Fix in Progress Selling Goods Increases Price, Buying Goods Has No Effect

[Hotshot]

I can't believe this is a bug, but why would the following be a done this way?

If you buy wares, the price gets higher with the amount you take (I don't prefer this, as if I'm lucky that the owner has a full store, I should be able to buy off his lot with the low price, but I get why it's done this way (demand and supply)).

But when you sell, you will get a fixed price determined by the amount you have on your ship!?
It doesn't matter if you only want to sell half of it (for better profit, as not to give to much of this ware to his market/island)!
Right now, if you want to maximize your profit, you need to transfer the goods between the ships so the owner only sees the part of the ship you select when selling and gives you a better price...

This can't be by design, can it?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

At the moment the "Buy/Sell prices" are updated "on the fly", which means the prices change WHILE buying or selling.
That doesn't apply when you use the Auto Trade/Sell All buttons though.

I do not like this one bit; would make much more sense for the prices to update based on supply and demand AFTER the transfer.
But modders implemented it like this many, many years ago. I looked into it at some point, trying to find a "quick fix" but couldn't figure it out at the time.
It should be possible to change, but I got the impression that would take time and effort that I can't really afford.

So technically, yes it is by design and according to the intentions at the time.
But I'd rather see it changed.

 

[Hotshot]

which means the prices change WHILE buying or selling

Well, no. The price changes when buying, but not when selling (and I don't mean Sell All or Auto Trade).

Silver in for instance:
I've 953. The store buys currently for 576. When I click on Sell, I see the whole sum I get (520.338) and the I see the price I get per quantity in brackets (546)
And this 546 doesn't change, even if I lower the amount I want so sell! That's actually the bug I was referring to.
Right now, if I want a better price, I have to load the amount I don't want to sell in another ship, so that the "trader" only sees the lower amount from one ship and gives me a higher price!

I'm with you on this, I too would like the prices to change after the trade.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm really not excited to dive into the weird code for this functionality.

 

[Hotshot]

LOL, this one cracked me up

And I believe you; I cannot imagine programing on such a level... good stuff!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I cannot imagine programing on such a level... good stuff!

Really? Unless I'm very much mistaken, you are actually knowledgeable about IT things.
On the other hand, I am a former navigation officer by trade.
So by all rights, I should have NO CLUE about all this programmy stuff!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Hotshot: Just to be absolutely clear, we're talking about CARGO GOODS here, right? Not "personal items"?

 

[Grey Roger]

A note of caution here:

There was another game which changed prices of goods after you bought or sold them to reflect the new supply and demand situation. You'd buy a load of something, the price would rise because there wasn't as much in stock, then you'd sell it back and make a profit. Not much, especially with the cheaper goods you could afford with your small amount of money at game start. But it accumulated. Eventually you could buy silver, which wasn't the most expensive commodity but was the one with the biggest price shift. A hold-full of silver was basically a licence to print money. So you'd do lots of buying and selling, make loads of money, then fit your ship with all the accessories and upgrades. And all before leaving port for the first time.

And this is why I get twitchy when anyone suggests fiddling with the PoTC economic system. The fact that it updates while you're making the transaction, and the effect of "Commerce" skill and perks so the buy price is always a bit higher than the sell price, mean you won't be using this sort of exploit. Let's try to keep it that way.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Hotshot: Just to be absolutely clear, we're talking about CARGO GOODS here, right? Not "personal items"?

@Hotshot: Just repeating my question there as I'd like to rule out any potential confusion here....

There was another game which changed prices of goods after you bought or sold them to reflect the new supply and demand situation. You'd buy a load of something, the price would rise because there wasn't as much in stock, then you'd sell it back and make a profit. Not much, especially with the cheaper goods you could afford with your small amount of money at game start. But it accumulated. Eventually you could buy silver, which wasn't the most expensive commodity but was the one with the biggest price shift. A hold-full of silver was basically a licence to print money. So you'd do lots of buying and selling, make loads of money, then fit your ship with all the accessories and upgrades. And all before leaving port for the first time.

That sounds mainly like an error in the implementation. Surely the prices could change, but not so much that they cause such an exploit?
Probably difficult to think that through properly. And it wouldn't be the first time clever ideas fall flat because their implementation is all wrong.
(To my great frustration because guess who gets to clean it up again afterwards???)

And this is why I get twitchy when anyone suggests fiddling with the PoTC economic system. The fact that it updates while you're making the transaction, and the effect of "Commerce" skill and perks so the buy price is always a bit higher than the sell price, mean you won't be using this sort of exploit. Let's try to keep it that way.

Indeed I much prefer not touching that for a good, long while. I can think of rather a lot of other things I'd prefer doing instead.

 

[Grey Roger]

That sounds mainly like an error in the implementation. Surely the prices could change, but not so much that they cause such an exploit?
Probably difficult to think that through properly. And it wouldn't be the first time clever ideas fall flat because their implementation is all wrong.

The prices don't need to change much. If you're making even a slight profit, it's still quicker to do this than to load up on the commodity and then transport it to somewhere else where it's supposed to be more expensive because it's an import, especially if the price difference between import and export isn't much for that commodity. Just keep doing it until you're rich.

There were plenty of other problems with the game in question, "Federation of Free Traders". It was a space-based combat/trading game with a lot of nice side features and only two problems - the combat and the trading. So I get a bit nervous when anything is suggested which appears to threaten to drag PoTC in that direction...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The prices don't need to change much. If you're making even a slight profit, it's still quicker to do this than to load up on the commodity and then transport it to somewhere else where it's supposed to be more expensive because it's an import, especially if the price difference between import and export isn't much for that commodity. Just keep doing it until you're rich.

Sounds to me like that should be avoidable, but I've never given the matter much thought.
If anything is to be done, it requires some serious thinking through to avoid the pitfalls that you are rightly afraid of.
But I have no real desire to get into that.

There were plenty of other problems with the game in question, "Federation of Free Traders". It was a space-based combat/trading game with a lot of nice side features and only two problems - the combat and the trading. So I get a bit nervous when anything is suggested which appears to threaten to drag PoTC in that direction...

It's always good to have a critical person asking "are you really sure you want to do that?" in such cases.
For the time being, I'm really sure I don't want to do that.

 

[Hotshot]

you are actually knowledgeable about IT things.

Well, I'm pretty knowledgeable in lets say IT in general, but programing: I've done some old-school Borland C++ (dos!) while in college; that's that.
The thing that I was doing after that (mainly PHP) is just learning-by-doing (I guess as it's with you).

Just to be absolutely clear, we're talking about CARGO GOODS here, right? Not "personal items"?

Excactly!

And this is why I get twitchy when anyone suggests fiddling with the PoTC economic system

Yep; that's exactly why I don't mind it that much, that the price changes dynamically while buying (not after). Or else it would be pretty easy to get money:

• trader has full stock (silver/gold) -> you buy a full load really cheap in one go
• the trader has nothing/low amount: high selling prize -> you sell him the whole cargo back in one go and make a tidy profit

But at least the selling prize should change dynamically too; that was all I'm getting at!

Because if not, you would be stupid to have all your silver on one ship: you'd need to have a portion on every ship, so you could sell at a higher price at one store, then the next, ...

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The thing that I was doing after that (mainly PHP) is just learning-by-doing (I guess as it's with you).

Yep, pretty much.

Excactly!

Thanks for confirming. I renamed this thread to hopefully more accurately describe the issue.

But at least the selling prize should change dynamically too; that was all I'm getting at!

I thought that did happen. Pretty surprised to hear your report that it doesn't.

 

[Hotshot]

Pretty surprised to hear your report that it doesn't.

It would be really strange, if that's only on my PC/Save/Universe

 

[Pieter Boelen]

It would be really strange, if that's only on my PC/Save/Universe

Yes, it would. It is very possible that nobody noticed it yet or bothered to report.

I'm hoping somebody can confirm the issue. Maybe @Grey Roger, @ANSEL or @Jason?
Or @Hylie Pistof of course! He's our resident merchant.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

So this bug must have existed for a long time. Has anyone ever observed this happening?
I want to see this bug either confirmed or denied. If this unresponsive silence continues, down the archive it goes.

 

[Grey Roger]

Sorry, I'm the wrong person to ask about this. The only goods I buy are ship supplies - ammo, food, rum, planks, sailcloth and occasionally medicines - and they're not for resale, so I don't pay any attention to the price, I just buy at whatever price the store is charging. All other goods are obtained second-hand at no cost other than perhaps the price of replacing ammo, planks and sailcloth.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sorry, I'm the wrong person to ask about this. The only goods I buy are ship supplies - ammo, food, rum, planks, sailcloth and occasionally medicines - and they're not for resale, so I don't pay any attention to the price, I just buy at whatever price the store is charging. All other goods are obtained second-hand at no cost other than perhaps the price of replacing ammo, planks and sailcloth.

Fair enough.

 

[pedrwyth]

OK just to flag up I am sort of dealing with this -It's only fair since I introduced it when re-enabling the multipliers (seemed like a good idea at the time but not in retrospect 18 months on!!). I'll either close off multipliers again or I do have another idea to try to retain them. However I am also picking up this other one at the same time (if I can)

Low Priority - Discrepancy between Auto Buy and Manual Buy | PiratesAhoy!

Once done I will also look at getting the money for cargo in the shipyard to correlate with what you would actually get at the store as well (I think @Levis has a temporary worked sum in there at the moment) although no-one has recently reported that mismatch (yet).

The "fix" element to this (non linear sale price and manual=autobuy) I will post as a bug fix and (assuming I don't get screwed up) the other element (shipyard sale=store sale) I will post as an"improvement" (it will be in a different interface c file anyway) to keep fixes and larger changes apart. However I'm away for a couple of weeks so don't hold your breath.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Fantastic, @pedrwyth! Thanks very much.

What were those multipliers you re-enabled again? I can't quite remember....