Market Dumps

Anyone on Kebir Blue can see someone just dumped 110 mil Ammunition component onto the market.

We should be able to find out which player CEO or country is doing these market manipulations and making the market unstable so we can take action.

I suspect this person is making these decisions in the hopes of having corps that make ammunition components become negative in the billions and close up.

He's also dumping Military Services, Pharmaceutical Products, and Home Equipment products.

I hope to petition the GMs for a response to implement a way to find out which person has the largest demand for a certain product and how much and also who is the largest supplier for a certain product and how much.

This would increase game activity and add new depths to this game.

We could find out who is the largest supplier/buyer and contract them for their needs.

We could also find out who is intentionally manipulating markets time and time again. Boycotts could be something people bring up more often.

Market manipulation is an old trick on this game. Second the motion on finding sellers (and buyers too).

Look for the deep pockets on your world. It doesn't have to be one player doing the dumping. Several may be liquidating their positions in certain commodities, to take an interest in others.

Not really a big deal to me, but while on the subject, howabout a page where you can visibly see all market suppliers sorted by quantities, qualities, and prices sold. I think I would find such a page rather interesting.

Simply who is #1 is at that moment is not quite as interesting to me as a page that displayed all the market suppliers would be, ranked of course so you can see who is #1 but also who is #2762 if you wished to see, for example, your position in the market.

I agree John. Finding out who's the biggest supplier by a product would be interesting.

Economic warfare and taking out competitions would definitely improve gameplay.

Players would take out the biggest suppliers that they're competing with in order to dominate the market.

I would love for the guy who has 100 companies of the same products just because they're "profitable" to be taken out.

Hahahahh all is fair with love and war in free markets.

Not to change the subject but a sidenote in regards to 'economic warfare' I will say that I do not understand why they allow private companies that are 100pc owned by an enterprise to be bid on by other enterprises (rather unrealistic there), but as far as public corporations go, that's all fair game to me!

I understand though if a president decides to take over private companies, as that does happen sometimes and particularly with dictators.

There are, of course, some ways to mess with enterprises besides buying their companies. In fact, buying their companies perhaps could be rather profitable for an enterprise that regularly builds successful high market valued companies. It is obviously easy to mess with an enterprise if you are the president of countries several of their companies reside in.

I think enterprises (and countries, too!) should be able to hire . . .well let's just call them 'security contractors,' or whatever you want to call them, to sabotage the competition (perhaps with a risk factor of becoming detected or captured, depending on whether targeted companies have adequate civilian security forces, i.e. security guards/camera systems), inflicting damage upon companies such as lower production and stripping them of some quality and effectivity upgrades, etc, stealing cash held by the companies. . .perhaps even closing companies after enough successful attacks. It would be interesting if a CEO/president could choose what sort of attack with what available security teams. These security teams and garrisons (I'd call them something other than 'garrisons' to differentiate them from military garrisons, though. For example, 'security presence' or 'paramilitary garrison') could have upgrades like as do military units/garrisons.

Building upon that furthermore I think it'd be interesting if an enterprise/country could assign civilian security vehicle patrols to countries where it has companies that would respond to such paramilitary attacks on it's companies in those countries, not unlike how interceptors/helicopters/stealth bombers/etc for example respond to attacks on countries by other countries. It could get really elaborate, for example like how a country may have stealth bomber wings to counter-attack, enterprises could perhaps have legal teams that automatically respond to take more cash than was taken/attempted to be taken by other enterprises' attack teams.

CEOs and presidents both could participate in these civilian attacks as well between countries/enterprises and state/private companies. This could possibly add an interesting parallel [economic] warfare system. Although much smaller in scale of course, pound for pound these attacks would be a lot more expensive and less effective than conventional warfare between countries, yet the standard attacks against unsecured targets could be cheaper than they are damaging.

These security teams would have higher maintenance than their military equivalents, because Blackwater mercenaries are paid a lot (exponential multiplier) more than American soldiers for example, but attacking an unsecured target shouldn't require much resources to make some severe damage upon companies that lack security guards/camera systems/vehicle patrols/legal teams(hahah)/etc.

Perhaps, although comprised of the same weapon systems, enterprises' security attack/defense teams could be called 'security teams/garrisons/patrols' and countries would have 'police teams/garrisons/patrols.' Countries either in a common market with an enterprise, or merely with friendly relations towards enterprises, could even choose to allow their police patrols to respond to attacks on companies owned/operated by enterprises in their countries, just as interceptors/helicopters assist the defense of federation member countries. Basically what I mean is that a president could choose to allow police patrols to automatically respond to all attacks on any companies in the country private or public, or only state companies and specific enterprise controlled companies, or companies of enterprises in the same common market as the country they reside in. and of course a president could choose to attack companies controlled by an enterprise that reside in his own country.

Just throwing that idea out there . .

Feel free to modify it, although it probably won't get anywhere (who knows).

You should be able to click a company on the map, and if you have intel on that particular company, it would show security/police garrisons and some sort of law enforcement/security officer symbol if civilian guards are present. and maybe even these civilian patrols would roam around the map checking on companies (hahah) not unlike how supply units replenish garrisons, but that's just graphical because they'd respond to any civilian attacks on their companies anywhere in that country. These vehicle patrols wouldn't require intel to see as would the civil garrisons. but perhaps because they are civilians and not military, the president of that country regardless of relations/common market with the enterprise, can always see the composition of civilian garrisons in his/her country.

Does anybody else like this idea? Of course as I said I don't think it'd go anywhere. Maybe somebody found it amusing at least. If you ask me, I actually really like this idea now that I laid it out. I was just building it here as I was going with it on this thread. I wouldn't try to push it though because I doubt the game developers would want to make such an investment implementing it, but they did make space travel so who knows. Space is like a whole other parallel game engine itself. As I said before, feel free to change this idea around to improve upon it if you want. Or if you think it's a silly idea, you can point that out also, whatever.

I agree about CEOs having security firms.

"Not to change the subject but a sidenote in regards to 'economic warfare' I will say that I do not understand why they allow private companies that are 100pc owned by an enterprise to be bid on by other enterprises (rather unrealistic there), but as far as public corporations go, that's all fair game to me!"

I've never understood why a corporation owned by only 3 or 4 entities is considered a public corporation, with no stock activity at all, instead of a limited partnership or J Corporation, with all the losses of tax benefits, etc.

You could remove them from being bid on by other enterprises. But you could also make them liable to being Nationalized by the Country they are in. Historically, that's just what happens. Foreign enterprises are usually first in line for being Nationalized. That ought to heat things up in the war arena. Even with some kind of notification that allows the Enterprise to move the corp.

If you are going to allow such attacks on corporations, I'd suggest adding the destruction or removal of supplies on hand, and on production. And extend that system to both enterprises and countries, perhaps as opposed to individual corporations.

If a country is sitting on 12 quadrillion tons of vegetables, a little judiciously applied poison should destroy some of that. Ditto for an enterprise. Neither entity has any cost associated with stockpiling massive amounts of any material, then flooding the market. Something needs to be done.

The initial post by SF mentioned 110 million of a particular product flooding the market. We're not heading back to the old days of folks flooding the market periodically with a couple billion barrels of oil, driving down the price, and repurchasing it? All the while making a profit on the price differential, and maintaining roughly the same amount of material?

If someone stores a very large amount of product for a long time, maybe the game to apply losses to the stored product. Food is the obvious one but other thins will rust. get wet am ruined, etc.

Kind of like game revenge (hehe).

I don't know what the old days were like, but all I know is that I see similarities from what's happening right now and OPEC with them flooding the oil markets.

They dump tons of oil, and it results in job losses around the world with companies in Canada, US, and in Russia being out-priced and out-produced.

It's good for the average consumer but not good for the economy and job growth.

If you take a look at the products I mentioned, and then look up how many corps are producing those products, you'll see that the number of corps has gone down sharply since those corps are starting to close.

They're flooding the market to shut down potential competitors and causing GM corps and player corps to become hugely unprofitable in an effort to get them to shut down.

I know a few people who like to dump. I dump from time to time but I only do it to shift prices so that c3 investment funds sell their shares so that I can buy my shares back after they decreased in value. Basically once my corporation hits the 500B mark I make it public and sell 75.02% of its shares. Then once the corporation value goes back down to 100-150B from high tax I flood the market of that product in order to decrease profit forcing c3s to auto sell their shares so that I can buy them back in my empire in order to maintain control over my corporations while spending the least on investment funds. Now of course, I don't do this for one corporation no. I usually have 15-30 of a corporation type that I buy/sell shares from at a time. So shifting markets is something I do get involved in for my own development, I care less about the market situation because well... I make enough profit. I havent done this in a long time however because I haven't had a stable empire on any worlds besides fearless blue for the past 3 months.

The other method I use is decreasing the staff of the corporation, but this doesn't work as well. I'm pretty much not losing any money from buying huge supplies of products because I'm selling them at ceiling price as well. I also tend to not flood, but even out the market if on one world something is in supply and cheap I buy it and transport it to the other world then sell it for profit. Unless it is military. I keep all military assets, and sell stealth bombers from time to time in space. I believe I have the third...? largest defense on Fearless Blue behind supersoldier( just barely )and whiteboy. -Aries obviously.

Ahem, who are the other few people that like to dump.........

Ahem, who are the other few people that like to dump.........


Very easy to find out. Pick out the largest dozen or two Enterprises/Empires on each world. See who owns them. You have your list.

Honestly only very few empires/enterprises will engage in market manipulation. Very few have the assets to do so in the first place. Probably only 3 or 4. The game is very stale with little competition and advancement( player advancement )right now to be honest.

I stand corrected.

Amend your list - top 3-4 entities on each world at present. And broaden the list as needed by active number of entities on your world, as it grows.

Back to the original subject, I don't think the dump, if that was what it was, was successful because my corps only saw a very temporary affect and then back to business as usual. You would really have to sustain the supply for several years at least to have an effect, correct?

Correct. This is why those who dump for a serious market effect need massive wealth and product supply. They would need to have enough to supply the market for multiple game years in order to achieve their goal. This is why economic warfare is ineffective in the most part, it is very rare for a dump like that. The only instances for those types of dumps is when a very large empire cancels their countries/deactivates. They sometimes have billions, trillions of some specific products.

Not too long ago on LU there was a huge surplus of ammunition quality upgrades, over a billion. That is worth 51,500,000,000,000 or 51.5 trillion SC$ worth of ammunition quality upgrades at market price.( this is at 100q so if the player had say 250q for instance it would be worth 128.75 trillion SC$. )You will need tens of trillions worth of a specific product to dump, and if players are smart they will buy that surplus once the price drops below the set market price for them to sell later for profit. So these dumps don't last very long. I almost always buy up someone elses dump if it benefits me.

Also, when a product is dumped on the market the dumper, or player who put those products up for sale only get the price back based on the quality they put up. HOWEVER those who buy that product can buy it at any quality they wish. I use this to my own advantage all the time with military assets. I produce my own precision bombs and laser guided bombs, which i contract to myself. They're around 280q. When the market goes into surplus I sell my bombs on the market and buy them back at 330q. So I am only paying for the quality difference in the end. Players can do this with any product.

Players also can engage in private sales( not really private let me explain )through the world market. Say player A wants stealth bombers at 120 quality. Player B has stealth bombers at 250 quality. Player B is the only person who can sell player A stealth bombers, and the market is in supply. Instead of player B selling directly to player A they both wait for a surplus in the stealth bomber market, then player B sells their bombers while player A buys them off the market the same month. Player B gets paid their quality, while player A only pay for the quality they wished.

This is another way people can trade, indirectly. I have never even seen this posted on the forum before or had anyone I have privately traded with even mention. Now this comes with great risk obviously. Other players can get involved in the process, but in my opinion it isn't an awful idea.

If players are real smart, they'll buy back the dump when the price drops with a separate enterprise. Or in a secured country. They might not get it all back, but a good chunk, depending on market conditions, and how many folks are paying attention to that particular market.

If you timed it right, just before and after processing, you'd pick up momentum on both ends, no?

When an inactive country or CEO is being reset, its surplus products are dumped on the market. There is a lot of dumping when multiple entities are being reset.

Regarding allowing CEOs to hire mercenaries, it would be more practical to restore the deactivated feature of allowing public and CEO corps to be attackable. Those corps used to be routinely attacked in wars and sneak attacks. That was a lot of fun but also nerve-racking. It caused some interesting tensions and more player interaction.

Those attacks made it valuable to keep corps in well protected countries. Some players deployed anti-aircraft and ground defenses in the garrison of each corp. Attacking public and CEO corps was one of the features eliminated when player v. player wars were nerfed. Yes, once upon a time PvP was fun. Maybe you all could convince the suits to press the button to reactivate that feature.

Feel free to check out this discussion.

I agree completely with the above post by Madoff. Allowing companies controlled by private entities to be attackable again makes sense to me. Additionally, I think that CEOs and presidents both should ALSO have the ability to attack/protect companies with some sort of parallel security system like I mentioned.

In regards to 'dumpers,' as Zen said 'dumpers' require massive piles of wealth and supply. For that reason, I am not one of those 'dumpers.'

However, as SeizeForce pointed out, 'dumping' markets happens in the real world.

SIMcountry is a SIMulation and so it should strive to be realistic.

This means to me that I have no issue with these 'dumpers' that you all are speaking of. If they have the cash, let them do as they please with it. If that means "market manipulation," well then....welcome to the real[istic] world.

John West, I am and nor does anyone else in this thread call for an end to dumping. Merely the source or identifying those who do.

Companies or countries who engage in market manipulation can suffer real world consequences such as war. We have gone to war over oil.

It'd be interesting to see a big player or a vet suffer backlash from the rest of the community for engaging in such an action that gives players troubles.

Hahah! I agree.

Interesting however if we can add a currency for individual countries we could perhaps punish the person harshly through currency system by making his currency extremely de valued due to over supply but no demand.

It'd be interesting to see a big player or a vet suffer backlash from the rest of the community for engaging in such an action that gives players troubles.

Hallelujah and amen brother. Pass the ammo.

MNey