WG Electric Power

GM, in case you haven't noticed your making things worse.
With these recent dumps of Electric Power onto the market the price has fallen below the price needed for the corp to be profitable.
Every time the price starts to recover you put more product into the market.
There are several hundred fewer corps now than a week ago removing millions of units in supply and increasing the monthly deficit.
If you are going to create these wild swings in supply then you should really look at adjusting the rate of price change.

I cannot pretend not to know who is doing it any longer. I'm not going to out them yet, but you know who you are. And it needs to stop. To the one dumping products on KB, WG and probably other locations; your're just making a lot of players angry.

GM, can you please look into the amount of products being dumped and determine if these are realistic amounts or not? We're talking int the trillions here...

Khome, johnV, GMs,

A lot of empires stockpile huge amounts of resources. I have at least 120 months of forward demand of every product, and I'm mild. Some veterans can have thousands of months of demand that they have stockpiled over the years. Add to that the fact that some of them have lots of nations and enterprises, and the amount stored by even a single player can be huge.

Looking around, there are several empires in disrepair on LU alone. The automatic system will be causing them to dump their products to free up cash so they can keep operating. KB being the oldest world, has the most stockpiled resources, I believe that is why it is the hardest hit.

I don't believe these are deliberate dumps by players or the GM. Rather, there are several cash strapped empires on each world, all dumping reserves automatically, at the same time. This is what is flooding the markets.

Theoretically, once these empires have finished selling off their stockpiles, things should stabilise. However, I am concerned we may be experiencing a feed back loop. Where cash strapped countries dump products, crashing the markets, causing other countries to experience financial problems, which cause them to dump as well. If this is happening, then each dump, may be triggering the next one, by causing countries to make loses, forcing more selling.

Some kind of safeguard needs to be put in place, that slows the rate at which the system sells stockpiles. For instance, preventing automatic systems from selling products that are already in surplus, or selling so much in one go, that it flips a deficit to a surplus.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

No, it's someone specific. I won't get nto details.

if this doesn't end soon khome. drop the name. Dan is totally right about the chain reaction this WILL cause. it will only get worse.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018 - 09:26 am Click here to edit this post
The idea of manipulating the market is OK.
A group of players could do this but you need to stay on top of it and keep maintaining it.
This never happened.
The market can be manipulated but it is not trivial.

Gamemaster interventions.

The subject comes up now and then and we explain now and then.

Any possible interventions never change the market situation in terms of shortages or price levels.
The mechanism makes sure the market does not fall over.

Example: services are used in nearly all products. A huge shortage will collapse the entire market. When the shortage numbers become far too high, the process adds 10% of the shortage quantity.
The shortage remains, and the price also remains at the top of the range.

Most products never get to this level of shortages and there are never any interventions.

If more players would react to severe shortages and start new corporations, such situations will never occur.

Extending the price range of products make sense if players react to the increased profits and start new corporations. This will also prevent any interventions from ever occurring.

khrome is right its not the gm.

The other day about 3 billion electric got dumped. The following month about 2 billion disappeared. The normal deficit for electric is about a billion every month. That was a 300% increase followed by a 200% decrease from the norm.
These dumps have happened 3 or 4 times in the last couple of weeks. I have to ask can a player stockpile 10+ billon units? And how do you explain the correction in the following month?

If we ever hear from the GM again maybe we'll get an explanation.

Emperor, that quote from the GM is not totally accurate. Sometimes products will be in a smooth cycle of surplus/shortage that repeats irregardless of the number of corps producing and demanding. I've seen this with either Wood or Stone where the number of corps producing kept falling, the number of corps demanding was about the same and it had an annual cycle of surplus/shortage.
Also I don't think there are enough players to have any real effect on the market. Most of the production happens in C3's and the GM controls what corps get built there.

Looking over the charts, and notes I took from the previous product dump on LU. A quote of which I will leave at the end of this post. I am struck by a strange pattern. Every product effected is part of the "Direct Trading" product group, which enables products to be transferred instantly between worlds at zero cost.

I can not be sure what this means, however, it would seem to indicate that a player/s is using the direct trading system to transfer huge quantities of products between worlds and crash markets by dumping them in a single game month. What I can't figure out, is what the motive for such an action would be? They would have to be losing a lot of money when they dumped the products and crashed the price, so why do it?

Signed President of DanNation on LU


"Between Jan and Feb 4213 LU time.

Some of the products effected, and amounts dumped, in a single game month, are listed below.
Air Transport ~9 Billion units
Software ~4 Billion units
Electric Power ~2 Billion units
Cable TV ~1 Billion units
Construction ~12 Billion units
High Tech Services ~7 Billion units
Internet ~7 Billion units
Services ~18 Billion units
Telephone ~4 Billion units
Sport ~3 Billion units
Military Services ~8 Billion units"

If you had enough money you could crash the price and buy back HUGE amounts . Now that i see that if demand increases to high the game will "make" new products out of thin air. using this you could dump and pump all day long with a nice bank roll to start with AND make money the whole time other then the first crash. Id think that there using thos products so people cant see them being moved. some one crashed the oil market on fb with like 50B units of oil so its not just thos products atleast on fb

It's such a clever strategy... for whatever their purposes may be...

The oil dump is most likely a cover. Like Dan said, the dumps are focused on those traded on the direct trade market.

who would have that much oil on 1 world without having to move it or buy it even recently? Oil was crashed for like 5 days but there was never a demand increase till the price bottomed out. I wonder if Aries came back and is having a laugh. who else is on all the worlds being affected?

The Oil Market on LU is fine. It had a short period of oversupply, due to Electric Power Corporations closing after the Electric Power dumps. But it's already back to its usual deficit state.

Since some worlds are only seeing dumps of products that use the direct trading system, and others are seeing dumps of a wide range of products. I am guessing that the person who is doing the dumping, is primarily based on the world/s where a wide range of products are being dumped. Since you can dump Electric Power anywhere, but moving oil would have to be done by shuttle. And 50 billion units of oil, would be way to much to move by shuttle.

FB was mentioned as the location of the oil dump, so I'm guessing it may be the epicentre of the destabilisation? I'm only based on LU, so I can't check the other markets, what products are effected on WG, KB, and GR?

Signed President of DanNation on LU

Basically, who would have the most assets or higher level of activity on FB? That would be a good starting point.

Aries wouldn't come back for a "laugh" by dumping, he took this game seriously. That would be petty and beneath him.

How is it petty to dump? LOL so all the old guys are petty? i remember zen would flood ammo and power for weeks and so would serpent. if someone floods then let it bottom out and buy it.

Another product dump just happened; not as much this time though. It included the following: Services, HT Services, Construction and Electric. All products that can be directed traded between worlds. (No oil was dumped).
Given the smaller amount of dumping this time, I suspect it was to express a point. I think the one creating these economic problems is feeling close to being caught, and is the type to start lashing out if their image is being tarnished. He believes this is some sort of power he can wield over others and must do so as quickly as possible to make that point. This "power trip" of disrupting a gaming community is just that; petty. It's someone who behaves similarly to a troll, and enjoys "kicking over the game board" as an attention seeking mechanism.
Yeah, it's petty. And Aries and Zen were both responsible players who mitigated their risks. They know how to work the economic game without causing havoc. They knew the military game as well, which was very obvious during the battle of Foxtrot against some forgettable cheater.
To some of you, let that sink in.

Oh the guy who found a glitch to dupe mobile units? if i remember correctly

Also what would being caught do in this game? 99% of people dont talk and are under war level 3.

A cap should be placed on dumping as it effects the economies of all the worlds when it does happen and is disruptive to gameplay. The best course of strategy is to diversify your economy to better weather the current storm.
@ The Emperor - Welcome back as you must be a former player returned to the game as you knew Aries and Zen and have knowledge of the game. I have been playing for over 5 years now. Who are you? Just curious as I have seen many players (sadly) leave this game (though I understand many of their reasons for leaving).

Michael - I agree that diversifying is a good way to mitigate the fallout from product dumps, still it is harmful. I agree that there should be a cap on dumping since there are other economic and gaming safeguards already in place. I think this would be a fair one, especially since this dumping is the result of market manipulation between several worlds.

Khome, GM, Michael,

I agree that a monthly "sell limit" similar to the monthly "buy limit" would probably be a good idea. However, the promotions bottleneck is still the most pressing concern in the game right now. Once they've fixed Medium and High Level worker shortages, then they can implement anti-dumping systems.

Signed President of DanNation on LU

I want to go on record saying i an againt a hard coded sell limit. There are players like me who make money buying low nd selling high nd we dont 'dump' products. Maybe on both buy and sell it isnt a number youd typicly reach (have yet to reach buy limit) then maybe. And i dont sell off stuff wvery month. Guess i am not a fan of limits at all

I don't like the idea of a selling cap. I think it would hurt more than it would help.
The current spending limit is fine for small to medium empires but limits large ones. That also applies to the worker exchange and change job limits.

I still have my doubts that this was totally caused by a player.

Any comments from a GM would be appreciated.

The GM told me it's all being done by a player and that this is "normal".