Not necessarily, lowering the block reward will lower the inflation rate.
As for manipulating the market, it's the law off supply and demand. Petty market manipulation is insignificant and innefective. You can create market demand by advertising the coin, but manipulating the market with fake buy/sell orders won't do very much. Stop focusing on the price, I don't say that to be optimistic, I say that because it's like trying to treat the symptoms instead of the cause. You may be able to hype a coin by advertising it, i.e. dark coin. People say "It is the only anonymous coin." That may not be completely true in the sense that you have to only use Dark Coin to spend anonymously, but it is a great marketing point. Some people say "Ultracoin is faster then credit and debit cards." Ultracoin's 6 second transaction time puts it in competition with traditional credit and debit cards, that is a great marketing line, or any other variation of. Put it in your signature, advertise it on forums, talk about it to your friends, create logos, banners, t-shirts, stickers, create a marketing movement behind the coin using slogans, logos, and facts.
The next thing to create demand would be to create products & services that you can use the coin with. This Minecraft plugin will be HUGE!! Because it will create potential demand for Ultracoin by opening it up to Millions of gamers. And at Ultracoins current price, it will make a lot of sense to bring the coin into the gaming world as a virtual currency. Otherwise, if you have a business you could accept Ultracoin, if you offer a service you can accept Ultracoin. If you have a website that somehow incorporates Ultracoin it will help bring legitimacy to the coin, legimitacy equals confidence, confidence equals investment.
Another thing I would like to see is a migration to Ultracointalk.org/, if we can create a forum as active as this Bitcointalk thread it will show investors that the community is diverse in discussion and active. It is very hard to showcase our community from here, if a potential investor comes and see's the most recent page where shareholders are talking about market manipulation, but do not know about our past achievements and future developments for the coin such as the Minecraft plugin, they will probably stop considering the coin within minutes (depending on how interested they are in the coin). That is why longterm, I believe, migration to an Ultracoin only forum is a MUST to showcase the community, generate interest in the coin, and give investors a place to explore the discussion. Please, consider making an account on UltracoinTalk and using the forum, the more people that sign up and post, the more it will snowball into a full migration (which means more legitimacy to the coin, and more likely investors will buy, which equals value for you.)
When will you learn... stop trying to manipulate the supply and thus the price. Stop trying to manipulate the algo. Stop perpetuating lies... 6 seconds confirmation now wtf? I tried to warn dcgirl even about the block reward, but she said the 'miners' even wanted a lower block reward. I assume that was just utcminer. Stop with the cult mentality. Oh but the devs work haaaard--it means nothing. Grow up and enter the real world. READ other threads. It's like you think ignorance is bliss as long as the dev says they are 'working hard', utc has 'real value', and no one say anything 'negative'. All of the statements along these lines are absolutely meaningless, and the price will fall into oblivion until you learn.