| Tom Willard (White Giant) | Sunday, February 15, 2009 - 11:17 pm 
There are shortages of products on all worlds. We are not able to see exactly what is causing it but here are some possibilities:
1. Some CEOs and countries with a lot of cash are buying and storing products. An empire with a total of 1000T available for spending can go a long way. We think that this is indeed taking place but we do not think that this is the main reason for the shortages.
2. Purchases of weapons and ammunition and an increase in the number of corporations producing them.
The numbers are indeed larger. A higher percentage of all corporations are producing weapons and ammunitions. This leaves a smaller part of the world wide work force available to produce the products everyone needs as food and raw materials for the corporations.
At some point, the amount produced each month, can become smaller than the amount consumed each month. The result is that some corporations do not get the raw materials they need. They reduce production and shortages increase.
We think that this is indeed the main reason for these shortages. This too has taken place in Simcountry before.
The result of the shortages is higher prices. For countries, all cost will be higher. Corporations sell at a higher price but they also purchase their raw materials at a higher price. In general, it is good for their profitability and their market value is increasing. We think that corporation values are too high because of this. |
| quaxocal (Golden Rainbow) | Sunday, February 15, 2009 - 11:27 pm
Tom, people are buying more ammo because war uses WAY TOO MUCH, and training uses WAY TOO MUCH. Corporations also do not produce nearly enough to keep up. A reduction in one of the first two, or an increase in the third, would help alot in this area. |
| Tom Willard (White Giant) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 12:54 am
There was no change in the use of ammunition for at least a year.
before ammo was used, the same amount of money went into services, military services and high tech services.
Same amount so it does not matter if this is ammo or other products.
spending on the military is money spent and not on products that can be used in production or for feeding the kids.
If a large percentage goes to the army, fewer hand produce food and raw materials.
there is no way currently to measure if production is high enough to feed everyone. |
| quaxocal (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 01:00 am
With changes to C3's supplies over the past few months, less ammo has been procured in that manner (people used to raid C3's for ammo).
This is what has increased the demand for ammo.
I still would recommend reducing ammo usage and/or cost by a substantial amount.
Q |
| FarmerBob | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 03:24 am
Markets are red because Factory Utilitization rates are in the toilet thanks to worker issues.
Production is way down across the board.
CEO's can attest to this FACT. |
| Grayson301 (Little Upsilon) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 05:40 am
Want to talk about feeding the masses where the profit in that notice that the Peanuts Profit is indeed Peanuts.
I started diversifiing the Corporations in my CEO back in early Jan.
Tom wants me to build 5-10 weapons Corps in my countries .. I can't staff whats there now, with the Worker shortages (mines MLW's and some HLW's).and my LLW's just started to climb. this is the main reason I have started the Agriculture Building, it uses the most LLW's.
Tom, I'm a Noob in the great simcountry way. been here Less than 3 monthes real world time. But I Can see that i'm hurting in some areas and doing ok in others.
I do have a question though,
In my main My monthly consumption of artillery shell is around 401 a month.. the issue is I Have 0 artillery Batteries :how are they being used?
Heavy Artillery 45.52M SC$ per cannon
125 0 0 buy
Heavy Artillery Shells 195,416 SC$ per shell
183 401 0
HelioCopters: 7 missles used .. no Heliocopters
Helicopter Missiles 11.07M SC$ per missile
188 7 0 buy
Helicopters 169.83M SC$ per helicopter
254 0 0
Heavy Tanks ammo :654 used ..... 0 tanks
Heavy Tank Ammunition 193,766 SC$ per grenade
181 654 925 buy / sell
Heavy Tanks 50.05M SC$ per tank
149 0 0
These are a few examples of the Governments Wasteful spending. on supplies that they don't really use.
The following are from my CEO to show that the Agri. is not all just peanuts for profit but some profits are just peanuts.
Acme INC Peanuts 0.13B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 0.0% move corp
Acme INC Wool 0.47B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 0.0% move corp
Acme INC Cattle FEED 0.33B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 0.0% move corp
Acme INC Cheese 0.06B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 5.0% move corp
Acme INC Chemicals 1 0.42B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 0.0% move corp
Acme INC Chemicals 2 0.28B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 0.0% move corp
Acme INC Chemicals 3 0.48B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 0.0% move corp
Acme INC Chemicals 4 0.53B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 0.0% move corp
Acme INC Computers 0.49B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 2.0% move corp
Acme INC Electric Components 0.37B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 0.0% move corp
Acme INC Electronic Component 0.32B SC$ 50.00B SC$ - 0.00B SC$ 5.0% move corp
with this said and ignored I have placed my 2 cents in , which will be devalued to around .005 cents |
| Tom Willard (Kebir Blue) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 08:39 pm
The utilization of factories is very high in countries that have their workers in balance.
there are many thousands of corporations producing at 100% and even much more.
To try and solve the shortages, we have in recent months reduced the average number of workers needed in a corporation and the number of corporations world wide increased from around 460.000 to close to 500.000.
this did not solve the problem.
The main issue, as I explained before, is the high production of all kinds of products, mainly weapons and ammunition, that in fact leak out of the system.
services are produced and used in the production of other products. servies do not leak out of the system.
Ammunition is produce and it burns with no trace.
If half the world work force is producing such products (as an example), there is only the other half, available to produce what we consume.
as of today, none of us knows what the real percentage is and we also do not know, what percentage is needed to produce what we need.
There are shortages, meaning that we do not produce what we need.
There are also countries and mainly CEOs who are stocking up products, using HUGE amounts of cash to purchase products and keep them in the enterprise.
One possible solution:
we can change a corporation. Example:
we can change a missile factory to produce twice as many missiles and reduce the base price by 50%.
market price does not need to move to 50% but it will decrease. immagine it does go to 50%.
Result:
- use of workers is unchanged.
- use of raw materials is unchanged
- revenue of the corporation is unchanged (output is doubled but the price is at 50%)
- Output in numbers of missiles is doubled
- the price goes down by 50%
- The cost of the army declines because much of the cost of the army is for missiles and other ammo.
Danger:
if we do this on a large scale, the shortages may suddenly go into surpluses and the prices of everything on the market will start falling.
we cannot flip flop corporations to change production levels.
we are making small changes in some ammunition corporations.
the talk about it and the talk about reduced quality of stored products already caused a large scale sale of weapons and ammunition by some who used to store them.
we expect ammunition cost to decline and we expect the cost of the army to decline too because it depends on the cost of ammunition.
This will happen in the coming days and weeks. It takes time to influence the cost of the army because many countries have ammunition they purchased at a high price.
You can of course believe what you want but as someone who knows how simcountry is built rather than guessing how it works, I know that this is the ongoing process and this is what will happen in the coming days and weeks. |
| John R | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 08:45 pm
Quote:we can change a missile factory to produce twice as many missiles and reduce the base price by 50%.
Go for it. I would be more aggressive than that on some ammo corps, actually. |
| quaxocal (Kebir Blue) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 08:53 pm
A slow change in the ammo corporations would be a great idea. I would recommend doing something similar for FMU corps. I agree that you wouldn't want to do too much at once, or you'd have the reverse problem.
By the way, some corporations are INCREASING in the amount of workers used. I have not seen any decrease recently.
Q |
| Tom Willard | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 09:05 pm
Ha ha .
I remember last time when for some reason, prices where going down.
corporations lost much of their value, profits plumetted, countries income from taxes were all the way down
and we were asked to fix it.
this may happen again.
if corporations start producing much more, it will happen much more frequently.
I will go for small changes to support the price decline of ammunition for now.
this at least will not cause any collaps.
ammunition is not used in the production of anything.
we should also not destroy the business for the ones who have built such corporations. |
| quaxocal (Kebir Blue) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 09:09 pm
I would also suggest tweaking the profit margin of ammo corps to be slightly higher, to provide more incentive to build them. Maybe like 5% or so.
Also, I suggested this elsewhere. What about raising the maximum market price up to say 2.25 or even 2.7 of base? If there is severe shortages, the price should rise more. This will create greater profit for those corporations, and spur more production of them by players. The increased production will in turn, lower the price down to more normal levels. In tandem with this, you could increase the market increase/decrease each month to 5% from its current 3%. This would help a good amount of the shortages problems in all products.
Q |
| Man of Peace (White Giant) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 09:20 pm
Monday, February 16, 2009 - 08:39 pm
"The utilization of factories is very high in countries that have their workers in balance.
there are many thousands of corporations producing at 100% and even much more.
To try and solve the shortages, we have in recent months reduced the average number of workers needed in a corporation and the number of corporations world wide increased from around 460.000 to close to 500.000.
this did not solve the problem."
The problem is that some countries, no matter what they do, can not balance their workers!
Please fix the MLW and HLW shortages and that will not only in small part help the shortages, but also greatly improve morale in this quickly sinking ship!!!
And before you say. "it is because my country is too large and over educated" With the usual blame the victim approach. Tell me how I can still educate all of the professionals that I require (especially the HT), without such a high EI, that I can't keep the MLW's and HLW's that I also require?
Not to mention the newest change I just discovered. Now we can only exchange 200K workers between countries now. That will really help us keep our workers balanced!!!
This game has many problems and I could accept that. If only it wasn't so evident that the only ones that you seem to work on are the ones that cost us more $$$ and save you $$$. The worst part is that these changes only seem to make it worse for us the SC community!!! |
| quaxocal (Kebir Blue) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 09:25 pm
Man of Peace, that 200K between countries has been around for a long time. |
| Zentrino | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 09:25 pm
I had recently noticed the 200k limit as well. I thought it was because I had just conquered the country though. |
| Man of Peace (White Giant) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 09:40 pm
@Q It was 400K when I moved some people around a couple of days ago. |
| John R | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 09:42 pm
For countries below 20mil of pop, I think, it's 200 000. For countries above that limit, it's 400 000. |
| Man of Peace (White Giant) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 09:49 pm
Yeah your right John. I just checked it out also. It's been a while since I had to resort to raiding c3's to fix shortages. So I hadn't noticed. |
| quaxocal (Kebir Blue) | Monday, February 16, 2009 - 10:08 pm
Oh, its 200K between other countries, and 400K between your own.
I thought you were talking about between others. |
| Martock (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, February 17, 2009 - 03:22 am
Tom, how about letting us have unlimited conversion amounts for workers (low level thru high level)? This issue with high level workers is hurting my entire empire and nothing, even spending GC's fixes this. That 24000 conversion rate for HLW's is far to low for the amounts needed. With the number of out-of-work workers (professionals), it's strange to see that they don't convert faster down or up to help alleviate worker shortages.
Also, to be honest, it's totally game ruining for me to have to spend all this time fixing a situation only to log in the next day and see it has returned with a vengence. It does nothing to attract and retain (which is the main thing you want) players if they have to spend an hour every day solely devoted to worker shortages. Even giving us the option to BUY WORKERS (i.e. X amount of MLW's and HLW's) with GC would be helpful. Heck, it would help you with your quest to get us to turn our cash into GC's. Please look into this! |
| quaxocal (Golden Rainbow) | Tuesday, February 17, 2009 - 06:00 am
Tom, keep in mind, this situation is MOSTLY for countries over about 70-75 Million in population, though it CAN affect those in the 50-70 Million range hard too depending on their corp upgrading situation.
Please raise the 24,000 for higher population countries in some way.
Q |
| chrysostom (White Giant) | Tuesday, February 17, 2009 - 07:37 pm
The reality is that the reason CEOs and countries keep building the weapons and amunition is because that is what makes a profit.
For a CEO there are some products that simply do not make a profit. For example:
-Soybeans: the highest valued company is valued at 167.82B, and that company is losing money. The 2nd and 3rd highest valued companies are also losing money. Who in their right mind would make a product when they know they will lose money in it?
- Stone: the highest valued company is 168.27B SC$. The top 3 are losing money.
The sad thing is this are the first 2 industries I looked up. There are whole segments of products where people cannot really make money.
A CEO -- who spends 100b or more to start a new corp, pay large portions of his revenue in taxes, and who is in this just to make money -- can only make money is his corporations consistantly produce a profit sufficent to cover expenses. This really limits investment into the MINORITY of products that can turn a profit.
Because of the significant uncertanty about the changes that will happen in the game investment is even harder. It is becoming very, very hard for CEOs to justify buying state corps that cost much more than 100b. Why? Changes in the game could make those corps unprofitable quickly and the CEO never regain his investment.
The more the changes are, the less willing CEOs are to spend large amounts of money.
Many have slowed or halted growth. In the real world, large corporations can still profit when demand drops in most industries. Some industries (such as housing) are an exception. However, there is no justification for what is going on for many industries.
I have 299 corporations in my company, and none are from several industrires. Why? I could not make any money in those industries, so I needed to close down the corps.
I looked at the top 3 rated CEOs; not a single one of them has a profitable stone company. One of them does have several stone companies that each lose 1b a month. |
| The Crafty Cockney (Kebir Blue) | Tuesday, February 17, 2009 - 09:17 pm
Ermmm, I have several stone corps, they all make profit and are all over 200B in value.
I also have weapons corps that consistently lose money.
Beside, without the quarries, where would we get rocks to throw at people?
But soybeans is a no-no  |
| Grayson301 (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 02:07 am
Acme INC Peanuts 173.89B SC$
Acme INC Peanuts -0.18B SC$ Profits/Loses
Acme INC Wool 384.28B SC$
Acme INC Wool 0.01B SC$ Profits/Loses
Acme INC Cattle FEED 158.64B SC$
Acme INC Cattle FEED -0.19B SC$ Profits/Loses
Acme INC Cheese 274.35B SC$
Acme INC Cheese 0.20B SC Profits/Loses
All these are VERY questionable also.
I haven't tryed Soybeans
And don't think I will |
| chrysostom (Little Upsilon) | Wednesday, February 18, 2009 - 04:19 pm
sorry, should have clarified that I was talking about WG ... the markets are different for each world. |
| Nute Gunray (Little Upsilon) | Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 07:19 am
Great news one of my ammo corporations on Little Upsilon made some nice profit last month. Net Profit Last Month 2,411.61M SC
Perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
(cough cough yup and it is a freight train coming your way)
Kanzler Nute Gunray
President of CHAIN GANG on Little Upsilon
Security Council Member on Little Upsilon
Chairman of THE BLUE TEAM FEDERATION ON Little Upsilon |
| The Crafty Cockney (Kebir Blue) | Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 12:30 pm
Freight train? You found a train in SC? |
| quaxocal (Golden Rainbow) | Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 08:11 pm
Market price cap is still in place though. |
| Johanas Bilderburg (Little Upsilon) | Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 09:11 pm
Back from vacation and good to see everything is normal....
More ammo at half price?
Sign me up! |
| Nute Gunray (Little Upsilon) | Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 09:11 pm
Yes quaxocal of Golden Rainbow Market price cap is one of the freight trains that I was talking about. To The Crafty Cockney of Kebir Blue there are many other Freight trains, some quaxocal of Golden Rainbow has shown us, others will be coming down the tunnel
Kanzler Nute Gunray
President of CHAIN GANG on Little Upsilon
Security Council Member on Little Upsilon
Chairman of THE BLUE TEAM FEDERATION ON Little Upsilon |
| Stuart Taylor (Little Upsilon) | Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 09:14 pm
Trains? Did you mention trains?
Woo-Hoo!!! Trains!!!!! |
| Nute Gunray (Little Upsilon) | Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 09:21 pm
Facilities Demolished
Thu Jun 3, 2381 Due to a lack of Trains, Chain Gang was unable to maintain its train tracks. Their number has been reduced from 22,003 miles to 21,009 miles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kanzler Nute Gunray
President of CHAIN GANG on Little Upsilon
Security Council Member on Little Upsilon
Chairman of THE BLUE TEAM FEDERATION ON Little Upsilon |
| John R | Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 09:28 pm
You shouldn't speak of such things.
Trains are owned by Manny.
If he knows of this, he will sick his trains on us.
"I left the game, im only here today because i wanted to ask about the trains." - Manny
"Great poin Manny I am sure trains will be added and you are the best person to make sure they remain on the agenda." - Jossi |
| Zeba (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, February 23, 2009 - 05:02 pm
Well...I don't know what happen to the ammo market on GR...looks like Saturday there was a massive supply increase...no demand decrease, no massive increase in corps...just 1-2 million extra ammo in most categories and now both my countries Financial indexes have dropped 2 points and 4 points while my CEO has taken a nose dive in profits. Everybody in GR with a high demand Ammo corp has taken a bath this weekend and it is having a massively terrible effect on the whole market and countries profits due to the fact that CEO are not selling there products.
What happen to doing this slowly!?!? Anyone have a clue what happen? Did the GM inject a bunch of product or did a CEO's dump extra product on the market? Is any other world experiencing this? I don't think corp production numbers were increased? |
| Pathetic Sheep (White Giant) | Monday, February 23, 2009 - 07:28 pm
Dropping the cost of weapons and ammunition won't change the purchasing pattern. You need enough ammunition to blow up your targets and scare away predators. If you cut prices in half aggressive players will fire twice the ammunition. Turtles will double the thickness of the shell. Rather than reducing shortages it will just pull more workers out of the work force.
Any change to the war engine that forces people to click the mouse more often but does not require any extra thought is a bad change. The prices of all weapons and ammunition should go up so that players have to economize and use weapons efficiently.
Zeba,
Sometimes players decide to sell a stockpile. If he/she spent months building up the stockpile it can be huge. Also when accounts close the game automatically sells weapons stockpiles.
Quaxocal,
People used to raid CCCs for ammo. The ammo come from players who deregistered. Now it is sold on the market when the country is reset. If the programmer did what was stated in the game news it should have no effect on the total number of weapons in play. |
| quaxocal (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, February 23, 2009 - 08:03 pm
And that's why I haven't invested strongly in ammo. |
| Zeba (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, February 23, 2009 - 09:05 pm
Boo hoo 
Oh well...thanks for your thoughts Pathetic Sheep...makes sence. |
