Stock Market Feature

[ipancakeman]

Ive been looking for things to make my open ttd games more fun. A random thought came in my head about a ingame stock market. Is there anything like that i can add to my game?

[kamnet]

No, there's no such thing that exists. OpenTTD is mostly a logistics management game in an open sandbox environment, which can be ignored and also operate as a virtual miniature train hobby.

[jfs]

The big challenge with a feature like this would be integrating it properly in the game, so it's meaningful to the larger game and not just a thing you can do that has no bearing on anything else.

To do that, you would need to do a major overhaul of the entire financial model of the game, possibly separating "players" from "companies", and make ownership of things explicit, including making sure everything has a value. Companies and players would need to have proper account books where all their assets, not just cash, are tracked and accumulate depreciation and so on. You would also need participants on the stock market that are not players, but a "general populace" that also trade the stocks, and somehow rate the performance of the companies.

It will be a massive change that will affect everything in the game, and balancing it to be playable and fun is another huge task in itself.


Honestly, if you want to play with stock markets, I'd suggest looking into the (very old) Railroad Tycoon 2, or the A-Train series.

[kamnet]

I wouldn't be opposed to separating the player from the company. If we ever get back to buying company shares, then a buyout could allow a player to start a new company with their assets rather than a loan, where a bankruptcy leaves them with nothing, or a hostile takeover leaves you with no company but a share of the company that ousted you.

[2TallTyler]

I agree with Kamnet. This would be an interesting way to play multiplayer. The hurdle is that you will need a stable client identity that persists between logins, instead of simply knowing the company password. Something like https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/discussions/8420 would do, I think.

[LaChupacabra]

To do that, you would need to do a major overhaul of the entire financial model of the game

...proper account books...
...accumulate depreciation...

It will be a massive change that will affect everything in the game

I don't think it needs to be that complicated.

To value the shares and therefore the company, information about profits in the last two years/periods and about shares held in other companies would be sufficient. OTTD is not a professional economic simulator and such a simplified valuation would be completely sufficient and easy to understand for players.

To determine the demand for shares among the "general population", information about profitability in the last two years/periods, i.e. the proportion of revenues to costs, would also be sufficient - the higher the ratio, the higher the interest and the fewer shares on the market. Yes, profitability could also influence the valuation of the stock and the company to some extent.

In order for a player to have the opportunity to repurchase shares, the "general population" would always leave a certain percentage of shares on the market.

The big challenge with a feature like this would be integrating it properly in the game...
...and balancing it to be playable and fun is another huge task in itself.

A simple feature would be much easier to integrate into a game than a highly complex one. Simple things are also usually more fun.

[Eddi]

I don't think it needs to be that complicated.

you'd just be creating exploit heaven with that attitude.

[LaChupacabra]

I don't think it needs to be that complicated.

you'd just be creating exploit heaven with that attitude.

The heaven of exploits was the company's asset valuation method present in the removed share function. If someone is thinking about maintaining this method, it may indeed be very complicated, and in this game it is basically impossible, unless, as jfs wrote, the entire game economy would be changed.

In the assumption I presented, the valuation of the company would be based on the combined method: income and assets, without taking into account the money held, which was the source of the greatest absurdities in the previous share function (the purchase of shares resulted in a significant decrease in the company's value; 100% of the shares could be purchased almost for free, because by taking over the company was paid mainly for the money it had, but at the same time, having 100% of the shares, you took over this money).

If you think these assumptions are wrong, can you point out what exactly about them could be a source of exploits?