Merchants and Markets

Frits Kuijlman (frits@ph.tn.tudelft.nl)
Thu, 30 Jul 92 14:15:59 MET DST

There has been some requests for polishing selling to other players with
synchronous transfer of money and goods. These requests have appeared on
and of for the last couple of weeks. In reply to that I propose a small
change to the currrent sell and buy commands:

SELL <id> <item> [quantity [min. price]]
BUY <id> <item> [quantity [max. price]]

<id> : can be either the id of a market or the id of a unit. As markets have
already an id this would not change anything as far as markets go, we can
even have more than one market in an area.

If you want to buy something from another unit that unit has to issue a
corresponding sell command. In the current system you would have to sync
to get these commands executed at the right time.

<item> : any item that's available. Even item 50(slaves).

quantity : how much do I want to sell? If not specified sell or buy as
much as money and supply allow.

min. price : if not specified sell at any price.

max. price : if not specified buy at any price.

If you sell to somebody else there are several possibilities :

no min. price -> sale, buyers price
no max. price -> sale, sellers price
no min., max. price -> no sale
min.price = max.price -> sale
min. price > max. price -> no sale
min. price < max. price -> sale, price depends on relative Trade skills

So far so good. The only problem remaining is synchronizing of course.
But we need some trust. Otherwise just sell everthing at the market.

For the more fancy stuff we can have markets and shops. Well, we already
have markets, but I want to be able to create my own market. I think that
markets as they are now should be something that is controlled by the game.
A market can appear when there is a certain amount of popylation somewhere,
and when certain crafts are being done by players. A war can result in the
removal of a market, or the dimishing of certain supplies.
The only influence that a player should have on a market is taxation.
(Take your percentage if you are the ruler of that area.)

Therefore I propose "The Shop". Actually this can be anything, but it is
actually a merchant who can optionally be in a building. This merchant can
have a supply of money and goods, and for some of his goods he can set the
selling price, the buying price, or both. I mean, it should be possible to
say that Crazy Iwan should buy any jewels that he can get, without
offering them for sale again. (He likes to collect them).
Selling to and buying from the shop is possible as long as the shop has
goods that it wants to sell/buy and as long as there is money. It should
go the same as with a market, only the price depends on the relative
Trade skills.

The first part about sell and buy shouldn't be too hard to implement(Rich?)
the second part is still just an idea. Any opinions anyone?

Frits

-- 
Frits Kuijlman                      frits @ ph.tn.tudelft.nl
Delft University of Technology               The Netherlands


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