Dynamic Market

[Shadow]

The new market is here! Prices are now determined by supply and demand - the more stuff there is on the market, the lower the prices, and vice versa. Over time, slowly, the market price will revert to the mean.

I had to tweak the merc prices a bit to make it work. My hope is that this will make indies a little more likely to actually use the market as a market. We will see.

On the public market page there are now little arrows indicating in which direction the price will trend, unless someone buys/sells some more stuff, which will cause an instant price change.

When you buy stuff, you get the quoted price for your whole order. So basically, you are rewarded for buying in bulk.

It is possible to manipulate prices. If you sell a bunch of stuff, the price crashes, and you can buy back cheaply. I haven't yet decided if this is a bug or a feature, and it may change during the round.

Please test it out, and tell me if you have questions/comments/bug reports. I'll be playing, but mostly I will only buy/sell stuff and make pirate noises.

[Sevz]

This is an excellent change. I love new ideas. As a wolf I'll be strictly buying from the market.

My only issue is the food prices. I stored about 800m food for $13 and now it is all $17 each. Yuck.
Can you put brackets in? $11-$15 would be sufficient

[Shadow]

It is capped. The prices will go down as more people enter the market. Just be patient. It goes quite low, when the market gets flooded.

[Shadow]

Food prices just tanked, get it while it's cheap

I set it to take about 2-3 days to revert to the mean, assuming nobody buys or sells more in the meantime

[austfit]

This thing is freaking awesome. I use and check the market so much more often now, when there's a bargain I buy. I feel like it's truly a real market instead of just a storage area for extra nw. Sometimes the prices dip or rise super fast, but wow! How cool!!!

[Shadow]

Glad to hear it

Seems like minimum food price might be a bit low, though, it seems to be hard to keep any volume on the market at all ^_^. Could also be the initial amount that needs tuning.

[Wolf Snare]

I happen to question the efficacy of this market as it can be very easily manipulated to benefit clans. You can drop or raise prices with several small purchases or sales, and I've already noticed it's possible to have an unfair advantage if done correctly. This will also destroy the server if someone were to decide to lock again like last round.. there will be no way to mass stack against an emperor. Any way to minimize fluctuation over shorter periods of time?

Edit: My news feed is full of micro purchases such as this
Time   Event
6.4 hours ago   You sold 187,500 Skiffs on the market for $413,268,750
6.4 hours ago   You sold 1,200,000 Rats on the market for $480,600,000
6.4 hours ago   You sold 375,000 Stoats on the market for $468,787,500
6.4 hours ago   You sold 138,750 Stoats on the market for $173,451,375
6.4 hours ago   You sold 21,808 Stoats on the market for $27,262,181
6.4 hours ago   You sold 4,175 Stoats on the market for $5,219,168
6.5 hours ago   You sold 12,500 Stoats on the market for $15,603,750
1 days, 2.2 hours ago   

Daily prices are being driven in the direction that benefits the person manipulating the system in place. If you would like I will demonstrate how easy this currently is.

This adds another dynamic to our strategy game, though I'm not sure if that was your intention.

[Sevz]

Shut up Snare.  ;)

The food sales don't seem to have the same balance as the troops. The troops tend to regulate much faster but food going up in prices might be broken due to a percentage factor of a smaller number and higher capacity.
It's clear that if skiff prices are increasing, every 10 minutes you'll see $2001 turn into $2030 etc
But food at $6 tends to increase much slower if at all. 500m food on the market will bottom out so selling in bulk is a terrible idea.
You will be rewarded if you leave the food exposed to sack and nobody sacks or punished if you try to make sales.

The loop snare is getting at would be the way I bought a bundle of 3.7billion food for $6 and only need to sell half of it back in small batches to expand. A few flaws in this new system but I'll have to comment on it later when I've thought about it a bit more.

[Shadow]

The market is designed to adjust itself to the state of the game: the more there is on the market, the harder it will be to manipulate. But the speed at which it adjusts itself could certainly use some tuning.

The market manipulation is something I was aware of before the round started, and I said as much - I haven't yet decided if it's a bug or a feature ^_^.

I'll watch it for a month or so before I make any changes, since it's early days yet. But so far I tend to agree that food regulates a bit too slowly and responds to new sales a bit too quickly. This can be tuned pretty easily, but I will wait until I've seen a bit more time pass and a supply build up on the market before I make changes.

Food and troops are adjusted the same way behind the scenes, but because of rounding to the nearest integer it looks like food happens more slowly. That can also be adjusted.

[Wolf Snare]

Shut up Snare.  ;)

The food sales don't seem to have the same balance as the troops. The troops tend to regulate much faster but food going up in prices might be broken due to a percentage factor of a smaller number and higher capacity.
It's clear that if skiff prices are increasing, every 10 minutes you'll see $2001 turn into $2030 etc
But food at $6 tends to increase much slower if at all. 500m food on the market will bottom out so selling in bulk is a terrible idea.
You will be rewarded if you leave the food exposed to sack and nobody sacks or punished if you try to make sales.

The loop snare is getting at would be the way I bought a bundle of 3.7billion food for $6 and only need to sell half of it back in small batches to expand. A few flaws in this new system but I'll have to comment on it later when I've thought about it a bit more.

Lol whine to me profusely in private and publicly chirp me and kiss butt on forums. Cute.

[Shadow]

So... updated opinions now that the market has some volume to balance out the price jumps?

[Gorak]

Is there still a way to recall troops off the market rather then sell them once they hit market?

[Shadow]

No. That's by design, market storing was getting ridiculous.

You can sell pub marketed stuff directly to mercs in a pinch, but you don't get very good prices for it.

[Shadow]

Crickets

I know I've sold like 30b food so far, how are troop sales going? Is this thing active across the baord?

[Disl]

Crickets

I know I've sold like 30b food so far, how are troop sales going? Is this thing active across the baord?

Me and Austfit have discussed it at length privately. I have a few observations, but as to not sabotage our strategy I will withhold a few of them :P

The most obvious is the ole' leader "Wolf+feast" hoarding strategy is nerfed heavily. Food is worth $5 on mercs now, when it was $9. This is a significant debuff in regards to food storing as a strategy in terms of converting food -> cash -> troops. It is arguable that public market safety is still incredibly valuable considering 3 month long sets but the other debuff is dynamic pricing.  Wolf would typically chuck food up on the market for $25. But now enemy empires with some effort can depress the food market to as low as $7 per food. 

For solo play leader is still the top predator but they lost out on food storing being viable compared to indy and their troop storing.  So far troops are now the go to resource for storage. I will end the discussion here to leave the server to figure out how best to utilize this avenue of storing.