Remove the stock market from the game. Shares in companies held by shareholders other than the controlling one will likely have to be kept as such, with the option to return them at a fixed rate. Since the controlling shareholder might not have the cash (or the will) to buy back shares, AirlineSim might offer a compensation scheme that allows shareholders to return their minority shares at any time. This is also required in case of liquidations, as we don’t want orphan shares to accumulate at the AS Holding.
Why?
The stock market has long been disabled on newer game worlds and it leads a sad existence in those that still have it. While the idea of a dynamic stock market is tempting, the size of a typical AirlineSim game world just doesn’t offer the liquidity to make it work. As a consequence, the market has been exploited for cheating and grey-area practices in the past and had to be so constrained by rules that the term “market” has been a stretch for years.
On top of this, the stock market is a very old feature, based on technology we’d like to phase out. So from our perspective, it makes even more sense to get rid of this.
There is of course the option to replace the stock market with alternative features that do not suffer from the same issues but fulfil the same purposes, like transferring ownership of an airline to someone else or raising capital from other players.
The thing that’s problematic is the “market” aspect. There just never was and never will be a liquid market for stocks since there are relatively few players per game world to begin with and an even smaller subset of these is interested in doing frequent speculative trading at a stock exchange (my guess: close to zero).
Ideas for possible replacement features:
Ownership transfer and/or raising capital: Direct share transfers between players (either by selling shares or giving out new ones). Technically similar to what we have today, but without the market aspect.
Raising capital: Inter-player bonds or loans.
Just like the stock market, both of these come with their fair share of issues, both in terms of game design (market consolidation to the point of monopolies) and exploitability. So they would of course have to be strictly regulated. But at least they take the “market-based price finding mechanism” out of the equation.
I really like this idea. Being able to support other players by offering loans or taking equity in an airline would be fun. Bigger more established players could support smaller players in other markets.
But of course illiquidity is an strong argument. Problem of every other tradingsystem will be a grey market with the same problems.
Bonds will be no real solution because in case of airline deletions the money is basically gone…Ok with stock it’s currently the same…
Maybe there it may possible to make two week long auctions with fixed date instead of live trading? Or you have to design a Marketmaker who offers liquidity? That’s the solution of the real world…. But avoiding cheating in this case is a bit tricky. Maybe a hard limit that only 49% of a company is allowed to sell and you can’t buy more as 10% of a other company?
I think you have to increase the liquidity to make it working. A better protection against deletions (planes for 10% to as if I believe?) and a Marketmaker who’s buying too cheap stocks and sell if there are expensive buying orders. And not more as 10% higher/lower as market price. The Marketmaker would check against the balance sheet and stock book value iehats cheap and what’s expensive. This in combination with a two week order window which fix the trades at the end of the two week window.
I don’t see the point in jumping through all these hoops in an attempt to save a feature that isn’t really required for (or is even detrimental to) the game. With market makers you have the additional issue of an NPC potentially injecting additional capital into the game, which is like pouring oil into a fire given AirlineSim’s typical ROIs and the airline growth they result in.
I prefer the stockmarket to have a better identification with the game world and the other companies in the game.
A Marketmaker don’t have the job to repair design problems which resulting in inflation - and he should make the stock market more stable so basically I believe there is not very much more capital inside the simulation…
