Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

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Should Stock Market Be Improved?

yes, as a priority!
9
27%
yes, eventually
9
27%
i don't care
6
18%
no, not really
4
12%
no, don't you dare waste time with this!
5
15%
 
Total votes: 33

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abejones
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Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by abejones »

this has been discussed many times, but nothing has been changed quite yet. apparently a stock market update is 75% complete (viewtopic.php?t=69780), but i'm not sure when this will be implemented (this post was from 2014). i'm starting this thread just to throw in my 2 pesos, and see where the community stands on this topic at this point in time. my argument is obviously in favor of upgrading the stock market. the reason is because Transport Tycoon is more than just a transport game, it is also an economic game. economic games should always have basic financial tools included, simply for realism... but also for increased strategic options. Transport Tycoon does have this, but they are incomplete. with a little fixing up this element of the game will have sufficient substance. as we all know, the stock market in Transport Tycoon was never very realistic, and has problems. i will address most of that below.

1. the whole purpose of shares in real life (from a company's perspective) is to raise funds. a company should start off with all their own shares, and be able to sell them to the market (or public) to get money. this way it is up to the company if they want to be put at risk of being bought out. or they can play it conservatively and only sell 50% of their shares so that they always retain control of their company.

2. i don't think that trading 25% shares at a time is a good idea. the reason is that it potentially requires more capital at a time, and can deter more casual trading... and also gives a huge advantage to players with more money (which is a very bad thing). reducing the amount will make this aspect more strategic. i'm very hardcore so i would like 1%, but since this is not a financial game i think the default basic for most economic games that utilize a stock market will work fine: 5% or 10% per trade.

3. allow companies to be fully bought out, this is just common sense from an economic gamer's perspective. there will be no problems with this as long as #1 is implanted to the game. i think the best thing to do is allow the controlling company to select which player manages the company. the controlling company would be the one with the most stock owned. the controlling company could also take cash from the bought out company.

4. dividends: the whole point of shares in real life (from an investor's perspective) is to make money on the shares. this can be done from either buying low and selling high, or from investing in companies they think will bring in good profits... and therefore collecting dividends. there could be an option for companies to change the percentage of dividends they wish to pay out, or there could be a default amount (which would probably be 5% or 10%). increasing the dividend percentage would also make the stock more appealing to investors. it is totally understandable to have a default dividend rate though, if programmers don't want the game to be too financially intensive a default rate is the way to go.

5. the determinants for share price should probably be fixed, they seem a little too easy to manipulate. this can be discussed elsewhere when (if) the time comes.
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by Baldy's Boss »

I guess I'm the second vote for the first choice!
I've wanted more financial features for a long time.
There should be ways to influence companies one controls but does not completely own & merge.
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by abejones »

Baldy's Boss wrote:I guess I'm the second vote for the first choice!
I've wanted more financial features for a long time.
There should be ways to influence companies one controls but does not completely own & merge.
this could work too. people don't seem to understand that financial tools and investment are an essential part of any industry (including transport). for example in games without a stock market you will realize that companies either start out with money magically, or take loans. the first is just an non-strategic way of solving the problem. loaning is satisfactory, but this system has to be more advanced. a working stock market, even if basic, is the icing on the cake, it simply adds more strategy.
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by Baldy's Boss »

It would make sense if instead of remaining constant through the whole game,the interest rate on loans could fluctuate based on market conditions and performance.
And of course it would be good to retain access to your entire financial history,and customize graphs.
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by Deactivated »

Another (more advanced) feature could include your stock prices changing due to destroyed track from disasters, train/rv crashes etc.
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by abejones »

So far the poll for improved stock market is...
Yes: 12
No: 5

Or if you want to look at it from a conservative view...
Yes: 12
Other: 11
Baldy's Boss wrote:It would make sense if instead of remaining constant through the whole game,the interest rate on loans could fluctuate based on market conditions and performance.
And of course it would be good to retain access to your entire financial history,and customize graphs.
I thought that the interest rate did fluctuate with the random economy.
Deactivated wrote:Another (more advanced) feature could include your stock prices changing due to destroyed track from disasters, train/rv crashes etc.
It seems to me that something like this would already in place, maybe I'm wrong.
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by Gwyd »

I know for a fact that crashes worsen the station rating, not so sure about share price/company value however
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by Alberth »

In my experience, point 1 already fails in 2 ways.
1) OpenTTD is not a real-life simulation, it's a game
2) (most important) There is no need to raise money in the game, in a standard game, you're swamped with more money than you can spend in a few years, defeating the entire goal.

Also what's this "in control"? Say you have 55% of my company. Who builds the tracks? Who replaces the engines? You? How is that fun for me?
Me? What's this 'control' thing then?

How do you prevent unfair advantage of you taking a company, taking all the money, and let it go bankrupt in deep debts?
Being a retired OpenTTD developer does not mean I know what I am doing.
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by Redirect Left »

I'm not sure if this is really needed, I think it'd be against the spirit of the game in its current state.

As alberth said, you're swamped with money already, so making more of it isn't a priority for any players after the first 2-3 years of in-game time.
You also will get lots of weird situations when you own a certain amount of company, that in numbers would give you meaningful control of it, what then?

It could probably all be implemented with not too much difficulty on a seperate patch (because good luck getting anything into trunk), but you'd run into lots of "what now?" situations with it.
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by abejones »

Alberth wrote:In my experience, point 1 already fails in 2 ways.
1) OpenTTD is not a real-life simulation, it's a game
2) (most important) There is no need to raise money in the game, in a standard game, you're swamped with more money than you can spend in a few years, defeating the entire goal.

Also what's this "in control"? Say you have 55% of my company. Who builds the tracks? Who replaces the engines? You? How is that fun for me?
Me? What's this 'control' thing then?

How do you prevent unfair advantage of you taking a company, taking all the money, and let it go bankrupt in deep debts?
Redirect Left wrote:I'm not sure if this is really needed, I think it'd be against the spirit of the game in its current state.

As alberth said, you're swamped with money already, so making more of it isn't a priority for any players after the first 2-3 years of in-game time.
You also will get lots of weird situations when you own a certain amount of company, that in numbers would give you meaningful control of it, what then?

I disagree on a couple points.

Point about no need to raise money: You initially need to raise money in any game. Some games let you start out with money, some let you borrow it through loans or bonds. More advanced games let you sell shares. The current lending mechanism may be too generous and/or not risky enough to simulate the difficulties of a business, especially something as industrious as a transport business. Obviously in a game where you just want to build cool stuff without economics you can just turn this off or make it easy, which is sort of already there.

Point about a standard game and being swamped with money: I don't think it's a good idea to use a standard game as an example because there is not enough game balance in this situation. A standard game is more for people who are beginners or people who just want to build (and that's fine). But to explore full game mechanics let's instead consider a large map with few industries and cities... as well as an at least somewhat difficult "profit potential" to player ratio. This is where it gets interesting from an economic standpoint rather than just a transport industry standpoint. The original game intended to have both transport industry and economic aspects, and I think both should be considered, but not necessarily mandatory (anything can be disabled depending on preferences).

With economic features turned on or at full blast... and considering my 2 above statements, the computer should only give out small loans with difficult interest rates. An artificial "public" could also purchase shares from players. All players should start off with 100% of their shares, and they can decide whether to sell them or not... if they want that extra money to get going. There are 2 reasons why a player might be inclined to buy shares from the public... for profits and to bluff or attempt a takeover for competitive reasons (for examples of this in games try the original Railroad Tycoon). There is much strategic importance in all of this, it can highly effect the decisions made in the actual transport industry.

To address your final point about company control, there are different ways to go about this. First consider in a corporation there is generally an executive and board of directors. We are obviously playing as the executives. Let's take a situation you mentioned where I have majority shares in your company... perhaps I would have some say in your company, such as deciding dividend payments. My control of your company could be limited by the artificial board of directors to limit unfair control. In more extreme situations there could be a full merger (perhaps it would be an option if I was able to purchase all 100% of your shares). In this case it is just like a merger in Transport Tycoon, I would take all your stuff for my company and you'd be out of the game. Isn't this the goal in the original Transport Tycoon?
Redirect Left wrote: It could probably all be implemented with not too much difficulty on a seperate patch (because good luck getting anything into trunk)
What do you mean by "getting anything into the trunk"
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by Eddi »

abejones wrote:What do you mean by "getting anything into the trunk"
"trunk" is the main development branch of OpenTTD, which will head into the next release (1.8.0 at the point of this writing, possibly in april next year, but that is not set in stone)

it is guarded by some pretty conservative developers, so you need
  1. a good quality patch
  2. a good reason for including it
  3. bonus points for having good testing data
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Re: Shares of Stock (Stock Market) Debate

Post by abejones »

Eddi wrote:
abejones wrote:What do you mean by "getting anything into the trunk"
"trunk" is the main development branch of OpenTTD, which will head into the next release (1.8.0 at the point of this writing, possibly in april next year, but that is not set in stone)

it is guarded by some pretty conservative developers, so you need
  1. a good quality patch
  2. a good reason for including it
  3. bonus points for having good testing data
I wouldn't mind helping to sponsor a separate patch if the main developers are not interested in this.
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