{"id":2185,"date":"2005-08-07T21:38:20","date_gmt":"2005-08-08T01:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=2185"},"modified":"2005-08-07T21:49:08","modified_gmt":"2005-08-08T01:49:08","slug":"everything-i-know-about-capitalism-i-learnt-from-enron-and-dopewars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2005\/08\/07\/everything-i-know-about-capitalism-i-learnt-from-enron-and-dopewars\/","title":{"rendered":"everything I know about capitalism I learnt from Enron and DopeWars &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img src='http:\/\/scruss.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/dopewars3.png' alt='DopeWars on Palm' \/><br \/>\nI play a lot of <a href=\"http:\/\/dopewars.kicks-ass.net\/\">DopeWars<\/a> on my Palm. Because of my long commute, I&#8217;ve got quite good at it, posting the second highest score ($237,252,973) on the <a href=\"http:\/\/dopewars.kicks-ass.net\/dopewars.cgi\">DopeWars for PalmOS high score list<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some tips that might help you play:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Always start at Bronx, and take the maximum amount of loan from the Loan Shark. This means you&#8217;ll have $62,000 to trade with.<\/li>\n<li>It doesn&#8217;t seem to matter which order you play the locations. The only one that seem to be noticeably different is Bronx, as it has the Bank and the Loan Shark.<\/li>\n<li>Pay off the Loan Shark as soon as you have built up a safe buffer of cash. I don&#8217;t tend to pay my debts until my cash is at least twice my debt. If I have a bit more, I&#8217;ll bank it, as it&#8217;s safe from the cops then.<\/li>\n<li>While carrying a loan, try to buy and sell as much as you can in one location. The Loan Shark&#8217;s 12.5%\/day interest really hurts, and unless you are maximising your value\/coat capacity ratio, you&#8217;ll end up paying a lot in interest. <em>Hint<\/em>: a loan at that rate doubles in under six days.<\/li>\n<li>Your coat capacity controls how much you can deal. As coat upgrade offers come in randomly, <strong>always<\/strong> have at least $200 cash spare. The only time you don&#8217;t want to do this is in your first turn, before you visit the Loan Shark. $200 out of your initial $2,000 reduces your loan cap by $4,000, and you never have a problem with overcapacity in the first few turns.<\/li>\n<li>Bank early and bank often. The Bank&#8217;s the only place that will make you money if your coat is full and nobody&#8217;s buying. Don&#8217;t put so much in the bank, though, that you&#8217;re not able to fill your coat with the highest value commodities. <em>Hint<\/em>: money deposited in the first week of the game will have at least quadrupled by the end.<\/li>\n<li>I always run from the cops, even if I have a gun. And I nearly always get away, while I near always get caught if I fight.<\/li>\n<li>This might be semi-superstition on my part, but I like to leave a little bit of spare capacity in case I find some saleables on a dead dude. These are usually high-value items, so it is usually worthwhile.<\/li>\n<li>As the game progresses&nbsp;&mdash; and your cash increases&nbsp;&mdash; the value of each space in your coat increases. So don&#8217;t buy and sell low-value commodities, as they&#8217;ll only add a small amount to your net value.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t take on a loan late in the game. You&#8217;ll probably get your legs broken.<\/li>\n<li>Buying all of one commodity can be risky, especially if you&#8217;re trying to pay off a loan. I usually try to spread the risk over three commodities, like this:\n<ol>\n<li>buy a third of the max amount of the most expensive<\/li>\n<li>buy half of what you can of the middle one<\/li>\n<li>buy the maximum amount of the cheapest.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Do be careful to leave yourself at least $200 for that useful coat windfall.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A lot of the game is luck, though, so sometimes a hopeless game can suddenly perk up&nbsp;&mdash; or unfortunately, a great game be ruined by a police raid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I play a lot of DopeWars on my Palm. Because of my long commute, I&#8217;ve got quite good at it, posting the second highest score ($237,252,973) on the DopeWars for PalmOS high score list. Here are some tips that might help you play: Always start at Bronx, and take the maximum amount of loan from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[1984,1983],"class_list":["post-2185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers-suck","category-goatee-stroking-musing-or-something","tag-dope_wars","tag-plam"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-zf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}