Internal Market 2.24

[JanitorSecondClass]

Removed

 

[Losttruppen]

I thought they fixed this with 2.2.3 so that buying batches was the same as buying the lowest denomination multiple times? Selling 3000 minerals a month definitely has an effect on the sale price, so if this is true it is most likely a bug.

 

[RoverStorm]

I thought they fixed this with 2.2.3 so that buying batches was the same as buying the lowest denomination multiple times? Selling 3000 minerals a month definitely has an effect on the sale price, so if this is true it is most likely a bug.

No what he(or she)'s saying is that by clicking the "sell 100" (the minimal amount) of food/minerals/alloys/CG each day, the price resets by the next day, meaning the selling price for those goods never goes down. But even at 100 a day, you can still sell 3k per month, the whole time the price never dropping.

But if you hit the "sell 3k" just once, the price you get is instead calculated as if you had clicked the "sell 100" button 30 times in one day, and it drops the price of that resource for years. So in other words, you can sell resources at a massive rate without a single drop in the price, if you click the button each day rather than one of the biggest ones.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I've noticed (and used) this. It's not very fun and feels like a bit of an exploit (but maybe it's intended). I often prefer the internal market to the galactic market just because it's so ridiculously stable with prices when you don't dump thousands of resources in one transaction or have the AI doing it - i.e. you spread your 2k mineral sale out over a few weeks while you're waiting for something to happen and you get far better prices both now, for that sale (the max amount possible) but also better prices on future sales next month.

As an exploit/strategy it may only save you 150 energy a month (selling 3k units of minerals for 0.80 vs say 0.75 for selling in bulk or on a single day) but the alternative is throwing away that extra energy and tanking future prices so you throw away even more the following month... which doesn't sound fun either. In a way the current system seems to be encouraging this behaviour and it probably shouldn't, or if lots of small trades is intended then it should be easier to automate via better automatic monthly/daily trades with values to at least 2 decimal places as well as minimum and maximum stockpiles and other conditions (so you can automatically sell excess minerals above 2k for example, only when prices are close to default, then buy minerals up to a stockpile of 1k but only when prices are also close to the default, and only when your energy is above 1k - repeat the automation rules for each resource so your economy is doing exactly what you want without your continuous, un-fun input. I'd like extra conditions like sell x resource when running an energy deficit).

Personally I think the internal market is a bit too generous in almost every respect - low costs, infinite stores and very stable prices (the galactic market at least makes some sense here, but not much more). I'd have the costs be a little higher, the time before it tries to shift back to normal be increased with each trade and for it to take longer to recover the more resources total have been traded allowing prices to actually crash. Perhaps with a modifier for economic output, so you can trade more without crashing your own market when you have more goods flowing around inside your empire. Lastly I'd give some sort of warning that your civilian economy is having trouble keeping up with the demand for x resource and events related to it when you're throwing money around very inefficiently just to let the player know why their economy is tanking if they set up a monthly trade and forgot about it.

 

[Losttruppen]

if you hit the "sell 3k" just once, the price you get is instead calculated as if you had clicked the "sell 100" button 30 times in one day, and it drops the price of that resource for years

I get that, but you only gather resources at the end of the month so doing it 30 separate times vs once on the 30th day should be the same. If it is not this is most likely a bug.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

I get that, but you only gather resources at the end of the month so doing it 30 separate times vs once on the 30th day should be the same. If it is not this is most likely a bug.

The market price updates instantly, that isn't the problem. e.g. buy 100, price goes from 0.8 to 0.82 or whatever. Buy 30x100 and it shoots up to 1.8 per unit or some other high value. (so it should cost the same if you buy 5x100 or 1x500, I haven't actually checked this though).

But, the market price also shifts back towards default values daily. e.g. after a trade it's at 0.82 on the 1st, 0.8 on the 2nd. If you trade huge volumes like the above it'd be 1.8 on the 1st, 1.78 on the 2nd etc... taking 1.00/0.02 = 50 days to return to normal. (I'm just using 0.02 here, I don't know the actual figures for increases in price or the nudges back down to default)

This means if your trade volume causes a shift in price equal to or below the amount it changes daily (0.02 in this hypothetical example), then the market price never changes. The same thing would happen if you did the price changing monthly back towards default, you'd just spread the trades out to one/month... which is probably far more sensible and the intended behaviour... but then the market prices would be fixed in place during a month and you'd only see huge swings
at the end of each month, or absolutely no change in prices if you keep your monthly trades below the dampening effect on the market prices. (which would be x30 times as big as it currently is, if changes are moved from daily to monthly, 0.60/month change in the above example instead of 0.02/day, aka you could trade 30x as much, set up as a monthly trade and get the same effect as above trading 100 units a day if the dampening/day is turned to /month).

It's a bit like if you bought a tin of beans each day the price is £1.20 now and forever. (it increases by 1p per tin sold, decreases by 1p at the end of the day until the price hits the default £1.20 (or £1 with 20% market fee)
But if you buy a pack of 6 it's an average £1.225 per tin (1.20+1.21+1.22+1.23+1.24+1.25)/6 and it'll cost £1.26 if you want another single tin.
The day after it's £1.25 per tin (decreased by 1p), or £1.275 / tin if you buy another 6 pack and so on.

But if you bought those tins 1 a day over 12 days you'd only pay £1.20p per tin or £14.40 total
If you buy the same volume over 2 days, 6 per day it's £1.25 per tin or £15 total
You'd only be paying a tiny bit more <5% for small amounts if the price is changing by 0.01/day, but if you track the two options over months and years you'd have a significant divergence in prices and total spent. The divergence only gets bigger the greater the artificial dampening effect on the market.

To fix it you have to look at the way the market is returning to default values, how often it ticks (daily, monthly or x days after last transaction) and how big a swing it has towards the default values (0.02 takes ages for large swings, but completely smothers the effect of small regular transactions in the above example. 2% changes do the opposite, taking the same amount for small and absolutely huge changes making it nearly impossible to permanently change the price of any resource with large trades).
Another effect of the dampening is that it makes the market look dead if you aren't dumping thousands of resources onto it - every time you look it's stuck at the default values, it's supposed to be a representation of your civilian economy and if so it's an economy that's completely rigid and fixed in supply and demand but also able to absorb large fluctuations in military spending within a single day. Personally I'd add some noise that scales with your empire's economic power and have the noise merged with the dampening trend towards those nice, workable default value for each resource. Perhaps have trades reduce the nudge towards default values for a length of time proportional to the amount traded and economic power and have the nudges only tick at the end of each month so daily trades are the same as monthly ones.

Lastly, people want to see graphs tracking prices, personally I want to see those little stock market style... rate of change indicators? (The % change with little green or red arrows, preferably with a few momentum indicators so you can see the rate of change in price too). I think a new UI would show these sort of issues better and make it less of an annoyance trying to explain it clearly - the above examples would be a flat, horizontal line at 1.20 with tiny bumps at the end of each day (+1% then -1%) vs two straight lines shooting upwards (to +9.2% price) with a tiny dip down (-1%) in the day between the two purchases.

 

[Losttruppen]

Trust me it is not a bug, it is a feature intended to help the ai.

I don't trust you, this goes directly against the changes they made in 2.2.3 to address infinite resource exploits on the market. The AI's use of the market is also causing many more issues than it is solving as they develop their planets poorly and compensate with trade/commercial zones which eventually reaches a tipping point around the time they stop expanding and they fail completely.

the market price also shifts back towards default values daily

That is what I think is a bug as it pretty much nullifies the change made in 2.2.3(if you are willing to pause the game every day. Might as well use the console at that point and actually play the game though)

 

[redrum68]

Yeah, I noticed this as well and it tends to make your Internal Market very strong especially for selling resources to cover an Energy deficit. It makes going for Agriculture Districts instead of Generator Districts almost always better early game since you get 6 vs 4 and can always trade at 70%.

I have to imagine this is a bug as in all other cases the price doesn't snap back a day later and takes some time to slowly move back (for example when you buy resources). I would think it should take say a month or so after selling at 70% for it to get back to that so that you can't sell at the 70% once a day.

 

[bobucles]

It makes going for Agriculture Districts instead of Generator Districts almost always better early game since you get 6 vs 4 and can always trade at 70%.

Don't forget that the diplomacy trade LOVES food. Most empires have better exchange rates than the market (70-90% are fairly common) and they value food pretty equally to energy or minerals. Food is much easier to surplus, so you can easily trade it for whatever excess resources the AI has.

Of course that assumes the AI has a competent economy and thus has something to trade.

 

[redrum68]

Don't forget that the diplomacy trade LOVES food. Most empires have better exchange rates than the market (70-90% are fairly common) and they value food pretty equally to energy or minerals. Food is much easier to surplus, so you can easily trade it for whatever excess resources the AI has.

Of course that assumes the AI has a competent economy and thus has something to trade.

Yeah, it kind of seems that they only half thought through making Agriculture Districts produce 50% more resources than Mining/Generator (6 vs 4). As many areas of the game like the Market/Diplomacy/etc kind of treat them as 1 to 1 ratio where they should really be treated as 3 to 2 ratio. Food generally feels kind of awkward in 2.2 as there aren't many uses for it besides some pop growth bonus decisions/policies. But since the Agriculture Districts are so efficient and Market ratios tend to be good, it ends up often being the way to go.