New forum Board - Tenders

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 25.02.2007, 16:34

Basically this is the opposite of the auction board. I feel it could seriously help the water, power and possibly a few other markets.

Say for example I want to buy 100,000 water a day, or a block of 500,000. Currently I would post in the purchases board saying a price i was willing to pay, Or I would search the sales board for someone supplying the product I wanted. Not easy as a newer player, we don't have the necessary purchasing power or reputation needed to get the good deals.

Now the tender board would work differently from the sales board.

The person who wishes to buy something posts a new topic in the tender board and:-

In the subject line they put the date and time the tender closes(min 24hrs), and product name(s)/number of products(if alot)/product type

In the post they list the product/product type, Quanity required, Quality, one off purchase or daily contract.

Suppliers can then post the price at which they are willing to fulfill that order at, along with quality they can provide(if relevant).

Within 3 hours of the tender end, The buyer(orginal poster) posts who, if anyone has won the contract.

The buyer can choose any contract offered, and is not restricted to choosing the lowest price offered. Although when they don't they must post the reason why. An example of this could be

I've done business with X company before, and they have proved their relabilty

. Although not accepting the best value contract offered, will be remembered by people and it is really a player choice, what do you want other players to think of your company.

The winner of the contract then has 12 hours to provide the first contract unless specified differently.

Suppliers can withdraw their tender by posting again, anytime before the buyer posts who the contract has been awarded to.

In that description, in which i'm sure i've left bits out of, and it probably still needs refining a bit. There is one bit I want to expand.

I said: one off purchase or daily contract.

now one off purchases are fairly self explantory. The only thing I will say is I don't see a problem with a supplier saying (if buyer is asking for 500,000). I will give you 200,000 straight away and the remainder within X hours of the contract being awarded.

Now with daily contracts I think it would be nice to specify when you want the contract for, example:

I need the contract delivered by 9:00am and I will sign it by 11:00am.

There has to be a gap to allow for something happening in the real world to prevent signing of the contract, bang on time.

It would also be nice to specify how long a daily contract would run for, before another tender is issued, I thinking along the lines of 7 days, 14 days and 1 Calender month type deals. If more experienced players than me could come up with a max length a tender should run for. This is to ensure renegotian of contracts to reflect current market demands. Rather than market demands when the contract was signed.

Just an idea for consideration.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 25.02.2007, 20:18

sounds like a good idea, but i think it should work more like the auctions where they must choose the lowest - and if the producer cannot supply it, they are not allowed to accept any more tendered contracts. Also, i do not like the idea of the daily/weekly/calander time contracts ... because it would take a lot of work by mods. etc to moniter.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 25.02.2007, 20:40

such a huge post it isnt easy to read thru the PSP u noe

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 25.02.2007, 20:44

Also, i do not like the idea of the daily/weekly/calander time contracts ... because it would take a lot of work by mods. etc to moniter.

This doesn't have to create extra work for the mods. It could be handled like this. If a contract turns sour. Either party can return to the thread and say it went sour and why. It's then upto other players who they believe. they can only mention it once in that thread, and can not make personal attacks. It will pretty soon become clear, if someone is falsely accusing people.

You could even have a rule where as the mods will not investigate a player till they have complaints from 5(only a number could equaly be 10 or any other number) different people. And i'm sure site admin doesn't really want that kinda of player and would take some action with the evidence provided by all the accusations, it should be fairly easy check game logs.

If it proved this did take up a lot of the mods work then yes remove it, but why not run with it and see what happens and then stop allowing it, if it is a problem, I think the players would surprise you. Plus at the end of the day all a party loses if a deal goes sour if nothing or the small forwarding charge, and the hassle of finding another buyer/seller, so really players have no real reason to shout loudly about sour deals, and if they are do you want them here?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 25.02.2007, 21:17

The posts are too long, i cant be bothered to read it all

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 26.02.2007, 02:40

Not a bad idea, but it seems you could already do most of this in the Purchase board, although less formally. Basically, you could post what items you want and a buy-it-now price and state that you are looking for the best offer. You then wait 24 hours or so and see what the best offer is.

Seems like basically the same thing without the structure and enforcement.

Montoya Inc · Post by **Montoya Inc** » 26.02.2007, 04:22

would work if u did lowest price only.

Tycoon · Post by **Tycoon** » 26.02.2007, 07:51

First of all: any thread containing the denomination of (trade) behaviour is not intended here in this forum and so such proposals won't be implemented.

And I do not really see the difference to the purchase forum. Any company should build his decision on his own without having to give a justification why it trades with a particular partner (so the lowest price is not necessarily decisive why to chose an offer). Obligations for more than one day here in the forum and with that really binding (as in the auctions) can come out as negative for both parties. I think of contests at the moment. During a contest prices suddenly jump or fall. You should think about that. Even if there are no constests now at the moment, you should really keep them in mind

And it is intended that the companies here communicate in game. If something goes wrong with the trade, admins will be forced to check this in game. Ingame messages and copies of contracts could have been changed. This will lead to lots of problems.

There is always the possibility in this game that you meet unreliable partners. But in my opinion this cannot be "ruled" by the admins. You have to build up connections and building up them also means separating the good partners from the bad ones...

My first thought after reading this thread was, to think about auctions which go the other way round: someone wants to buy and the lowest price is the winner of this auction. Rules similar to those in the auctions thread. But this was just a quick thought... my next thought was: even now we have threads in this forum complaining about companies which put products for a really low price (and I do not mean cheating... so steel for 0.10 or something like that) onto the market. By implementing such auctions we would encourage this. And this could also mean that a company offering it's products for a really low price could face problems afterwards with other users not accepting this price...