billythekid’s Blogshares blog

For some reason the way to work the idea market is kept secret, well wonder no more at how those top players make their cash as in these lessons I let the cat out of the bag. These lessons are directed at those new to ideas play who want to learn.

Industry building(idea play) can be the single most lucrative aspect of the game. It’s not for those who want a quick buck however, you need patience to work it properly. If you’re still interested in my take on this please read on…

Everything centres around the drop. This is when it’s decided if the price goes up or down and by how much. The drop happens every 15minutes at the ¼ ½ ¾ 1 hours(+0-7 minutes). The drop is affected by various things but for the time being we will concentrate on drop size. This is the single most important factor in ideas play. A rule of thumb is small drops = rise, large drops = fall. Lets look at some examples of how to determine what will happen at the drop.

Example1:

Industry X has 100 blogs. Blog 1 is indexed. Industry X drops 2000 ideas(big drop).

So why did this happen?
Well, the blogs in the game are ordered by value(price). We know that price is dictated by incoming links. The more incoming links, the greater the value so Blog 1 probably has the largest number of incoming links. If this is assumed to be true, you have your reason.

More incoming links = bigger drop

Example2:

The same Industry X has 100 blogs. Blog 100 is indexed. Industry X drops 0 ideas.

So why did this happen?
Well, as we already noted blogs in the game are effectively ordered by incoming links(value/price as dictated by value of incomings). So blog 100 might have no incoming links at all. This is rule number 2.

No incoming links = no drop

Example3:

Using the same industry as before. Blog 2 is indexed. Industry X drops 0 ideas.

So why did this happen?
Well, we know that incoming links affect drop size and the order of blogs suggest that number 2 should have lots of incomings, in fact it does have lots of incomings, so what happened? The reason the blog yielded no ideas is because, although it’s number 2 in the industry, the industry is not in the top 5 voted industries for the blog, take this blog as an example…

This blog won’t drop ideas in ‘Blogshares’ or ‘English’ industries but will drop ideas in ‘Aberdeen(Scot)’ and ‘Internet Games’. This is rule 3.

Indexing will only drop ideas in the ‘TOP 5′ industries of a blog.

So that’s how to make ideas drop at the quantities required. If you want to build an industry you want it to produce fewer ideas per drop so index only blogs with <5 incoming links. One blog at a time as it's incomings that count, so 2 blogs indexed at 4 incomings each makes for an 8-incoming(and therefore larger) drop. You might want to get as many ideas as possible but dropping them all at once is not the way to go!

The above is the most important part of the lesson. It's fundamental to industry building.

What actually happens in the drop?

When it's time for the drop Jade(ok it's the game but using Jade is an easier way to understand) looks at the amount of ideas in the industry already available. She then looks at the number of ideas to drop(as above - big incoming = big drop etc.) and makes a comparison. If she sees a less ideas on the market already than the amount in the drop, she just drops them onto the market. If she sees more ideas on the market than in the drop, but not more than 10 times as many, she'll subtract the drop from the ideas on the market!! WOW - I know a drop that eats itself! It gets better though. If Jade looks on the market and sees over 10 times as many ideas available she'll keep the ideas from dropping and then remove 5% of the available market ideas!!

Examples:

Drop size = 200, Public market = 0, Jade will drop 200 ideas on the public market
Drop size = 200, Public market = 1000, Jade will remove 200 ideas from the public market leaving 800 available.
Drop size = 200, Public market = 10000, Jade will remove 500 ideas from the Public market leaving 9500

So that’s the drop, I bet you thought it was a simple case of a drop = more ideas too didn’t you!

The ability to remove ideas from play is one that is utilised later in these lessons.

Now how does all this make us money? Well the drop also affects the price of an industry and this is the Idea Math. It may seem complex but it’s actually very simple. Let’s start with the ‘may seem complex’ bit..

You’ll have seen the following table in an industry…

…but probably have no idea as to what it all means. This is most of the ideas math. Right there for you to see!

The price is affected as far as regular game play is concerned by using the formula Movement = U - D2 - D1. If the result of that formula is negative the price will go down, if positive it will rise. The eagle eyed and those paying attention will have noticed there’s no D1 field. D1 is worked out by dividing the value of the entire idea market by the total player wealth in the game! This can be worked out from this page and is very slow moving. (Stud and the Idea Assistant Tool both have an automatic D1 calculator built in to their shift predictions.)

D2 value is a comparison between the value of the industry against the average of the value of ALL industries.

U value is worked out at drop time. Jade looks at the amount of ideas in the drop and measures that against the number of Existing ideas in the industry. If smaller the drop in comparison to the existing, the larger the U value. (hence small drops!)

So simply put you want to keep your U value as high as you can (by dropping small amounts of ideas). You want your D1 as low as possible(although you can’t really affect this) and your D2 as low as possible (by keeping the industry price low)

This flies in the face of industry building surely, but don’t worry. D2 moves so slowly that it can almost be ignored if your industry is rising. Only once the D2 is high enough is it a concern. For now though recognise how the math works and be happy to try to keep your U high.

We’re in danger of encroaching on the next lesson now: Pricing and price manipulation.

Look over this at any time, learn how the drop affects the ideas and play around with some drops to see it in action. If you are non-premium and require blogs to be reindexed ask in the forum.