Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

General Discussions about new beta versions of Capitalism Lab
markyears
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Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by markyears »

I have figured out a way to make infinite money in one day using subsidiaries. I feel that this is a rather serious flaw, it is infinite loan+no liability.

Step 1: Create a subsidiary, and inject all my cash to it (let's call this subsidiary S1). And let S1 take the maximum loan, and create its own subsidiary (called S2), and inject all cash to it... You can do it as many times as you want.

Step 2: Merge your own corp with the last subsidiary. Now you have billions, or trillions!

Step 3 (Optional): Make your direct subsidiary, S1 go to public! And sell all of your stocks of S1 immediately. On the next day, all of S1,S2,S3... go bankruptcy...But who cares, I'm not the chairman of those companies for a long time, oh, since yesterday in fact.

ps: I tried not to do step 3, then all my subsidiaries go bankruptcy, and my own corp also has no liability.

I think all of these steps are illegal or impossible for real-world life (but I do think some capitalists are playing the same game in a much more shady and sophisticated way...) So I suggest more regulations should be added.
Stonx
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Re: Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by Stonx »

This exploit was reported weeks ago by beamthegreat but I haven't seen a proposed solution yet.

I just generally don't touch loans at all in the game because I find them to be really unbalanced and take away game challenge.

In real life when banks consider allowing a person or company a loan they look for a proven track record of non-default. In the game any new, asset poor and totally unproven company can take out ludicrously large loans as soon as they are created.

If the debt system operated more like it does in Railroad Tycoon 3 for example - any new company could take on very little debt and would pay a high interest cost on it. If your company then runs profit and grows for a few years then debt is much more readily available and you pay less interest on it.
markyears
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Re: Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by markyears »

Yes, I have seen beamthegreat's post on that. But I guess, my step 2 and 3 are more problematic, since it is not only infinite loan, but infinite net worth.
Stonx wrote:This exploit was reported weeks ago by beamthegreat but I haven't seen a proposed solution yet.

I just generally don't touch loans at all in the game because I find them to be really unbalanced and take away game challenge.

In real life when banks consider allowing a person or company a loan they look for a proven track record of non-default. In the game any new, asset poor and totally unproven company can take out ludicrously large loans as soon as they are created.

If the debt system operated more like it does in Railroad Tycoon 3 for example - any new company could take on very little debt and would pay a high interest cost on it. If your company then runs profit and grows for a few years then debt is much more readily available and you pay less interest on it.
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David
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Re: Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by David »

We will look into this.
markyears
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Re: Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by markyears »

David wrote:We will look into this.
Thank you!
beamthegreat
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Re: Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by beamthegreat »

David wrote:We will look into this.
For reference, the following video demonstrates this process: https://youtu.be/5dyUV112HQ4

A simple solution would be to prevent the parent company from merging with any subsidiaries owned by the first subsidiary. Only the first subsidiary can be merged with the parent company.
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David
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Re: Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by David »

A simple solution would be to prevent the parent company from merging with any subsidiaries owned by the first subsidiary. Only the first subsidiary can be merged with the parent company.
We could add a new script variable for disabling the aforementioned function if the player wants to block it in the game.

Capitalism Lab is a game that caters to the player's play style and preference. For those players who enjoy the existing features, they could keep having them, including the exploits. For those who found exploits negatively affect their gameplay experiences, they could use this new script variable to block it.

Please let us know if you guys want us to implement this new script var. It will be something like:
"Restricted merger conditions=Yes"
beamthegreat
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Re: Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by beamthegreat »

David wrote:Please let us know if you guys want us to implement this new script var. It will be something like:
"Restricted merger conditions=Yes"
I would be interested in that script.. exploits takes away the realism and immersion from the game in my opinion.
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David
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Re: Flaw: Infinite loan and no liability

Post by David »

We have added the following new script variable and it will be available in the next patch.

[SPECIAL RULES]

Anti-exploitation Game Rules=On

This line enables the special anti-exploitation game rule.

Under the special anti-exploitation game rule, your company can only merge with another company in which it DIRECTLY owns a majority of the shares.

This prevents the parent company from merging with any subsidiaries owned by the first subsidiary. In other words, only the first subsidiary can be merged with the parent company.
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