Since the Cemetech MC PvP (1.7+) server opened on January 1st, 2014, the economic system has been revolving around gold ingots as a form of currency to be able to purchase items from spawn shops and other players, as well as keep towns and nations running day to day. This economic system has served the server relatively well for the most part for a reasonable period of time in the least. I say 'in the least', because of where opinions may begin to split on whether the current state of the economic system is still serving "well" in the server.

This is where I would like to discuss a few major points:
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[1] Ways of obtaining gold ingots currently
►[1a] Mining for gold
►[1b] The current issue in my opinion: Gold farms

[2] Possible problems to address, with possible solutions
►[2a] AFK/farmable currency
►[2b] Money distribution due to farming for money in the past (with respect to the point in the future at which a possible change in economics happens)
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In these major points, I would like to summarize the giant paragraph that many people might cringe at, into a nice TL;DR:
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►I have calculated that under constant, averaged branch mining conditions for a standard user, 1 hour of work = 36-56 gold ores = 1800-2800d. This figure remains relatively constant, and serves as a good economic foundation.
►Gold farms produce roughly 10 pigmen/hour/portal = 112d/hour/portal with looting III sword. The amount of time it takes AFK at the farm to completely pay off the time spent making it (return on investment) is under 10 hours, regardless of size.
►Some farms on the server are capable of approaching 5-figure profits every hour-- 10,000d/hour. This is equal to 100 days worth of town upkeep every hour, or 50 diamonds every hour, or 1 beacon every hour... all AFK (once return on investment is paid off). This rate is 3-4 times the rate of mining for gold, except you have to work for it mining it, but completely AFK for the gold farm.
►3 possible solutions, or any combination of the 3 solutions arise for this possible issue:
[1] Limit the rate of gold farms? (but also respect the actual material itself)
[2] Use a different currency than gold ingots? (gold ores, since ores are not farmable?)
[3] Raise the price of town upkeep dependent on the number of total plots claimed? (total upkeep increases with more plots owned?)
►An open-ended question of whether or not we want to deal with the current money distribution-- it might be too late to fix it due to the unfairness in any solution.
►Overall, bring more challenge to the server so that it's not as easy as AFKing in a box. This would make things more fun!
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(Henceforth, "farming" will be defined specifically as gold farming.)

Ways of Obtaining Gold Currently
The first method that ends up being used no matter what, which also acts as the standard (being a universal and relatively constant system) is mining for gold. Since searching for caves to actually go caving is variable and would need to be extensively tested, we'll stick to branch mining as a way of numerically measuring the output rate. To get an idea of the time-value retained in the currency, let's assume that there is a volume-projected surface density of σ[gold] = 8 gold ores/chunk (16*16 blocks²), and that > 95% of it exists between layers 5 to 31 inclusive. If we assume > 90% time-efficient branch mining, where tunnels are spaced 3 blocks apart, the math can be done to show that a diamond tool with or without an efficiency enchantment will yield on average 36-56 ores/hour depending (40-63 ores/hour @ 0% loss of time. Figure is calculated using 0.400-0.625 seconds/block mining time, with 1152 blocks to be mined per chunk between layers 5-31, using branch mines, achieving 8 ores on average)
The mining speed was derived experimentally, while other info can be found here:
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Gold_Ore
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Altitude#Natural_resources_and_altitude

With 1 gold ingot = 50d in the current system, this prices about 1 hour of efficient work at:
1 hour = 36-56 gold ores = 1800-2800d

While one may choose to obtain their money via mining, there is a secondary option which can seem more or less overpowered. In Minecraft 1.7, larger portals (up to 23*23 blocks²) were introduced, which opened up the doors to more possibilities for gold farms which originally were constrained to portals that were 4x5 blocks² in area. Because pigmen spawning is dictated by the number of portal blocks (the actual portal itself, not the obsidian), bigger portals caused pigmen to spawn at a rate according to the square, based on the portal's perimeter. With portals that are 23*23 blocks² in size, rates of about 10 pigmen/(hour*portal) can be achieved (experimental tests). The average drop rate with a looting III sword can yield about 2.25 gold ingots/hour/portal = 112d/hour/portal.
Assuming that you had just a plain diamond pickaxe to mine the 84 obsidian blocks/portal, it'd take you about 788 seconds (@9.375s/block) to gather the materials for the portal, 331 seconds to dig out the 23*23*1 blocks³ volume, and lets safely assume 60 seconds to construct it... roughly 20 minutes in total. (This process can be speed up a bit with efficiency tools, conditions, and even taking advantage of a much more speedy lava-casting technique)
If 20 minutes of work is about 600d under a standard gold conversion, then the farm will have a return on investment in about a little over 5 hours... but if you want to include the planning time, and the time to organize a collection system, then lets conservatively double this. i.e. under 10 hours before the farm will pay you back for the work you invested into it. And this goes the same for any N number of big portals of equal size. All inputs and outputs are scaled linearly by the scale of the farm, so we should still see a return on investment of under 10 hours.

The crazy part about this is that the bigger you make the farm, the faster your output rate is, with a constant return on investment time period of under 10 hours. The even crazier part is that whatever that output rate is, is all AFK. The only part that involves actual player interaction for 100% of that quoted 112d/hour/portal is killing the pigmen with a looting III sword for a couple minutes tops, and returning to AFK. This is where the proposed problem is introduced.

Possible Problems, Possible Solutions.
The possible problem that arises here is that once the return on investment is done, the output rate of the farm gives nearly free money. On smaller scaled farms, this isn't really an issue, and isn't really worth a discussion. On much more grand scales with farms of close to or more than 100 large portals, money output with looting III swords start approaching 5 figures-- 10,000d/hour, AFK. (I understand that some have said around 9,000d/hour, which is why I made sure to say 'approaching')
This rate is at least 3-4 times faster than an average mining trip at obtaining money, but the major difference is that one way, you work for your money, but the other way, you don't (once return on investment is paid)-- it's a money printer. The time-value retained of the money generated from this big of a gold farm is nearly zero. It has gotten to the point where I was offered 125,000d by a mega-gold farm user, for a single enchanted sword (I strongly urge you to compare this money amount to the top user balances on the server via the /baltop command).

In no way at all, am I trying to say that the work put into the gold farm should be going to waste, and doesn't matter. I think that good time was invested into some of the gold farms made on this server, and the efforts should at least be rewarded the equivalent standard gold conversion rate based on mining, maybe even a bit more just because it's quite boring to mine obsidian for hours to obtain that amount of obsidian.

For the amount of money that the farms of that size have generated to date however, I feel that the work that was initially invested, has already paid itself off in the least, and more likely multiple times over, i.e. the return on investment has already been met and exceeded. At this point in time, users are free to AFK for nearly the price of 1 town, every hour (founding a town = 10,000d). In rent terms, this is 100 days worth of town upkeep every hour under the current system (100d/day to keep the town running, independent of number of plots owned) To put this in equivalent spawn shop pricing terms that might put the value into perspective, 10,000d/hour can get you 50 diamonds/hour AFK, or even 1 beacon/hour AFK.

So, instead of asking if 10,000d/hour AFK is fair once return on investment of the farm is paid off after a short 10 hours or less, let's ask this way:
►Is it reasonable to AFK for 50 diamonds per hour?
►Is it reasonable to AFK for a beacon per hour?
►Is it reasonable to AFK for 100 days worth of town upkeep every hour?

These questions raise 3 major possible solutions, if we deem that this is an issue.
►Should we limit the rate of gold farms?
►Should we use a different currency than gold ingots?
►Should we raise the price of town upkeep dependent on the number of total plots claimed?

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In response to a few different opinions and proposals I have heard from people:

I believe that a change in currency to a non-farmable material is a good step in the right direction. This will make it so that AFK money-printers are not possible on such a large scale in terms of output, and it will retain the time-value of the money. With this change, I believe that there would not be a bigger demand to cut down the rate of gold farms, since gold ingots are no longer the [main] currency. The one major product that the farm could produce indirectly is Notch Apples, which take 72 gold ingots total to craft, giving you extreme potion-related effects. In addition to excessive Notch Apples, the amount of pigmen standing in the portals alone that cause a bit of lag, with the risk of accidental over-AFK in some farms which rack up insane amounts of entities that can lag or even crash the server depending, would be reasons to limit the pigmen spawn rates, moderately, but not entirely. I feel that gold farms should still fulfill their purpose of producing material gold ingots in some reasonable fashion.

*Note about accidental over-AFKing:
Farms with this amount of power are dangerous to the server because rates of over 1000 pigmen/hour are possible, and I feel that is a mistake that even the best of us can make if there is no safety on the farm. This is an issue related, yet also separate from economics that may need to be addressed.

I would have to say that iron ore, gold ore, or lapis shards would be the best forms of currency if we choose to change the economic system. They are both limited resources that are not farmable, and there is also a plentiful amount of them in the world, so that we will not run out of them anytime soon that it would be relevant to discuss. Gold ore seems like the best choice because of the uncommon (but not rare) frequency of finding it, the already present gold-based economy, and non-farmable attribute. Note that this is the actual ore, and not the ingot. If we assume 8 ore/chunk on average with 40,000 chunks in this 3200*3200 block² world, there are 320,000 gold ores present, or about 16,000,000d to distribute, which is definitely not an issue for the amount of active players we have on the server.

For reference to the other two possible economic systems in their plausibility, use:
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Iron_Ore (77 iron/chunk)
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Lapis_Lazuli_Ore (3-4 ore/chunk, 4-8 shards/ore without fortune, up to 32 with fortune)

On top of the changes to the actual currency, I feel that 100d/town as a flat rate is far too cheap for towns that are bigger. Realistically, despite that this is minecraft, the more land that someone owns, the more money they should be paying for their land. I believe that we should discuss a reasonable function that would make things more realistic and challenging, since it's honestly far too easy with this. We should consider it in light of the idea that we want to be able to simultaneously bring more challenge, while at the same time not making it very difficult for someone who wants to be constructive and build larger scale things. Being someone who runs a very large, aesthetic town, I would want it to cost more per plot to own it, but I would be deeply saddened if I had to destroy what I've made to be able to afford keeping what's left.

Perhaps with this in mind, maybe there might be a favor of one solution over the other? i.e. Creating higher costs for towns of bigger sizes only, or only limiting gold farms, or changing currency? Or perhaps we might see a balance of all of them? i.e. doing all of them in some way to some degree?
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The last standing issue would be the current money distribution, which is a far more difficult issue to debate, has many solutions which are not completely fair one way or another, and likely will not see light. If we examine all of the money income on the server based on pigmen killed, it would be very outstanding, especially with those who have higher balances, since that's more likely how their money was obtained. A question would stand:
►How would we enforce large amounts of money obtained previously via gold farming?

I'm leaving this question open ended. Based off of multiple opinions, I feel it may very well be that it's far too late to do any changes to this issue, and that we have to just leave the current money distribution as is to be the most fair.

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Everything that has been covered, was put in the perspective of creating more challenge on the server, seeing that things may be far too easy and comfortable. As an active user outside of school, I would love to see challenges on the server that bring both more [non-AFK] activity to the server, as well as amusement.

I would love to see what other users might have to say on the issue, and would encourage thinking outside of what favors one person or another, i.e. automatically thinking limiting gold farming is a bad thing because of being a person who uses it extensively. I would reemphasize the amounts of money that can be made completely AFK, and the endless reasons to join the server, sit inside an enclosed room for hours AFK, be involved in minimal server activity outside 'the box', depositing money from being AFK, and logging off.

You beat me to it. I was actually going to post something like this myself (with zero calculations of course because I need math help badly x.x )
I feel increasing town costs based on plot number would be a good idea as long as it's not too dramatic like you say here:
I was always under the impression that money on this server was for town/nation upkeep and building materials you couldn't get anywhere in the world itself (like nether items and items from biomes that don't exist in the server map). I think some of the money problems come from being able to by diamonds and coal/redstone blocks in the spawn shop (and seriously, you put books in the spawn shop but not enderpearls?); and with huge gold farms, buying diamonds at 200 a pop is insanely cheap! I feel if we got rid of those, there would be more incentive to actually go out and mine/farm for items of that nature. I like going mining because I feel it's really fun. I even have a song I mine to!
Another thing I think would be good would be to limit portal count in the gold farms themselves. I'm not even looking at ingot collection rates here because I feel like the lag that those huge farms cause to the server and certain people on the server (like yours truly) is a much bigger issue. Maybe make a town limit of one gold farm per town with maybe 25 portals at most? I say one gold farm per town so that no one can have a 100 portal farm and be like "Oh this is really 4 gold farms I just put them together to conserve space." Mine is 20 and I get 4 gold blocks an hour with a looting 3 sword, and even with my crusher on I can't just leave the server and come back to millions of nuggets because chunks wouldn't have been loaded; so I think a limit of 25 would be sufficient. The only reason I have a crusher on my farm is to keep mob rates low and keep lag from being a huge issue for my town and my computer so I'm not against having a crusher in place if that's the reasoning behind it.
Also I've always had a thing for AFKing at a farm of any kind (not just gold farms). I feel it's cheaty no matter what you're doing it for. I hope I've helped in some way, at least to prompt the thinking process. Just my two cents.

I've made the minor suggestion before, but I feel this could be the best solution available.

First, disable portals (or at least pigman spawning). Then, create a separate mining world. Make a portal to it in spawn (kinda like the museum world). Make it so people can interact like they would in the normal world, but nobody can claim anything, and there's a no-pvp 'safe zone'/spawn area around the portal back. This would allow the world to be periodically refreshed as resources become scarce.

About the only drawback I see offhand is that this would require more server space, and/or reduce the space currently available on the main server.

I'd be for a mining world, but I use my pigman spawner for experience more than for money gathering because I don't have a good place for a MMM (I don't know how to make it look less like a cobble box anyway and I HATE cobble boxes), so I really don't like the idea of disabling pigmen all together.

I do like TurquoiseDrag0n's idea, but CharlesSprinkle brings up a good point. Being a relatively new, three-day old mayor, I think I could easily adapt to these changes. However, it is understandable that larger, aesthetically appealing towns have relied on easily achieved maintenance to create such awesome builds. The exact logistics need to be such that towns allow for a balance of creativity with a challenge, whether it includes gold as a currency or not.
In any case, I hope people see both sides, whether having to make a gold farm or not.

Hmm, what about just decreasing how much a gold is worth?

Thanks for the super awesome and detailed topic, Charles. This is basically the math I was starting to do as well. I'll read over it better as time goes on and address points. But for now, my individual thoughts before addressing yours.

In my post over in the rules topic, I mentioned I was interested in limiting gold farming to a respectable figure. Much like a job. To keep things simple you go to work and get paid 10 dollars an hour for 5 five hours of work, five days a week. At the end of the day you are 50 bucks richer. End of the week, 250. I was planning to attempt to figure out how farms should be limited to encourage mining and exploration. The whole job analogy was so that if resources are scarce, players still have their "job" as secured income.

At the end of the day, this has to be something I don't need to regulate. I don't want to hop on every week and check gold farms. That could lead to players creating secret gold farms to side-step my audits and I don't want to write rules where our player base can be banned for such a stupid reason.

I realize some of our players are knowledgable in Java and I might call upon them to write future plugins. (Such as a kick after 5 minutes of inactivity).

I vote that we move to a currency that can only be mined. Such as emeralds. For the sake of misquotes, "such as" does not equal "let's use," Emeralds are far too rare. But by using a ore that can only be mined, there is a proper balance in values. One Ore could be X diamonds and it's not something that'll depreciate like gold has. I don't think it's a good idea to create a mining worlds or a farming world. Maybe we open up the nether and disallow pigmen in the overworld. You'd get access to blaze rods, glowstone, nether rack, pigmen and more. It'd also limit the farming and AFKing.

I think maybe these changes could be made when 1.8 Sponge Server & plugins or whatever Monkey0x9 was talking about.
This could be implimented with a server restart(?) because there would be a lot of changes to some towns with big farms, and it WOULD be nice to add the new biomes.

I agree to opening the nether

Yes, the nether with no claiming WOULD be fun
Also, 5 minutes would be too short. But good idea, comic.
Yes, I've seen seperate mining/resource worlds on other servers, and they are reset frequently. Would this new Gold-Resource world have extra gold and less other ores, or ...?

Speaking unofficially, they'd likely just be regular worlds.

Speaking on how I view the servers economy: There's no need to deflate the value of gold any more than it already is. You'll learn in your Economy class when you get to that point in High School but adding money to the economy deflates the value. If you always have 1000 dollar bills in circulation, those those dollar bills will always be equal to a dollar of goods. All the sudden the government adds 100 more bills to the circulation without taking any out, each dollar is now worth 90 cents of goods.

Right now, we have so much gold/denarii that gold holds no significant value. Luckily, our Spawn Shops are a fixed price so gold is still "of value" to those who don't have massive gold factories; they're the ones who have to make the decision between buying diamonds for armor or buying redstone for wiring because they don't have those gold factories.

Would you mind explaining why 5 minutes is too short? I'd love to hear your counter argument rather than your one-lined disapproval.

That was my impression and that's how I treated it (at least tried to). Nether lags me hardcore so I'm not in favour of that being implemented. I think if we just limit the size of the farms and get rid of materials like diamonds and redstone and such then most of the problems will leave. Maybe add nether and make mining worlds in a restart?

Also, I'd like to dispute the often-thrown-around amount of gold earned per hour. I usually end up with 20-25 ores per hour spent mining on a regular basis (which is much lower than what's normally quoted).

My gold farm is possibly the smallest on the server (14 portals or a cube of portals). I've accidentally afk'd for 2+ hours, and haven't caused any sort of issues short of a touch of localized lag. I'd be much more in favor of limiting gold farm size (and therefore output) as opposed to eliminating it outright. I also second sauron's idea that we remove most/all items in the shop that are obtainable in the normal world. That way, the only real purpose the money system serves would be obtaining nether/end-exclusive materials and town upkeep/founding/expansion.

Though I will add that people afk-ing (and I include running scripts in this, as it's basically the game doing stuff without eternal inputs) is also a side issue that's come out of this. One of my town members (cole) is possibly the most named 'abuser' of this, though far from the worst IMO (monkey readily comes to mind).

I think that mining shouldn't be the only way to earn money. Some people would rather farm crops, work on redstone, or build magnificent structures than continuously mining for their balance to remain stable, so maybe making alternate forms of currency or adding a time based paying system like comic suggested could be a possibility. In irc, I suggested keeping gold as the currency, but decreasing it's value and making ores even more valued. That would help even out the value of of gold farms. Another possible solution I have is making gold from pigmen a rare drop so we don't have the issue of people afking for gold anymore.

Well, if you devalued gold that'd work, since one player has a limited number of portals he can keep loaded, therefore the amount of gold one farm can make is limited. However, that'd be insanity, putting small players (small gold farms and mining) practically out of business.

I think it's a good idea to somehow limit the wild rates people like Charles get from their farms, but I also like the way the gold farm simply transfers time to money; if you could remove the afking-benefitting you factor, you'd have that more clearly. I dislike the idea of mining stuff out of the world; sounds too griefy.

Lastly, please please don't make it so it's not possible to afk. I was on another server, where you'd get kicked for inactivity, and hated that aspect (in above, I was referring to the way pigmen would pile up while afking, but still think afking itself should be allowed). Stuff like growing crops was a horrible pain. And well, I think afking is a sort of traditional thing I'm used to people doing on this server... but then I dislike change most any time.

Devaluing gold is one option as long as it isn't some ridiculous amount like half a denarius. Those of us with asthetic towns do need money for materials we can't get in the world.
I do like to mine and I don't entirely understand your point of how it's "griefy".
I also wouldn't want AFKing to be completely removed from the server. I have been on servers where if you AFK for more than 5 minutes you would get kicked. Personally, I don't mind that because if I know I have to be off for more than 5 minutes I naturally just log off the server entirely then get back on when I know I can (of course by that time my sister takes over the computer but that's another story). I think if we put a 5 minute timer on AFKing like comic suggested that would definitely help with the AFKing situation. And I do feel running scripts is the same thing as AFKing like turqee said. Both AFKing at a farm and running scripts to get materials/money feel super cheaty and honestly super lazy. I, like some people I know, like to actually work for what we get and I feel hitting pigmen at a gold farm is in fact working to some extent. Like comic said, it feels like a normal 9 to 5 job to me.

Wouldn't the mining time increase over time as resources are used? Mining times for gold is not a constant, its exponential. As more people mine there is less of it in the world, with less of it in the world it takes longer to find, if it takes longer to find then you get less per hour. There are 8.2 gold blocks per chunk. (http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Gold_Ore) and our world only has 328000 ores in it. If mined at the current rate we would run out in 8200 hours if one person mined at 40 gold an hour. what happens if two people mine it? Its reduced by half to 4100 hours. We have about 14 active people on this server. if all of them mined gold for 1 hour at 40 ore per hour all the ore in the server will be gone within 560 hours. that is only 23 24 hour days worth of work. Most of us have put in more time then that into the server already. Gold ore is not a good solution to our problem. Lapis in 1.8 will be far to valuable in enchanting to be used a currency and Diamonds/ emeralds would run out even faster then gold. I believe that if we have to change to a mineable only currency it would have to be iron. The ingots are renewable through farms for use as materials so the ore can be put to use exclusively for currency. There are 77 ore blocks per chunk on this server. (http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Iron_ore) Meaning that there are 3080000 iron ore blocks on the map. That does mean that they are easier to find, thus reducing mining time, but that also hopefully means that the sheer amount of it will last longer then 23 days worth of mining per active user on this server. I also believe that the current system, although broken, should not be changed unless a new map is implemented.
Thank you for your consideration,
Bosaik

That's my opinion as well, although the little things that I suggested could work in the now (except maybe the limiting portals thing) which is why I suggested it in the first place. It will stop some of the brokeness of the currency system which would give us more time to think about bigger projects for a new map. People have already mined a lot in the (almost) year that this map has been up (I know I have), so switching to an ore for currency now wouldn't last as long as it would if we got a new map and started from scratch.

Well remember the ore-mining idea was attached to the idea of creating a separate mining world that renewed fairly frequently.

Me and a few others had a counterproposal:

As of right now, the rate of sale for iron ingots is 50d and for a block is 450d. To encourage the mining of gold ores, perhaps gold ores can be exchanged for the 50d rate, but the value of ingots and blocks dropped.

I say this because sometimes town upgrades/projects take priority over mining for gold and sometimes sitting at a gold farm for some time is just easier.

That being said, gold farms have been completely op'd in several towns on this server, and i would not mind seeing them limited in output.