Buyout balancing

[Eric.B]

Sorry for the late reply, I read this, this morning but I'm also trying to maximize my programming time. So I did not respond because it's a longish post.

1) Game difficulty has an effect - 1% harder (than currently) for Hard, 2% easier for Normal, 5% easier for Easy.
2) Double what the current maximum bid is but with diminishing returns - Offering 50% more than the current max increases the chance of acceptance by 8%, offering 100% more than the current max increases chance of acceptance by 10%.
3) Owning shares in a company you are trying to buy out increases the change of accepting a buyout offer - each 1% you own adds a cumulative 0.0001% bonus to the chance of accepting an offer every month.

1)Probably the best solution is to work in difficulty. The main issue is preventing quick, cheap, expansion like it used to be.
2) Acceptance is linear with slider amount.
3) Not very realistic imo. From my days owning stocks, most shareholders resent anyone who owns large chunks of the company taking them over. As typically said large company will pay less per share than a completely fresh take over.

1) Whenever a company that another company has shares in goes bankrupt, all companies that have shares should be offered the chance to make a buyout bid. Starting with the company with the most shares and calculating offers as normal but adding the value of the shares you own to the total bid for determining the % chance of acceptance. (I realise something similar has been suggested before)
2) When another company makes a bid to buy out a company you have shares in that would be successful (and possibly on hard mode, have the same thing happen when players buyout as well). You should get the opportunity to make a counter offer. You're not told what their offer is but if your offer (+ the shares you own) is higher than their offer (+the shares they own) then you get the buyout instead.
3) Randomly, have companies that are losing value (consecutively for at least 6 months) invite offers for buyouts (give the player a notification? Or just a story in the news paper?). For the next six months, the chance of a bid being accepted by this company are doubled.

1) If memory serves me the top 5 highest AI share owners have a chance to merge. Other than that it's random assuming merging companies can afford it. Player takeover of bankrupt companies is too exploitable.
3)Again this probably becomes either spammy or exploitable.

Maybe after I get some obligation expenses in the game it will be become less exploitable. As it is now, there is not much variation in market cap and book value. And the variation that is there Is mainly tied into margins. This means the player would always gain more by merging with a dying/bankrupt company than playing the game normally. Thus causing what we had long time ago when I tried to make it 100% dynamic market cap, Players buying companies out just to expand the company thus 30 years later they own 50marques and playing against no one!