Ideas for the Black Market in the new system

[Foundation]

Keep in mind that the goal is not to make other players' lives difficult by obscuring information on their own offers.  I never want to check and find that "your offer was fulfilled" for an arbitrary amount less silently.  Either it happens and players are informed, or it doesn't happen, since I can just subtract my new bonds from my previous amount to get the difference anyways.

[fodder]

in the old black market system

you could:
successfully do it.
get scammed by npc.
get caught and have your name plastered everywhere.

so i would think in the new system, there should be a chance of your name being plastered everywhere.

[Indirik]

If you get caught, yes.

[Zakilevo]

Why not give bankers an ability to set up a trap to catch traders using black markets? Let bankers turn maximum of three orders under surveillance and if traders who use black markets buy that offer, his name will be shown to bankers.

[Chenier]

if the chance of getting caught is a flat rate per attempt, this will encourage lords to spam really small offers to maximize the chances of catching black market traders.

[Zakilevo]

That is why I want only bankers have the power. Out of all the offers they can only put 3 under surveillance. If you limit the total number of offers to three, that wouldn't be good for your realm.

[Chenier]

That is why I want only bankers have the power. Out of all the offers they can only put 3 under surveillance. If you limit the total number of offers to three, that wouldn't be good for your realm.

Sounds like a great way to make trading suck, imo.

Black market used to be about really small numbers. Maybe that's partly because my trading skill always sucked, but I never saw anything really interesting on the black market. Sure, it was better than no offer at all, but still.

However, these suggestions sound like they'd allow traders to get thousands of bushelss from the black market...

[Indirik]

These ideas definitely need to be thought through and balanced. But a limiting factor would be that the bigger the deal, the greater the risk. The smaller offers would probably be not too risky, but trying to trade on a restricted 1,000 bushel deal should be very risky.

Also, many of these options I posted don't really defraud anyone. Trading on a restricted deal means that the lord/steward posting the orders still gets the food or gold he wants. It's just getting bought/sold by someone other than intended. The options to actually defraud the posters and pocket an illegal profit would be even more risk.

The option for a banker to monitor trades for fraud is interesting. Perhaps it could be a police action style thing, limited to the physical location of the banker, or just his current and surrounding regions or something. I wouldn't want it to be just any three random offers from anywhere in the realm. Realms could possibly have dozens and dozens of orders. Monitoring three would be essentially useless. Rather, monitor a marketplace, and anything going through there would be scrutinized.

[Zakilevo]

These ideas definitely need to be thought through and balanced. But a limiting factor would be that the bigger the deal, the greater the risk. The smaller offers would probably be not too risky, but trying to trade on a restricted 1,000 bushel deal should be very risky.

Also, many of these options I posted don't really defraud anyone. Trading on a restricted deal means that the lord/steward posting the orders still gets the food or gold he wants. It's just getting bought/sold by someone other than intended. The options to actually defraud the posters and pocket an illegal profit would be even more risk.

The option for a banker to monitor trades for fraud is interesting. Perhaps it could be a police action style thing, limited to the physical location of the banker, or just his current and surrounding regions or something. I wouldn't want it to be just any three random offers from anywhere in the realm. Realms could possibly have dozens and dozens of orders. Monitoring three would be essentially useless. Rather, monitor a marketplace, and anything going through there would be scrutinized.

Wouldn't that block off too many offers? I think this could work if traders have a way to find out where the banker is. Then they can play cat and mouse.

[Indirik]

It doesn't "block" anything. It makes things riskier. Kind of like Patrolling The Streets for infiltrators. If you limit Black Market deals to your current location only, then there could be a warning such as "You notice there are quite a few guards monitoring trades. Illegal activities would probably be much riskier right now."

[Zakilevo]

It doesn't "block" anything. It makes things riskier. Kind of like Patrolling The Streets for infiltrators. If you limit Black Market deals to your current location only, then there could be a warning such as "You notice there are quite a few guards monitoring trades. Illegal activities would probably be much riskier right now."

Oh I misunderstood. Thought it would be 100%. Yeah I that sounds much more interesting and it will also give bankers something to do as well.

[mykavykos]

I agree. This is good add to the black market option.

I don't know what the bankers have to do now, but when I was banker, there are not much to do.

[Eithad]

Is there any way to link the black market up with excess stores, like any food say in excess of 100 bushels above the granary limit would be put up in 100 bushel blocks at an average price between all the buy and sell offers in the area.

It gives more incentive to build granaries besides just preventing rotting and it also serves the automatic sell offer purpose. Of course this automatic sell offer would only be accessible to traders on the black market and not just any regional lord so more incentive for the lords to place their food on the market.

[Indirik]

Is there any way to link the black market up with excess stores, like any food say in excess of 100 bushels above the granary limit would be put up in 100 bushel blocks at an average price between all the buy and sell offers in the area.

I wouldn't make it quite that easy. Rather, if there is more food stored in the region than there is warehouse space to store it, then make it more likely that food is for sale on the black market, and make the attempt to buy it much more likely to succeed.

[Azerax]

What about the ability to sell rotten food, or rotten food mixed in with good food?  The larger the quantity the higher chance that you get caught.   Seems like a suitable scam.

Best regards,