Hey, Everyone.
I am playing Sim Companies for 2 years now and it definately not boring but surely is addictive, but since i learned exchange resell, needed something that would help me collect products for cheap prices without exploiting new players by asking dirty cheap prices.
So i figured out a tool which i made which notifies me whenever the prices on exchange are very low so i can purchase them and sell them when the prices are up again. So You might be thinking how does it all work???
First of All, the tool gets the exchange api data from the game every 5 minutes which has all the current market orders. Then i filter out the products I am interested in such as power and researches due to no transport needed in resell.
After getting all the prices it looks something like this on my web browser:
NOTE: The red color means no profits in buying and green color means 5% profit if resold
This is determined after reducing 3% market fee and keeping 5% gross margin for you aside.
So what next? Simcotools does the same! You are Stupid to waste your time?
Not really, the real magic is left!
Once the price is under my expections I use web notifications to notify me about the price drop so even if I am not active in game after seeing the notification i can quickly login and make a purchase!
Also if i want a detailed overview on what price to sell and what time is was cheap but I was afk, It shows me data in form of graph:
NOTE: Since the blue line is under Maximum Buying Price it means i can earn good profits if bought! And the orange and yellow lines guides me at what price is should sell it for either of exchange and contracts.
Again one more question Von, Will you sit in front of PC all day? Isn't that impractical? What about phone notifications?
Well true, I need this for mobile as well, so I made one 😉
So if I am away from my laptop i can use notificaions in my mobile (Only for Android)
NOTE: This App and tool only helps you by notifing you about low prices, since you can't automate purchases in sim companies as it is against TOC, you manually have to open the game to buy it.
Since, we had allowed few players to help us out in testing the app (they made good profits 😉), they were still confused at what price they should sell out the purchased goods and even wanted to know the risk in investing their money in some product that is of no use and can't block out their money for 2 days.
So we added Suggested Selling Price and Risk Factor,
Also, we had add a bunch new products for the notifier which ofcourse needs transport, so transportation cost is removed before calculation the profit for you so you will still make a whooping 5% Gross Profit.
One more problem! Yesterday we faced a phase change in game, generally exhchange takes 1-2 days to get effected by the price drops/hikes, This could be a problem for the drops as you might invest in some product at BOOM prices and might have to face a loss buy selling at NORMAL prices. So we had to add an function that uses last SAME Phase's data to determine current buy prices, which might not give you frequent notifications but you won't take losses!
Also, since this needs a bigger Database, we swicthed from local JSON to MongoDB to store our price history.
Risk Factor is very basic and can't really determine risk by just market movements as price movements can be drops too. So enhancing the risk factor we added few more factors listed below
Made changes to the calculations of Buying Prices and Selling prices to minimalize the risk of cash getting stuck.
Since some fellow readers asked about how the calculation works behind the scenes, to fulfill their curiosity here are the calculations:
Buying price is the max you should pay for a product if you wanna resell it in the market, so how does that been calculated?
So the Maximum price and the Mode Price (The price that is most stable) in the last 50-100 Orders is considered to Calculate.
If the Maximum price occurs multiple times means that could be a reliable price to consider but if was once or twice, means it won't get sold easily at that price, so Mode price comes in action,
If Max Price occurred 1 times in last 24hrs:
- (Max price + (Mode Price * 3 )) / 4 => is used to Determine the Final Selling Price
If Max Price occurred 2 times in last 24hrs:
- (Max price + Mode Price) / 2 => is used to Determine the Final Selling Price
If Max Price occurred 3 times in last 24hrs:
- ((Max price * 3) + Mode Price) / 4 => is used to Determine the Final Selling Price
If Max Price occurred more than or equal to 4 times in last 24hrs:
- (Max Price) => is used to Determine the Final Selling Price
Since we got our Final Price, Now Just Deduct the 3% Fee, Transport Cost (If any) and your 5% Gross Margin. The price left will be considered as the Maximum Buying Price.
Risk Factor is Determinded by few factors,
Since the game as some events every few weeks, when a event is about to end the price can fluctuate. So if the event which is going to end, has a positive speed boost indicates the price is going to increase after the event as supply will decrease. So risk will be lowered and visa-versa.
If the selling price has been acheived multiple times on the Market, the risk is very less as it will get sold easily but if not it might take a while to get sold. So it directly affects the risk
If price is constantly increasing/decreasing it will also contribute to the risk.
If the market moves very fast or very slow, this is also a matter of risk.
All 4 factors mentioned above together decides the risk in investing in that product.
If you have surplus of cash, investing in high risk is not bad but if you want fast returns, invest in low risks.
Risk Factors are divided in 7 sections: Extremely Low, Very Low, Low, Mid, High, Very High, Extremely High.
NOTE: The risk factor is not a static variable, it gets automatically calculated on the basis of last 50 market orders.
Since it is an interesting project and my fellow tech geeks must want to try this out so here is the techstack is used:
- For Web Server: Nodejs
- Graphs: charts.js
- Mobile App: React Native
- API: Simcompanies API
- Database: MongoDB
It was a very fun project and hoping to earn some extra cash without exploitation of new comers.
It is just a personal project and personal use not gonna publish it for everyone, but you might contact me in-game and request for it i might allow you :)
Since, the programs are running on my local server, it costs me to maintain it, so if you want to use it please don't come to me if you are not willing to contribute some money. (Can be free if you just want to try out of a day or so!)
If you are a programmer and willing to copy me and need some help feel free to reach out to me. (Only able to help in suggested Techstack)
IGN: Von Braun b.v.
- (24/03/2024) Advancement of Risk Factor and Calculation Changes
- (23/03/2024) Added DB, Phase Risk Factor
- (22/03/2024) Added Few More Products and Risk Factor
- (20/03/2024) Made The Project
So Just for your information this project was successfull,
Profits Made So Far: $6,123,561