Market Calc Algorithm and daily focus

Gameplay Questions
1

So this is a continuation of the discussion under “Why is there a daily stock limit?” by Jobsons. The direction of my thinking is too different to that heading but please read through there first…

Both but in context…
At the moment the algorithm to determine markets is just too clunky. It’s a ridiculous assertion to say the markets have grown (so now we will have 6 buy groups up from 5) so you will go from selling 5 cars per day to zero (because your price is just above the new price ceiling) Europe market is destroyed by this because it’s fragmented and that sledgehammer hits each country - the same as if each state of USA were calculated individually. It’s also ridiculous to say only 6 cars per day are sold in Germany. Simple answer - Divide everything except the total market size in each country by 10 so now you have 60 cars per day in Germany at 1/10th the price but your market calcs are a lot finer. Reduce all costs including starting a new company and all the infrastructure to 1/10th and of course max price goes down from 100k to 10k

Apart from fixing the market calcs, it doesn’t really matter what the figures are because it’s all relative. But it wouldn’t hurt to have a proportionately lower income potential from each of your max 10 operating companies if the latter stages of a round were intended to push your thinking away from operating a business to investing in stocks and bonds as your main potential to increase income. It’s not that the operating businesses are earning too much, but rather that they would not be the main focus any more.

1 Like
2

Hey Firey … sorry to take a while to get to this …

I understand some of what you say here but not everything. Here is what I think you are saying and what I’m not clear about:

  1. As player success grows, you want the gameplay expanded to allow the player to focus on other things rather than the grind of managing the operating businesses. Agreed, we want to get there too.

  2. You want to see a higher quantity of cars sold in each country. Ok, but why?

  3. Why reduce the costs of starting companies and such? Note that I don’t want the automotive business to be too high volume … our upcoming smartphone business will be higher volume.

  4. You believe the buying groups are not working properly. There may be a bug I’m not sure, but note that how the economy algorithms work is more complicated than what you describe. When a buying group increases from 5 to 6, there shouldn’t be a sledgehammer effect. If this is happening it may be because of another reason.

  5. “proportionately lower income potential from each of your max 10 operating companies” … Proportional to what? Proportional as compared to do doing something else in the game (as per #1 above)?

As always, thanks for the idea exchange.

3

Let’s say we set up in Sweden and there are no competitors. The max market is 2 groups at 54690. So I could go super low quality and make a poultry income selling 4 cars per day at 27k - not very profitable but about the same as if I do 2 cars at 54k. Of course I want to maximise my profit so I have to live close to the wind pricing at close to the max.
If the market declines and goes below 54k - I sell zero until I reduce my price.
If the market improves and splits to 3 groups - I sell zero coz the max has dropped to cater for the extra group
I hate the market algorithm because it always rounds DOWN - not fractions and then add them. Too simplistic - too clunky.
In a market decline my sales should go from 2 to 1. In a market increase my sales just should NOT go down

Then of course if a competitor comes in to the market we’re both screwed, I believe there is a bug in how sales are allocated but as you say it’s complicated and too difficult to prove…

So I say the markets should sell more cars - reduces the clunkiness of the market algorithm and saves you having to fix it. Surely IRL there are more than 2 cars per day sold in Sweden so it can’t be that big an ask.

I read early on that each market will support at least 1 retailer - but with smaller countries they just don’t. Surely supporting a retailer means the ability to sell 5 cars per day until a competitor comes to town

4

It was just a follow up if you made Sweden 20 cars per day at 1/10 the pricing, then you would have to drop the price of starting / building / equipment and manufacturing each car accordingly.

But if phone companies are all just a smaller version of a car company then that may achieve the same thing. If we had more options on products, we wouldn’t fill each market so quickly. (Still have the problem of the clunky calculations tho)

5

Yes - as per 1. I’d like to evolve from the daily grind as early as possible in a round which means markets have to be easier. Hard to learn and tweak but once mastered - tick and move on. But then the value of what is now the daily grind has to become less in proportion to doing other activities like investing or ?

Again - could be achieved by starting with phones and not being able to move to whitegoods till company 4 and not cars until company 6 or something along those lines.