Last place seller and land auction half price

[Rhodan]

I have noticed two changes in 1.3.4 compared to previous versions that wasn't on the changing block.

While in auctions the last rank player was always the first to sell.
This is no longer the case in 1.3.4. Whoever reaches the buyer first sells first.

For play balance this needs to be changed back to lower ranked players sell first if they hit the buyer line the same time as higher rank opponents.

I have also noticed that when a plot doesn't sell the price of the next land auction is no longer half the price of the previous auction price.

Once again this is a change from the original and previous 1.3.x versions.

While not as big a play issue as the above change I believe this should be changed back to half the last auction price so the strategic option/risk  of passing up a land auction in hopes of 2 plots or cheaper plots next auction will be properly rewarded with the lower auction price.

[Peter]

I moved this post to bugs.

While in auctions the last rank player was always the first to sell.
This is no longer the case in 1.3.4. Whoever reaches the buyer first sells first.

From my testing the lower ranked player get to sell. Nothing has changed since the previous version.

However, latency does affect this. If a higher ranked player has already started selling when the lower ranked player's position arrives at the host, then the trading will not be interrupted. The time before a trade starts is 225ms + the largest player latency to the host.

Can you tell me more about what happened? Was there two players trying to sell to one other player?

I have also noticed that when a plot doesn't sell the price of the next land auction is no longer half the price of the previous auction price.

There was a problem in the land auction which made the price calculation slightly wrong. It's fixed now.

Note though that the price of the next auction is not always half of the current price if a plot of land doesn't sell. These are the rules for land pricing taken from Kroah's document:

# the selling price at the beginning of the auction is:

    * for the first auction of the game: equal to 160$
    * for the first auction of the set: equal to the average selling price of the previous land auction set deduced by 60$
    * for the others auctions of the set: equal to the previous land auction deduced by 60$

# the selling price at the end of the auction is:
    * if there's a buyer: equal to high bid
    * if not: equal to the bid start divided by 2 and incremented by 52$ (bid start/2 + 52$)

If there are 3 lands for sale and the first 2 get sold for $1000 each and the third is not sold, then we have:

Auction Set 1 (Round 1):
Price 1: $1000
Price 2: $1000
Price 3: (1000 - 60) / 2 + 52 = $522

Average: (1000 + 1000 + 522) / 3 = $840

Auction Set 2 (Round 2):
Price 4: (840 - 60) = $780