Stock Market Removal

Feature Roadmap
1

What?

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.

When?

Not scheduled yet, but almost certainly before Project "Glow-Up" (UI refresh) for technical reasons.

2

Where is the dislike button? ^^

but tbh i think with a rework it would be great, removing would be the wrong option as its a thing no other Airline manager has.

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3

I’m very much open to suggestions :slight_smile:

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4

What options could that be? Stock market would be appreciated, I think.

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5

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.

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6

Colour me concerned, yet intrigued.