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Competing against a bot
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Bob Malone RJ: Bob Malone CO: Malone Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 341 Karma: 191 Joined: Apr 17, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 14, 2012 Is there any trick to compete against a bot creating companies in every market of the game ? ( just hope that it's not really a bot, yet ;) )
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Brent Goode RJ: BB Goode CO: BB Goode Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 506 Karma: 180 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 14, 2012 Yes. Hope they get caught and executed, or quit the game.
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Brent Goode RJ: BB Goode CO: BB Goode Post Rating: 1 + / - Total Posts: 506 Karma: 180 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 14, 2012 I consider bots cheating. Period. I was under the impression that they were not going to be allowed on the new server. I understand that those using bots would like to think of themselves as helping the economy. (not saying you're using them) Criminals always think they are doing something ethical in their own twisted minds.And I don't know why you would be "worried" about people playing vertically. The game is supposed to be set for any player to play by whatever strategy they want. The most advanced, complicated econ sim ever written should not even notice. And all that vertical foot print should still build demand. Add to that the tons of "advice" in the forums about how most players should get as vertical as they can to maximize profits. You are advocating in your advice to Bob! I don't like Lazy's either, but they are part of the fabric of the game. And there are a ton of posts that have "senior" players telling newbies that the aim is to get "at least" 2X cost. As for gouging empty markets...aren't you all the ones that keep screaming about the natural supply and demand, and how every low-demand market is an opportunity? They are just NPC's for god sake! Take them for all they are worth until someone comes in to keep you honest. And for all of that, I see some of the biggest players constantly squeezing prices in markets I try to compete in, just to keep anyone else from gaining any toehold in that market. Given the limited facade of "demand" that exists, I guess even the leviathans are hard pressed to keep their 80% of a market. I get more "worried" about B2B gougers that keep players from being able to interact on that venue. It is just stupid to pay more than going retail, from your retail competition, on a wholesale market. One of the first things I ever learned about business as a KID was that you can't compete with your supplier for the same market. Just sayin... |
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Cian Kemp RJ: Cian Kemp CO: Cian Kemp Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 183 Karma: 58 Joined: Apr 9, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 14, 2012 Make your own bot? Probably the only way to really compete on a sales level. With the demand met mechanics I was able to swoop in and make some nifty profits on items as they got down to 15-30% demand met in clothing. Since it was a pretty big industry with a bunch of products covering several categories a lot of stuff got overlooked over the course of the day. So I made my cash jumping into markets that other players overlooked every time I logged in - I usually found at least one I could change over to. Bots don't tend to overlook things, though - now the markets are all pretty even.I commend BallC's programming skills, though - he's got a really great bot. |
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Brent Goode RJ: BB Goode CO: BB Goode Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 506 Karma: 180 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 14, 2012 I still see bots as cheating, and I still see the cheaters justifying it as good for all. Sorry, just how I see it.
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Cian Kemp RJ: Cian Kemp CO: Cian Kemp Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 183 Karma: 58 Joined: Apr 9, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 14, 2012 Well, it does give a pretty big advantage - especially with all the formulas available so that you can have the bot calculate exactly how much money each market can make and pick the most profitable ones every tick. I'd prefer if the game had a little more mystery to it. I play just by my intuition of glancing at the market data the game provides and making choices without breaking down all the formulas on a spreadsheet or using a bot. I could make a lot more profit if I had a bot selling the ideal product mix all the time, but I find it more fun just playing the game with the tools in it. Others enjoy writing bots to do all that for them I guess. This game has to be one of the easiest to write a bot for though, with all the formulas revealed and the next tick of sales being completely dependent on the last tick's numbers (which are freely available). It isn't that much math to calculate exactly how much each market could make you, and nothing that other players can do will impact the next tick. It might impact the tick after that if sell a bunch of something cheap or whatever, but that next tick is guaranteed - so if a bot is buying tick by tick and recalculating each tick it's going to get ideal results every time no matter what the competition does. |
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Edwin Quintanilla RJ: EdqMaster CO: Edqmaster Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 74 Karma: 9 Joined: May 3, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 14, 2012 I guess cheating is dependent on definition. If you mean gaining an "unfair" advantage then bots are not cheating.I mean he/she still has setup the bot do the math and even then it is not guaranteed sucess. I am in no means justiying what they do nor will I ever use bots.
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Victoria Raverna RJ: Victoria Raverna CO: Victoria Raverna Post Rating: 1 + / - Total Posts: 107 Karma: 43 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 14, 2012 Is this a game where players compete with each other running successful companies or is it a game where players compete with each other by writing the best bots that run successful companies? |
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Cian Kemp RJ: Cian Kemp CO: Cian Kemp Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 183 Karma: 58 Joined: Apr 9, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 15, 2012 Well, let's be honest - having a bot pick up on high demand markets and change your product mix every 15 minutes during the day is a lot more of an advantage than even the best spreadsheet. I was selling sunglasses the other day with a 2k stock and they were selling at a decent pace at 60% demand met, then suddenly the demand met dropped to 25% due to apparently yesterday having a big bunch of sales all at once. A player might not have seen it right away, but next tick suddenly both Ball Mart companies hit it and drove it up to 95% in a single tick (and probably making you about 400k in the process) I expect today the same will happen - a sudden massive drop due to the 70% of demand being sold in one tick followed by another massive spike once your stores pick up on it. I just hope I can catch it at a point somewhere today that lets me sell the rest of my sunglasses stock at a decent rate.This is only useful due to the crummy (IMO) change making it so you can only sell 8 products at a time. Back before we had to micromanage product mix every 15 minutes it wasn't needed. Is it an unfair advantage? That's up to RJ - but it's a lot more than a spreadsheet. |
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Michael Tsui RJ: Reisen CO: Reisen Udongein Inaba Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 45 Karma: 30 Joined: Apr 26, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 15, 2012 Well, the problem is the lack of Menu Costs.These kind of bot-raiding should be greatly reduced if there is a significant cost of changing your shop layout every tick (by means of a bot or not), but should be negligible over the long run. This should reduce the rate of change in shop layout and certainly dissuade botting for the sake of demand spike raiding. |
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Bob Malone RJ: Bob Malone CO: Malone Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 341 Karma: 191 Joined: Apr 17, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 15, 2012 Well, let's be honest - having a bot pick up on high demand markets and change your product mix every 15 minutes during the day is a lot more of an advantage than even the best spreadsheeMaybe there should be a server for bots competition, and let players who really want to play the game on another server... Just a proposal... |
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David Gray RJ: graydoo CO: graydoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 11 Karma: 29 Joined: Apr 19, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 15, 2012 I don't really mind bots. I would rather see micromanagement discouraged by game mechanics and for the interface to improve in a way that minimizes the need for external tools.With the right mechanics bots would have to imitate players for maximum efficiency - not the other way around. Say for example if customers had expectations of what a shop sells. If Bob's Apple Emporium has sold apples for 10 years then that is the place you are going to go for apples. Bob's Apple Emporium suddenly only sells oranges? Well that's counter-intuitive. Will take a while for sales to pick up without advertisement and special offers. If a bot was being used to juggle products then customers would have no strong expectations, and so at best giving no bonus. Just one possible way that could reward foresight and a more achievable play style rather than bouncing around to the highest profit margin every tick. |
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Cian Kemp RJ: Cian Kemp CO: Cian Kemp Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 183 Karma: 58 Joined: Apr 9, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 15, 2012 I agree - bots aren't the problem. The problem is the micromanagement nightmare that the game has become with the new shelf system.
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Bob Malone RJ: Bob Malone CO: Malone Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 341 Karma: 191 Joined: Apr 17, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 15, 2012 because filling a supermarket was not a micro management nightmare before ?
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Michael Tsui RJ: Reisen CO: Reisen Udongein Inaba Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 45 Karma: 30 Joined: Apr 26, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 15, 2012 The new shelf system isn't the problem. Its implementation, lacking anything to dissuade players from jumping from good to good, is a problem.
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Cian Kemp RJ: Cian Kemp CO: Cian Kemp Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 183 Karma: 58 Joined: Apr 9, 2012 |
Posted on Jun 15, 2012 Yea, but in that case you could do it once and be done all day or possibly for a week if you had the cash to stock big inventories.Now to make maximum cash you'd have to sit there 24/7 eyeballing the demand charts and swapping your shelves around constantly. That's what BallC's bot is doing, and one of the reasons he's making so much money on retail. My shops run over the course of ~8 hours after I stock em and by the time I'm around to change products I might have the demand up to 120%, he's hopping around and keeping the demand met at 60-70% or less, and grabbing all the really sweet spot items when they dip to 20% (which can make him a few hundred thousand extra a tick). I was doing it manually in clothing before he came around, getting on every few hours and finding all the 10-20% demand met items and making hundreds of thousands on them. That's how I got my #2 spot and the way I came out way ahead of the other electronics companies. Some way to discourage jumping between goods might be a good idea. Maybe have it take a few ticks to ramp up the sales. Like first tick could be 50%, then 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100% sales on the 6th tick. That way it takes an hour and a half to fully swap between markets. Running out of stock shouldn't carry the penalty, though - that'd just be annoying. |
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