Na ja,
Siuaheli würde auch noch gehen, aber da hast du mit den Klickgeräuschen so nen Problem, wenn du die zu Papier bringen willst ! 
Spaß beiseite,
Ne Anleitung ist wichtig, vorallem mal eine zentrale Übersicht der Preiseinstellungen für alle Waren je 5er oder 4er Kapitän. 
Mandela
ZitatOriginal von Mandela
Ich habe zwar mittlerweile bei mir in meinen Dauerspielen deine Mk5 und auch schon einige Mk7 laufen,....(
Hi Mandela,
was ist der MK5. Hat Ugh! den auch noch erklärt 
Mir sind nämlich nur MK2, MK3 und MK7 bekannt.
As the main content of this thread is written in English, I decided to move it to the English Section of the board. (it has been discussed at a time where we did not have an own part for Non-German-Speakers).
( @ bizpro, brasileiro & BT:
I hope this is in your spirit? )
Absolutely.
By the way, it was I who developed the arbitrage. In one of our contests, Levon had asked if I had found the golden nugget, a high money exploit. I looked at the sale/resale of the captains, in stationary autotrading, and at the same price for sale and resale found that money was constantly generated. I wrote to Kquis, as he styled himself on the Patricianworld board (later Quis), and to Robber Baron, and we all experimented. In collaberation, with the spreadsheets Quis used, we found the optimum for buy/sell stationary autotrading was to place the buy price somewhat higher than the sale price. Counterintuitive, but it generated more money. We checked it against the buying ability of the captains, and of course 5s worked best but a 3 and a 4 could also be used with a different pricing table. A good technique, but it wasn't the one Levon had come up with!
For a while we held it a pretty close secret, brought in Captain Morgan too. I developed some versions with experimentation with multiple convoys, in synchronous trading one after another, and then variations, where after buying it was loaded into the warehouse, and with careful timing, picked up and sold and immediately rebought. Adding in production, and with sufficiently large convoys, Captain Morgan developed one game to the point it generated over a million a day in profits, all on the sale of the same goods, in a single town.
We agreed amongst ourselves to keep it quiet, since as an exploit it would tend to ruin our contests. Quis was playing a multiplayer game with Baron Monkey, Macangus, and a few others, got into money problems and began using it. BM picked up on it since strange things were happening with the supplies in his home town, and we then went public with the trick. Best results before you are producing means efficient supply of raw materials to the town. It also boosts your reputation rapidly since the game thinks you are constantly trading. We generally outlawed it in our contests from then on, since it wasn't really a test of your ability to effectively trade.
By the way, pig iron works just fine. You need to drive it to the lowest possible price.
Very interesting and up to date, beside the discussion who found or made what earlier and so on.
A complete instruction of arbitrage / infinite money exploit with price tables and how to set the convoys / ships for the "MK cascades" is not yet made. To have a chance to understand it, you have to switch between some threads an posts.
Of course it is a trick, but how dirty or not is something, that decides every one for his self and / or the rules of a contest. In the matter of a contest, the controlling who made it is not difficult.
Also, how I mentioned earlier, later the trick is normaly not needful after a time. 
By the way, I saw it now and not earlier, what Seebär asked, so sorry for the late answer:
Sorry I mean MK 2 and not MK 5, only a typing error!
It would be really interesting to know why Ugh! used the numbers Mk2, Mk3 and Mk7 and why the oners, fourers, fivers and sixers are missing. Have they been failed projects of arbitrage cascading?
This had been project names. They're to keep difference, since I developed several different arbitrage concepts at nearly the same time. (of course of the initial one I found, invented by BT)
Mk2 - uses two different and alternating goods lists (step1: buy goods on list 1, and sell list 2; step2: buy list 2 and sell list 1)
Mk3 - solves coordination with office manager (office manager sells arbitrage goods at same price as arbitrage trader, plus an extra step (of the arb-trader) to coordinate action.
Mk7 - uses mk2-alternating goods lists, plus coordination with multiple other arbitrage captains in a single city.
And yes, the oners, fourers and so on were unsuccessful methods.
Zitatby Mandela
A complete instruction of arbitrage / infinite money exploit with price tables and how to set the convoys / ships for the "MK cascades" is not yet made.
Be sure, it is already. And bizpro got it for translation.
@ Ugh!:
If you don't mind I will add my version to it. What's the code/project name for it?
To add to Baltic Trader's suggestion for pir iron, it works great but you need a large vessel or a convoy for it. I changed the crayer in Stavanger to a 700 holk and it's almust full, 63 units of pigiron per step.
I have now two towns, Bruegge and Koenigsberg running the two-goods / three-ship arbitrage version; London will be next.
Pig iron is not bad, if you are playing a trader's game, since the AI tends to nab a number of items, like iron goods or furs, if they are in the market for any time.
In one variation I nicknamed Hogzilla, a play on the words Godzilla from the Japanese movies and hog for pig iron, smelters are built and the pig iron dumped on the market to the lowest possible price. The AI never grabs much of it, and in a population based game the ten day industry is fast to build, and doesn't require other goods to manufacture. Two ships, convoy leaders, start it off with one on buy/sell, the other on sell/buy. As the volume grows, ships are added to the convoys. Alternatively, a load/sell ship coupled with a unload/buy ship can be done.
Ugh!, did you ever try price manipulation? Ships set at load/sell/sell/sell/sell etc at a particular price, with ships set to buy at marginally higher prices, at buy/buy/buy/buy etc/unload. In a larger population center, with furs for example set at above 1300, (and again best if you are producing domestically as well) you can make more money and still be selling domestically at excellent prices. Series of ships work best, if the population isn't high, with somewhat lower numbers. Amazing what a number of snaikkas can do early on for cash generation. I even did a several tiered system once, with ships set at graduated prices for buy and sell.
ZitatUgh!, did you ever try price manipulation?
No, but for? I read your description, but I don't get the point. Perhaps you could become a bit more detailed?
@Biz
Your development is IMHO related to the Mk7 (coordinated arbitrage ships in both cases) and improves the top fill up of the market, (without adjustment or readjustment).
The difference of the mk7 to your method is, the mk7 doesn't immediately unload (like your hulk does) but resells, another ship rebuys, another resells, another rebuys, ... ad infinitum (which is about 20 in this case) if necessary.
I added, at my current 40-city-game, five of your loader-ships (one for each good) pre to a 9-ships-mk7-cascade with great satisfaction. Works fine.
Okay, I will try it a different way. The captain gets a discount, which is based on the pricing of the goods. So, to buy furs at 1350 as an example, he pays 1215 if the discount is ten percent, right? So, you can set up ships such that the price never in the market is below 1300 because they are constantly and continually being bought at that price. These goods are loaded back into your warehouse.
The town needs furs, the bigger the town, the more furs it consumes. It buys them at whatever price it can.
Another ship is continually selling into the market the furs, down to a price of 1300, uploading them from your office. Supply remains steady, but price controlled. And, you are making money as well from your inventory stockpile.
Now let's examine a case.
For an example, consider a town like Memel in the contest. As it grows, you supply it with furs produced elsewhere. It consumes them, at a price you set for sale from your warehouse. You sell at 1300, make several hundred on the sale, times whatever number have been sold. But you have a hundred or more in the warehouse still, idle inventory, and you don't want to dump them on the market. But you want to earn money on this inventory while it otherwise would have been sitting idle. You think about it a bit, and come up with the idea of arbitrage with price manipulation. It is different from the usual type (which relies on town production with or without your additonal production), and generates cash from otherwise unused inventory. Perhaps it should be named Inventory Arbitrage. Lots of goods will work, but for now our example is furs.
So, with arbitrage ships now placed into the town, you buy up furs from the marketplace that you have sold there at a price of 1350 (but you actually have paid 1215, a difference of 1350, put them back into inventory at a discount from the listed market price. With other ships, you sell back into the market. At 1300 selling price, each arbitrage round sale of goods (sold and repurchased) has generated 85 per fur (bought by you at 1215, sold by you at 1300). The town continues to consume furs, always paying more than your sale price of 1300. Supplies are steady. But now the inventory has generated additional moneys and profits beyond those profits you have made from the town consumption. With an inventory arbitrage of just one hundred furs per day you have made 8500. The town perhaps has consumed a dozen that day, which perhaps you originally paid 650 net (including transportation and storage costs) and, selling twelve in total that have been consumed, you made 8400. After taking out captain and crew salaries, your profit is now double what it otherwise would have been.
So is it clear how the price manipulation in Inventory Arbitrage works? You are still providing the town needs, and sell at excellent profits. You have doubled your profit though by putting otherwise idle material to use. In regular arbitrage, you sell hundreds of units at a price perhaps 10 or 20 above the price you paid, in the town that produces the item.
In some of our games, and I will pick on Bizpro here, he has hundreds of units of train oil and leather sitting idle and costing money to store, iron goods too, maybe cloth and wine as well. If he ran Inventory Arbitrage, the town still gets its supply, at a good net profit compared to production, but he makes more money than he otherwise would have made on the otherwise idle inventory.
ZitatOriginal von Baltic Trader
In some of our games, and I will pick on Bizpro here, he has hundreds of units of train oil and leather sitting idle and costing money to store, iron goods too, maybe cloth and wine as well. If he ran Inventory Arbitrage, the town still gets its supply, at a good net profit compared to production, but he makes more money than he otherwise would have made on the otherwise idle inventory.
Actualy, I am running arbitrage in the hubs with all good commodities. As I said in my description, each hub will have enough IG, furs, cloth etc to do the two-commodity-three-ship arbitrage. By always relaoding from the warehouse the arbitrage ship not only covers normal arbitrage but supplies, in addition, all locally consumed goods. Obvioulsy, a hub needs more than 350 in stock since at any fay several convoys will come calling to cart IG away while supplies come onl twice weekly from Koenigsberg, and every two weeks from Ladoga and Reval (rounded, of course). I have mulled over the arbitrage potential of the hubs and it was for Danzig where I came up with the three-ship version but moved it first to Koenigsberg since the stock was not large enough in Danzig. Bruegge is another story, but then there are mor goods than just IG, cloth and fur. If I can find the captains, and have surplus ships, I foresee 12 ships in every hub doing arbitrage on pig-iron, wool, cloth, meat, leather, IG, pottery and furs.
On a side note, since I did not build any more whalers, the whale oil was consumed @ 130/barrel during last winter.
I should probably elaborate a bit on the subject of price controls, in production towns. There are several ways to take things to extremes. One is to flood the market with enormous amounts of goods, to the point you can buy hundreds or more of the item without raising the price, and churn this repeatedly with the captain's discount. In a trading game, you also have to take the AI into account, and you also wish to keep markets profitably supplied. To do this, especially early on, and I will use furs once more for an example, it can be best to have one ship buying and sending to the office the goods at a particular price (it varies depending on the game settings, I usually played before at the highest settings, I am still checking for these settings but somewhere around 800 is probably the best price) and running arbitrage on higher price ranges. I am sure that many have noticed that some arbitrage actually will run in the red for a bit. Just as in price spreads, there are optimum quantity settings and these will vary by population and consumption numbers. Using two ships, one for arbitrage and the other as a "sucker" keep you purchasing supplies at good prices early in the game, and a 3 trader is just fine, while still running arbitrage for profit. Set the upper prices high enough, it keeps goods out of the hands of the AI.
I even had four ships running once in an experiment, a bottom feeder removing low prices for resale, an intermediate buy/sell at the identical price (just above the low of the arbitrage), and a seller uploading from the office with a buyer driving the price higher with an upper level arbitrage spread. But it was a headache to set up in proper synchronicity, so after taking some aspirin I decided to live with a simpler system and make do.
