Why you have trade groups?
yes, to help each other grow and get invoiced products, etc.

BUT, why is there in the trade group no option to place a request for lets say grain.
Everyone of the group can see this and offer there quote.
Now you need to send players almost a personal message if they can help.
If the order is accepted it can leave the board with the offers not used.
1. what product
2. QA (minimal)
3. Quantity
4. Price (optional)
5. CITY

Just an idea and could also be for internal market where group members can add there products.
Any buyer can select order plus quantity they need for direct stock instead of invoice.

I like that idea because it's based on the need of the buyer and not directly the listing of the seller, but then if you make it into a trade group market then you could just add an option to limit to trade group on the normal market, right?

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The goal to have a trade group is to get your products cheaper then on the market.
This helps players (small players) to get most of the time higher QA products then from normal market.
That this gets a min/max on it would not be a huge problem. It's the same as with invoice, there you are also bound to min/max.

But most of all you don't have to ask all the trade members if they got X product with XX QA or higher.
As a starter this the biggest problem. A trade group is not always player from same country or continent.
This means for a EU player to wait a minimal time of 6 hours before my US friends come online.
Most work of course so there daytime not always they have time to check and handle everything.
So around there end of working day is for us bedtime.

For me its my only option to compete against the big boys with there high QA.
Started 8 November 2018 and in December sold all my buildings to start over on the correct land and new product line.
You will never be able to make high QA products on your own.

With this Trade Group only demand and selling would be a MASSIVE benefit for the Trade Group.
The only MUST for this that demand and selling are send as invoice.
The tax bill will jump out of the roof for smaller players, as inventory is also a part of the tax counting.

Tried once to put a request on the forum for Corn in high QA, got several quotes, but you also pay the jackpot.

That sounds pretty useful.

On a related note, having a TG wide communication channel with a permanent or semi-permanent record could be useful.

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By the looks of it we are the only one who liked the idea.

Or rather, the only ones who saw it. I think that's just how things are these days.

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The last person to join the forums was Dec 29, 2018, which was also the last day they logged in (found on bottom of Board index). I think the number of views on any of the threads written in the last 3 months have only racked up 30 views at most.

The most active trade groups have used Skype and other external group chats since the beginning to work around the low capacity in-game chat. There are likely 10x as many active individual players, who might play solo or only trade with 1-2 others, as there are in trade groups.

That said, maybe updating in-game chat groups should be second to an overall game update to enable the option for SMS/email notifications for chat/PM/forum replies and/or reminders for certain game functions (e.g. "Factory 1: 60,465 of qa69.74 Action Figures produced! Factory inactive, please select next action." or "Simujohn replied to your message!"). Something to make the game even the slightest bit more mobile might engage a larger player base.

Yeah, I know Skype is pretty common for trade groups. And I could be wrong but many of the views may be from search bots even.

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Good point, I didn't think of that.

I'm curious what's on the dev teams' plate following the final stock market update - it was likely mentioned somewhere and I missed it.