Title is short version of the problem.
Markets are getting controled by corps, as there is no a lot of movement, same company just need to put ask and bid custom offers with thousands of units, so prices and margins go up, this is just a milk for new players, I know.
Im new player, there will actions to avoid this?
I just dont want to be a person-npc to milk from other players that just have the money to monopoly markets due low population.
- Isn’t that the whole point of playing an economy sim, trying to deal with larger companies biasing the market to be more profitable for them.
- You can use player contracts to buy stuff at reasonable prices.
- The real fun part is that when you are a large mid-game or late-game player, you get to bias markets!
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I would like to think your opinion is only shared by a minority.
There are so many wrong arguments that I dont think there is a point in just discuss.
Just we have completely different opinions about how enjoy a game.
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Is there a specific commodity you are talking about? There is not enough centralization for control of any of the popular commodities - for thinly traded ones there could be issues - but mostly it is just a question of supply/demand.
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From what I understand, people do that to set prices at a profitable margin for newer players. There is a system called the Price band, I don’t fully understand it but if one side falls outside of it it’ll prevent free players from buying the item outside of the band. Least that is what I recall from it, someone please correct me if wrong
Depends on if the new players are buying or selling that commodity.
Like carbon. If someone raised the price of carbon, it makes it profitable for carbon farmers - but not for many other industry branches, such as metallurgy and manufacturing.
From the perspective of the big corps (or even midsized individual players), new players come in with essentially nothing. There’s nothing there to “milk”.
On the contrary, lots of organizations exist to prop up new players. Check out the Antares Development Initiative, which gives out 1m AIC grants to new players in the Antares region.
Generally speaking, PRUN is designed so that established players don’t have the ability to make things drastically cheaper than new players. So there’s always an even footing possible, so your goods can be sold competitively.
As others asked, mentioning specific commodities (and your region) would help. Usually players who are acting as market makers are creating stability for the market, and creating more buy/sell opportunities, and they aren’t really eliminating profit from others.
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Actually, larger players can change prices for goods, but not below the buy price of the MM if the MM is buying that material, and not above the sell price of the MM if the MM is selling that material.
Especulation is the main problem, there are tons of different ways to handle this or at least mitigate it.
Just an example, really, only an example, there are other ways to especulation without risk with the current system.
Easy, realistic, and minimalistic way to avoid this is putting a tax to sell orders, bare minimum implementation, that I think is just the miniumum standar in games like this from the last 20-30 years?
I’m not quite sure what the actual issue in this example is…
45/u water isn’t milking anybody, it’s quite a fair price. If it was too high, people would be selling into the 44.9/u bid and then undercutting the 1,000,000 listing, and if it was too low people would be buying up the 1,000,000 water they have on offer.
This is just how the market works. In fact, if you look at CXPC H2O.AI1 you can see that the 31/u price they previously had it pinned to was too low, and eventually the market caught up to that fact and broke through Zipatsu’s listings causing the price spike.
there are other ways to especulation without risk with the current system.
This strategy is the opposite of risk free, it’s full of risk. If you gauge the market incorrectly and price your listings too high/low you can lose a lot of money from people buying/selling you out. Just like in the H2O.AI1 price spike example. All that time that water was being sold too low was lost profits for Zipatsu.
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If there aren’t enough people participating in these trades, the balance can sometimes be lost. Sometimes people think that’s a good price and agree with it - as it’s been the price for a while. Put in a large enough order on a commodity without too much exchange and you could change the general price of the market.
I’m going to put it this way. Without Vox Lunaris stabilising h2o in the Antares exchange, prices would hit 100 AIC/unit. That means the drinking water you need to buy to run your bases will be at the market maker-around 120? Rations would be at their market maker as well, since crop prices would go up. So would Carbon. And everything else on that exchange. Now what that means for you as a new player, is that if you didn’t pick the Promitor start in Insitor Cooperative, you can’t play the game because you can’t buy anything. And there’s no way for you to know before you start playing for a bit.
Another thing to note, is that you don’t want to pick an industry that is too saturated. Pumping water isn’t a default profession - so most new players don’t pump water. Vox Lunaris isn’t going to sink a new players economy by making water unprofitable. Cheap H2O also means that new players are less likely to commit to the terrible business plan of building rigs on Proxion or Deimos.
If they wanted to price gouge the market for water, they could price their H2O at 70 - and players would still buy that. They are the largest H2O producer by far, and they decided that they want to make their goal to stabilise the H2O market on multiple exchanges and keep the prices low. The buy orders they put out are so other H2O producers have something to sell to, otherwise water production would collapse and we’d be back at 70/u H2O prices - Even the mighty water baron can’t satisfy the universe’s H2O demands on their own.
I think H2O is the only commodity that tends to have same player place buy/sell orders adjacent?
Another thing - Player based Market Makers such as the above help provide a baseline number for costs and profits. If I see that lowsrrife is buying EPO.NC1 for 151 and selling at 172, I can plan around that. If I make EPO, I know that the price will be at least 151. If I consume it, I know the price will be at most 172 for the near future. This lets me plant down bases that either use or sell EPO without worrying about if the CX will run out of buy or sell orders at an acceptable price. In the case of lowstrife, the definitely make good profit off arbitrating the markets, but I think the service they provide by doing so is a net benefit to the market. In the case of Vox Lunaris and H2O, since there is a 0.2% margin, they aren’t making an appreciable amount of money reselling the H2O.
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Frankly I think what we have here is mostly a fundamental misunderstanding of what free markets (and free market behaviors are) versus what market manipulation and speculation is.
Vox Lunaris has a large buy and sell order for H2O at 45 and 44.9. Can you explain how this is a problem? How is this an example of speculation? They have tied up over 1M H2O (because unlike Wall Street where you can put up order WITHOUT having the underlying object - see “Naked” puts and calls) they have 1M H2O sitting there. And they also have the cash tied up to buy H2O at 44.90 - so any player pumping water has a reasonable sell chance at 44.9 - without dropping to 20 or 10 - where there business isn’t profitable.
Please explain why you think this is a problem?
And, by definition this isn’t speculation - because they have actual goods up for sale and actually cash behind the purchase order. A key aspect of speculating is that you are betting on the change in price of something - normally with a high risk associated with it (sometimes they own the underlying asset, sometimes they don’t) and with a short timeframe.
The orders that Vox Lunaris has up are actually stabilizing the H2O market, not driving the price up and down - which is the opposite of what a speculator would do.
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