Galatic stock exchange

[Thanak]

It would be very cool if there was a galatic stock exchange in game. You could buy and sale share of in game NPC corp like Falcon Delacy, Gutamaya,... I think it would open the possibility of a bunch of interesting gameplay loop that would help flesh out the world. You could have occasional general assembly vote based on number of share on the next model of ship to release or the next system to colonise, and stuff like that.

Eventually it could be opened to player run corp going public with the possibility of flying corp ship

 

[Lestat]

Well if you deal with Bitcoin you understand what whales are. Basically it about 1000 people who own most of the Bitcoin market and they and manipulate the market to suit their needs. They can make it rise or fall by buying or selling it. I don't think that what Frontier needs.

 

[Rick6549]

I will now purchase 100% of saud kruger

 

[Captain Willard]

I will now purchase 100% of saud kruger

Then everyone would sell their beluga. Saturate the market and you would go bust.
Elite Dangerous.

 

[MK Regular]

I'm just going to point out how unrealistic players being able to have any significant say on the internal maters of a mega corp through a shareholder vote would be. Given how large many of the mega corps (like ship manufacturers) are in ED, players being able to buy stock for any mega corp would have virtually zero impact on the mega corps in question.

Using Faulcon Delacy as an example, think of how many Anacondas are owned by players (INARA says that this figure is just under 64000). Assuming that Faulcon Delacy only makes 25% profit on each Anaconda sold (full price, discounts are done by the individual retailer), they have made 2.27 trillion credits by selling only the Anaconda, only to players with INARA, and only in the last 5 years. For reference, canonically the buying power of 1 CR in the ED universe is roughly equal to $50 US, meaning that 2.27 trillion credits over 5 years is about 22.7 trillion USD per year, which is roughly equal to the GDP of the United States of America.

Now, considering that Faulcon Delacy presumably makes more than 25% profit per unit sold, the Anaconda is not the only ship they sell (INARA says players own ~62000 Pythons, ~56000 Sidewinders, ~42000 Cobra IIIs, and ~35000 Krait IIs), not every player uses INARA (~37000 players use INARA despite several million copies of ED having been sold), players only make up a fraction of the in-universe market for spaceships, and the companies like Faulcon Delacy have existed for hundreds of years, the net worth of these companies FAR outstrips the players' ability to buy enough of their stock to have anything close to a controlling presence in a shareholder vote. Assuming that Faulcon Delacy makes 50% profit per unit sold on the aforementioned ships, INARA statistics are representative of the 1.3 million people who bought Horizons, the ratio of players with INARA to players without INARA is equal the ratio of players to NPCs, and that Faulcon Delacy is seeing fairly aggressive growth of 10% per year, that puts the net worth of Faulcon Delacy at 17 quadrillion (10¹⁵) credits.

Essentially, in order for players to own all Faulcon Delacy's stock, each of the 1.3 million players who own Horizons would need to buy 13.2 billion credits of Faulcon Delacy stock. To make matters worse, this is a conservative estimate (it does not include the Viper III or IV, Cobra IV, Krait Phantom, the 1.7 million players who only own the base copy of the game, accounts that have been reset, that the ratio of NPCs to players is going to be closer to 340:1 or 3400:1 than than 34:1, or that Faulcon Delacy might have a growth rate similar to that of a banking institution), and the playerbase would still be hard pressed to be able to buy out half of the stock for a single ship manufacturer. If we try to come up with a more accurate estimate, but only use a NPC to player ratio of 340:1 and give Faulcon Delacy a growth rate of 3% per year, that gives us a net worth of 557 quadrillion (10¹⁵) credits, which is well beyond the collective purchasing power of the playerbase and is still probably at least 1 order of magnitude too small.

TL;DR: Mega corps have absolutely ridiculous net values and the collective purchasing power of the playerbase doesn't have even the slimmest chance of buying one.

 

[metatheurgist]

TL;DR: Mega corps have absolutely ridiculous net values and the collective purchasing power of the playerbase doesn't have even the slimmest chance of buying one.

Great, now tell FD how ridiculous it is that player factions control systems.

 

[MK Regular]

Great, now tell FD how ridiculous it is that player factions control systems.

The Sirius Corporation is THE mega corporation in the ED universe. Between all of its various corporate arms, it has a definite controlling presence in 24 systems. I'm not sure if Sirius Inc, or Sirius Special Forces count as being part of Sirius Corp since they have different allegiances and/or ethos, but they would add 30 and 31 systems to Sirius Crop's sphere of influence, respectively. Best case scenario, minor factions aligned with the Sirius Corp control 85 systems while the powerplay faction headed by the CEO of the Sirius Corporation controls another 57 systems and exploits another 567 systems (if you really want to count those) for a grand total of 709 systems.

In comparison as of the end of last month, the top 10 player minor faction directly control 694 systems, with the top 20 controlling 1220 systems and a grand total of 7216 systems controlled by PMFs. Somehow, these minor factions that are ostensibly owned by players control 10x more of the galaxy than a corporation that could literally buy the collective assets of every single player in the game using only the profit they made in the last year.

Yeah, I don't get. Could someone please explain to me exactly how this is supposed to work?

 

[Thanak]

I'm just going to point out how unrealistic players being able to have any significant say on the internal maters of a mega corp through a shareholder vote would be.

True but not any less realistic than becoming a king in the empire by shoveling mail between two systems

Actual in game voting would probably be a rare event and use just for immersion purpose. You could very well just say that NPC holders are split on the vote and that they vote proportionally to the players.

Voting power might be more significant on a small / mid size player corp.

But the whole idea is that it expend well with the existing universe. You already have a universe with a bunch of fleshed out big corp and you have a Galnet broadcasting news. And it would give a place for veteran players to dump their billions.

 

[RamirezKurita]

True but not any less realistic than becoming a king in the empire by shoveling mail between two systems

Actual in game voting would probably be a rare event and use just for immersion purpose. You could very well just say that NPC holders are split on the vote and that they vote proportionally to the players.

Voting power might be more significant on a small / mid size player corp.

But the whole idea is that it expend well with the existing universe. You already have a universe with a bunch of fleshed out big corp and you have a Galnet broadcasting news. And it would give a place for veteran players to dump their billions.

Rather than giving players a vote on shareholding (which would literally be a drop in the ocean as we are comparing wealthy players and their pitiful billions against manufacturers that have values in the quadrillions, if not quintillions), it would make more sense for the factions themselves have a say.

Give each minor faction a set of weightings for the different ship manufacturers, and then link the relative prosperity for a manufacturer to the factions that prefer to use their ships. This could also be split between military contractors and civilian markets if they want, as not every manufacturer makes combat-capable ships. Superpower-aligned factions would have additional weighting towards their given military contractor and reduced weightings for their enemies' manufacturers (Alliance and Lakon, Empire and Gutamaaya, Federation and Core Dynamics). Obviously, some factions would use a fairly balanced mix, some factions would use predominantly one manufacturer with support from others, while some might use almost exclusively a single manufacturer. There might have to be some mechanics in place to prevent minor manufacturers from being used heavily, such as limiting them to 25% market share in a faction or preventing them being used as military ships, but the larger manufacturers can easily compete in all fields.

Players who want to support particular manufacturers would then have to go out and identify minor factions that use that manufacturer primarily and support them in order to further the goals of their favourite manufacturer. This would go doubly so if each faction used different manufacturers for certain things, such as primarily one manufacturer for military ships, another for system security and another for civilian ships. If players go out and support factions that use Lakon primarily for trade ships, for example, then it would encourage FD to develop more trade ships for Lakon. However, if factions that use Lakon for system security become quite successful, then it would encourage the development of Lakon fighters and small-medium combat ships that would be used for policing systems.

This would also add in a good amount of extra flavour to each individual minor power, as each faction would have a different set of preferred ships that they use. A player might jump into a CZ and see a mostly Lakon fleet engaging against a largely Delacey fleet, which would then present different tactical options depending on which side they join. Players engaged in long-term conflicts that follow multiple successive wars might even choose to specialise their ship builds to counter their main opponents. This would make even more difference if each faction also had its own selection of tech broker modules, powerplay modules and preferred weapon loadouts, so that each faction presented quite a different opponent rather than each using the same stuff.