Proposal : remove qty from Raw Material LLC (NPC)

[Guest]

Hi all,

I have seen that when we buy some item to "Raw Material LLC (NPC)", his "amount" of item will never get down, ex : 1,000,000 Steel for Raw Material LLC (NPC), will ever stay 1,000,000 Steel....
My suggestions is to decreased the amount of item of this "society" all day long (from 0h00 to 23h59)
and "reset" this amount at 00h00 to 1,000,000....this way, society which have put a higher price, will be able to sell their item this price

[Tycoon]

Not now, but a few weeks later on, the rich companies, respectively one of them, will buy 1 mio of steel directly in the morning... and the small companies have to buy the expensive one...

furthermore this will be unfair for users in time zones where the day begins at 1 pm server time...

[Guest]

also, i think if this were to be a viable option, the gradual increase over the day would be better than if it were to be a quantity 'reset' at 23:59

[Guest]

What's the problem with the large company buying out the NPC? Small companies would pay more for their steel, which means that they would expand more slowly... or they would start producing more steel, since it would have become more profitable.

Or if you see a problem there, just change the NPC price into (market average below the NPC price + 10%) or something. Then the large company would have no reason to buy out the NPC every morning, but the NPC would be there in case of a steel market melt-down. *shrug*

Fairness in markets (which is the result of ethical behavior of market participants) can be stated as two simple principles: do what you promise to do, and do not encroach on anyone or their property. If each player follows these principles and refuses to deal with players who do not follow them, the markets are automatically fair.

Faxes and contracts are simple cases of fulfilling your promises. Erroneous contracts are also related to this: the buyer promises a certain price in a fax and is thereby obligated to pay this price for any contracts that he accepts. If somebody sends a contract at a lower price, the buyer should reject such contracts, as otherwise he breaks his (implied) promise.

Erroneous contract is the only case in this game where the encroaching can occur: When you send a contract to somebody at too low a price, and the other party accepts the contract, he has your property. It hasn't become his property, since he hasn't paid the agreed-on price for it. Because of this the ethical player simply rejects the contract, or if he has already accepted the contract, he sends it back at the same price (+transfer fee), whereas the unethical player accepts the contract and keeps the goods. This can of course happen also when posting to the market, and the same goes there: the ethical player recognizes the honest error and sends the goods back to the seller at market price + transfer fee, whereas the inethical player keeps the goods and thanks his dark gods for the windfall.

In the real world registered complaints and claims are published in a trade newspaper so that other entrepreneurs can beware of companies with bad business practices, but this game cannot have such a list, since a) there is no way to register a complaint or a claim (the reason for this registration is to prevent spurious claims from tarnishing the names of honest companies) and b) the administrators have the policy of censoring any company names from messages, good or bad.

[Guest]

You're correct about real world markets and fair trade, Widgetry. But I have to disagree with you about Steel & the NPC.

Though market forces are at work, certain imbalances also arise in translating to the game. One of those is the intense need for steel. And as it is Kapilands already seems at risk of turning into the Gas and Steel game. I wouldn't want to exaggerate that by pushing more people into the steel game

[Guest]

the game is already steel & gas.. it is too late..

[Guest]

is it steel & gas in the german version too?

[Guest]

the game is already steel & gas.. it is too late..

Ya I agree with you there Bilge

[Guest]

so what we can do is "removing" RAW MATERIAL NPC for "higher" level player, this way, they would buy "material" at the "highest" price and so , player putting product at a higher price than NPC could have their product bought

[Guest]

so what we can do is "removing" RAW MATERIAL NPC for "higher" level player, this way, they would buy "material" at the "highest" price and so , player putting product at a higher price than NPC could have their product bought

That's ridiculous, big players know always others who could buy the steel for them, there is no need to change the NPC, if you adjust limits to it, it will loose his purpose.
Although I am myself not a big player I also think it's ridiculous to make proposals in order to boycot big companies. You'r giving penalties for being succesfull??!!

Without or with limited NPC almost every starting player would be pushed into building a factory because prices could increase so high that they have to save money for ages in order to build a new construction. On the other hand, many new players who start producing steel will sell it too cheap in general and decrease of price could be a consequence.

Furthermore, if steel enters the free market, who do you think will have most influence in setting the prices? Intuitive you could say the players who produce and sell it (there are lots of them), if you look it from the other side, there are few buyers who buy really lots and lots of steel of many players. If they suddenly decide willing to spend less at steel, prices will fall very quickly (they can do that in cartels or by producing for themselves big parts and building a stock and use that stock untill the market starts crumbling under oversupply). That's why I think they have more influence at prices of raw materials.

In our daily economics things like the NPC are also more common than you think ( prices of certain products are free untill a certain fixed amount (mostly of basic needs, like rent charged for an appartment or water etc.), and it's illegal to sell above that price, ok not quite like NPC but it has the same effect, which is protecting the poorest (weakest) players.

Finaly I would like to add that in order to build constructions, it's more usefull finding stones for a couple of $ cheaper than steel, because in the end you need a double amount of stones in order to construct, so untill steel starts fluctuating with differences in the order of twice the amount of stones (notice that stones have been noted 14$ and dropped to 8$ last weeks), the price of stones is more determining wheater you can build cheap or not.

[Guest]

That's ridiculous, big players know always others who could buy the steel for them, there is no need to change the NPC, if you adjust limits to it, it will loose his purpose.
Although I am myself not a big player I also think it's ridiculous to make proposals in order to boycot big companies. You'r giving penalties for being succesfull??!!

That's the prevailing design philosophy of Kapilands: the game penalizes the player every time he crosses an arbitrary treshold in fixed asset value. Everything becomes more expensive to construct.

In real life (RL) the same philosophy is apparent: more efficient you're in your work and more you earn, more you pay taxes, and it is not linear: thanks to progressive taxation, you pay an increasing fraction of your earnings. Thanks to means-testing, more you pay, less you get of the "services" produced by government and authorities that get their funding from taxes. What a hoax, eh?

Without or with limited NPC almost every starting player would be pushed into building a factory because prices could increase so high that they have to save money for ages in order to build a new construction. On the other hand, many new players who start producing steel will sell it too cheap in general and decrease of price could be a consequence.

So where is the problem? If the price goes down, newcomers need not build factories. It the price goes up, newcomers can build a mine and a factory and rake in some sweet steel money. The market is self-balancing: as price of steel or its ingredients (coal, iron ore, minerals, chemicals) go up, more people will start producing them, since the profit will be greater. When the prices go down, people repurpose their mines and factories (since it is possible in Kapilands, unlike in RL).

Furthermore, if steel enters the free market, who do you think will have most influence in setting the prices? Intuitive you could say the players who produce and sell it (there are lots of them), if you look it from the other side, there are few buyers who buy really lots and lots of steel of many players. If they suddenly decide willing to spend less at steel, prices will fall very quickly (they can do that in cartels or by producing for themselves big parts and building a stock and use that stock untill the market starts crumbling under oversupply). That's why I think they have more influence at prices of raw materials.

Big steel purchasers are big steel purchasers, because they've used their limited building space (60/100 buildings) for production chains other than steel. It simply makes more sense to produce oodles and oodles q9 gasoline/wardrobes/leather jackets than to sacrifice 10% or 20% of the production capacity of high-quality products so that you can produce sufficient amounts of steel of your own to support the expansion of your industries.

And why would markets "crumble under oversupply"? As steel becomes cheaper, some of the steel producers start doing something more profitable with their factories. Some don't care for profits: they're just going through the motions of playing a game. And cheap steel is a good thing for everybody else in the game: no need to produce your own, if you can get it cheaper from the market.

In our daily economics things like the NPC are also more common than you think ( prices of certain products are free untill a certain fixed amount (mostly of basic needs, like rent charged for an appartment or water etc.), and it's illegal to sell above that price, ok not quite like NPC but it has the same effect, which is protecting the poorest (weakest) players.

In real life, price fixing causes real horrors. Price ceilings, such as rent control, eventually make it inprofitable to maintain the rent-controlled building, so the landlord either sells it or abandons it, and voil

[Guest]

That's the prevailing design philosophy of Kapilands: the game penalizes the player every time he crosses an arbitrary treshold in fixed asset value. Everything becomes more expensive to construct. In real life (RL) the same philosophy is apparent: more efficient you're in your work and more you earn, more you pay taxes, and it is not linear: thanks to progressive taxation, you pay an increasing fraction of your earnings. Thanks to means-testing, more you pay, less you get of the "services" produced by government and authorities that get their funding from taxes. What a hoax, eh?

In real life the same philosophy is not so apparent as you think, why do we see these days so many fussions btw? Big companies have more power and they take advantage of a principle called "economies of scale" in economics. (the more you produce the less it costs)
The example you are giving is applied to people, not companies.
The only reason I can think of, why everything gets more expensive and productions goes slower in kapilands when you reach a certain level, is to keep the leaders from taking even more distance from the rest, in order to keep the competition more fair.

So where is the problem? If the price goes down, newcomers need not build factories. It the price goes up, newcomers can build a mine and a factory and rake in some sweet steel money. The market is self-balancing: as price of steel or its ingredients (coal, iron ore, minerals, chemicals) go up, more people will start producing them, since the profit will be greater. When the prices go down, people repurpose their mines and factories (since it is possible in Kapilands, unlike in RL).

My point was that with high steel prices almost every new players would be pushed into steel, although now that I think of the fact that you start with 4000 steel for free in your warehouse this may not occur. (if you are not in temptation of selling it before you build several constructions) When prices go up or down you generally also notice some substitution effects, for example stone dropped a lot last weeks, lots of stone producing players switched to minerals, coal or iron ore because of that, by consequence, in those markets there was also a decrease of prices.

Big steel purchasers are big steel purchasers, because they've used their limited building space (60/100 buildings) for production chains other than steel. It simply makes more sense to produce oodles and oodles q9 gasoline/wardrobes/leather jackets than to sacrifice 10% or 20% of the production capacity of high-quality products so that you can produce sufficient amounts of steel of your own to support the expansion of your industries.

I agree, absolutely

In real life, price fixing causes real horrors. Price ceilings, such as rent control, eventually make it inprofitable to maintain the rent-controlled building, so the landlord either sells it or abandons it, and voil

[Guest]

Price floors, on the other hand, result in overproduction, such as the butter mountain of Finland: Farmers were promised a certain price for butter, so they produced way, way more than the Finnish economy needed at higher costs than what butter brings in at the world market. The government bought all excess butter and sold it at loss at the world market. So the tax payer got soaked coming and going.

I never said those things didn't have their drawback in real life, they are always supposed to protect weaker parties of society, in your example of the butter, the farmers are the weaker party, in a free market they couldn't make a living anymore with their products, btw the tax payer is not so much a victime in that story as foreign farmers in Africa who see that excess of butter being dumped into their market at ridiculous prices they even can't compete with.

Ah, you know my Uncle Bud was a butter farmer. In the summertime I'd go visit his butter farm, we'd see how all the butter buds were sprouting up from the little buttercups. If I was good he'd let me pick a fresh butter stick off the butter tree. Of course you had to eat fast or else the hot summer sun would melt the butter right through your hands.

Many were the times he'd tell stories of the oppressive Finnish butter farmers. Bud's butter was better, because the Finnish butter was a bit bitter. Buyers always finished Bud's better butter, but they wouldn't finish but a bit of the bitter Finnish butter. But he couldn't finish selling his better butter because the Finnish butter was the lower bidder. It made Bud a bit bitter. So if you're baking and you need better butter for your batter, remember to bid on Bud's Better Butter, the best butter you can buy!

Of course Finland was nothing compared to the butter farmer's greatest adversary - the butterfly!

[Guest]

In real life the same philosophy is not so apparent as you think, why do we see these days so many fussions btw? Big companies have more power and they take advantage of a principle called "economies of scale" in economics. (the more you produce the less it costs)
The example you are giving is applied to people, not companies.
The only reason I can think of, why everything gets more expensive and productions goes slower in kapilands when you reach a certain level, is to keep the leaders from taking even more distance from the rest, in order to keep the competition more fair.

The current players have spent their time playing the game. What is fair in changing the rules in the middle of the game? Of course, we know that as you advance in the game, the changes occur, but it is still an odd design choice, as it distorts the development of a company.

I never said those things didn't have their drawback in real life, they are always supposed to protect weaker parties of society, in your example of the butter, the farmers are the weaker party, in a free market they couldn't make a living anymore with their products

Yeah, right. In free market nobody would produce food since it wouldn't be profitable

In a free market there would be even more of a choice in foods than is in the current situation, not the opposite. Just look at _any_ field of business or product category that the government hasn't destroyed by turning it into a "service": there are multitude of choices in all price categories.

, btw the tax payer is not so much a victime in that story as foreign farmers in Africa who see that excess of butter being dumped into their market at ridiculous prices they even can't compete with.

It wasn't dumped at ridiculous prices: it was sold at world market prices. Of course those prices went down as the butter mountain flooded the market, but still. And the African farmer could still eat his own butter, so it wasn't as if he went hungry. And the Soviet consumer rubbed their hands with glee, as they finally got their butter after three years of standing in three different lines (first to order the product, second to pay for it and third to receive it).

Anyhow, the real culprit in this case (once more) was the Finnish government for legislating the butter subsidies and dragging their feet when it was time to remove them. But were they punished for their error? Nope.

[Guest]

Yeah, right. In free market nobody would produce food since it wouldn't be profitable

In a free market there would be even more of a choice in foods than is in the current situation, not the opposite. Just look at _any_ field of business or product category that the government hasn't destroyed by turning it into a "service": there are multitude of choices in all price categories.

Absolutely, make it a free market in Europe for food, no subs or floor prices and almost every food related jobs will be abandoned, I can assure you that. Why? because wages are huge compared to those from other continents who can easily export their products to us (assuming you live in Europe), the thing you'r mentioning about Finland happens every year in most of the lands throughout Europe, tons of food are being dumped every year in foreign economies, just to protect the inside market, they have butter for cheap idd, but how are they gonna pay for it? The African farmer rather sells his butter instead of buying it