W3C - Trading in Simcountry (Little Upsilon)

Products in simcountry are traded on a real market. The base price for each product is set by a production rule that is fixed for each product in the game.
Fluctuations depend on demand and supply. Pricing can change up to 3% per game month and the base price can change between 0.3 and about 1.8 of the original base price. In addition, the price can increase by the quality of the product.

Anyone who offers products can ask for any price.
There is no cap what so ever on the price of products and any price goes.

Simcountry has always proud itself of its real markets where products are traded by demand and supply. This principle will of course stand and will not be compromised in any way.

Products are always sold to other countries and corporations. The simcountry game master does not buy or sell products except for the addition of some products to the market when shortages are such that there is a danger of a market breakdown.

Anyone can ask for any price but there must be a buyer. If there is no buyer, there are two possibilities:
1. No sale
2. A lower price is used to accommodate the buyer. The average between the requested and offered price can be used.

Many corporations in simcountry produce at very high quality and there are no buyers at this price.
Although many players want the price they ask for, there is no one who is ready to pay that price.

In the past, countries with no president wrongly paid any price. As the gamemaster kept their economies running, gamemaster in fact heavily subsidized the price.

This problem was eliminated. There is no reason for the gamemaster to pump money into the economy while there are in fact no buyers for the products.
Currently, the paid price remains higher than it should. C3 countries pay less but the price they pay remains higher than is good for their economies.

If C3 countries will pay the real price, the average price of products will decline.

The trade strategies in the game are clear. If no one wants to pay the price of a product, it will remain unsold. This strategy was not always enforced in the past.

To make the trading more transparent and correct any misunderstandings, We will enforce the no sale principle when there is a price difference.

A player, as before, can ask for any price.
If there are buyers, the deal will come through, exactly as it happens today.

If there are no buyers at the requested price, the products will remain unsold.

Urgent action will be needed by the player. Large quantities of unsold products can cause corporations to bankrupt.

To stimulate more trading in very high quality products, we will allow players to purchase products of higher quality and we will look into the implementation of new features that will give advantages to countries that are purchasing higher quality products.

We will take some time to find the right way in the introduction of this process. A full blown change can cause instabilities in the initial period. We expect more price fluctuations and more shortages on the market because large quantities of overprized products will remain unsold and will eventually be discarded.

Many messages on another trail on the Forum are claiming that there is a product quality cap and ask for the requested price to be paid. This is despite the fact that we have explained the same before.

This discussion is in fact misinforming players about the way simcountry works. In the past we removed all discussions that have spread misinformation.

There is no way to sell a product at some price is there is no request to buy the same product at the same price.

In the mean time, profitability of corporations remains good and with the recent decline in cost, most countries are doing better than before.

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

We will take some time to find the right way in the introduction of this process. A full blown change can cause instabilities in the initial period.<!-/Quote-!>

And instabilities haven't occurred already?

Quit blowing smoke up our rear ends Tom.


yeah, remove posts that point out the flaws in the programming Tom....WAY TO GO. My corps in question sold off the entire stock that was set to sell at 333 quality plus a minor bump for demand. SOLD EVERYTHING!!! Do you even get this? Yet the price received was not what was asked, not even anywhere near it, yet it sold anyway.

Thanks for dodging the issue yet once again. you have made up my mind.

Hi there Tom Willard,

would you take a few minutes of your time and be so kind to explain to me the following?

1. go to World market
2. pick random product in "green"
3. place order for everything there is available @ 100 quality

What happens is that everything you ordered will be delivered at around 100 quality.

If I accept your arugments regarding supply and demand in the context of quality, and confront it with the example from above, I cannot find any logical explanation how it is possible.

The only logical explanation is that everything what was in "green" was offered at 100 quality, however, that seems impossible to me.

Is that the case? Everything what is offered on the World market is offered at 100 quality?

Thanks in advance for you time.

Tom, I think the problem was that high quality products WERE being sold, but not for their right price, so instead of the product sitting on the shelf until the trade strategy reduced its price, or the need for the product became such that purchase became acceptable for someone, the higher quality just disappeared.

I for one welcome the outlined improvements, making trade strategies more important.

But I have yet to come across any player saying their country/ies are doing better than before.

Thanks for trying to be clear. There is still an issue however with the quality.

Even if you enforce "the no sale principle when there is a price difference", there will still be countries and corps ordering products with quality = 100 and corporations turning out products with high quality - will the gamemaster still be making up the difference in the price multiplier?

Until the game implements a matrix of quality and price for each product (i.e. where there can be a different demand for high quality supplies compared to low quality supplies), there will never be a "real market". At the moment there is just a vector of quality with a scalor of price (i.e. a general demand where double quality means double price, even if there's so much double quality goods that you couldn't give it away).

Products were sold at a higher price because the trading procedures tried to make a market when C3 products where sold.

It made a market and made sure products were indeed sold. To C3 countries.

This lead to the confusion. The products are sold and in fact subsidized.

The trading procedure should stop making a market.

If there is a request for the quality then sell, if not don't trade.

The trader, when it came to C3 products did make a market. The trading procedure was linient and prices were too high.

it does it now too but takes some averaging on the price.
Now everyone is in arms while the price paid is too high.

It should and will leave these products unsold.

I don't understand the 100 quality question. Many corporations order at 100 and many offer at 100. If you see something that looks wrong to you, mail me and I will have a look.

Ordering at 100 should deliver at 100. The question is if you order at 100 and there is only 150 available.

who pays?
until now, C3 countries paid, now they pay a little less.

The trade should not take place at all. The player who places the order should raise quality or the seller should reduce the price.

I was for averaging both ways. The trader could average the trade and close it.

It seems that many prefer it to be "clean".
Give me the price I asked for.

fine.

You will either get the price you asked for and
you will accept a more frequent "no thanks" no sale result.

we will probably allow people to choose the strategy they want.

The startegy:

Give me the price I ask for and let the gamemaster pay the difference does not exist.

Danneh:
The gamemaster cannot make the difference.
It will add thousands of trillions into the world economy.

The world economy is a closed system with very few small exceptions.

the world bank sometimes give loans but this is insignificant as there is enough money and it takes it out too.

I cannot think of other examples right now but there are and very small.

the gold coins stream in and out is of course a larger "leak" and goes both ways.

Averaging is a better way as one gets less than intended and the other pays more than intended.

We should create incentives as I described before, to make it attractive for countries to order high quality.

Are you kidding me Tom? I could contract 370 quality from a public corp so somewhere, thus ENSURING demand for my product, and then STILL only be paid at 300! LOL

If trade strategies above 300 are really too damn high, then 333 quality product should just SIT UNSOLD until the trade strategies reduce price after a few months to a tolerable level. Not sell the same month at a fiat lower price that is NOT what the trade strategies are set for.

If there is an order for 100 quality (I'll call this Q100 from now), but only Q150 available, how will there ever be a trade? It is stated that ordering at Q100 should deliver at Q100. Even if the Q150 stock is reduced to minimum asking price, how can a trade ever happen if all the orders are for Q100?

...

I guess we will see you in a week or so then Foo Manchoo.....

Ordering at 100 should deliver at 100. The question is if you order at 100 and there is only 150 available.

who pays?
until now, C3 countries paid, now they pay a little less.

The trade should not take place at all. The player who places the order should raise quality or the seller should reduce the price. - Tom Willard

This is what Danneh Turner refers to, and I believe following:

The buyer pays the 100-quality rates. The seller profits at the rate of whatever quality at which the products were produced. The game master covers the difference. - Kevin Henry

from another thread is the .. reality, is how the game engine handles such situation, simply because if it would not work this way, trade would not happen, and the economy would collapse.

I can understand why the GM does not want c3s to buy high quality thus expensive products and services sold by the players (Tom Willard called it ... subsidize), however, real market is based on supply and demand, and if there is shortage then c3s, and anyone else for that matter, has no choice but to buy whatever quality at whatever price there is.

If you will get lost in desert, with no water in 100s miles radius, and I - by some miracle - happen to be there selling a bottle of water, you can be sure you will pay me any price I will ask.

A contract for quality 370 should go for 370.
if not, show me an example and we will fix it.

if the offer is for 150 and the request is for 100:

C3 used to pay 150 for it.
now, C3 pays probably around 135.
If averaging: C3 should pay 125
If you only sell for the price you have set, then no sale.

If 370 is asked and only 150 is offered, they probably close now at 370 - 20%? (294)
averaging will mean: 260.
or no sale.

There will always be a problem to match quality.
there is no way around it but to make a market in some way.

You can shout a lot of obscenities but the seller and buyer have to make a deal.

The webmaster should facilitate, not finance it.
Maybe the US government wants to pay for it?

The cost averaging you speak of completely eliminates the point of the "reduce price for each month the product remains unsold" half of the trade strategy.

In the case of severe-shortage product, I may have it set to a very low percentage. In some munitions markets on LU, for example, supply has been less than 20% of demand.

The buyer can either pay the price, or not obtain product. If I see five months unsold stock and want to reduce the price, I will.

Otherwise, let the corp go bankrupt.

The high price was not paid by choice when there was a shortage.
it was paid by default because the trader was programmed to have C3s pay whatever was asked for.
C3s were paying far too much, their economies were losing money, (10.000 countries) and anoth part of the simcountry software kept them afloat by adding cash.

When shortages get very severe, an "immediate buying" procedure kicks in. this procedure could indeed trade differently and I know it does although it is a long time ago.

no reason to pay the high price by default.

As far as I know it has "never" been a problem in the past, and it always worked like that, at least since 2003. After all its system "invented" by the GM - W3C.

If Q370 is offered - BMW and Q150 is asked - Dacia, then they wont close at -20% or anything like that. One is selling BMW and the other one wants to buy Dacia and that is that.

Sure market has to be made somehow, and theres no way around it, however, as much as W3C feels they cannot subsidize it, players feel being ripped off.

I will repeat myself again, but if it was not for the Cash Market with option to cash out, this would not be an issue, because the GM could subsidize, could let players to make virtual meaningless money, as much as they wanted.

Keith,
this is an option. let them sit there unsold and the corporation will bankrupt.

I know that the monthly reduction procedure lost part of its functionality because the market and quality mismatch caused a major problem.

The C3 "solution" was created at the time because they did not complain. now they do and if they stop buying, there will be a very big problem for many many sellers of high quality.

the market making procedure, although at a lower intensity, is making the sales as we speak.

this is why currently product ARE sold, be it at a somewhat lower price.

Not true.
The cashing out function in simcountry is of no consequence at all.

The total amount paid out per month is 100 to 150$. we had a 250$ month some time ago. wow. so this is really of no consequence.

This is not even one day salary to any of our engineers. we don't care if this amount will become 1000 a month.

We are buying game money by the bucket these days and pay out thousands of gold coins. no problem at all.

The market should remain a closed system and we are trying to bring it back to the desired level.

If we start adding money to the market, everything will become worthless, the markets will fall over as demand will outstrip supply by an ever increasing factor and there will be no economy.

the game does not make sense at all if money is falling off the trees.

There are monthly votes to give everyone money every day and all of them are wisely voted down by a huge majority because adding money in this way or any other way will kill the whole logic of the economy.

In fact, we had some problems in the past with too much money being created. This is why there is today too much money in the worlds, concentrated with a number of players.

we don't want to take it away. we want to give them gold coins or cash if the want to cash these gold coins but we want it out of the system.

Some use the cash to purchase huge quantities of products and store them in enterprises.
they are capable of bying all the weapons that are produced and they are able to flood the market.
Playing with the markets is part of the game. However this is what you get when there is too much money around and money supplies are unlimited.

If I wanted to argue about this, I could point out that it would be interesting if everyone would withdraw their "investments" at once, not by the rules set for cash withdrawals, but solely based on total in-game assets represented by population, stocks of products, services, weapons and ammo.

but I don't so .. fair enough.

Thanks for your replies Tom Willard, its appreciated.

Tom, I can give you MANY examples of Contracts not being fulfilled at market price modified by quality.

As for the reduction you speak of, it does not explain why 370 quality and 333 quality sell at about the SAME price!


I agree with several others, if there is severe demand, then the seller's price should be met. On the flip side, if there is large supply, then the buyer's price should be met. In-between should be somewhere more toward the middle.

If Simcountry could come up with something like what i just proposed, more elasticity in the price based on supply/demand, I think that would be 1) more realistic, and 2) more fair to everyone. Couple this with increased incentive for high quality products, and enable buying of higher quality products (cap is 250 currently, when up to 370 can be produced), and I think you would solve most of our complaints and gripes.


So to summarize: High demand = close to sellers price. High supply = close to buyers price. This could be done similar to how most indexes in the game work, as a average of several months, to prevent hard swings one direction or the other. Combine this with more incentive for buying high quality products.


The current problem is most people want to sell as high of quality good as possible, while buying as low as possible (for countries), and not a whole lot higher for corporations. There is no incentive to buy products over 190 quality, and currently there is no incentive to buy over ~ 160 quality.


Also, if I buy say 190 quality, at 190%, and someone else is selling 333 quality at 333%, if both have say 20% increase, then in a couple months, price is met. Does the buyer still receive the quality asked for, or does he get stuck with 333? The seller obviously is getting paid his requested price. This is an extreme example, but I figure it would better illustrate this point.


Tom, having read your explanation, I agree with your "market making procedure", I just feel it should be adjusted for the supply/demand. FMU's, as an example, should almost always be swinging to the seller's price. While something like coffee, more toward the buyer.

Thanks for your detailed explanation, alot of things make sense now.

However, Common Market/Contracts are working the same way as the world market, this should be fixed. If you want, I can email you several examples of this, with the math to back it up.

Q

Oh, and thought I would share my latest finding.

The modification Tom speaks of, with regard to trade strategies, is a little more detailed than what he explained.

If you are selling 333 product at 360%, chances are its not going to be sold.

If you are selling 333 product at 340%, chances are it WILL be sold.

If you are selling 370 product at 400%, chances are its not going to be sold.

If you are selling 370 product at 380%, chances are it WILL be sold.


However, the price given in ALL these transactions, remains about 290-297%, when the product is sold.

Q

" Keith,
this is an option. let them sit there unsold and the corporation will bankrupt.

I know that the monthly reduction procedure lost part of its functionality because the market and quality mismatch caused a major problem.

The C3 "solution" was created at the time because they did not complain. now they do and if they stop buying, there will be a very big problem for many many sellers of high quality.

the market making procedure, although at a lower intensity, is making the sales as we speak.

this is why currently product ARE sold, be it at a somewhat lower price. "

Tom, I have a wonderful idea!

There is now, on the country financial statement page, a line item for "Spending by the Population 0.00M SC$" In a country of 84 million (my main on LU), the population spends not one cent.

Use it. Those products the country orders for its population to use, such as food products and household products, the country should be able to sell back to its population.

If the country pays for 333Q product, have the population buy the goods it uses at the 333Q price.

This reduces the financial hit to countries caused by ordering high-quality products to those the country itself needs to use, such as military supplies. However if you implement your ideas concerning unit quality there could be benefit for countries there too.

Countries that are doing well, with reasonably high salary indexes, should have population that can afford to purchase the high-quality products and pay the high-quality prices for products the country orders on its population's behalf.

This can also increase welfare index, and the effect of welfare index on corporate productivity can be attenuated somewhat.

There is a potential mechanism in the game already to make high-quality product worthwhile; it just sits unused. The line item already exists.

Salaries as paid to workers now (after taxes) disappear into a vacuum. Countries that have high salaries should have their population clamoring for high-quality product--and willing to pay for it.

Keith, excellent suggestion. Excellent.

Though that doesn't solve the rest of Simcountry's products, it does help a good chunk of them.

Q

Keith.
you misunderstand the spending by the population.
the money the population earns comes into the country finances and the country is paying for the products the population needs.

the numbers are not matching each month so we report them on the financial statement.

long term they should be about the same.

What can be done is as I suggested before, making it attractive for countries to purchase high quality by, for example, increasing the welfare index of countries that purchase higher quality product.

Higher welfare index will improve the country score but more importantly, increase the productivity of its workers and with it, the production levels in corporations and their profitability. This mechanisme is already in place but the welfare index is currently not influenced by the average of the quality of the products, consumed in the country.

The suggestions I see here, keep assuming that the product trader will add money to the market to make prices go this way or another way.

This is not a good assumption.

The amount paid, should be exactly the same as the amount received and the trading program should not add or remove any money from the process.

Gamemaster has nothing to do with money moving between buyers and sellers.

I think that the best way will be to set up a default that will average the quality of offers and requests and make a trade at the average price.

if you do not want this to take place, you should have the option to enforce the price you requested and rather have no deal at all than one at a lower price.

This can sometimes deliver more money but also, many times, no money at all but it will not make you sell your products at a lower price than you want for them.

We will look at the options of how to deal with the unsold products:

1. Take them from the market at a very low price after 3 months. (10% of value?)
2. Cancel the old offers and the products will remain with the corporation. It can re-offer them and they will be sold or not. etc.

The latter is probably better.

Contracts:

again, the message is not clear enough and more info will help.

I will have contract trades checked tomorrow and make sure that if there is a contract at any price, it will be executed at that price as there is an offer and request at the same price.

We can and will check for fraudulent contracts and in such cases, will discard all products and contracts.