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Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 05:57 am  It seems like almost all of my countries and enterprises are simply paying too much for raw materials. Here is an example. Corporation A (mine, "Vulpinian Holdings") makes Household Products in a c3 country and pays 300 salary. It orders supplies at 140 quality and pays ~2.6 billion per game month for these. Corporation B (not mine) in the exact same country also produces Household Products. It pays the same salary, 300. It orders supplies at 160 quality, a bit higher than mine. It pays ~1.9B per month for this. Why is my corporation ordering lower quality supplies and paying more for them? I see this happen consistently across my enterprises and countries. Most of my private and state corporations are paying exorbitant amounts for raw materials and do not produce profit at all any more. Why is this occurring? What am I missing? To further add to the confusion, here is another corporation to look at (sorry HTML tag didn't work): https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=3141000 in my other enterprise [Kitsunebi] on the same world produces HHP with salary 300 and orders 150 quality supplies. Basically the same trade strategies. Paying only ~1.9B per month.
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| Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 06:02 am Agreed.
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| Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 06:19 am Similar thing with me; have 2 CEO's on GR. I was comparing corporations in them, same country, same product, same settings, same taxes (0%), yet my 'cursed' CEO costs across the board were higher than my other CEO. I compared many corps., and it was the same. Coincidentally, Columbia Commerce Consortium's total market value for all corps have dropped close to 60% since the GM's started moving numbers down. It is down considerably more than my other CEO percentage wise (Carolina GCX). I keep wondering, when does the devaluation of this particular CEO end?? And why are the cost higher, when my settings are exactly the same in every category as my other CEO? I am not blaming the GM's for this, however. I may be doing something to cause this, though I have tried everything in the book so to speak, to at least slow down the downward spiral that CCC is taking. Andy, if have the time, could you look at the drop of value of my CEO (Columbia Commerce Consortium) and see if it out of the norm. I would greatly appreciate anything you could do. Thanks!
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| Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 10:26 pm Bumping. What's going on here? Why are certain private (and state) corporations paying so much for raw materials when others aren't?
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| Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 10:43 pm I agree with Kitsune I've noted this a few times among different CEO's. WTH is going on
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 07:08 am Yep. My minds eye caught this a long while ago. I'm exhausted at finding where my profits are draining to in my CEOs especially :S
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 02:06 pm The value of corporations is declining with all other numbers. Income and cost declined and the difference too so if earning per share is down, PE ratio restores itself by reducing the price of the shares. measured in gold coins over time: a year ago (or two) a very large corporations was values at 0.5-1.0 gold coin, not it is doing around 7. We have not pushed this down, it is the result of declining numbers. check the value of your account in gold coins. If you have done recently as good as before, the value has jumped in the past year. the total world value used to be 3.5M gold coins, now it is 12M+.
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 02:07 pm Raw material pricing depends on the market. create some corporations that produce materials your corporations use a lot and contract it to them at a good price.
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 02:47 pm If you look at the "last price paid" column on the "available materials" section for each corporation, you will see this: First Example Corporation, "Louth Household Products" from my enterprise "Vulpinian Holdings" Product Avg Quality Last Price Paid Chemicals 144 $3465 Electric Components 144 $1563 Electric Power 137 $165575 Electronic Components 146 $1813 Factory Maintenance Units 135 $4.19M Glass 142 $2404 High Tech Services 142 $1553 Plastics 142 $2223 Services 139 $1576 Second Example Corporation, "Omega Household Products 15", in the same country as the first: Product Avg. Quality Last Price Paid Chemicals 167 $4052 Electric Components 154 $1514 Electric Power 154 $202253 Electronic Components 164 $2097 Factory Maintenance Units 162 $5.16M Glass 166 $2916 High Tech Services 162 $1814 Plastics 159 $2467 Services 157 $1727 Finally, if you look at the third example corporation "Batangas Household Products" from my second LU enterprise, which is in a different country but uses basically the same trade strategies as the first: Product Avg Quality Last Price Paid Chemicals 145 $3539 Electric Components 150 $1599 Electric Power 156 $198783 Electronic Components $1777 Factory Maintenance 151 $4.74M Glass 148 $2501 High Tech Services 156 $1733 Plastics 144 $2147 Services 151 $1634 You can see from this that the first example corporation buys slightly lower quality materials on average than the other two and according to "Last Price Paid" it is also paying less for these. This is entirely logical. Here is the part that isn't. From "Profit&Loss Statement -- Current Month", we see the item "Raw Materials Used." Louth Household Products: $2670M Omega Household Products 15: $1945M Batangas Household Products: $1857M If the average quality of materials and "last price paid" is mostly lower in Louth Household Products than in either of the other two, why is the listed "Raw Materials Used" cost so much higher? That's the part of this that doesn't make sense. Further, "Vulpinian Holdings" seems to be similarly overpaying in all of its private corporations (but not any of its public corporations) as compared to other corporations on the same world. On the other hand, my second LU enterprise "Kitsunebi" is apparently not overpaying on any of its corporations (I don't think - haven't had the time to look at every single one). This phenomenon seems to be centered on certain enterprises, as well as on state corporations (most of my state corporations across the worlds have very high "Raw Materials Used" costs). This is not the only example of strangeness in raw materials used costs. I could look around on LU and also the other worlds and find different examples of this from various different enterprises and players. I am less concerned about a simple lack of profit than I am about these numbers not adding up. Is this a bug? Intended feature? If intended, what is the criteria that makes this apply in certain cases and not others?
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 05:00 pm I don't know how the question could be explained any better than what Kitsune stated.
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 09:32 pm Could it be buying strategies, paying more because you dont get it for a month or two? To compound this the slight difference in Q ordered may matter as from what I understand the game tries to fill orders of a certain Q with offers of the same Q, if this cant be fufilled then it will do a best match. Hard to believe, but vaguely possible that a slightly different Q order would take longer to be fufilled??? and so the 8 or 10% strategy mark up comes into play. Probably I'm clutching at straws and hopefully Andy will find out and explain exactly what is going on.
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 10:24 pm How about this thesis. Older corps buy first. Younger corps get the scraps and higher prices if product stocks are sold out at lower qualities. The older your private corps the further up in line they are to get the lower cost supplies. kitsune. How old are those corps? Is the older one getting the better supply prices? Just curious. Cheers.
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 10:38 pm LOL redman, but hey, most people do make and offer higher Q product, so the higher Q requests are more likely to get filled first. I wonder if the box on the corp page shows the price at the time the order was first considered or if it actually reflects any markup due to your purchasing strategy. Also, Is the production in these corps the same?
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| Friday, April 13, 2012 - 11:23 pm That's an interesting theory Redman. I don't think that is it though. Corporation Start Dates: Louth Household Products: March 15 2714 Omega Household Products 15: July 15 2015 Batangas Household Products: June 15 2843 The corporation that is paying more for materials is Louth, which is the middle child of the three. It is owned by Vulpinian Holdings which is my (renamed a few times) first enterprise on LU. Batangas Household Products is owned by Kitsunebi which was my second enterprise on LU. And Omega Household Products 15 is actually Laguna's corp and as you can see it is very old. Production Levels: Louth: 107.3% Omega: 107.3% Batangas: 111.6% All 3 pay 300 salaries. Louth and Batangas use very similar trade strategies so that seems unlikely to be the cause. Louth: Start at 91%, increase by 9% each month. Batangas: Start at 92%, increase by 8% each month. Also, here is another example corporation. Public HHP corporation. This corporation is a public corporation owned by Vulpinian Holdings. Buys 140Q average materials. Same trade strategy as Louth: Start at 91%, increase by 9% every month. Production: 126% Raw Materials Used: $1905M
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| Saturday, April 14, 2012 - 12:36 am Another thing I noticed Kitsune is that with the market price for goods swinging Violently, one month a product is market price 4321 and the very next month it is 2432. The violent market price shifts lend themselves to this problem as well I think. It's hard just keeping trade strategies set without having to change them, so our corps are getting the same when they buy supplies. With all the changes we are getting it's very difficult to adjust correctly before they change it again.
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| Saturday, April 14, 2012 - 02:08 am Oh! This is my corp. I hadn't noticed. I wish I knew the answer, but I don't.
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| Saturday, April 14, 2012 - 03:08 am Imagine if you never had a moment to look so deeply. Into the abyss....
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| Sunday, April 15, 2012 - 04:25 pm https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=enthist&miKey=21145&miColumn=vEnterpriseMonthMaterials It appears that this enterprise has become "un-cursed" after I purchased it. This seems relevant to this thread.
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| Sunday, April 15, 2012 - 10:02 pm That is a very interesting graph. I was hoping that I had presented enough evidence of a materials cost anomaly to provoke a serious GM response. Since I did not get one, I am currently arranging a few side-by-side comparisons with the exact same settings on LU and GR to hopefully prove that Something Is Not Quite Right...at which point I will send an email to the gamemaster. I'm not going to let this one go easily...it has been the death of a few of my enterprises.
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| Monday, April 16, 2012 - 01:13 am Not only is costs going up but the GM DESPERATELY needs to lower the country resource. With everything being dropped countries still make tons of that fee. The GM should lower them to 15-20% this would allow taxes to play a much bigger role
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| Monday, April 16, 2012 - 08:30 am Super, we're talking about glitches here. Not about game balance.
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| Monday, April 16, 2012 - 08:31 am https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=enthist&miKey=21362&miColumn=vEnterpriseMonthMaterials The player that sold the enterprise seems to have had the "curse" moved to his other enterprise. EDIT: I went ahead and sent the GMs an e-mail. I hope they fix this soon (and I hope the glitch isn't actually inexplicable reductions in the costs of raw materials, haha).
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| Monday, April 16, 2012 - 06:14 pm Hmmm. I'm well interested to see how this one turns out.
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| Monday, April 16, 2012 - 08:35 pm Me 3
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| Monday, April 16, 2012 - 08:46 pm Me 4. I don't think there is any glitch here. just erratic raw material pricing that will average out.
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| Monday, April 16, 2012 - 11:25 pm I bet a small horse on how there's a glitch. Otherwise, I would like to hear explanations for why there's a drop of 600B in materials when an enterprise is bought. And another explanation for an equal increase.
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 12:00 am Demand.... https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=tldhist&miKey=261&miColumn=vTradeMarketPrice Cost.... https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=tldhist&miKey=261&miColumn=vTradeMarketPrice If its more then 3M in the negative a random monthly increase then immediate decrease shouldn't effect this prices. I'm getting board of this the GM needs to fix shit NOW
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 12:40 am Super, we're talking about a specific glitch here. Go spam your game balance stuff somewhere else.
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 12:53 am Can anyone who doesn't mind thinking explain how this is possible. I lost about 2 Trillion in one game month. GR CEO monthly P/L
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 01:02 am https://sim04.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=enthist&miKey=14413&miColumn=vEnterpriseMonthTurnover Your corps didn't sell products that month. We're talking about a specific glitch here. Please go spam your nub questions somewhere else.
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 01:21 am STFU, I'll post anywhere on this forum I want to. You need some substance behind your empty words to be able to dictate what anyone does here. Spam that.
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 05:41 am Did the new owners change the names of the enterprises when they were bought?
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 06:25 am The name of the enterprise that I purchased (the one with the abrupt decrease in raw materials costs) was changed from Simple Blue II to Unkempt (before purchase) to Unkempt Manufacturing (after purchase). The name of the player's other enterprise (the one with the abrupt increase in raw materials costs) remained Space Inc for the entire time. Were you thinking the glitch may be related to name?
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 07:54 am No I think it had to do with the price of potatoes in China. Don't forget the name of the vendor in China, Potatoes Inc.
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 09:56 am We see very large fluctuation in the turnover, cost of materials and profit/loss of countries but mainly in enterprises. More in enterprises because they have many corporations. Most times, when we checked, the ask price was above quality. check some of these corporations and you will see profits of 10+ B in a single game month, followed by a loss of 6+ B in the next. This is taking place on a very large scale but now less than before and we expect it to disappear.
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 10:49 am Jojo... I think you're onto something. EDIT: Running a test.
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 03:12 pm There's a difference between large fluctuations and a permanent impact. http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4968/pointk.png I'm talking about Scarlet's graph.
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| Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - 08:30 pm Scarlet and Jojo. Please elaborate, how on earth could a name change make any change? And one of the enterprises did not change its name but experienced the cost increase. Have you said that the Q of products bought remained the same after the purchase/sale of the enterprise? Odd goings-on regarding Q settings and trade settings have been reported before...
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 01:04 am All purchase settings were/are un-changed during the time owned here, for at least the past [earth] month or so: world: Kebir Blue enterprises: Simple Blue II/Unkempt (sold), Space Inc auto-order supplies: buy: -9/+10 quality: 120
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 02:08 am fn links are still broken...
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 02:52 am Crafty, the name of things in the game may have created a prioritization mechanism that determined which enterprise of a player received the glitch (i.e. first or second alphabetically has the glitch). The name Simple Blue II was prior alphabetically than Space Inc, and Unkempt was later alphabetically. Personally, I believe that for players affected by the glitch, it may affect their oldest enterprise in terms of continuous ownership by a player (I believe that the enterprise sold by CP was owned by him longer than Space Inc so the sale could have move up the error) or oldest enterprise is terms of lowest ID number (22145 is lower than 21362, the ID number of Space Inc... and my account is not affected by the glitch). (Of course, this is all speculation until it is proved.) The problem with testing out the bug is that not all players appear to be affected by it (I don't believe that my account is affected by it), but players that are possibly affected by it that own 2 enterprises appear to have 1/2 enterprises enterprises on a world affected. If it could be identified how the enterprise affected is determined, it could at least be controlled in absence of GM action. This looks like the last month of that spike showing on the graphs... like Laguna pointed out, the change is indicative of a glitch as it created a permanent impact and raw materials costs are also not know for large spikes, but smoother fluctuations in price because.
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 04:35 am I was just speculating. Every month when they run through transactions, are there any processes that they do one corporation at a time? If so, there must be some order, maybe alphabetical or by id#, and I'm just guessing that those later on in the order might possibly be at some disadvantage.
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 04:56 am So is it a glitch, or a technical oversight on the part of the engineers? Oh, and where do I sign up for repatriation of funds lost as a result of said "Glitch"?
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 05:54 am The scientific method! 1. Define a question 2. Gather information and resources (observe) 3. Form an explanatory hypothesis 4. Test the hypothesis by performing an experiment and collecting data in a reproducible manner 5. Analyze the data 6. Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis 7. Publish results 8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 07:09 am My situation fits the theory somewhat. I have 2 CEO's on GR, one (Columbia C.C.) established seven real days before the other; both close alphabetically (Columbia.... and Carolina.....). Columbia C.C. has been hit the hardest, and has actually dropped both in value and score under Carolina GCX. Columbia was always the leader until recently (last month and a half or so). Corporation make-up very similar, and settings have always been the same or very close. The only thing that I do not know is if there was a spike like I saw in the graph (Scarlet's). Columbia has been in trouble for some time now, and it did not occur to me to look at that graph when I first started having problems. I chalked up the decline in value and score to the GM's number lowering updates. The nominal value of the CEO was around 1,200.00.....it is now 502.34 (and still falling). I guess the GM's would probably respond and say the CEO is worth more gold coins now. I wouldn't know; I haven't kept a record of it. For what it's worth, materials costs in both CEO's has dropped for the last 14 game months in a row now.....maybe that will continue.
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 11:31 am Hmm, after taking a second look at some enterprises suspected of the glitch, it seems as though they are returning to normal. The graphs for raw materials costs in many of them seems to be decreasing. The cost difference between the example corporations in the OP has decreased. Perhaps W3C has fixed the glitch.
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 07:12 pm I don't think it's fixed. Raw materials costs are decreasing across the board because another round of product price decreases just happened. It does seem like the size of the difference is smaller now.
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 08:58 pm The one off is not explained, where there was a sudden change in material costs for the two ents. I thought this was the problem under scrutiny here. I still very much doubt the age or name theory as that would be integral in the code and manifest itself many times. But hey, I have been known to be wrong...once I think was it...? nah, must have imagined it...
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| Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 11:41 pm Well, I hope to demostrate the glitch even more obviously using the initial two corporations:
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| Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 12:01 am As of the last "update" (4 world months ago on Kebir Blue, during "maintenance mode"), the decreases in total supply costs stopped -- no more decreases, and 4 world months of nearly flat and slight increases. Nothing has been "fixed", except that it was already "fixed". ;) https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=enthist&miKey=21362&miColumn=vEnterpriseMonthMaterials Those costs should be/were around 1T SC$ before, and as Kitsune' referenced, all costs concommitantly should have been going down from there. There is extensive historical documentation relating to "glitches" involving the names of entities. In addition, there were not one, but two, "updates" recently regarding "entity name changes": One shows as a new "red box error" when changing entity name; the new required minimum is 3 characters, with no numbers or symbols allowed. [error message currently displayed]
The other was announced in Game News:
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| Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 12:24 am Haha, I remember the very long country name glitch and its abuse.
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| Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 08:47 pm Some complete tripe can be bandied around these forums, huh? Minimal characters for country names causes material costs to seem incorrect? Adding a notification of a name change causes the same? Maybe we should all check all names to be sure they dont mean some number in hex-decimal that triggers a divide by zero error. LMAO
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 02:17 am I'm basically 90% sure it has to do with lowest ID number, but this only has to do with what enterprises on a world are affected. Not sure what determines who has a glitch.
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 03:28 am I would like to point out that state corporations can be glitched too. Corporation: "LU State HHP Materials Test 1" Owner: "L7 Hyperborean Wildlands" Status: State Corporation Utilization: 118.9% Cost is determined by Monthly_Use*Last_Price_Paid*Utilization Expected cost is the sum of costs from each supply product. Actual cost is Quoted from "Profit & Loss - Current Month" Data Collected: Feb 10, 2957
Conclusion: glitched. Assuming, of course, that this is actually a glitch and not an undisclosed "feature." The way that it appears selectively, affecting certain players is strange.
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 03:59 am No. These formulas are not correct: First, when a corporation has "last price paid", that can still average with other supplies already in stock. As an estimate, it may actually be Ok, because usually auto-orders do occur when supplies are low or very low. Still, there is margin for errors there. Next, the corporation at greater than 100% utilization, uses (based on observation and rough calculations) to also use more supplies. This further can be confirmed by the cotracting (auto-contracts) which will show "100%" contracted for supplies, but then still come up short of what is needed. Finally, if you check the supply levels, month-over-month, they do not all drop by exactly one-world-month amounts...it's usually something like 1.1 for enterprise corporations, fully upgraded, using roughly 300 salaries and located in "free countries" aka 'Simcountry' owner. Finally, it is useful to see actual data and references from some posting, whereas these other side-shows, who have neither clue nor concept of what's happening, best to step aside and mind yourself in some other topicus maximus.
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 04:08 am I think I compensated for utilization by multiplying each product by utilization. For example with "Chemicals" I multiplied: 20,000 * 3262 * 1.189 to get the cost of 77570360. I assumed that a corporation with 118.9% utilization would use 118.9% of the quoted supplies. In the case of Chemicals (20,000) the real usage would be 23780. Is this wrong? The averaging of new supply prices with existing ones does present a slight problem.
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 04:38 am Well, most likely it's wrong for every product, but, yes, that would help improve the estimate. It may actually do the converse, and error on the other side...so, actualy raw material amount usage increases may be say +8.5%, but, that formula would cause it to be +18.9%. For example, one of the largest costs is "maintenance", and that is not even included in that table. It is a supply like others, but just happens to be itemized differently. For that case, it has been observed almost always to not increase its usage with higher productivity %. Other supplies seem to vary, but only have in-direct evidence of that based on tracking common market contract %s. Maybe someone else has more details. In addition, the amount of supplies needed, and likely used (as a corollary), have been almost ceaselessly changing for a very long time. Even "Andy" admitted, to a degree, that this is still occurring. If you ask those who are very careful contractors, you'll soon find that the changes are even much more than advertised. Bottom line: it would be better to take one specific world month, with actual supplies in stock, before and after, then use that to estimate the total amount expected to pay. You would still have the price issue, but as was said, that likely is a small factor. [This is the "complexity" that those who don't understand, claim to enjoy--a lack of transparency of prices paid/received--and is probably why they end up stuck going in circles, which for a child's mind is joy enough.]
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 07:00 am When I observed the information last game month, I pasted the entire "Available Materials" box into a spreadsheet... I just didn't include everything in the table here to save space. So here is a comparison of product stocks. New information from: March 11 2957 This month utilization is reported as 119.1%
The actual amount of raw material used seems very close to Utilization * Monthly Use As far as I know FMU use is reported on the line "Maintenance Products Used" and is not included in "Raw Material Costs" so I didn't include that in the table. Maintenance Products Used costs seem pretty consistent across all of my corporations, "glitched" and otherwise. So the biggest problem with this table is the price averaging of older supplies with newer ones, but that is probably not enough to explain away such a large difference...
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 07:13 am Very nice...incisive. Did that happen with each corporation that you were referencing/watching (for this topic)? fyi: just checked some Oil corporations at different hiring/utilization levels (production level: 82.5/99.7/108.5), with same upgrades, similar countries, etc. and maintenance used appears equal. Materials costs also rose with increased utilization in all 3 as well (materials (Ms): 1429/1725/1886).
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 08:25 am Scarlet checked those Oils (in his countries) and actually they have not stabilized costs yet, due to being former State corporations...so, maybe can monitor them and report again later.
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 11:59 am finance indexs appear too be dropping again wtf
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 12:44 pm Update: (Disclaimer: Obvious speculation is obvious.) Okay, we figured out that 'local trading' from enterprise to corporations (Space Inc) and 'direct trading' from corporations to corporations (tested corp in Overrike Manufacturing to corp in Space Inc) are bought at the correct price (as measured by change in cash levels). Whether this causes a reduction in the discrepancy of Raw Materials Cost between expected/actual numbers is unknown, but what is known is that these methods of selling to corps are working fine. If filling a corporation through these methods does not cause a reduction in the discrepancy, I believe that the Raw Materials Cost glitch is an error in the P&L value and not an error that manifests in the corporate cash flow. However, given observations of affected corporations, the latter is most likely the case. Regardless, most corporations do not buy their raw materials in this manner. What remains to be seen is: 1) Whether contracted materials buy for the correct price. 2) Whether world market buy for the correct price. It is difficult to measure these. Attention should be directed to the corporation cash flow line item "Raw Materials Bought" unless the previously mentioned methods (local trade, direct trade) of selling products to corporations can be discovered to decrease the difference between expected/actual amounts... if this is demonstrated, then it's a simple matter of seeing if the discrepancy is reduced (will need to also see if corporations are affected by an absolute difference in raw materials cost or a percentage difference) by contracting products to a corporation. Otherwise, process of elimination, find a corp that received a set amount of some product through contract. Find it where the cashflow sheet only show a purchase of that contract and compare "amount contracted" * "quality of contract" * "market price". The difference between expected/actual is significant enough where it should be obvious even considering monthly differences in market price. If both can be eliminated as possible manifestations of the glitch, then this would indicate the glitch is a reporting error and not a cash flow error. Which in turn would mean the net effect of the glitch is tax reductions. However, reported overpayment of raw materials on the P&L sheet does appear to correlate to lost cash flow in affected corporations. So... my current belief is that the "curse" manifests itself in overpayments on raw materials from the world market. I'm unsure of whether it manifests itself in overpayment on raw materials from contracts as well. In absence of GM action, understanding this glitch may provide a defense. Of course, the obviousness of the glitch should warrant GM action unless it can be determined that some enigmatic and obscure factor is causing it. Careful readers will note certain tests possible that could lead to a tax-loophole exploit if certain results are observed. I would put more effort into this, but I have no opportunities to test as I'm not affected by this glitch.
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 05:27 pm If there was a glitch as you call it I feel sure it would have been addressed by now. So we are back to the 'complexity' of the game that the children enjoy, supposedly. In other words many of us dont understand it, but instead of saying so, point the finger of accusation at the the very thing they dont understand. Child like indeed. This has to be one of the most in depth threads and analysis of some game mechanics that I have seen, (with a surprisingly astute and coherent contribution from CP) and I wish you good luck in getting to the bottom of it.
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| Friday, April 20, 2012 - 10:24 pm I did not go into this because I saw some things like: "maybe it is the name change". come on. I can never claim for 100% that there is no error that depends on something "arbitrary" but we never had such an error before. My take on it is that there are indeed many parameters that make it very hard to predict and even more complex because all these parameters and processes have a built in delay and also depend on the existing data which is different from country to country and make the process proceed differently in each case. Keep looking. This is always interesting. I can add that when we make a complex change, like recently, we can in most cases predict the end result but we cannot always predict the path, the ups and downs on the way and the time it will take to get there.
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| Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 09:17 pm Crafty, it isn't "real" complexity if it's just bad information. Take corporations selling their production to the world market. They NEVER sell for the "advertised" price. The difference is obvious enough that it can neither be accounted for by trade strategies or by changes in market price. Take a corporation that's been selling all its production to the world market, then contract its production to one of your countries and watch the graph. Timestamp: Aug 3178 Here are two corporations (same trade strategies [-1/-5], quality difference of 1.6, market price fluctuating in a range of 2%, both having sold all production in the last two months): Corporation: https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=1113515 Selling to world market (turnover graph) https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=corphist&miKey=1113515&miColumn=vCorpLastMonthTurnover Corporation: https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=2717325 Recently switched to contract sale of all production (turnover graph) https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=corphist&miKey=2717325&miColumn=vCorpLastMonthTurnover You see that spike in the second graph? That's because it's actually earning "amount produced" * "market price" * "quality" by selling through contract. It's an almost 10% increase in revenue. Trade strategies are meaningless because they don't work as advertised. If it says it'll sell for -1% quality (or 329% market price) the first month and sells everything, I would expect it to guess what... sell for 329% market price. This is not what happens. It sells for closer to 290% market price. Observation reveals the same thing for corporations at other qualities: https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=404394 Same trade strategy: -1/-5 Quality: 262.4 Market Price: 1152 Production Level Last Month: 1,523,509 (stable) All production sold in one month. So given this information, we'd expect to have a turnover of: (1,523,509 * 2.624 * 1152) * 2.614/2.624 = 4,587,785,309.952 So I should be getting 4,587.79M SC$ Can you guess what the actual turnover was? 4,280.77M SC$ This is 6.69% lower than it should be. My 262 Q goods are being sold for the price of 245 Q goods. The difference gets worse at higher qualities. This is not an isolated instance, and it has been this way for a LONG time. But wait, maybe you're think fluctuations in market price... but the market price was 1165 last month, meaning any past price sold for would have been higher than the current price. Don't look at the game too closely. It's not complexity, it's convoluted fluff. Most players don't look closely at the cash changes and just assume things because they're are distracted by interface fluff. There are multiple different things that you look at closely and they fall apart and don't behave as they are described and your actions don't do what you think they do. I mean w/e, game's still fun if you don't look at things closely and assume you're making less than interface says you should. tl;dr The interface is a dirty liar.
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| Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 09:51 pm Scarlet, sorry bud, but the market is not that cut and dried. This is one of the complexities that I talk of. By no means do I pretend to understand it but one of the main reasons for my continuing here is my enjoyment of trying to gain my best understanding of these fluffy complexities. One of the others is getting to talk to such wonder people as yourself 
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| Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 11:55 pm I've never seen a corporation sell to the world market even close to market price, much less above. Even in markets whose market price is rising: https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=2924557 Should be at least NEAR 6,102.97M accounting for production, trade strategy, and the current (i.e. higher) market price. Actual Value: 5,489.60M This is 10.05% lower than expected in a rising market. If the question is, what is market price? It is an inflated value used to determine the price of contracts and direct sales. It does not appear to have much to do with prices on the market. Find me a single corporation that sold its products at or above market price or even within 2% below market price and we can talk. Trade strategies are NOT tied to market price as advertised. This is not complexity because this essentially mean I have no idea what trade strategies actually do. Corporations offer for whatever the game decides they offer them for, not for what I tell them to offer them for. This simplifies the game to checking the "None" "Some Left" and "Too High" numbers and assuming the price is being reduced at each level. Whatever the trade strategies does doesn't matter, whether there is stock unsold does. So... This is how I played in the first month when I had no real clue what was going on. I have no reason to play it otherwise after how ever many years it has been. If it actually introduced complexity, I can guarantee you that I would be trying to decide more sophisticated trade strategies because it would behave in an expected manner with an interface that accurately described my actions and not do whatever the heck it wanted to. the main issue is that trade strategies aren't even CLOSE to describing what actually happens.
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| Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 12:19 am Ok, now I have to believe Andy. Look at this for improved profit I hope this continues every month, what do you reckon the chances are? WOW
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| Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 12:35 am Unlikely, that appears to be a temporary spike in Profit Transfer brought on by a "double month" of production sales in state corporations. It looks like your corps were selling on a one month delay, and are now selling on a zero month delay.
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| Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 02:19 am Wow......I wish they would jump up like that.......and STAY. Scarlet is right however on this point.
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| Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 08:36 am Anyway, I purchased another "infected" enterprise with my "clean" account. https://sim02.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=enthist&miKey=16339&miColumn=vEnterpriseMonthMaterials Yet another sharp drop in raw materials cost.
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| Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 07:44 pm Dunno scarlet, this is still unexplained. But going back to my graph...(yes I did realise that, thanks for the comments) that does show what a change in trade strategies can do in terms of selling promptly. I will be monitoring further months of income and see if an increase in profit is permanent.
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| Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 10:25 pm CC, didn't mean to be patronizing with my comment.....I see how that looks now.
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| | Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - 10:00 am Authentication ErrorBy: (IP:188.92.75.82) You can only post messages if you are logged on as player of simcountry.You must also have a country in one of the worlds. New members can join the forum about 48 hours after registration.
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