Trade agreements are fun and not frustrating.
I got an order for 1240 rice, and i hustled for 15 days to scrape up 1242 units of rice just in time to get on the road.
Great! Keep it up!
Unfortunately, when i arrived, the hay and meals I packed apparently weren't good enough for my animals and colonists. I arrive with 1220 something rice, and the fuckers won't take my fucking rice! I didn't want do do harm to anything at all, in fact, i wanted to do absolutely nothing at all anymore. I went to lie down a bit, contemplating the life of the peasants.
Posted May 25, 2017, 4:12 PM UTC
19173
This makes a good case for prorating. Them not buying ANY of the rice, despite needing 1240 units, doesn't make sense.
They should definitely take what you brought and give a fair price with maybe a small penalty, because it's "not what we agreed upon."
Yes, it should be a "buy up to X amount"
With a bonus if you meet Y amount. Where Y can be < or = X.
Yeah. A bonus for meeting the target would be more fun than a penalty for not meeting it (even though the effect is the same).
This would dumb down the system and reduce risks associated with trading. Ie, it would make things boring.
In the non-rimworld, "buy up to X amount" is a completely different kind of contract, with added overhead on the seller side and risk for both parties. Obviously these kind of options are executed in the real world, but there will be large deviation from spot market rates. Allow me to explain:
Why should a seller lug around a huge amount of rice, with a huge amount of transportation/logistics overhead, only to have a buyer say 'oh thanks i'll just take 1% of your rice'? There are huge fixed costs when transporting commodities across international trade routes. Extremely inefficient use of capital. This is why we have contracts.
The purchasing party has requested 1240 rice because they need 1240 rice. For you to rock up with 1220 rice this is unacceptable and a breach of contract. What will it be next time? 1000? 800? I need this rice to feed my people. If even 10% of the population go hungry there is risk of uprising and civil war. I can order another rice contract, but what if the next guy is as flaky as you? I need reliable and predictable imports that align with my forecasted consumption and inventory capacity. Sure, i'll buy your 1220 rice, but at 40% of market price. Sounds unfair? Well I have to fly in 20 units of rice at massive expense thanks to your inability to meet product specification as contracted.
tl;dr - in the real world, buyers will absolutely refuse the whole shipment if its 95% of the contract rather than 100%.
Welcome to international trading. OP would be lucky not to have a hearing in front of the World Trade Organisation with his shoddy behaviour.
Do you know what the word fun means? No? Great youre hired for ludeon studios.
My post was somewhat in jest, but I do think trading is more fun if the risk/reward stakes are higher.
Pro rata payments would just be boring. Either make me care about protecting my cargo (and delivering it at full quality) or just stick to normal trading. I want thrilling highs and crushing lows. Not 90% reward for 90% cargo.
Pro rata payments doesnt feel very Rimworld. Rimworld is about survivors. You survive or you die. You have an arm, you dont have an arm. Give me brutal consequences and occasionally thrilling victory.
You make it sound like we should expect to be paid the same for less product? No?
I'm not suggesting Rimworld implement some complex real-world type of trading contract system. I'd be delighted (I work in the management of risk for commodity supply chains) but I imagine most players would find it a bit tedious.
I'm just saying pro-rata payments would be boring and not in the style of Rimworld. Rimworld is all or nothing. The OP should have planned his journey better and taken 105% of the cargo if he was worried about this happening.
Yeah but in the real world, you can also say "THIS THING IS IMPORTANT, DO NOT CONSUME OR TOUCH THIS THING UNLESS YOU ARE TRANSPORTING IT OR THERE WILL BE STRICT PUNISHMENTS."
In the real world, if the last 5% of the shipment gets eaten, then the people who ate it get fucking arrested/executed.
Or executed then arrested.
That one's always fun.
@AlexDanger
Don't make such ballsy claims when you don't actually know what you're talking about.
At the company I personally work at, a steel processing company operating in over 50 countries worldwide and employing in the tens of thousands, we use contracts with a flexible delivery amount with most of our clients. The case is the same with deliverers of various raw material etc that sell to us (Exceptions do exist). Of course these flexibilities are limited to certain amounts. Typically in the 10% range depending on how flexible the operation it's needed at is, but it's kept as flexible as possible to allow for higher efficiency on all parts. Efficient production is more important than production of precise quantity. Your statement, in the real world as you said, is in most cases not true at all. Of course it can be at times, I'm not denying that precision of delivered quantity CAN be important, but in the general/overall 'real world'? Not one bit like you claim it to be.
PS. The payment is of course adjusted according to amount delivered, if the seller has been over/under producing a bit they don't need to worry. And there is no reason to lowball amounts to get away cheaper yourself by delivering less with the same payment, as it just scales accordingly.
?
I said proof of existence.
Lets agree to disagree.
Or "at least X, up to Y"
It has to be this because you're selling at above market rate.
Are you ? Or that is just normal rate, just not affected by normal selling penalty ?
At least X, up to Y sounds best.
100% agree with this. A18 will probably be a tweaks and such update anyway, so let's hope things like this are addressed.
If it becomes such a glaring problem, then Tynan usually does a few patches in between updates for rebalancing.
This feels like the kind of problem you can adjust to as long as you know about it. If they need X of a food product get 105% of X and then set out. That and/or just pack more meals.
Not an ideal solution, but good enough for vanilla.
Obviously mods could just fix this by default.
I'm confident we will have it like that soon. I honestly expected it to work like that to begin with.
I agree with OP's point, but it can make sense not to buy any of the food.
If they need the food to send out their own caravan, then not having enough food can mean they aren't sending the caravan at all, so they don't need any of the excess food.
But gameplay-wise idk... depends on the reward I guess.
It would make sense to have a percentage above which they'll accept it. If you order 1200 rice and wait quite a while for it, and the seller shows up with 1191 rice, you still take it. Your caravan is possibly delayed a day or two; if you refuse the rice you're now delayed several weeks or longer.
They'll still buy it through the regular caravan interface with market prices. Just no special deal
sometimes the trades are for a single valuable item, though.
Sure, but that's a different situation.
Even with prorating, 0/1 still gives you 0, so those types of quests aren't affected.