| James Folsom | Friday, May 3, 2024 - 02:16 am 
Did I gather correctly that these setting don't have any effect anymore? |
| blackmoon8297 | Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 09:42 am
SAYS WHO? |
| Andy | Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 12:49 pm
Of course they do.
During trading, (about 6 or 7 times each game month, all the offers and orders for a product are read from the database, sorted by price/quality and then matched against offers for the same product that were handled in the same way.
everything that matches is traded.
the trader will try to make more trades. High quality will be relaxed a bit for higher priority but to a limit.
at some point, the distance between the asking and the bidding becomes too wide and trading will stop,
remaining records will remain in the database, waiting for the next round.
orders and offers at market price and without any quality concerns will be traded more easily as matching them is easier.
fix pricing prevents many trades as there are fewer or sometimes no closely matching counter offers or orders.
If you ask for quality 120 and there are no matching offers, who will sell you at Q120? |
| James Folsom | Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 06:20 pm
Well, when I examine the sales logs for my corps: the price received for products sold is always equal to market price multiplied by (Quality/100). This occurs no matter what trade strategy I set. QED the trade strategy settings don�t work. |
| Eeeee OOOooo | Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 06:57 pm
It's been my understand that trade strategies haven't had any impact for years. You can adjust them to be just about anything and your profits etc. will not change.
This was true as far back as when I played in 2020.
My experience matches what James is saying here. |
| James Folsom | Wednesday, May 22, 2024 - 12:02 am
They didn't work in 2014 either. |
| Mad Buddy | Wednesday, May 22, 2024 - 02:26 am
The price could go up 5% above market limitfor every 10x in shortage.
-10 5%
-100 10%
-1000 15%
Someone smarter than me could make a better formula that match product with high and low shortage, but this would be smoother.
The fact is that some products are always on demand, but the corporation are unattractive to build because even in constant deep red, the profits are abysmal. |
| James Folsom | Thursday, May 23, 2024 - 01:26 am
Well I think, country strategies work. EG whenever I place WT order manually and specify a price, I get them the next month whereas on best price or lower fixed price, I wait....
Question is, can I set my country strategies to to say default to +10 of quality adjusted market price automatically? Because all the automatic orders are best price. Oh and BTW, best price just means the products sale at quality adjusted market price. So really it doesn't matter whether your corps are set to best price or not.
Corporate trade strategies don't work, because if did either my product would sale at the price I specify, or it would sit. This is not what happens, it in fact sales at quality adjusted marktet price.
I never try to specify quality for my purchases, so I cannot say anything about that.
Another thing I want to know, is why do the product my corps sale on the open market always trade ~11 points below the stated quality in the Corp data? |
| James Folsom | Sunday, August 4, 2024 - 10:31 pm
Hi all,
Since my very naive exploration of this I have concluded they do work within limits. I also found some forum posts that explain it somewhat.
https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/12280.html?
https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/27442.html?
https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/25018.html?
The first link outlines what was changed and the other links are later discussions that occurred after the collective consciousness forgot about the first post.
I continue to see weirdness that don't make sense and I'm pretty sure at least some are bugs that have been there since the original Tom Willard fix.
1)Some corp types sell the product 10-11 points below the produced quality. This does not make any sense, Resulting in reduction of income since the price recd is usually (market x Quality)
2)I have seen market prices reported wrong in the sales logs. Resulting in reduction of income since the price recd is usually (market x Quality)
3)I have seen price recd that was way higher than the quality sold. But I believe this occurs when when someone orders 330Q weapons. I only ever see this with military corps. It seems to happen more and be more profitable when produced quality is low. I have had 120Q producing corps that would just print money in short spurts because of this. If anybody ever figures out what causes this, it could be an exploit.
There are others that are more uncommon.
If I start posting examples when I find them, will you investigate this, Andy?
There are some things that work.
* My experience so far suggests that for buying strategies 101/5 is sufficient to keep corps supplied.
*Selling strategies are useful when product supply is green. If you cut your request price to -100Q and lower by 10, you'll get your stuff to move somewhat.
*For selling in the red there isn't much difference between best and time. For products that people always buy at 120Q there seems to be some benefit from time. Same for things that people always buy at 330. Best is just a kind average, and reliable.
*For buying in the red for your countries, offer a bit more on a time strategy seems to be better. But of course this is a manual only process.
-hymy- |
| Andy | Monday, August 5, 2024 - 09:51 am
Thank you for this analysis of the way trading takes place.
It has been a long time since we had discussions on this and it remains a bit opaque.
I cannot claim that this is 100% error free but we have checked it many many times in the past years, fixed some and concluded that it works.
The reasons have to do with the trading mechanism which is very effective and reliable when it works with many orders and offers that are matching correctly and becomes less predictable when it works on the fringes of the market.
By that I mean either the very high price and quality ranges when only small numbers of orders and offers are available to match or with products that are traded in smaller numbers of transactions, and again, it is harder to match them.
It forces the trading mechanism to make transactions and mitigate pricing to enable processing.
Without it, very large numbers of orders and offers will remain on the trading queues and will never be traded until the cleanup mechanism is compromising price and quality even much more and makes them disappear at a much lower price.
Examples will help.
I am not very optimistic about the chance to find specific errors.
Most examples will lead to nothing (this is our experience) but you never know.
one little example might lead directly to a specific error and make it possible to fix it.
You cannot judge by the example if you have one that will help. |
| Andy | Monday, August 5, 2024 - 09:58 am
As to best price:
The trading mechanism is processing best price first.
These are much easier to match and there are many, so the trading is able to match and remove most orders and offers from the queues.
Then, the matching process starts making concessions.
Most times, all best offers are gone or all best orders are gone and trading become more complex as it works its way through the queues. |
| James Folsom | Wednesday, August 7, 2024 - 01:11 am
Hi Andy,
Lets talk about scenario 1 then.
H Oil 0 in Hymyland (https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=363133)
This oil corp and probably all my oil corps produce ~270 quality oil and sell it at ~260Q. That is a a big revenue loss across say 10 in country or more in an empire.
This one only sometimes does it.
It's easy to find examples but I've seen no discussion of this anywhere. It seems like a bug. If it is supposed to do that, it'd be nice to document it as knowing the cause might suggest play strategies that would discourage it.
-hymy- |
| James Folsom | Wednesday, August 7, 2024 - 01:14 am
 |
| Andy | Wednesday, August 7, 2024 - 07:25 am
It is a coincidence that I was looking at this code yesterday for a different reason.
the one point drops were always there and are the result of the corporation losing one quality point once in so many months and the new upgrade kicks in the next game month.
The quality difference of 11 points, is the result of market lack of availability of buyers who want to pay the right price.
The main problem you face is that if you want to sell, there must be someone who wants to buy exactly what you offer.
What do you do if there is none.
The game does not buy any products from anyone and is not selling to anyone.
There must be a country/enterprise or a corporations that will buy the product and many times there is none.
so the trading mechanism is making concessions.
without it, all these offers will get stuck in the market and will not be sold at all. |
| James Folsom | Saturday, August 10, 2024 - 12:51 am
Quote:The quality difference of 11 points, is the result of market lack of availability of buyers who want to pay the right price.
This explanation of the quality difference is not plausible. Why adjust the quality instead of the price? That corp was selling everything at best price, so there cannot be a lack of buyers since all the free players have that same strategy.
Nonetheless, I have set one of those oil corps to offer it's product on the same terms as used by the C3s. The trade engine will not need to make any concessions to find a match. I will report what happens. |
| auditor | Saturday, August 10, 2024 - 01:23 am
It keeps being said that the game itself produces nothing and the market essentially just facilitates trade on the open market between between C3s and players, but the 330Q military equipment that I was able to buy on worlds that had no public corporations producing those products would like to have a word. |
| James Folsom | Saturday, August 10, 2024 - 01:31 am
Auditor,
I believe your 330Q issue is what causes issue #3. EG someone asks for 330 quality, the game sources from somewhere and transmutes the quality and the seller gets the extra money too.
Well it's plausible, but I wouldn't expect it. |
| Andy | Saturday, August 10, 2024 - 08:11 am
James,
There are no buyers for the offered quality.
The trading process cannot execute a transaction. |
| hymy1 | Monday, December 23, 2024 - 08:50 pm
Looking at this thread again I realized I should ask again:
Andy if what you claim is true, what is the explanation for the ability to buy 330Q of products that are not available at that quality? By your logic it shouldn't be possible. |
| Daniel Iceling | Tuesday, December 24, 2024 - 06:41 am
The quality of sell and buy orders never match 100%, so sell orders and buy orders are matched even when the quality is different.
If the quality of the sell orders are higher than the buy orders, the quality the product is sold for will be downgraded, to a limit of aprox 10 quality points difference (as seen in James Folsoms post).
Equally, if the quality of the buy order is higher than the sell order, the quality of the sold product can be upgraded, under similar rules.
If this mechanism didn't exist, it would be impossible for most trade to happen, as most buy and sell orders are at opposite extremes of quality.
The limit of ~10 for upgrading or downgrading quality means that trades are often executed with a considerable quality gap, causing money to be created out of thin air.
For example the Buy order is 120Q, the sell order is 270Q. Product is bought for 130 quality, the product is sold for 260 quality (limit of 10 difference from the ordered quality). The product is 130 quality when the buyer gets it, but 260 when the seller is paid for it. The 130 remaining quality gap is filled by money being created out of thin air.
This is where most of the profits of corporations come from, the quality system creating money to match orders, otherwise orders would never get matched and the market simply wouldn't function.
I'm sure Andy will nit pick, or simply say it's not true (it's difficult to admit the game has a massive economic flaw that can't be solved without entirely removing the quality system), but etensive study over years by many players has verified this is how the system actually works. |
| hymy1 | Tuesday, December 24, 2024 - 06:05 pm
I believe Daniel has a fairly plausible explanation, that fits the observations.
The only thing I can't figure is that the historical record shows that we have the existing system because Tom Willard was mad because C3s were stuck buying all the high quality stuff, and subsidizing profits for players.
If it's true the final solution, just shifted the problem elsewhere.
Edit: Actually, the more I think about it, I doubt that the money is created out thin air in Daniels example. I think those mismatches are resolved without creation or destruction of money. Eg when the buyer is asking for 330 and gets transmuted 120 quality, the seller is paid for 330 quality. There are of course different permutations of that depending on whether it favors the buy or seller. It likely isn't straightforward, I just think that given the GMs historical aversion to creating game money; it doesn't make sense.
Nonetheless, I suspect that the C3s are still eating most of this, as always.
|
| Daniel Iceling | Wednesday, December 25, 2024 - 02:36 am
Hymy1,
In cases where the quality of the buy order is much higher than the sell order, then money is removed from the game. It's the same mechanism, just working in reverse. I didn't mention that in the post because I was worried the post was going to get to long.
It helps to partly offset the money that gets created when buy orders are for very low quality, while sell orders are for very high quality. However, I doubt as much money leaves the game in this way, as gets created. Corporations are all producing goods for higher quality than they purchase, and plenty of goods bought by countries are ordered for 120 quality.
The quality system has a large distorting effect on the flow of money in Simcountry, but it would be almost impossible to fix without completely removing or reworking the entire quality system, so the player base largely just accept it as a necessary evil, to enable the simulation to function. |
