Simulated ChestShop

The Simulated ChestShop system is an automated market activity engine on Prosperity SMP. It creates background buying activity at player-owned ChestShop signs, ensuring that shops see regular traffic even during low-population hours. The system is designed to be invisible to players — it behaves like a normal customer.

Purpose

At low player counts, player shops can sit idle for hours with no buyers. This discourages players from setting up shops, which weakens the player-driven economy. The Simulated ChestShop solves this by having a server-managed bank account (CentralBank) purchase items from player shops at fair market prices.

The system does not sell items to players. It only buys. This makes it a pure money faucet into player hands, funded by the CentralBank reserve.

How it works

The system maintains a shopping list of common items it is willing to buy.
Every few minutes, it scans active player ChestShop signs for eligible items.
If a shop is selling an item on the shopping list at a reasonable price, the system may purchase from it.
The shop owner receives payment to their balance, just like a normal sale.
The purchased items are removed from the chest (the bank does not stockpile).

From the shop owner's perspective, the transaction looks identical to a real player purchase. The system uses randomized persona names in logs to avoid easy identification.

What the system buys

The shopping list includes common economy staples:

Category	Example items
Mining	Cobblestone, stone, deepslate, iron ingot, gold ingot, diamond, coal, redstone, lapis lazuli, copper ingot
Wood	Oak log, spruce log, birch log, planks
Farming	Wheat, carrots, potatoes, sugar cane, melon, pumpkin
Food	Cooked beef, cooked chicken, bread
Building	Glass, bricks, sand, gravel

Each item has a maximum buy price based on the server's market data. The system will not overpay — if a shop prices above the fair range, the system skips it.

Demand governor

The system has built-in controls to prevent it from dominating the market:

Daily spending cap: The bank has a maximum daily spend limit across all purchases. Once the cap is reached, the system pauses until the next day.

Per-shop cooldowns: After buying from a shop, the system waits before buying from the same shop again.

Per-owner caps: No single shop owner receives more than a set percentage of the daily budget.

Intensity profiles: Activity levels adjust based on time of day and player count. During peak hours with many real buyers, the system backs off. During off-peak hours, it increases activity to keep the market moving.

Relationship to the economy

Simulated ChestShop activity is tracked separately from real player-to-player trades in the server's economic monitoring systems:

Simulated transactions are marked with a simulated: true flag in the transaction log.
The CPI (Consumer Price Index) calculation excludes simulated transactions. CPI reflects real player-to-player prices only.
The monetary policy engine classifies bank-to-player payouts as transfers from the public reserve, not new money creation. The money was already created when an admin funded the CentralBank.

This separation prevents a feedback loop where the bank's buying activity inflates the CPI, which then causes the bank to buy at higher prices.

Visibility

The system is intentionally invisible to players:

No public /market command reveals the bank's exact buy prices or shopping list.
Transaction log entries use randomized persona names.
The /market command shows real player-to-player CPI data only, not bank activity.
Shop owners see normal sale notifications — they cannot distinguish a simulated purchase from a real one.

Admins can monitor and configure the system through the /simshop command (staff only).

Admin commands

Command	Description
`/simshop status`	View bank balance, daily spend, and pause state
`/simshop pause`	Temporarily pause all activity
`/simshop resume`	Resume activity
`/simshop refill <amount>`	Add funds to the CentralBank

These commands require staff permissions and are not available to regular players.