automatically save every hour or so?

If it were to be built efficiently, it would do it in waves. Essentially, the game world is just text, so break it into chunks that the server can handle without lag, and then send it through like that. So a save in this region at 12:00, then a save in that region at 12:05 or whatever. However, I could be totally and completely wrong. Just what seems like common sense to me. I know we had that lagging issue a few months back, I dunno what that was, but I heard it tossed around that it was because there were so many items IG (it was mid-summer and our peaks were 80ish)

[Nyr]

I don't know much about servers or coding or how much of a hassle it would be...

But would it be a stretch to have the entire game world automatically save every hour or so?

If it were to be built efficiently, it would do it in waves. Essentially, the game world is just text, so break it into chunks that the server can handle without lag, and then send it through like that. So a save in this region at 12:00, then a save in that region at 12:05 or whatever. However, I could be totally and completely wrong. Just what seems like common sense to me. I know we had that lagging issue a few months back, I dunno what that was, but I heard it tossed around that it was because there were so many items IG (it was mid-summer and our peaks were 80ish)

Arm 2 will be structured differently than Arm 1 with a completely different codebase, so things will be (in layman's terms) in a near-constant save state, if not completely constant.
The lagging a few months back was definitely not due to there being so many items in-game.