W3C - Trading in Simcountry (Little Upsilon)

You cannot have a closed system. To think otherwise is a grave mistake.

In every game, money is created out of thin air, to assure players can play. Even in the real world, money is added or burnt as necessary.

If production were to increase, the monetary mass the same and the products remained anchored to the same base price, the markets would collapse due to insolvency.

The game's intervention is needed to assure that all works as it is expected, for consumer and buyer.

But, most importantly of all, this is a storm in a glass of a water. This is non-issue. This is all nonsense.

The game worked fine as it was. This attempt to tie loose ends, and reduce game cash levels and this never-ending reach for realism is unnecessary and unwise. From a game point of view, illogical even.

Why in heaven would any of you threaten the stability, the room we had to grow?
I don't think none is quite well aware with what he is playing with once again.

I just recalled one very precise reason I never enjoyed when a game tried to close its monetary market:

Unlike the real world, when a player dies (goes inactive), his assets die with him, instead of being inherited by his next of kin. In essence, the currency that player owned is put out of circulation, which is what matters.

There are more.

Mr. Willard Here is yet another flaw in the your arguement

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New members order always Best Price<!-/Quote-!>

That is the rule and many other players have set their trade strategies to buy at best price. So if my country is ordering at best price and the only products availible are priced at 333% above the base price then it is only logical that my country will have no choice but to pay that price as it is the best price.
Nute Gunray

"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."

You are saying that if a country orders high quality products for its population, the population will buy those high quality products at the correct price adjusted for quality?

One of the major, major reasons why countries order at 100 quality is because there is no way to verify this. We need the ability to log prices paid for automatic orders, as well as the prices for individual products that the population buys. The game already logs the last price paid for corporation supplies, so I think this is a reasonable request.

Countries buy 100 quality because presidents view buying higher quality as an unnecessary expense which yields no return. If the population will pay high-quality price for high-quality product used, and the outlay returned to the country because of spending by the population, this fear of overpaying can be alleviated, because cost of ordering products and spending by the population will wash as you say. However, no president wants to order 370 quality goods only to figure out later the population only pays for the use of those goods at the 100 quality price.

Therefore, presidents are cautious and order low quality for products their country needs. Because there is no record of price paid for products the country needs, and price paid for spending by the population, presidents rightly fear being reamed by a huge spread as outlined above. My proposal would remove this concern and remove a major reason, perceived or actual, to order low quality.

"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."

I did not make that assumption.

In my proposal, only the population of well-developed countries with high salaries would have the money available to the population to buy high-quality product.

Those salaries are paid by corporations (be it state, private, or public), and by government, not by GM.

There is no subsidy inherent in that.

In fact, under such a system, C3s would likely be the countries ordering 100 quality, because state corps in C3s pay low salaries and 100 quality would be all that the population could afford.

If 100 quality product for C3s was unavailable, those C3s would experience shortages of product or take loans instead of having money added to their treasury by GM.

Will these changes lead to a more realistic use of common markets within an Empire? Currently, it is not considered a good idea, or even profitable at all, to use contracts to supply your own needs from your own corporations. This has never made sense to me.
Within my Empire and Enterprises, I control 1000's of corps. I could easily be self-sufficient in production of my country's needs. Instead, I produce products in my corps and then sell them on the market all while my countries order products from other corps on the market.
Should an incentive be given for self-sufficiency within countries or Empires?
(On a side note Tom, I think my government has thrown just about enough money after bad financial choices--let's not encourage them to throw any at a game )

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

It would be neater if the quality level did not change during a transaction. We know there is little supply at most given levels one might desire. For example, once the benefit to welfare index for higher quality foods has been established, I may want milk at Q150 because I think that's the optimum trade-off level, but I probably can't buy much at exactly Q150. The market-making process could, though, buy me some ratio of say Q100 and Q333 to give an average of Q150. This could work well for products used and stored in large quantities, though not so well for single items.

Another way to match quality would be for quality of products to decrease the longer they are on the market waiting to be sold. Instead of the price offered decreasing each month, the quality can decrease each month, until it matches a buy order. After a while producers will tend to adjust the quality level downward toward the levels demanded.

More information provided on the buyer's end would refine the market-making process, at the expense of more data processing.

Tom wrote: "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."

It would very much help to create a real market, when we get tools to buy and sell stock, semi-automated.

Some years ago i posted this idea/suggestion. In theory it is possible to use a script to perform this action (but that would be unfair to other players who don't use scripts).

It would help to balance markets when all serious players would use the trademarket to buy/sell goods. The principle is simple: you buy and store goods when the price is low and supply is high. You build up a stockpile. When you see prices + demand go up, you sell.

This can be done manuel but then you need more then 8 hours per day tot manage your empire.

My idea for trading-tools are like this:
On the trade-page, make automation settings:
1) use market-tool when remaining cash in country is more then ....X (to prevent bankruptcy)
2) for each product togle: use market tool yes/no (to skip products that show a lousy market-performance, or to concentrate on some specific products)
3) then per product when you use the tool:
--->set minimum stock (no selling when less then X)
--->set maximum stock (maybe allso set by the gamemaster), to keep things realistic
--->set buying conditions (ammount/per month, when price is less then... etcetera
--->set selling conditions

That is the basic idea.

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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.

And...

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.<!-/Quote-!>

I am not an economist; however, am I wrong to see a complete contradiction here?

Or is market defined as the good folks at GOSPLAN would have defined it?

Things work quite well when I do them on my own, alone.

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You are saying that if a country orders high quality products for its population, the population will buy those high quality products at the correct price adjusted for quality?

One of the major, major reasons why countries order at 100 quality is because there is no way to verify this.<!-/Quote-!>

Yes. The population buys the products adjusted to the current market price and quality.

And no. Players buy at 100Q to avoid the whims of market fluctuations.

What there is no way of knowing is if the population is buying what it can afford. They always buy and pay correctly, even if they possibly don't own enough money.

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Should an incentive be given for self-sufficiency within countries or Empires?<!-/Quote-!>

No and there is no need for that.

And why would that happen? For anyone who knows anything about International Trade, he would call that, in your terms, "unrealistic"; not to mention financially unwise, a blatant waste of advantage, a mockery to David Ricardo.

Open market is rule, wisely and rationally so.


I have already explained Common Markets before. They are one step down from the de facto EMU of the World Market.

Enough is enough. To extend, pull and create problems is a sign for pause.

Between the addition of a quality effect to weapons coupled with the wavering payment, but certain purchase of country stocks and the to-be-added affect of quality stocks to welfare, the quality issue is a non-issue; except on what ammo and public facilities are concerned, along with production plants. But I can already imagine what the solution for those will be: when they reach 100, they will be erased and forced to buy anew. And if I ask why?... Realism.

For the producer and the consumer all things, in the end, work quite well. They work, because the game intervenes to assure the producer sells and receives proper payment, and assure the consumer buys as asked and pays as he should. In the process, money is either lost or created.

In recent years, the amount of money added was far more than what was removed. In time, many players accumulated large amounts of wealth. That wealth was address with financial services. Now, the possibility to allow such "extra" wealth to be created and accumulated is now being address through this "solution" regarding an "issue" concerning product quality. In assuring the game does not inject or remove money in each trade, that is guaranteed. But such a move would be a disaster. A most complete threat to the stability of the markets.

There are more gentle solutions, easier solutions, better solutions.

Instead of decreasing the amount if cash that is added to the market to near 0, I would... do nothing. With cuts from losses, cost of war and financial services, a very good, meticulous and excessive work to reduce game cash throughout the game has already been executed. But if it was still something that had to be done, I would augment the ways that there are to remove cash from the game or even create some. But I fail to see the point of explaining which ways are those exactly, when the game is already compensating the lack of cash in the game through the World Bank.

And all of this begs the question: why is there such an unwavering will to reduce game cash?

If the answer is realism, my reply will be "ceci n'est pas une pipe".

Nothing of this matters much to me, but the mistakes are so crass, so obvious and so insulting I find them calling for my despise. I have doubt, however. I am uncertain of what is more crass, more obvious or more insulting: if the mistakes themselves or the continuous persistence in following the mistakes.

"And no. Players buy at 100Q to avoid the whims of market fluctuations. "

From what I understand people by at 100Q because they don't know of any reason to buy at higher quality

From what you know, other players told you to set to 100, from what they learnt from me and my peers.

The smaller the quality, the smaller the differences in fluctuation, the smaller the risk, the greater the stability.

For the goods that aren't consumed by the population, for those there is no gain when used, there is no reason, excluding weapons now. But there is still reason when you plan to sell them.

"Yes. The population buys the products adjusted to the current market price and quality.

And no. Players buy at 100Q to avoid the whims of market fluctuations.

What there is no way of knowing is if the population is buying what it can afford. They always buy and pay correctly, even if they possibly don't own enough money."

It would still be nice if we could have logs for the prices countries pay for product automatically ordered, and the prices paid by the population for product used, so that we could verify this for ourselves

I buy at 100Q for country, because if you buy higher quality, it shows up as higher amounts on your financial statement. Your profit/loss, the loss part of this WILL increase. I did a thorough testing of this.

This means, your finance index WILL go down.

There is NO reason to buy over 100Q for countries at this time.


Contracts:


If I have a contract selling 333 quality of let's say Services. I'm selling these Services to a FMU corporation. These services, SHOULD be sold for 333% of the market price. In reality, they are being sold for about 290-297% of the market price.


Does this make more sense Tom? It is the same thing with ANY quality above about 296 or so. Quality above 296 has some kind of bug. This is what I and others have been trying to explain for quite awhile. And its not just the quality. Its the whole pricing scheme above about 297-298. Nothing will sell above that range, period. Regardless of demand, buyer price, immediate buy, whatever parameters you set. This does NOT change. It cannot be done. This was not the case about 2 months ago. It is the case now, and has been for about 2 months (or close to). Regardless of how you set things up, NOTHING can be sold above about 297% of the market price. Absolutely nothing. This is the same on ALL worlds, all types of corporations, all types of selling/buying.

Q

Quote from Tom:

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.

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For this proposal, I suggest letting the selling have the option of lowering his price by a set % each month.


Quote from Tom:

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.

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For #1, I suggest increasing it to at least 6 months.


How exactly does immediate buy work? From my previous understanding, immediate buy takes the highest offer available and gives it to you at that price. Basically seller sets the price? With immediate sell working the opposite way?

Q

we are all wasting our time......it's a language problem!

The discussion is diverging to many other interesting issues.

The only point I brought here is:

we are not adding money to the system by paying for products. The buyer is paying for the products.

This is what I mean by the closed system.

We do not add money and we do not take money out.
there are a few exceptions and I mentioned some.

A lot of money is produced in simcountry all the time.

The production process in corporations creates value.

All these arguments cannot replace this simple fact:

If you want to sell a product, the buyer has to pay for it.

You get whatever you agree with the buyer. if there is no agreement with a buyer there is no deal.

You can run circles around this and discuss every detail of simcountry and be in favour or find many errors that might be there. All true.

However, you cannot convince me that if you want to sell a product and you do not find anyone who wants to pay the price you ask for, that I should pay the difference.

This is explained several times in the past days.

We will think of adding a trading feature:

You can choose to insist on your price and get it or, if there is no exact quality match, not sell at all. After some time, the offer to sell will be withdrawn autmatically.

Or, the default choice:

The trader will find the best quality match, exactly as it does now, and trade, using the average of the requested and offered quality.

you will be able to make a choice.
The default will be the choice to average and make the sale.


We will try to add this feature ASAP.

This is a great solution because you will be able to insist on your price and you can refuse to sell at any other price.

The bug:

If we see a contract for a price x that sell under that price, we will fix it. this is an error.

The averaging in partially in place now, C3s are not paying whatever is asked but less. this has a depressing effect on the prices.

The top of 297 seems high. If C3s are requesting at 100, I would have expected the deal price to be even lower.

When we implement this feature, there will be some exceptions at a very high price. most deals will be at a lower price because in general, requested quality is on average lower than offered quality.

When it is implemented and you offered a product of Q350 and received payment at 290 it means that the match was a requested quality of 230.

You can also have quality 350 and request 400. that will reduce your sale probability even much further.

I can and will.

I am not speaking of product or production or value or assets. I am speaking of cash. Of money. Of currency. Of liquidity. Of monetary mass. Of unit of measurement. Of means of exchange. Of storage of value.

Currency is created when you sell GCs to the GM, when the game compensates the difference in trading, when the game adjusts cash levels in C3s, when the World Bank issues loans. Currency is deleted when you buy GCs from the GM, when the game compensates the difference in trading, when it adjusts cash levels in C3s, when financial services are charged, when interest is paid to the world bank and when a country or an enterprise are deregistered.

Are you telling me that from now, the main source for currency creation will be selling GCs to the GM? I am sure this is not your objective, but that will be what will happen. I wonder if that will compensate for all the currency that will be eventually removed. I know what will happen if it doesn't.


A buyer already pays what he buys. A seller already receives what he sells (or he used to). This, in monetary terms, is unquestionable. The balance may not be 0, but both pay what they should. What you are doing now is forcing that the products match, so the balance payment approaches 0. That is a mistake. It has mistake written all over it.

What we will have will be something like a river drying out and the same amount of water being consumed. Eventually, they will thirst.

I have the sensation you think monetary mass will grow/decrease and stop on what financial services are determined. I don't think so. I think it will just keep on decreasing and go way below the mark of financial services. And even if you are right, I consider the amount of cash that will be stored insufficient.

I just hope I can wring out level 6 before everything crashes.

Ordered Q at 100...

Q on market at 333...

Market collapse.

That simple.

The only way for corporations to lower quality to match the demand is to order supplies at very low quality like Q100. Even then, a CEO can only lower to Q225...and get paid for only Q160ish. Turning off upgrades will make the corporations completely unprofitable.

Which, in turn, increases demand for low quality even more.

It is untenable for a corporation to produce 300 quality product and only be paid for 200 because of an "average." The corporation is paying far more in supplies than it should.

The advantage of having public or private corps over state corps is drastically reduced in the race to the bottom. It is easier to contain costs in state corps due to the lack of "country resources used" expense.

You MUST give countries a damn good reason to order goods at high quality if you have any chance at making this work. A very good reason. It is up to you to give us reason to create demand for high quality products so that supply is closer to demand and this fiat "averaging" becomes unnecessary.

And if you want to keep your customers, those reasons should come in the form of carrots, not sticks.

Alternatively, quality could be removed entirely. It is my understanding that once upon a time corps were more concerned with production than quality that didn't exist yet, yes?

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However, you cannot convince me that if you want to sell a product and you do not find anyone who wants to pay the price you ask for, that I should pay the difference. <!-/Quote-!>

The problem is that it's YOU who determines what computer controlled countries and corporations wants to buy.

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All these arguments cannot replace this simple fact:

If you want to sell a product, the buyer has to pay for it.

You get whatever you agree with the buyer. if there is no agreement with a buyer there is no deal.<!-/Quote-!>

If players decide not sell their product, thus create shortages, what will YOU do? YOU will add products and service the to market to compensate, to prevent it from collapsing.


How dare you talk about closed system? When Russia stopped delivering their Gas to Europe few weeks ago, there was no magical YOU suddenly pulling millions of cubic meters of Gas out of nowhere pumping them into the system in order to .. make the market.

As it was said before, when there is shortage computer controlled entities, and anyone else for that matter, has to pay whatever price at whatever quality, within the hard parameters for pricing set by YOU, is asked, if the system is to work.

Stop adding non-existing products and services to the market, and I'm pretty sure it will not be that hard to convince the few and very powerful producers of goods and services in this game to withhold their production until they will get what they want. This is not real world, real economy, where there are thousands of sellers. Very few players have so much influence that if they decided to make YOUR imaginary closed system to collapse, they could do it with few clicks. Of course YOU will not let this happen, YOU will determine what price they can ask for their products by setting hard caps for pricing, by adding non existing goods to the market, and now even by enforced deals between sellers and buyers.

Out of curiosity, how come the system YOU invented and presented to us as realistic simulator, could work for 7 years and now YOU refuse to pay for the difference? What is YOUR exact problem with paying the difference? YOUR closed system argument does not hold water, because the game never was, and with the ability to inject in-game cash through the Cash Market into the system from outside, never will be anything close to the imaginary closed system YOU like to use as the irrefutable argument in this debate.

Why should YOU not pay the difference? It certainly does not bother those who play this .. game.

Tell me why?

Tom, players have been asking for higher Q goods to work as a way to order less supplies.

Can we apply this principle in reverse for C3 purchases?

What I mean is this: If C3s are ordering 100Q goods, and I am producing 296, 333, etc Q goods, instead of averaging the prices, why don't I get paid for the 333Q, and my goods morph into the equivalent 100Q goods

-THIS IS DIFFERENT THAN SUBSIDIES, or the GM paying the difference. The system remains closed, but the higher Q good simply goes further...

If I am ordering 190Q goods for my own corps, and 333Q is being placed on the market by someone else, when I buy their goods, I pay for a 333Q good, but the 333Q morphs into an equivalent number of 190Q. C3s would have the 333Q morph into the equivalent number of 100Q...


This is basically the request that higher Q goods go farther than low Q good, but applied in reverse. We should be able to sell at whatever quality, and also buy from people at whatever quality, and then turn the higher Q goods into the goods we need, at a number equivalent to the value of the higher Q.


Or this idea could be horseshit because I'm so utterly exhausted, but I think it would be the easiest to implement and serves the same purpose as buying higher Q and needing less supplies. Well, you buy the higher Q, so yes you're buying "less," but instead of one 333Q good, you get three 100Q goods... or however the multiplier works.