Allow Partial Quantity Trades

[DeletedUser61]

PROPOSAL

• Allow folks to post trades with the maximum quantities that they can handle, and then indicate if they will accept partial quantity trades.
• Allow folks to buy the full trades or, where partial trades are allowed, enter an "at least" amount in lieu of the offered amount.

DETAILS

• Simply showing the seller offered amount as the default "at least" amount, may be the simplest approach, although there should still be a static indication of the actual offered and demanded amounts.
• Trades that the buyer cannot cover are currently listed at the end of the trade list. No change is proposed, even though a great many of the trades that allow partial quantities would thereby be listed after all of the picket fence trades.
• LARGER trades are currently listed before smaller trades of the same type with the same rating. While the sort order would not change, the trades that allowed partial quantities would tend to be larger, and the flexible trades would therefore be presented earlier in the sort sequence.
• The buyer should always receive full measure. The algorithm would be:
  Partial_Offered = At_Least_Offered
  Until ((Offered - Partial_Offered) * Offered / Demand) is integer
  .. Partial_Offered = Partial_Offered +1
  End Until
• Partial_Demand = Partial_Offered * Demand / Offered
• If the user has a sufficient quantity on-hand to cover the Partial_Demand, the popup the Confirmation box as with a normal trade. Provide an error message otherwise, but DO NOT try to outguess what error the user may have made. Merely indicate that they need to ask for fewer items.
• The Partial_Offered amount sold would be reported to the seller in their Notification Log
• The transaction would disappear from the trade list, but the next time the list was (re)loaded, the remaining Offer and Demand quantities would be shown.

ADVANTAGES

• The trade list would be much shorter, so less data would need to be transferred to the client.
• Players would be able to post a few LARGE quantity trades, rather than several groups of picket fence trades.
• Players would be able to buy exactly what they needed, with perhaps a few additional items to ensure that they received full measure.
• Neither the default trading ratios nor the like value limits would change.

 

[DeletedUser]

I like this idea. It would be just like eTrade!

The one problem I see with this would be handling a partial trade of a non two-star trade offer. A two-star trade is easy to split up because it is one for one. So if you have, for example, 1000 Marble you offer for 1000 Planks with partial trades accepted, then if somebody comes along and takes 100 of your Marble, then you'd get 100 Planks in return. No problem. But what happens if you are offering 1050 Marble for 1000 Planks with partial trades accepted. Then if that same person comes along and wants only 50 of your Marble, how much should you get in return? Would the game apply the same ratio? In that case, would it round down to give you 52 Planks in return or would it round up to give you 53? I know this is a small issue, but if that same 1050 Marble for 1000 Planks trade offer gets scooped up in sets of 50 Marble, things are going to get dicey with the remaining amount as you near the end. Just something to think about. Perhaps a partial trade feature like this could be implemented only with 2-star trades to avoid this situation.

 

[DeletedUser61]

Then if that same person comes along and wants only 50 of your Marble, how much should you get in return?

The buyer would always get full measure. Let's look at a simple example:

• I've offered 9 Marble, and I'm demanding 6 Planks, so 3:2 and 3 stars, I think.
• You only want 5 Marble, but you're going to have to pay at least 4 Planks to get it
• The system would bump your request up to 6 Marble, so that you would get a full measure for the 4 Planks that the trade will cost you.

 

[DeletedUser]

That would work, Katwijk!