Hi all,

Today's update marks the first step to improving economic gameplay. MARKET code has been entirely rewritten from the ground up, receiving a cosmetic facelift and some powerful upgrades. Let's review what's changed:

- Clans now have Comms Storage.
- Clans, Factions, and Dynasties now have the Marketing power (and corresponding perk for Dynasties), which allows players to place buy and sell orders through an org, with commodities/marks withdrawing and depositing directly to org storage/accounts. Navigate the market via an org with [CLAN|DYNASTY|FACTION] MARKET.
- For Scatterhome, only Accountants have the power at the moment. Feel free to referendum it if you'd like the power elsewhere.
- We've split commodity storage adjustments and market notifications into a new log, commlog, for all your accounting needs. Changes to org storage via DEPOSIT and WITHDRAW will go there now instead of the main logs.
- Syntax for interacting with the commlog is same as with the normal log:
- COMMLOG READ <org> <day> (shortform READCOMMLOG)
- COMMLOG WRITE <org> <message> (shortform WRITECOMMLOG)
- MARKET syntax has been completely rewritten. Escrow and market takes have been removed as a concept. The entire system is now interfaced with just 4 commands, MARKET LIST, MARKET BUY, MARKET SELL, and MARKET CANCEL.
- You can still buy from specific offers and sell to specific orders using the MARKET BUY <amt> FROM <offer_id> and MARKET SELL <amt> TO <order_id> commands.
- Market orders can now specify ranges via the MARKET BUY syntax. You can place orders at specific locations as before, but now you can also specify that an order can be filled anywhere, or you can specify a space zone, optionally some number of zones away. So you can place an order for iriil specifying that the order can be filled anywhere in the Sector, or you can place your order for titanium specifying it must be within 3 zones of Aleph.
- Immediately after placing a market order or offer, the game will check against any and all offers/orders in range consistent with the specified price:
- Market orders will check against all market offers in range and automatically buy from them, resolved in order from least expensive up to the maximum price stated in the market order, paying less than the stated price if there are offers at a lower price.
- Thus MARKET BUY 100 IRIIL FOR 50 ANYWHERE will first look for market offers anywhere where iriil is being sold for 50 marks or less, and buy them up automatically starting with the cheapest iriil. The remaining quantity after this process will be posted as the buy order.
- Market offers will check against all market orders in range and automatically sell to them, resolved in order from most expensive down to the minimum price stated in the market offer, selling for more than the stated price of there are orders at a higher price.
- Thus MARKET SELL 100 IRIIL FOR 50 will first look for market orders in range where iriil is being bought for 50 marks or more, and sell to them automatically starting with the best price you can get for your iriil in range. The remaining quantity after this process will be posted as the sell offer.
- The maximum number of market orders you can place has been increased from 20 to 50. Furthermore, we've added a stacking artifact, market_tycoon, to increase that amount by another 50. At the moment the maximum number of these artifacts you can stack is 5, making the maximum possible number of orders 300.
- This limit does not apply to market offers. You can place as many market offers as you'd like.
- Orgs don't get a maximum number of orders. Placing a market order on behalf of an org counts towards your market order cap.
- Existing market orders and offers have been preserved. The range on pre-existing market orders defaults to specific station/celestial body as before.
- MARKET LIST now provides a summary of all the possible commodities and their market listings. MARKET LIST <comm> is then used to view a list of offers and orders for that specific comm. You can no longer view a list of the entire market all at once, as this would surely lag our game terribly if we ever manage to hit healthy market volumes.
- You can also MARKET LIST MINE to view your own listings and relevant statistics, and CLAN/FACTION/DYNASTY MARKET LIST ORG to view organizational listings and relevant statistics.
- CARGO CONTENTS and org STORAGE quantity column now split into two separate columns, one for the number tied up in market offers, and the other for the amount leftover.
- The changes to captaincy gain from mining have made the need for captaincy gain on the market basically obsolete, and it is simply too onerous for us admin to constantly monitor for abuse of the mechanic. Thus Captaincy XP is no longer acquired on market.
- The Deepspace Market artifact now only works when you buy directly from an offer via MARKET BUY <amount> FROM <order>, does not work when purchasing on behalf of an org, and cannot be used to purchase your own offers. In other words, it is not intended as a method of instant teleportation of commodities, rather simply as a MARKET alternative to what Crazy Jerry's provides for the purchase of shipforge supplies.

Lastly, personal market orders have been disabled for the time being. This was a difficult decision that involved much discussion, and we realize it may be an unpopular one as they can be a good source of marks for industrial players, so let me explain the reasoning. The problem with them at the current stage of development is that we do not yet have a thriving player-driven economy, and personal market orders have the possibility of dumping large quantities of bottleneck commodities towards a quick cashgrab that has little telemetry built in allowing us to accurately assess commodity fonts and sinks. Combine this with the fact that organizational marketeering can potentially release large stockpiles into the open market, which then is sunk straight into a short-term cashgrab, and we are quickly left with an economy in a difficult state where bottleneck resources largely get dunked. We may reactivate them in about a month's time or more after monitoring the overall health of the economy, and furthermore the personal market order system would be made smarter to target specific commodities requiring sinks. There were also some small NPC orders being placed on market after ships were destroyed, a relic of an old unfinished system. That has been removed for now. There will come a time for NPCs to return to the marketplace, but not before we improve the logic of the simulation such that a player and NPC economy can exist hand-in-hand.

NB: While we have done our best to ensure the new system is free of bugs, there are many points of failure. Issues with market listings can potentially lead to some critical issues, so we ask for your attention, care, and discretion over the next little while. If you notice anything particularly exploitative, please CANCEL a problematic listing and ISSUE it with steps to reproduce so that we see it immediately.

Now then, we want to see lots of market orders getting placed! Go forth, Tycoons!

Regards,
Neritus