Suggestion for Stocks

[Kyrodo]

it would give a harsh blow to all the strats... but then again, someone would just start storing it in the clan treasury instead...

[Ruddertail]

The clan treasury is slightly better then the bank, but still isn't big enough. With a four person clan, it still might not even hold all the cash stored by one person, let alone all four.

[Kyrodo]

I vote to leave it the way it is, cause I don't see any wantable changes here XD

[bjornredtail]

Ok... I'm for a means of saveing reasources, but there must be some disadvantage to putting stuff in storage. Like, it takes time to get it out of your brokerage account (to be implemented).



This is how I see the stock market of FAF v. 3.0:
1. A high, but limited number of shares per company.
2. Many companies, with many diffrent amounts of volitity and preformance. This might mean going so far as makeing up reasonable random numbers for stuff like earnings, then running it into a function to determin "fair market price". On its own, the stock would fluctuate around that, though news (earnings warnings, etc.) could change that. We could also appily that to dividens too.
3. Investments handled by a broakerage accout of sorts. It takes time (to be defined later) to move money into or out of the account. Moveing cash out of the account will also incour a mild fee. Only cash in the account can be used to buy shares. Brokerage accounts can have "dry powder" in great ammounts (think 100-1000 times the current bank maxes, but such would not be adviseable for short term storage as a result of the fee I mentioned before)
4. Trades effect stock prices. I particularly like Railroad Tycoon's model for this. When you buy a sigifiant amount of shares, the price starts to go up. After a while of rideing this bubble, the price will either gradually, or quickly (depending on stock and situation), retrun to that "fair market value" mentioned before. Oppsite for selling, the prices will dip lower for a bit.
5. Margin and Short. For fast servers, really open up the margin and short system. Margin, for the uninclined, is borrowing money with stock as colleteral. Margin would allow players to take incredable risks with their cash. Same goes for shot, where you get the current price of the stock on the market. But when you close it, you pay back whatever the value is when you close the short. This means you make money when the stock goes down in price.
6. Make a few index funds avable for those who want modest returns for modest risks.

[Devari]

I have a very strange suggestion here:

Considering that we are Redwall-based, and Redwall most certainly does not have a stock market, why not move it towards more of a "merchant" system? Buying and selling units of a commodity, that sort of thing. Different markets in different areas and so forth.

Regardless, I do agree that, in FAF 3.0, stock/unit prices should be affected by "real life" trading. Perhaps, instead of our current system of determining share prices, we have a series of "investor" AIs running amok, with random and/or admin defined company events (company goes bankrupt, all that kind of stuff).

[The Beatles]

It is always more fun to have the stock market defined or shaped by in-game events, but also all the more prone to information starvation (i.e. too few exciting events) or information bias (i.e. too strong factors, like a really large emperor). Overall our game allows huge differences between players, whether that's good or bad is irrelevant, but it makes it harder to normalize.

[Nuclear Raunch]

Couple things I'd like to point out, first of all in-game actions affecting stock market prices. you need to be careful how much of an influence players have on stock prices. If for instance buying raised price and selling lowered price that could be asily manipulated. Lets say stock A is worth $100. I buy 100 bil worth of shares so the prices jump to $104. I sell all and the prices drop back down to $100. Just by doing that I have made 4 bil cash by simply manipulatnig a market. Rinse and repeat several times, make 1 mage run, then buy out BM/PM and wait for empororship.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have in-game actions affect stocks, just be very careful about how you implement it.

As far as the cap goes, I'm all for it. It's not right that an empire can have an unlimited amount of resources stored on stock market. If someone wanted to, they could have an empire with a net below 10 million but has 500 bil in stocks just waiting for the end of the set. 2 minutes before sets end they start buying up troops and come from nowhere to win the set, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. Let the net/resources get out in the open, and if someone is good enough to keep it then they deserve to win.

[Devari]

Raunch, your first concern:
Limited shares in a company/unit would prevent too much market manipulation
"AI" shareholders would prevent too much control by one player over the market
You wouldn't be able to sell all of that stock for $104 - it would decrease in value with stocks sold. In the end, you would not get any gain.
A stock "commission" would render such ploys somewhat useless.

[Kyrodo]

we should set up a poll or see what other players think before we change the stock market XD

off topic

Devari, how did you get -1337 karma? XD *laughs* (does that have a n00b language meaning? *laughs* cause n00b language is almost total gibberish too me >_<)

[Nohc]

If we could get it to work, I think having all of our wealth in goods would be a lot cooler.

[Slasher]

Do real stocks have a cap on? If not stuff the idea *laughs*