FreeCol

Tracker: Bugs

5 Infinite money from buying/selling same commodity in Europe - ID: 1825463

Last Update: Comment added ( nobody )

Details:

With certain commodities and certain price points, it is easily possible to
buy 100 of a particular commodity, causing the price to rise more than 2
gold per item, and then immediately resell for a profit. This is
infinitely repeatable, and thus essentially leads to an infinite amount of
money being available.

An example of this occurrence would be Trade Goods - when at 4/5, buying a
bit more will bump the price up to 6/7, at which point you can sell 100 of
them for 600, and have the price drop back down to 4/5. Buying 100 back at
500 will bump the price back up to 6/7, etc.

This situation is likely not avoidable for a player with a large enough sum
in the bank (enough to buy so much of a commodity that the price jumps up
twice), but I think it's reasonable to disallow it for amounts as small as
100 of a commodity. I think the major problem lies in the fact that
certain commodities will rise in price by 2 or more gold at once, since a
commodity that will only rise by 1 gold does not make a profit on resell.

It seems an alternative system of not allowing the player to resell
commodities that he's bought from Europe could be implemented, but I doubt
the original Colonization had such a system anyway. I definitely do not
remember ever having a situation where I could repeatedly buy and sell 100
of a commodity at a profit, however.

Submitted:

NobleHelium ( noblehelium ) - 2007-11-04 08:02

Priority:

Status:

Closed

Resolution:

None

Assigned:

Nobody/Anonymous

Category:

General Gameplay

Group:

Fixed (FreeCol 0.8.0)

Visibility:

Public

Comments ( 9 )

Date: 2009-12-05 16:54 Sender: nobody This bug is not fixed. This is a duplicate of #2012413 I can't figure out how to reopen this bug, so I'll update the other bug which is still open.
Date: 2008-03-24 08:59 Sender: burschik I have just increased the difference between the buying and selling price to (at least) 2 for all goods in trunk. This should avoid the bug for the moment. A better solution is always possible in the future.
Date: 2008-03-24 07:23 Sender: noblehelium I haven't visited the site in a while. Have there been any changes made to address this issue? I saw in another bug thread relating to tax rates, and someone suggested that tax rate increases could happen more often if more trading in Europe occurs. That could be a solution to this problem, but it would be deviating from the original Colonization.
Date: 2007-12-09 04:56 Sender: nobody Logged In: NO One could of course also allow the spread to widen, which is also perhaps a more realistic reflection of what happens in the real world when a big buyer steps in and starts buying, the sellers will back away, raise their prices. The buyers may or may not chase the price up, depending on whether they are trend-following speculators, or whether they are buying for their consumption - in the latter case, they may not buy at the higher price. In other words, while the player is in Europe, if he buys, raise the selling price (two increments?), but do not raise the buying price as much (one or no increments.) Vice versa, if the player sells.
Date: 2007-11-06 14:12 Sender: tefkab If I recall it correctly, in original colonization the problem was solved by decreasing the price _before_ selling.
Date: 2007-11-05 00:29 Sender: nobody Logged In: NO The best solution for this would probably be to have the prices be continually, rather than incrementally updated. Then you lose the large lot discount, though.
Date: 2007-11-04 12:53 Sender: burschik Could we guarantee this does not happen by setting the initial amounts in the Market high enough?
Date: 2007-11-04 12:39 Sender: sergiocambra A fix would be limit increments to one gold per turn
Date: 2007-11-04 08:03 Sender: noblehelium I forgot to mention that I've observed this in the 7.1 and 7.2 release versions.

Log in to comment.

Attached File

Changes ( 3 )

Field	Old Value	Date	By
status_id	Open	2008-03-24 08:59	burschik
artifact_group_id	None	2008-03-24 08:59	burschik
close_date	-	2008-03-24 08:59	burschik

FreeCol

Tracker: Bugs

Comments ( 9 )

Log in to comment.

Attached File

No Files Currently Attached

Changes ( 3 )

About SourceForge

Find Software

Develop Software

Community

Help