The price for jumping to the head of the line is often less than 1% of the price and inconsequential to the overall price of the item.
Then if BigCorp repositions at 190, this repeats again within a day at 189, 188, 187, 186.
The proposal:
You can always delete a CX offer within 1 hour.
When posting a new low sell (or high buy) price, you must wait 7 - (price difference % from previous) days to delete a position.
If the reposition is more than 7% different from the previous, there is no wait.
If a company position something at less than 1% different from the previous low price, the company is going to need to wait a week to be able to delete that CX listing.
If a player wants to undercut a price and be able to reposition it again quickly, the player will need to bid (or ask) 7% or more different from the previous price.
This calculation is done when the order is placed and is not recomputed if the previous position is deleted for any reason. In the above example, ‘Again’ is going to need to wait a week to reposition those 67 units since the difference of 197 to 196 is less than 1%. To be able to ensure that it is able to be repositioned immediately, the price would need to be posted at 183.
However, if Again had posted at 197 instead of 196 (‘behind’ YACT in the order book), and someone undercut at 195, Again would be able to reposition immediately since Again would have not been the lowest offer (‘behind’ YACT) when posting the material at 197.
This would also apply to the bid (in green: I would like to buy 100 units at 120) side of the order book, though the penny wars are less common there (though they still happen).
It is less than 1%, but at least more than 0,1% (which was possible a long time ago).
There is also a system in place to prevent permanent replacing of their orders: you can only delete some (5 or 6 iirc) orders per day, for every one after that you have to pay a pretty high fee.
But tbh it is a rather complicated solution for a rather minor problem (by some even considered part of the game design), even more so in the future with more market activity which will make the market even more fluid so a price is more about how fast one wants to sell/buy as there will be a lot more orders and movement on the CX.
The way it’s implemented now, aka basically no limitation* to placing and removing orders, I think that the objective is to minimize the convergence time to an equilibrium price.
Personally, I would suggest the simple and tried solution that EVE uses: a percentage fee on every order. If you cancel the order, the fee is not refunded.
It would limit penny wars, which can get annoying
It would remove people posting sell orders at absurd prices as free storage, which should be considered an exploit. This also has the added benefit of making S/D values not useless
People would be more mindful about the prices they set based on objectives. I actually think a lot more about the price I set in EVE compared to this game, because it has more consequences, leading to more accurate prices based on value
It would make vertical integration more useful (it isn’t right now). In the real world one of the reasons vertical integration is OP is that accessing the market has a cost (sales, marketing, admin, etc), so integrating removes much of that cost. In this game the selling expenses are trivially ignored (transportation costs are a rounding error). Adding a sales fee would also indirectly buff vertical integration
It would act as an additional money sink to reduce inflation, especially now since the NPC MMs are going to be tweaked
You could argue that it would make price convergence to equilibrium slower, but that might be balanced by point 3
* Yes, I know there is a limit of 3 cancelled orders per item per day, but that’s not a serious limitation. More something to prevent botting.
It would make vertical integration more useful (it isn’t right now). In the real world one of the reasons vertical integration is OP is that accessing the market has a cost (sales, marketing, admin, etc), so integrating removes much of that cost. In this game the selling expenses are trivially ignored (transportation costs are a rounding error). Adding a sales fee would also indirectly buff vertical integration
Vertical integration is VERY useful under current gameplay rules.
It’s unfortunately the meta way to play.
This isn’t great cause you engage with other players less, which is the meat and potatoes of the game lol.
Also, your proposal makes avoiding the CX more optimal, which does not seem like a good idea.
Unfortunately, that is a very technical view of the market. Of course, those 1-credit increments amount to spoofing, but the market operates discretely—not everyone is online 24/7. The market in general is constrained by two factors: there are players who have hit their maximum storage capacity and are simply “parking” materials on the market at extreme prices. All other players optimize their cash flow to ensure they are making a profit. Anyone can calculate the production cost of a good and determine the price point at which a profit is made. The only real consideration for players is whether it is cheaper to produce the material themselves or to buy it on the market at a slightly higher price—and whether they are trying to run a diversified conglomerate or specialize in a specific area. The fact that storage capacity costs a bit more following the latest update is a good thing, and the gate construction mechanic has helped reduce some of the financial surplus, though further adjustments regarding maintenance and VF consumption are likely still needed.
There used to be “Penny wars” until they fixed it so that price increments could not be smaller than 1% of the total cost of the item. Now there are “Dollar wars” or “100 Dollar wars” depending on the item.
I don’t think there is any real fix for these “xx wars” that wouldn’t involve introducing automation (which the devs don’t want) or restricting trading in some way that would end up being inconvenient or unfair to some people.
What would help the most is for the game to grow more so there are a lot more players. Then the spread between bid/ask will be smaller and trades will get filled faster. The result will be that there will be less chance that the high bid/low ask will stay on the board long enough to be undercut.
I think the issue with this is there will always be some goods with insanely low volume.
Some goods to have a narrow market would require an insane number of players.
I think some adjustments to the increase the size of the increment / adjust the sig fig would not be bad.
Some of use don’t want to engage (economically) with other players more - we prefer our vertical integration for our empires - even while we engage in talking with lots of people.