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CEOs broken by new under quality sales strategy.

Topics: General: CEOs broken by new under quality sales strategy.

Inanna

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 11:05 am Click here to edit this post
Okay, I have shaved a ton off of my enterprise expenses. My CEOs were losing a hefty sum of cash every game month since the last update. I've reduced salary costs, material costs. I've been trying just about everything.

I have switched my sale strategy to sup par quality strategies like 5 under reduce by 5 every month product not sold.

After that setting did not work, I used 10 under reduce by 10 every month product not sold.

So, the enterprise let off a spike in turnover one month, and has turnover has decreased ever since. Despite shaving salaries by 150B and shaving another 300B in supply costs I am still losing money and not even turning the most modest income.

Something is wrong here. These figures are from my My LU Enterprise

With my GR enterprise it is pretty much the same story.


Selling under has not produced the intended result. I am still losing money. I was using 10 over market and reduce by 3 every game month which was producing horrible results. I have changed my strats as Andy suggested would improve the situation, as well as shaved overhead by hundreds of billions to no end. I am still losing money. There has to be something at work here and I suspect it is that buggy thing on that other thread.

I have sunk a healthy sum of cash into the CEOs in the last few days.

What is really annoying is that this enterprise used to turn 3/4 of a trillion profit consistently every month.

Andy

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 10:44 pm Click here to edit this post
If your sale strategy was already under quality, the changes are probably more related to the reduction in pricing.

check your raw material cost in the coming game months. they trail a bit and as we explained with this update, corporations have raw materials that were bought earlier.

Lets have another look tomorrow.

This enterprise should not return 3/4 trillion a month. why should it?
There is no such CEO doing this each month.
I have seen 2T followed by -1.5T. this is what we call fluctuations.
3/4 T is what it used to do when 1T was, what is now 0.1T

Inanna

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 11:09 pm Click here to edit this post

Quote:

This enterprise should not return 3/4 trillion a month. why should it?
There is no such CEO doing this each month.
I have seen 2T followed by -1.5T. this is what we call fluctuations.
3/4 T is what it used to do when 1T was, what is now 0.1T




Before the most recent updates 3 of my largest CEO's brought in on average 400-600B each game month, and before those updates, 1 Trillion each avg.

Why shouldn't they make 1T? I like making money. The point is not about how much they make or were making, my point rather rests on how much they are never making. Barely crossing over .1 Trillion and consistently making negative gains to the tune of -200B or better.

I have extended to 10 under and take 10 for each month product is not sold. I will track the results and am afraid I do not see much improvement. I think the real mechanism bringing me near break even has more to do with my reducing salaries to 100 and material quality to 120.

Even after losing -200B or less each month, I am still barely breaking even with hundreds of billions saved on these two large expenses. With the reductions of a few hundred billions I still am not seeing it translate into some increase in profit despite minimal changes in turnover. My turnover has consistently fallen since using 5 under and take 5, and subsequently 10 under and take away 10.

As per your advice, I don't see much influence other than lower turnover using the strategy you highlighted. I could justifiably argue that these settings have had a net negative effect on the situation of my CEO and what is really helping is the falling price of supplies and wages. After looking at the data and histograms surely you have to agree, no?

Inanna

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 11:25 pm Click here to edit this post
Golden Rainbow seems to be making a consistent gain of 64B for the past few game months.

However turnover is lower than before and still making small decrease, possibly flattening out.

I have to date shaved 130B from salaries and and material costs have slumped by some 300B and continuing the decline.

The factor of profit I am making strikes me as familiar, I remember you saying a player who was making similar note of CEO profits made 60B last game month.

Is 60B the baseline you want for 750 corps in a ceo to return? If so I have to argue that is way too low. I will give some room because things are moving down as you say, but this is also the reason the picture is too murky for us to demonstrate what we really are seeing.

Scarlet

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 - 11:43 pm Click here to edit this post
Easy way of determining if your enterprise is glitched:
The Use*Utilization*Last Price Paid doesn't add up.

Posted in the other thread as well.

Omega (fine)UseUtilLast PriceCost
Chem200001.064349774416160
Elec1400001.0641846274980160
EP7501.064191488152807424
Elect1400001.0641876279448960
Glas1500001.0642504399638400
High900001.0641532146704320
Plas1500001.0642419386072400
Serv750001.0641647131430600
Expected1845.498424M
Actual1803.54M

Louth (glitch)UseUtilLast PriceCost
Chem200001.064315767180960
Elec1400001.0641796267532160
EP7501.064165643132183114
Elect1400001.0641563232824480
Glas1500001.0642064329414400
High900001.0641613154460880
Plas1500001.0641905304038000
Serv750001.0641441114991800
Expected1602.625794M
Actual2213.71M


Past the glitch, GMs determine game balance entirely. All you can really ask for is that things aren't glitched.

Inanna

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 12:11 am Click here to edit this post
On LU generally, this is what I am talking about. A graph like this is what I am talking about.

I am making minimal gains so 43B this month, but mixed with loses of up to -120B. This is horrible. The corps that are suffering from not selling production, or selling it too low, are sucking cash from my cash position and pumping it fast. Any month I am making any money it is overshadowed by cash transfers to my corps. By much more.

Also, the turnover since using the settings you have given, has reduced my overall turnover considerably. Before I entered your settings, turnover was around 4.1T up to 4.7T and is now down to an average of 3.5T and stabilizing.

I have shaved 190B off salaries and another 500B in supplies costs.

This is not translating to any kind of gains. In this CEO I am barely making any profit once every 3 months and losing by a multiple of 2 or 3 every month I do not make a profit. Couple this with auto transfers and I am bleeding a few trillion into this CEO in the past day or so.

Scarlet

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 12:19 am Click here to edit this post
Oh, so you're just complaining that you can't figure out how to make money. Nevermind, I'll be going.

Andy

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 09:39 am Click here to edit this post
I just removed a text by Inaana because of the language used.

We are back to square one.

Another such contribution and Inanna will be off the forum for a very long time.

Andy

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 09:41 am Click here to edit this post
Check your corporations and give me an example of one, losing a lot of money and not improving lately while the price of the product on the market is good (shortage).
My impression is that they are all improving, stabilizing and will deliver sustainable profit long term unless the product they produce goes into a surplus.
Corporations must be profitable under normal conditions or otherwise all countries and everyone will make losses.
They are and will be more stable than before.

Private corps may make a little less profit in the long run, but they contribute a lot of money to the country where they reside and their profit does not need to be used to support the economy of a country.
This has always been the principle behind corporations. They should earn you money but they don't make you rich.

As of today, last game month, the total profit+loss of all countries was 170T. with Ts much bigger now than before, it will probably decline in the future.

Inanna

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 12:31 pm Click here to edit this post
I would appreciate you clarifying what text was so terrible that you needed to threaten to remove me from the forum, again, please. I would like to know ahead of time because I cannot determine what it was.

Inanna

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 12:40 pm Click here to edit this post
I'll appreciate the clarification.

On the other hand, although you took the time to type a very long response, none of it addressed any of what I was talking about.

Once again it is back to "prove it" even though there is nothing that needs to be proved. I see profits and losses. I make no claims about specific corporations, but I did about my enterprises in general.

Why do you require one example to outweigh the entire lot of corporations as a total?

I am selling products in various corporations, I used the inputs you supplied, including in addition my own cost saving measures, yet nothing positive has come of it.

You have a funny way of diverging way off topic when you don't have a rational answer. Not to offend you, but I didn't know if you were aware of it, or if it is a subconscious defense mechanism.

Redman

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 12:56 pm Click here to edit this post
Sheesh you are clueless Big A. Absolutely clueless. You don't live in this reality at all.

Inanna

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 01:06 pm Click here to edit this post
Maybe he read something too fast, or something, because I truly don't understand what I said that could be so horrible to receive a warning like that.

I don't think it is fair to warn me, but not clue me in as to what you are talking about. I'd rather correct a mistake instead of thinking you just want to railroad me off the forum, for any other number of seemingly random reasons.

Andy? Do you remember why you erased my post? If so, can you tell me what words were horrible or unacceptable so I do not repeat them. Do I have to walk on eggshells here or what? It sure is beginning to feel that way.

Christopher Michael

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 05:13 pm Click here to edit this post
I'm not trying to tell the GM's their business, however, Scarlet needs to watch his tone as well.

His sarcasm is hateful and inappropriate at times, including the comment he made just above the one the GM's removed from Wendy.

Andy

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 07:05 pm Click here to edit this post
Christopher,

we never removed comments because of criticism. Just bad mouth, (in this case).
Read the forum again and see how much criticism is there about me and others.
That's all OK. people as we all know, are easy with criticism when the target is many miles away and you can just say what you want.
The entire internet is full of that.

Bad language is not acceptable.

Redman

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 11:25 pm Click here to edit this post
We are easy with criticism when we email specific cases to you with graphs, numbers, dates, country names, worlds, money amounts, circumstances and conditions under which certain things have happened which we believe to be wrong. Then, waiting for at least a reply that NEVER comes. Not a word. Not even a "we are looking into it". Not even a "Sorry it's your mistake".

QueenBikini has sent no less then 4 of these such emails to your gamemaster email addy. Your gamemaster department doesn't have the courtesy to acknowledge her. She spent a long time putting those together so you could not possibly twist things around. And for what? So yeah, welcome to some criticism. I have sent 1 and another about game level rewards, which, as I have found out was my misunderstanding of the rewards. None the less not even an acknowledgement.

It doesn't matter to me if you were right next to me and not across the pond, I'd say the same right to you. See, we pay to play, you are a paid professional. Your roll is a hard one and your pretty much the only person we have any channel to at all. Nothing I will ever say will be personal, ever. It will be about the game and Delusions of how it is developing.

Telling us that corps value are increasing when I sit and watch them decrease more and more is the "delusion" of which I speak. Only over the last few days have my corps started to increase in value. You FORCE us to put strategy from -5 to 0 to +5 over quality and that is it. Or we watch are corps shrink like dried mushrooms, all the while telling us how great things are. Do you not understand that people do not want to be "ROBOTS" and be forced to go no more then 5 points over quality just because that's your vision of the future for the game?

Your updates come too soon following previous ones, you don't answer emails, you seem to pluck apart things put on this forum when presented to you, so yeah, criticism is part of your job unfortunately. Please understand nothing is personal. It's just a game we love to play and you keep telling us how great things are going and how things are increasing in value when it is NOT the case in most cases. What is so hard to understand that My country is not like your country where you have everything -5 points under quality. I would like to make money. I would like to buy weapons for war that are still the same price as before these updates which are shrinking profits to ZERO almost. I AM NOT A BOT!

Anyway. You are at least here on the forums and I appreciate that. Don't worry, no cursing here. : D


On a positve note. I'm not leaving the game. I'm staying to make profit and hopefully have fun with friends.

Christopher Michael

Thursday, April 19, 2012 - 11:56 pm Click here to edit this post
I got you Andy. I appreciate your interaction with us!

You are right; it is very easy to sit behind a keyboard and be inappropriate and nasty.

(Redman, this is not directed at your comment)

Inanna

Friday, April 20, 2012 - 04:36 pm Click here to edit this post
I just asked what words he considered bad mouth.

Of considerable note. Andy has not responded. Because there is nothing worthy of threatening to remove me in any of what I posted in the comment he removed.

If so, I would like clarification. I don't like fabrications and false accusations. Andy I do have an email if you don't want to place whatever it was on the forum again.

If you can't say what was so bad to threaten me in that manner, you should apologize. I won't hold my breath.

Andy

Friday, April 20, 2012 - 06:26 pm Click here to edit this post
I have no problem with criticism and we answer all mails we receive. Start asking around because many of the people on the forum had multiple mail exchanges with us, including Inanna and Jo but many many others.

sometimes it can take some time to answer but we currently have no waiting mails at all.

if you did not get an answer, it probably landed in the spam filter.

Corporate values are increasing for some time now because when profits are increasing in corporations, their value starts to increase.
we said before these changes, that the cost will take longer to decline because of stocks in corporations and this is indeed exactly what happened, hence the temporary decline in values.

Some corporation values were based on offering products above their quality.
these corporations may have difficulties, lower profits and declining values.

There is nobody in the market who wants to purchase these products at that price so they will not sell.
The gamemaster is not buying your products, other players do or they don't.

Product quality has gone down and most of you are now buying at 120 - 160.
you cannot all buy at 160 and sell products at 300. No takers.

This is probably the most important reason for the declining numbers. All the costs are also declining, including government, defense, weapons and ammunition.

We watch many countries and collect results several times a day. Most countries are profitable and will be increasingly profitable in the future but with smaller numbers because the amount of money you need is much smaller. The lowest profit world wide in the past days was 140 Trillions.

We used to have a game where countries were earning trillions and spent trillions.
that game changed in the past several years and now we have a game where the numbers are in billions. Most players do not know the trillions game and are used to smaller numbers.
A lot more changed in the game in the past years and there was always a lot of cracking and shouting when we took some sharp corners.

The logic of the game did not changes because of the numbers.

QueenBikini

Friday, April 20, 2012 - 08:11 pm Click here to edit this post
Now I am spam. I will not wasted my time and effort in the future. : (

Christopher Michael

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 12:24 am Click here to edit this post
The GM's have always answered my emails; thank you.

However, how does a person know if their email has landed in a spam box? No answer back? How does a player keep that from happening?

The 'Contact Us' button on my home page does not work. I don't know if this is the case with others or not. If it works for everyone, that may alleviate the 'spam filter' issue.

Of course, it may also flood the GM with more emails than can be handled.......so maybe it doesn't work for a reason??

I hope that there is a more empathetic answer than 'it might have landed in a spam filter'.

That can't make a player feel very good with the way that statement came across.

Andy

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 12:31 am Click here to edit this post
we know that some times our answers go into the spam box.
we had several cases we answered mails and the player kept saying we do not answer.

I did not know that anything is wrong with the contact us link.
we will check it. but we do get mails from players every day.

I don't know what to do with a claim that we never answer mails while we are answering all.
what do you think?

Keto

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 01:42 am Click here to edit this post
I think someone like yourself should be at least answering questions in these forums every day. You have been very helpful the last few weeks answering questions daily, and I can speak for all of us fine players, we appreciate your effort Andy.
Also, dont beat around the bush. If the GMs dont have an answer just say so, and say you are looking into it.
Honesty goes a long way.

Kolenski

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 02:16 am Click here to edit this post
CEOs broken by new under quality sales strategy ...

My CEO's were broken also since updates because (for one thing) my sales strats that had always worked no longer did. Once I changed them (ALL of them) my situation improved considerably. I assume I may have to make more changes as there is more updating.

And in conjunction ...

Andy said: Corporate values are increasing for some time now because when profits are increasing in corporations, their value starts to increase.
we said before these changes, that the cost will take longer to decline because of stocks in corporations and this is indeed exactly what happened, hence the temporary decline in values.

This is exactly what it looks like has been happening in my CEO's. Bottom line is they took a big hit but are now bouncing back, I think partially due to changing the sales strats but also because they are using up the old stock.

I am still (for now) able to sell almost everything at or above quality, assuming I really am selling at the strat amount (I don't know if adjustments are made at time of sale), just not as much above as I used to be able to.

Andy said: Product quality has gone down and most of you are now buying at 120 - 160. you cannot all buy at 160 and sell products at 300. No takers.

I cannot wrap my head around trying to produce high quality products, then setting a selling price at X amount below that quality. What that says to me is that I should be producing lower quality products.

I am guessing this means we may have to purposely start producing lower quality products? Buying supplies at lower quality to do so? Will we need to be able upgrade corps as in the past, but be able to set a ceiling on the quality upgrades?

For the record: It's been a while since I emailed the GM about issues such as coding that didn't work right, etc, but they always answered within a reasonable time and fixed the problem. Maybe because I asked politely and waited patiently?

Jo Salkilld

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 03:21 am Click here to edit this post
The GMs have always answered my emails. However, I don't use the 'contact us' click link. I email them directly at gamemaster@simcountry.com.

If anyone thinks their emails to the GMs may be disappearing into the spam filter, may I suggest you try typing that address into your email messaging system, rather than using the click link.

Hugs and respect

Jo

Keto

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 04:37 am Click here to edit this post
All mail coming from Simcountry should not be directed to spam filters. Maybe they need to adjust their settings?

Christopher Michael

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 04:44 am Click here to edit this post
^^^^^^+^^^^^^^^^

Homerdome

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 08:04 am Click here to edit this post
Check "Star Ship Enterprise" on GR Andy please. What is wrong with this formaly first place winner of at least 3 times. I am selling at plus 25 minus 7 in most of my corps some are plus 10 minus 6. ALLMOST ALL corps are selling with "SOME LEFT"(to me that means my product is selling in the sweet range) my buying strat is 95 plus 6. I was buying at 140 Q trying out 150 now. Was making a good deal of money now the "CASH POSITION"shows it is now losing money even though the profits say im making money. Explain please and help me save this enterprise.Currently this enterprise is in 3rd place and would likly be in first if it wasn't for being at game lvl 6. Should a long running hardly no maintenance enterprise that has forever brought in some cash now be losing money?

Andy

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 10:15 am Click here to edit this post
Thank you Keto.
we are too busy to be here all the time. some of us are consultants, including Jozi, for part of their time, to help keep this running and pay our salaries.

I am here more now because I expected this not to be a perfect soft landing and promised everyone here some turmoil. we will try to be here more but the extensive checking of accounts because someone claims havoc, is time consuming. Once we land, and extensive checks show that it is fair and correct, we will reduce going into accounts and finding out what is wrong.

we will however, within two to three weeks, add an advisory system that will check many parameters when you login and give you an advisory message. you can ignore it but it will tell you what the game thinks of some of your settings. one advice per login. experienced players too. we see a lot of simple errors everywhere.

Mails:

we have tested our mails by all kind of tools to check their "spam index" and they are OK.

despite it, there are some problems and we get some complaints from players but none in the past months.
Some mails, complex and long ones, can take very long to answer.
keep it short and clear, you will be answered quickly.

Offering products by corporations

When you offer at quality +, your offer gets a low priority and may sell a month or two later. hence the "some left" or "too high" messages.

in current conditions, these offers are very far from the main market and must be tweaked to sell at all. There was always a mechanism that tried to create compromises and make a market and now it is desperate.

we have tested again recently and it seems that Q170 - Q180 is the current limit for raw materials that makes sense.

This is not good enough. Corporations should use higher quality to improve their own, and with lower "other costs" to preserve their profit.

there must be more incentive to use high quality products and at the end, the market must be such that the products it needs are the products we all produce.
Currently there is a gap and the market does not want so many high quality products.

Arccuk

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 12:25 pm Click here to edit this post
First - thanks for all your responses here Andy, I appreciate it must be difficult to keep an even view in light of the constant complaints. However I still view the majority of them as justified due to the pace of the implemented changes in additon to what seems a distinct lack of forethought and communication of anticipated effects.

for example:-
"there must be more incentive to use high quality products and at the end, the market must be such that the products it needs are the products we all produce. "

this should have been foreseen and communicated earlier, although the subject was touched upon in a thread over a month ago. If foreseen, a function to view overall market, including the quality supply and demand, could have been implemented - again already suggested in the same thread already mentioned.

Please don't forget - players are not bots! The best possible course of action will not always be taken because the markets are ruled by only two criteria - fear and greed.

No players want their corps to tank, give us all the chance to adjust the products we sell to what the market demand is.
Perhaps some players will address the niche demands and receive a higher profit margin while others will cater for higher volumes at a lower margin. This way the players get their game back and you get the markets performing as you expect they should.

I'll shut up again now....

Andy

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 01:34 pm Click here to edit this post
The issue of quality plays for a very long time with discussions on differences in the price and who pays for them. It was here on the forum too, several times.

we know it has to be solved. We know how to solve it but it is easier said than done.

Recent changes are a small fraction of what needs to be done and caused a lot of discussion, some of it completely beside the facts.
Implementing it will take many many small changes to make sure nothing breaks.

corporations did not tank, they are adjusting and make profits. We have announced this ahead of time.
We advised many times on the quality they should purchase. we said many times that it should be limited to 150-160.

we also advised to reduce the selling price to quality or lower. To no avail. some still are trying with diminishing effects.

I do not think people take the advice. Reading is very difficult these days and they wake up when the change has taken place.

Today I said that recent tests show Q170-Q180 is now OK. By the time Q250 will be OK and corporations will be doing great, we will be close.

Arccuk

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 01:41 pm Click here to edit this post
but before i do ;)

After a conversation with Scarlet....

How about publishing several indicators on financial pages of countries and ceo's and countries? Along with a graph of changes over the last few months this would allow players to see if the asset is more or less profitable as a percentage or ratio INSTEAD of the bottom line $ number. (ignoring the actual number which is useless when all numbers are falling and will continue to do so)

Profitability ratio's
Asset Turnover ratio's
Liquidity Ratio's

now i will shut up again.....

Andy

Saturday, April 21, 2012 - 02:08 pm Click here to edit this post
This is easily obtained from the historical sheets on the site.
A lot of work for us to create.

The total number is showing all the time on the portal. It shows the value in $ US of all the countries in all worlds.

It used to be 300.000 to 320.000 a year ago.
Then it went up to 1.200.000 or slightly higher a week ago
It went down to 1.130.000 after the recent changes
It is now back at 1.195,000 and increasing
I expect it to reach 1.300.000 within less than a month.
It will keep growing.

It does not mean that everyone saw that same growth. but in general, the distribution is fair with some exceptions, up and down.


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