Competition between traders / new "sell to port" mechanic

[Soliel]

I love this suggestion. Trading is easy and boring, and it becomes less of a game and more of a process. I think A would be preferable as far as market systems go, just so that there aren't two separate markets you have to stock/manage/price/etc. for each port.

I do see one issue, where a player could buy up the entire market on an item then sell it at an exorborant price back to NPC, which would presumably buy the minimum amount at least for whatever price from what I understand. So if everyone's selling, say, cotton for 7-9 GC per and you turned around and sold any amount of that for 50 GC per, that's a huge profit. Sell the leftovers back at whatever price you bought them to break even on them. This could be partially solved by having ports buy their daily minimum in intervals throughout the day, but it's still exploitable.

[Axy]

P'xel, that person would have to invest billions in just one port and still have the huge risk of not selling half of it. It seems fair enough to me, even if someone manages to do it.

[Soliel]

P'xel, that person would have to invest billions in just one port and still have the huge risk of not selling half of it. It seems fair enough to me, even if someone manages to do it.

Out of legitimate curiosity, how do you figure it would cost billions? It costs nothing to maintain a warehouse, and buying all of one resource in a port is in the tens of mils at absolute most. Easily possible even for a noob like me. Even if you didn't sell any of it, you could sell back to players at the average price you bought at to break even. Am I just missing something obvious?

[Sir Henry Morgan]

I see the first issue is the cost of building a large enough warehouse.

Second, if that is done, there are two other ports selling the same goods.

Thirdly, it is tied in directly with plantation production - eventually, plantations will produce all goods.

It would take a massive fortune to build such a warehouse - let alone 3 - a syndicate could possibly do so.....but highly unlikely due to competition and the massive warehouse size....perhaps even in the trillions to get ahold of such a warehouse.

[Soliel]

Okay, having to build a warehouse from scratch would def be expensive. I was thinking as if someone would already have a levelled warehouse. Though I don't get why you would have to build in all three ports if you're trying to sell to one port?

Let's say I were to buy all the rum in Aiora with this suggestion implemented. With some napkin math, at this moment I'd need a roughly level 70 warehouse and about 1.8mil GC. That's roughly 25 GC per unit, give or take. The port then buys the cheapest/only, mine. Even just 10k units at 50 GC/unit gives 250k GC profit. Lower it until the next hour when the next person buys it all to sell to the port.

[Axy]

You are forgetting that each port would need way more than just 10k per hour. There are so many merchants and privateers in this game, each port would have to need extremely large amounts. That is, supposing that you could buy everything, which seems impossibly as every second fleets are reaching and leaving ports.


I also have a question: suppose in a Spanish port there are 2 americans selling x at y gc. The port only needs x/2. Would the selling be devided amount each other or how would the selling player be chosen?
Is having a sallesman and a corresponding mechanism even to consider or are we better without it?

[Soliel]

I was just basing my estimate on the figure used as the minimum above, but you're right, the port would buy a lot more than 10k/hour. This just increases the profit for the seller, though. You would only have to buy everything for a minute, right before the hourly sale, something which should be as easily possible as casting voodoo right before the daily reset. I don't think it'd be that hard to buy everything of one resource, so long as you had a bit of capital.

[Haron]

Pixel, I understand what you mean. First, though, let's be clear that what you are suggesting would only be possible if we go for alternative A, a common market from which both port and players buy from. If there are separate markets for selling to port and selling to other players, what you suggest is not possible, since no players can buy from the "sell to port" market.

So let's assume it's case A.

First, it's important to remember that today, only a small portion of goods is sold on the player market. Most goods are sold to port (or through party cards). This goods would now be a part of the total market, increasing the amount of each good on each market by a huge amount. So even if buying all wood in one specific port is easy today, it might not be so if this was implemented.

Second: Competition. If it is possible for me to do what you suggest, it is possible for everyone else as well. And so many may try this, making it hard for anyone to achive it. Also, you assume that the price for ALL the goods of a specific type is at the minumum level. This will typically NOT be the case. So if a lot is selling for the minimum price, but some are selling for 1 gc more, some for 5 gc more, some for 10 gc more and some for 20 gc more - do you buy it ALL, and sell at 25 gc more? If you can only sell a small amount at this maximum price, then you risk taking a loss, as you have now bought expensive goods as well. If you don't buy that, the port will always buy the cheapest goods first, so you can't sell at 25 gc more, since the port will buy that goods which only cost 10 gc more first.

However, I agree that a market where the exact time a major part (the port) trades, may be negative. There WILL be advantages to keep trading just before the hour with such a system. If we end up concluding that this disadvantage is considerable, then there is an option (apart from alternative B and C): Have the port buy at a random time each hour, instead at at the top of the hour. Say, at the top of the hour plus d60 minutes (where d60 is a 60 sided die). That would probably eliminate the issue, if there is one.

[Haron]

I also have a question: suppose in a Spanish port there are 2 americans selling x at y gc. The port only needs x/2. Would the selling be devided amount each other or how would the selling player be chosen?
Is having a sallesman and a corresponding mechanism even to consider or are we better without it?

I tried to explain this in my example. Let's say two players sell x crates and y crates, correspondingly, each at the same prize. The port wishes to by z crates (where z is smaller than the sum of x and y). Then the port would by the same percentage from each of the players. Mathematically, this would mean he'd buy xz/(x+y) from player x, and yz/(x+y) from player y.

So if one player is selling 100, the other selling 200, and the port wants to buy 30 crates, it buys 10 crates from the first player and 20 crates from the second - 10% from each player.

[Soliel]

First, though, let's be clear that what you are suggesting would only be possible if we go for alternative A, a common market from which both port and players buy from. If there are separate markets for selling to port and selling to other players, what you suggest is not possible, since no players can buy from the "sell to port" market.

I was indeed operating under the assumption of case A, which I think would be preferable so that one doesn't have to choose between selling to players or the market.

Second: Competition. If it is possible for me to do what you suggest, it is possible for everyone else as well. And so many may try this, making it hard for anyone to achive it.

Yes, this is true. I think this would be the biggest limiter in the practice, so far as "how much lower than max price will you go to undermine other's prices". However, there are 21 ports with 6 resources to sell each, so that's 126 different targets to pull this on. There's only so many a single person can manage to hustle at once, and only so many hours someone can be online. Everyone could get a turn eventually.

Also, you assume that the price for ALL the goods of a specific type is at the minumum level. This will typically NOT be the case.

Again, very true. Of course one would have to buy everything on the market, regardless of price. But the competition aspect somewhat negates this- as long as you list back at the average price you bought at, someone will swoop in the buy it to resell themselves while you break even. List it a few gold higher and even profit then. It's unsustainable long-term because the leftover goods would snowball in size, but only one person has to take the fall there.

If we end up concluding that this disadvantage is considerable, then there is an option (apart from alternative B and C): Have the port buy at a random time each hour, instead at at the top of the hour. Say, at the top of the hour plus d60 minutes...That would probably eliminate the issue, if there is one.

That could certainly work, although again this is all assuming option A. I think the convenience and realism of a single market would be worth it.