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Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 12:17 pm  A major change is planned, that will complete the quality system for all products in Simcountry. This issue is old and to date, only partially solved. Current status The quality of weapons and ammunition, has an influence on the fighting power of military units and purchasing them at a high quality can make sense. Some do not think so and they purchase weapons at any quality they wish. The quality of raw materials is also important because they influence the quality of the products produced by the corporations. Here too, you can decide for yourself what the best way is. The remaining problem is the products that are used by the country. It is possible to order these products at any quality you want but it requires manual orders and the quality has very little influence on any other parameters in the country. Future situation We will now resolve this last issue. The ordering strategy screen (Trade menu), where you can set your purchasing strategy for all automatic orders, will be extended with an extra column where quality can be specified. This will allow you to specify, per product, what quality you want the system to purchase for you. In addition, we will add a new index to Simcountry: the Quality index. The quality index will be an average (weighted by the quantity of product used) of all the products a country consumes. The quality index will include all food products, services, electric power etc. all the products that are used on monthly bases for use by the population. The index will not include any weapons or products you purchase for strategic reasons. (example: machine parts or trucks). The quality index will be added a an important factor in the welfare index. A high quality index means that the country is purchasing higher quality products for its citizens consumption. If the index is high, the welfare index will increase and influence the productivity of all the corporations in the country. If your quality index is very high, it will cause all your corporations to increase their production without the need for more workers. It will improve their profitability. work is started on this feature and it will be added to Simcountry by the end of September or early October.
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 02:45 pm Nice!
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 02:58 pm This is a great change, especially the change in the trade menu. Thank you!
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 04:53 pm At last! Thankyou Tommi, I've been looking forward to this for a long while.
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 06:36 pm I see this as a double edged sword. In one instance it is great to auto order certain items or products at a specified level. Great, but it appears to have come at a cost. When more details of the quality index are provided we will see. It looks as if the price of quality-adjusted purchase strategies has come at a price. The inclusion of a quality index. The first item to note is that: The index will not include any weapons or products you purchase for strategic reasons. (example: machine parts or trucks). The second item to note: The quality index will be added a an important factor in the welfare index. The first item to question is: Will the quality index play any part in requirements for any specific game level? From what I gather this will force presidents to order what are atm 100 quality products that have no benefit for ordering over 100 quality, into purchasing at a higher quality in order to influence the pending 'quality index'. Failure to do so, will have a negative impact on your welfare index which is entirely too hard to figure out as it is. Am I right in this assumption Tommi or is this not the case. It would be good to expplain if I am wrong as I am probably not the only one to see things this way. If I am right this will be another increase in costs. So what you could have done manually will now be possible through the automation feature, but we will now have some form of increased costs as a result of this implementation. So if I am right, people, be careful what you wish for. May the gawds help us all if I am right Lol.
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 07:14 pm I applaud this coming improvement, it will complete the quality aspect of the game, and make CM useful for country needs.
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 07:17 pm We had complaints here on the forum about buying products at a high quality without any effect on the performance of the country. We solved the problem for weapons. We never had any such problem in corporations. The last part is consumption products. If a country takes good care of its citizens and orders high quality products, it pays more for products used in health, education and all the consumption products used by the citizens. The assumption is that the welfare of the country is then increased. People are happier and one of the side effects is that they also work harder, become more productive and corporations are doing better. if the country is buying bad quality product, the cost for the government is lower but people hate it, the welfare is down, people may decide to emigrate (if also health and education + social security are bad and salaries in corporations are lousy) and workers become less productive. Corporations get into lower productivity, produce less and corporate profits decline. This is how the welfare index works for years and now, it will get a new component. This is a complete cycle of quality and its consequences and we have many such subsystems in the game, each with its own feedback and consequences.
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 07:17 pm "The quality of raw materials is also important because they influence the quality of the products produced by the corporations. Here too, you can decide for yourself what the best way is." Will the new system give individual corporations the ability to buy supplies on a multi quality basis?
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 07:19 pm The new system is only taking care of the products that are consumed by the population and have an influence on their welfare.
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 07:24 pm Any chance on adding a warehouse feature for countries and ceo's so we can order supplies on a multi quality basis? (Help players with their ASQ strategies)
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 08:07 pm I'm still not sure if that answered my question tommi. I'll take your response as I was wrong. With that in mind, what will be the ratio of benefit vs cost tommi? For example, if I buy higher products for my citizens, will the benefit at the very least offset me added costs in materials. Like if my extra cost involved in higher quality country products is %50 then will corporation productivity increase due to higher welfare result in increase in profitability of my corps to cover the increase in higher quality products consumption of country products? Or in short will the added costs of buying higher quality products turn into higher profits in my corps to at least cover the added costs?
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| Thursday, September 1, 2011 - 11:44 pm I can imagine the wise president will establish some sort of ASQ for their countries as well as their corps wendy. Of course it will cost but production is the big issue with corps nowadays. This is promised to effect production. With a lot of corp production being reduced I reckon you should be able to work this to at least recoup your costs. We shall see.
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 12:46 am I can gather that it will be an incurred cost. I wonder why this addition of a quality index was masked by the addition of order strategies by quality. As if the benefit of one outweighs the negative result of another. I'm really surprised that of all the responses that I am the only one who even questioned this at all. Are you guys so bent on saving a few clicks, that you were willing to give up something tangible in return? Because that is what happened here. I'm not saying that it is a bad thing. I am saying that it is a bad thing that we are always leaning towards an objective with such a degree of tunnel vision blinded by such shortsightedness. This is an interesting tidbit of information to be analyzed. W3c have you thought to contract your forums to psychiatrists for psychological studies and interpretations? I bet you'd get a handsome contribution for doing so granted you found the right group of Scientists. I always thought of SimCountry as a huge Psychological ******
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 01:46 am Actually, Simcountry was once mentioned on a paper about MMO psychology. Or other some such. Nimz was the who found it, and looking at Google Scholar, I think it was the Agent-Based Simulation of Leaders paper he posted on IRC. I suppose I could take a loot at the lot of you, but I'm not a big fan of public choice theory.
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 02:25 am Wendy: I feel I did consider the consequences of both changes. Having the quality of products our country buys actually mean something is important and we have talked about it for years. It makes sense if I buy better quality food,furniture, medical supplies, and everything else that I would have happier and more productive Sims. You have a point about the cost of higher Q items and the return we will get in production. We shall see on that one. But, even if we have a net loss, it has never made sense that everyone upgrades Q on all of their corps and everyone buys 100Q supplies for their country--Yet, all those corps selling 250Q potatoes still sell their products. Who buys them?!? Now they have a market. So it is a plus 1 for realism either way.
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 02:48 am Thanks Tom ! I hope my thread had somthing to do with this... "Quality in Corps (Fearless Blue)"
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 03:13 am Lol Zen, indeed a +1 for higher q goods consumption. I agree there should be a benefit for buying higher Q as well, but not at the expense of a negative impact if you do not. And wow LG, my theory was spot on then. Someone at least considered it. I'll look it over at some point of leisure. The articles look intellectual, especially the 5th.
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 09:53 am Good. Only one question for Tom Willard- So is this change why my welfare has crashed in the last two weeks or so?
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 02:16 pm No. " work is started on this feature and it will be added to Simcountry by the end of September or early October "
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 02:56 pm Well, I don't remember doing anything to drop welfare so a glitch is the most likely case, or I've just been a n00b and f**ked something up, excuse the French.
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 03:24 pm This goes to the notion i previously mentioned of the welfare index being entirely too complicated as it is already. A nice formula for the computation of the index would be nice. Hopefully included in the game news update with the feature.
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| Friday, September 2, 2011 - 03:31 pm This update is a step in the right direction. The quality of products should have more of an impact on our gameplay.
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| Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 06:19 pm I dont know fatty, I kind of like to have a certain amount of intuition put down to experience, it makes the game intriguing. If we all had the exact formulas, it wouldn't be hard to draw up maxima and minima and have the ideal settings, removing a lot of challenges. Its also challenging to adapt to changes, I know most complain about some of them, me included, but it does keep things interesting...
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| Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 07:16 pm I fully support this. Ever since Quality was introduced, this has been desperately needed. I already contract to my country at high quality levels, so I can look forward to a handsome gain then.
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| Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 07:38 pm CC you misunderstand the request. If we don't have any idea what goes into how the index is calculated, how can we ever make informed decisions based on a formula to understand why we set variables to any value. Why,.... Why do you set salaries higher, to increase production. Why do you set education index to 120, 160, or 200, to increase the quality of professional output or decrease it in opposition with lower settings. Increasing 'confusion' should not be and adequate substitute for difficulty or intrigue. If you want a more or increasingly challenging or complex game, simplifying the game to what is tantamount to guessing is not acceptable. This is the confusion that leads to frustration, not of the challenging sort, but rather the 'deliberate type, which inevitably leads to non renewal. I do not see a viable excuse for not publishing how the formula that explains how the index is compiled or calculated. This isn't a guessing game. If it is, why publish game news, why even have outdated documentation. Why have newb help, or information boxes that still have as of yet to be filled in many cases. Do you feel me now. We don't just make decisions, we make them to achieve a desired result. We achieve these results as due to, in the very least haphazardly educated guesses. Time to take the guessing out of the game.
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| Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 07:47 pm in the real world their is allot of uncertainty. if the world worked like sim country, the current economic problems would be solved by increasing salaries, and building a few more corporations... maybe having a better idea of how much the supply index will help the welfare index would be cool. but knowing everything exactly, does kinda turn running a country to min/max game.
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| Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 08:06 pm ignorance is not a valid substitute for uncertainty. Stop making irrelevant correlations between the real world and these simulated worlds.
This makes your comparison to the real world or realism relevant to nothing in simcountry Knowing how the index is computed is hardly turning this into a minimum/maximum. That is a statement made in ignorance or in stinginess of the value of the present amount of knowledge you have acquired thus far. Granted, much of the game knowledge I know i have not gleaned from any source gamemaster has supplied. Almost 200% of my success I can attribute to BlueSeprpent and a few simple settings he had suggested one day while complaining about one of my CEO's. But BlueSerpent took time and gave an effort that we all may or may not have to come to the same conclusion, or the patience to employ his methods of figuring out this information. This is unfair to the general game populace. This game is too dependent on finding some peer to peer help in order to become even modestly successful or Profitable which seems to be the real issue. Peer to Peer support or interaction is in no way a bad thing. But what about the solitary spirit. What of the Lone Wolfah? Everyone isn't a team player. And if we are to make real world comparisons there are many successful and profitable countries that are isolationists or solitary, or isolated by the world body , and so on. Give a valid reason why the formula, or proposed formula should not be published? Maybe less than half of the people playing the game would be able to use it or the mathmatatics involved to solve the equation to improve their gameplay. Maybe less than half the game would care to look at it or ever use it to their advantage. But why sghould the information be secret. Post a reasoning on something based on less on your feelings and based on logic. For example, I have suggested that this will take a large part of guessing out of the game. Eliminate frustration due to a large ignorance of game knowledge. This is one of the biggest factors affecting many, many things in your country ranging from Migration, to corporation productivity. I also assume this would improve player satisfaction, being able to possibly figure out where they are going wrong, yes? With a formula so complex and dependent on every other index in your country, population selling or purchased and so on, an idea of how this works, at least in theory, should have no black or white outcome for the game. Why7 if this index needs to be secret do you know the finance index? This information is known to a few players since Wildeyes asked for it in a Jozi Chat. Who knows if it is changed, been altered, is affected by the 'welfare index, which no doubt has changed by admission in the game news which seems unending at present. What are you logical reasons, not personal feelings, for keeping this information secret. What is this the Illuminati here?
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| Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 08:47 pm The logical reason is to keep it as a game where experience, gained through reading forums, docs etc, and trial and error leads to success. Basically as Blue and Wild have done. Misunderstanding or lack or willingness to find out info should not be mistaken as confusion. I am wholy against dumbing down the game.
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| Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 10:01 pm Okay CC. At what point does game experience come into play when this index has been affected several times due to updates. Population sale/addition Salaries And now(although I have missed some factors **because I don't know them all**KEYNOTE) An entirely new proposed index that affects an existing one in a way you can never comprehend. Unless you can quantify the word - Important It takes time to go through forums. Especially when you have no idea what information is trustworthy. I can take advice from Laguna, or i can go with SuperSoldier, or even Matthew Patton(WoW) who doesn't even use capital letters or punctuation to clue in where a thought begins or ends or even post where the subject is relevant to his posts for that matter -------------------- Your reasons again are not logical, they are personal You argue that because Blue and Wild have had the time, experience with spreadsheets, excel and so forth that they, due to those efforts alone, deserve to be imparted with this knowledge solely? And due to lack of anyone else's exact efforts, despite the reasoning behind the lack their own efforts, do not deserve this knowledge(of the formulas). It says a lot about the state of the game that 1. Wildeyes even had to ask. 2. Blue and Wildeyes or any other player for that matter, have to put forth such an effort in the first place to figure it out. According to Blue this amounts to 'countless hours' of studying spreadsheets/excel, or whatever other methods he employs I agree that they have and should have reaped a benefit as a result of their efforts, but at what point does this justify a secret formula to an index that affects almost every part of how your country will perform. What if I do not go to chat. What if I do not know who is or isn't informed or trustworthy in order to trust the information they present. Trial and error would be testing settings or variables at various values based upon what you know to be the formula. Not endless tinkering with settings until you find what is best. With so many factors unknown this is like playing the Powerball and saying, just because I continue guessing which number will eventually hit, I am destined to win one day...wrong. For example, Wildeyes discussed what the finance index formula was in Jozi chat. She then used this knowledge to exceed in this game at finance. Who knows how many times this formula was changed or altered, and how are we to know that this was the first request. From my own investigation, she had countries making number 1 since way back when I first started, and was making up to 200 gcs per month in some countries at that time. I modeled her settings and altered them to take over and hold 1st place finance for a very long time before and after that time she asked for the formula without ever using that knowledge. She soon found a way to overtake me yet again. But lets say, I am not able to make it to chat for Jozi-Chat. What if I am not knowledgeable enough to know that I can go look at her countries and examine her corps in order to figure a way to mimic her success. What if I just pay my dues to play, wish to log in, use my common sense to play some finance, declare a war or two and have some fun. Why does this have to be a second job? I'm not asking that the gms figure and publish the Optimal Settings based on said formula. Which at this point I don't think they have tried to figure out themselves. What i am saying is publish the formula. CC thnks for trying but your response is based on we did the hard work why shouldn't everyone else. I am arguing that we should all have to do the hard work as well, but based on finding appropriate settings and such based on the economies and type of countries or gameplay we plan to enjoy. The publication of the formulas would be the easiest and quickest route to that end. These formulas should be in the docs. We have discussed and even you have agreed that the docs need to be updated and this wouldn't be a bad edition at all. Furthermore this guessing game is all that the beginners forum is today, confusion clouding confusion. If none of us know for sure, what we are sharing is true or accurate how can any of use be of any help to anyone using the forum. Do the users have trusted ratings given or added to by users of their advice? No. Just another example of guessing who to listen to. The forums are not a substitute for docs. Ignorance is not a substitute for complexity. Experience and time in is not an decent excuse to deprive any player of the information that players need to avoid all these countless posts of the same exact questions repeated by player after ne player to encounter this game the gms could never answer in a timely fashion about finance, welfare, or any other confusing or complex part of the game. The volume of these requests are at present mountainous and most likely are at least %50 of the storage space this forum requires on the server.
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| Saturday, September 3, 2011 - 10:37 pm A shorter version of this post and following CC's logic is this is all tantamount to the blind leading the blind without the formulas. We need to understand why we are doing whatever we do in the game in order to enjoy and possibly excel at it. The difference between long term players and short is the vast gap of game knowledge. Hands down. I am positive that the statistics would back that claim up %100
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| Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 09:43 pm Okay, so if I buy food, medicine etc. at higher quality levels, I will see my populations grow faster and see them produce more in the corps? Because after discovering my population (164.378.438) began shrinking fast, births decreasing and deaths increasing, I tried cut the Back to work schools by 50% (from 10 to 5) and now hope some housewives will do better with more time at home, more time to both make the kids and raise the kids? I just did that adjustment today 15 minutes ago, so ill wait and see now. My health index is on 130, social security is on 80%, so there is not much left to adjust here I think. Please tell me if I am totally wrong here ??
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| Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 12:10 am What is the average age of your citizens?
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| Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 12:15 am I think that you're on the wrong path. A few things to check: - you're average age - number of retired people You're health index is rather high. Higher developed health care means that people live longer. But even those people will at some point die. You've probably got a lot of people dying of old age right now and low birth rates. It sucks but is nothing unusual. Try keeping you're life expectancy a little bit lower. Retired people are a waste of money and resources anyway.
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| Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 12:18 am As for an answer on your first question. Higher welfare means higher spending and higher production. there are many ways to raise the welfare level. Buying more expansive supllies is not the most effecient way.
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| Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 12:31 am This is crazy...
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| Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 01:07 am Try searching the forums, I know it's kind of tough. I believe there are a couple of threads on average age and I believe Aries has one on supply quality for optimal welfare.
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| Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 03:22 am Heck of a thread necro job there. Reviving a 5-year old thread. Some general threads on running your country and population growth can be found in these places: https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/24202.html?1421188466 https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/6/25580.html?1457104003 https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/8/25563.html?1456864885 As for what quality to buy products at, it has no effect on population growth nor does back-to-work schools.
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| Friday, October 28, 2016 - 06:53 pm Thanks guys for guiding me back on the road again! Some data: Average Age is 34.62 Life Expectancy is 65.12 Expected Number of Births is 60,683 Expected Number of Deaths is 2,674,454 Health care index is 130
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| Saturday, October 29, 2016 - 11:15 am Sorry to say this but you're going to have to endure it. You've simply got to many old people.
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| Saturday, October 29, 2016 - 06:52 pm Is anyone else a little sad that this game considers 34 old? Sigh...
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| Sunday, October 30, 2016 - 07:46 am I'm aghast at the Life Expectancy. I'm living on borrowed time it seems....
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