| chrysostom (White Giant) | Monday, March 2, 2009 - 08:57 pm 
I think we are now at the point where we need to have the ability to auto order quality upgrades up to a set point for each corporation. (a quality level, sort of like a salary level) is needed.
I also think that any change made that lower profitability of high-quality producers need to be announced ahead of time so that producers can lower their quality settings in time.
Quality has long helped many corporations turn a profit, leading to taxes paid to countries. Thus, if the drop in quality leads to a drop in profits that could cause a cascading problem. CEOS would need to close many high-quality corps, others would make less many, and pass less in taxes. This would lead to countries -- including C3s losing money. Many C3s get 1/3 or more of their income from CEO corps. So if the profits of CEO corps fall, it can really hurt C3s, as well as players.
The next major issue is the issue of public corps. Public corps have, currently, only the advantages of improved quality and improved effecientcy. If changes are to be made to quality, I think they need to happen after changes to public corps.
My suggestion is to make public corps (those with under 25% ownership) 5 times as big, employeing more people, buying more supplies, producing more, paying more in taxes, etc. Also, allow them to be more efficient. |
| Tom Willard (White Giant) | Monday, March 2, 2009 - 11:56 pm
The idea to set target quality per corporation is good. we will look into it and add as soon as possible.
Quality will be more relevant in the future when weapons quality will become a major factor in war.
we will add advantages for countries that supply high quality products to their citizens.
There are no specific quality changes to one type of corporation or another. The rule remains that there must be a customer for quality and it will sell.
There are some complaints on contracts that are executed below the quality. will will fix that if it is true.
Public corporations have a higher PE multiplies. Their market value is higher. We plan the option to increase the size of real public corporations to a multiple of their current size.
Lower quality also means lower cost of maintenance and also lower percentage of revenue contributions and the change to the net profit after tax is limited. There is no need to close any corporation.
It is more important to look at products with long term shortages on the product market and produce such products. The price can fluctuate between 30% and 180% of the base price.
This has a huge influence on profitability.
Also producing at 100% of capacity is essential. |
| Noproblem (White Giant) | Tuesday, March 3, 2009 - 11:09 am
That will be interesting, Tom.
I always thought the if countries supply high quality goods, they should use less each month than low quality goods. Is that the sort of advantage you are thinking about? Could you give us a heads up about what the advantage will be if that is not it? Maybe a few extra points on the country score? |
| Tom Willard (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, March 3, 2009 - 07:47 pm
Welfare is probably where we should look into.
today the welfare index mainly depends on salary levels.
it should also depend on the quality of products countries purchase and the range of that index may become much larger.
that index currently influences the score but more important, the welfare index influences the production level of corporations.
This is why corporations with very high salaries produce more.
Increasing salaries to very high levels is influencing the index at a slower pace. At some point, the increased production does not pay enough to compensate for the increased cost of salaries.
we never tried to find the break even and it depends on many factors. but the fact that many players do increase salaries means that it is profitable.
we will, most probably add the quality of products that countries purchase (weighted average) to the computation of the index.
This is easy to do because it does not require any new pages and user interface changes. It is just a change in the computation.
I will make that computation update one of the coming weeks, discuss with the others and add it.
we will publish ahead of time and the influence of quality will be introduced step by step. |
| Pathetic Sheep (Little Upsilon) | Thursday, March 5, 2009 - 06:44 pm
On the other end we also need an option. If we want a higher or lower quality stockpile we should be able to sell the part we don't like.
For example, if we want quality 100 and have quality 140 we should be able to sell half the stockpile at quality 180.
For example, If we want quality 200 and have quality 180 we should be able to sell 1/3 of the stock at quality 140.
If weapon quality becomes useful people will have to sell the entire arms stockpile before starting to re-arm. That would be tedious and would cause a market upheaval. |
| Keith Allaire (Kebir Blue) | Thursday, March 5, 2009 - 06:55 pm
"If weapon quality becomes useful people will have to sell the entire arms stockpile before starting to re-arm. That would be tedious and would cause a market upheaval."
Another option would be a grace period during which we could gradually voluntarily expend funds to upgrade existing weapons/ammo stockpiles with "research and development." |
