The 4-5 hour market delay in Alliance is excessive, IMHO.

If someone is trying to play at the same time window each day, this is quite frustrating. If you put stuff on the market as soon as you log in, it takes 5 hrs to arrive, you have 1 hour to "play" after the sale. You have to log off then in order to get the 18 hour bonus and log back in at the same time the next day.

I believe the time for goods to arrive on the market should be shortened to the 2-4 hour range.

You have made the faulty assumption that you have to spend your cash the same day that you get it. There is nothing wrong with selling goods and then logging in 18 hours later to use the cash.

I second Rockman's notion.

I disagree. I believe the admins have stated they want to move towards people being in the game more frequently, which being able to sell and then play while still receiving your turn bonus would allow. Ultimately a better solution is probably to just remove the 18 hour turn bonus as that is explicitly against their stated goal, but that does not change the validity of the suggestion.

Rockman, no, that wasn't what I meant. The point would be to be able to play turns both before and after the market sale. For example, you might have standing orders that bought something overnight, you then want to turn the sale on those before playing your turns. Or, you want to produce something with turns, then turn the sale on them, then play more turns.

Ideally you want to be able to do all of this in the 6-hour window that is outside the 18-hour dark period.

Removing the 18-hour bonus is another option to get rid of the problem. That would lead to people being more frequently logged in. My concern there is that it also makes it harder to surprise opponents while Earth is out of their frame of mind. (Game Dynamic).

Well it just makes it harder to surprise opponents, but that is actually a good thing.

With 18 hour bonuses, you can kind of expect players to make a game schedule, on once you figure it out, you can safely hit them and kill them, without the 18 hours cooldown period, people will log every now and then times will be more random, and walling may happen easier.

If you want to reward people with lives, then make a passive bonus in with your people will "explore" 1 acre per hour (one hour after you logged) you are logged out of the game, is a minimal advantage, but isn't ridiculously worthless either.

If you want to play turns both before and after the market sale, then what you are saying is that someone wants to play their country twice a day - most often by indies, or someone else that would need to make two sales a day. Why should it be extremely easy to get two sales a day in?

Why not just make people be able to sell a higher portion of their military or tech at the market, if this is an issue? With the Communism bonus, this really isn't an issue. There's just no need for this change.

Maybe a better question would be to ask why this delay is here to begin with, and why it is 4-5 hours? Was this also tied to server load/performance back in the 90s, or is there a specific game mechanic it is trying to serve?

a techer who is doubleselling might have a bit of problem getting 18 hour bonus all the time. Just another reason to get rid of 18 hour bonus tho...instead of lower market times...

Market times is part of the game, if your units/tech get instantly on the market there is no market game, no predictions, nothing getting stuck for failed predictions.

Is part of the game, you could predict certain goods price will raise in the next 10 hours, and as such you can take a gamble on it, that is part of the game.

Choaswind,

If the market was instant it would be like real life. There certainly are predictions in real life. So would it be in instant, how quickly will everything sell? How high will the price go? Can I sell for slightly more than the current market price? Can I effect the market price? How?.... these are all questions that would remain, even if your goods were instantly dropped on the market.

What I'm saying is, I am all for the shortest possible market delay.

I'm sure there is a reason for it, to decrease cheating or something, but other than that I think it is pointless, except that a lot of people are used to it. :)

you raise a good point, this could insta kill buyouts, and not only the Netting buyouts, also the public market buyouts to fluff with walling countries :)

public mkt buyouts aren't that rare.

how would this make buyouts harder?

i would think it would make them easier, at least in ffa

and standing orders more important.

A reason for the delay (which is random) is to prevent easy transferring of goods from one country to another via the market back when there are no standing orders.

With Standing Orders is possible now, but not easy...

you can't for example transfer bushels for $27 from one country to the other, Standing Orders act as a kind of floor price for transfers.

Anyway what is wrong with the market delay?

and Yeah, No delay would make Buyouts easier, but that also means you can undercut buyouts right away.

Standing orders don't really get in the way of transfers.

If you set your Standing order at $1 higher than the normal level (which there is usually a gap between it and the current price of goods) then you get the next bit of goods, no matter the price. So if I put cheap bushels on the market and tell you exactly when, you can log on right before the opening happens, put in a standing order and then you'll probably get them since most people don't sell to standing orders. There is risk there, because you could end up buying more expensive goods, but your chances are pretty high to be successful.

Yeah, but is like a floor price

If the Standing Orders are at 80, the current price is at 190, you can put your orders at $81 and sell at that price, but you can't go lower than that...

so What happens if the Floor Price of standing orders is at $180 and current prices are at $190? the transfer is pretty much pointless :P

"then you get the next bit of goods, no matter the price."

Incorrect.

this is incorrect

Remember the 6-8hr days?