Common market help

the meaning of "quality" is too subjective to be in this game.

on earth, a honda civic car is a honda civic car regardless of where it is on the planet. the only difference is that its price maybe lower in america than if it is in africa. and this price difference is do to distance of getting this product to those locations, or the supply and demand of this product in those locations.

i don't know what would the difference be a 500Q honda civic to a 100Q honda civic. do you?

the concept of efficiency in this game makes sense, because if your factory is more efficient then you costs should be lower and you would have fewer people there.

my income has dropped badly since I changed the quality, but why should I have to adjust the quality manually instead of automatically, this is insane. there should be other options. and 120 months is a long time to wait to just increase it to 300 quality.

@michael,
set your quality as low as possible, 120Q seems to work for most products. if you set your Q too high then you corps won't buy any of those products you need if their quality is less than the one you set, thus you will not produce any products so your profit/loss will be affected.

the manual labor in here for me is that i don't know how to set the parameters for my corps/country, that anything i produce more than i needed then they would automatically be offer for sale on the world market. i have to manually buy and sell the products i have in stock. if anyone know how to automatic this selling, please let me know. i shouldn't be my planet's rank number 7 because i still don't know how most things work in this game

@xox,

im trying the same thing as you are too. but I aint gonna give up on it. we shouldn't have to do the manually quality supplies. (that's the best way I can put it, even though I hardly make any sense at all, lol)

@michael,
it seems that price you have to pay for products in your own common market go against the concept of having a common market.

it's like you have your own supermarket, yet you are buying from your competitors because they are cheaper than yours. if this is the way, then it's a great will to kill your own supermarket.

the common market needs to be such that you are buying at wholesale price, not retail price, regardless of the quality that you produce. such as buying from your own common market at 300Q should be no more than buying at 100Q from the world market, so that you would rather buy your own high Q products in your common market.

the markets should have priorities, such as

for buying:
1. buy from local market
2. buy from common market
3. buy from world market

for selling:
1. sell in local market
2. sell in common market
3. sell in world market

so if i need a product, my perference would be proritized such as i want to buy from the local market first, but if the local market does not have the product i want, then shop at the common market next. if the common market does not have what i want, then go to the world market.

if the world market do not have what i want too, then perhaps is time to build a corp for that product. instead of just magically making that product available by the gm by immediatelly ordering which you pay a high price for.

direct contracts in the common market should not be with a specific corps, but buy the products from any corps in the common market.

the way it is now, of matching a selling corp to a buying corp, seems to be way there is a shortage if the selling corps cannot produce the require quantity because of its supply chain issues, i.e. short of workers, short of a specific materials, etc...

if you are buying from the common market, then buy from any corp, not a specific corp, so that shortages from a specific selling corp does not stop your buying corp from having zero production due to that material shortage.

Yes indeed your right with high quality output. I have notice the difference after I dropped the quality down, the turn overs jumped. So now, I have set the quality to 175 quality to all corporations and see what happens as far as the cost of raw materials goes and the turn over should make a huge difference. Quality above 200 has killed it, you were right on that one, so now, I have to wait for the time adjust everything and hopefully it all should be ok once we find that magic number. With out hurting the corporation costs and low income turn over.

@michael,
i think there are still bugs in the game.

perhaps be easier if you can specific the range of the Q you want, such as from 100 to 200, instead of just the lower number because you corp may buy at 300Q or 400Q which cost you way too much as Aries already mentioned above. there is a max to Q, inputting 400Q into your production process may not get you 500Q result, so no point to buy very high price and get the same result as if you buy very low price.

also i've already mentioned above, it seems that it would be easier to not have direct contracts between corps in the common market, because you could have many corps producing the same product. direct contracts become drama when the supplying corp has supply chain issues, then the buying corp get nothing to make its products. even though you have a surplus of this needed products from another corp.

weird things

doing common market contracts have driven my profit way down, i must be doing something wrong?

it does not make sense that the prices that you pay in the common market is the same as the world market price for the same product. if this is the case, there is no point to buy from the common market. common market prices should be half of the world market price, in order to be beneficial to have a common market?

for example, why would i build my own strategic bombers corp which takes a lot of my country's resources (workers, materials, etc), if the bombers that my country will buy from this corp is the same price as if my country would just buy them directly from the world market (correctly: direct trading with others who already build these bombers)? this bombers corp require that i build many other corps to get the materials to build the bombers, and you can only build one per year? there is almost no market for this product, but is the 2nd highest price product in the sc worlds?

there needs to be prices/costs differences to go from local market, common market, and world market? my A corp should be able to buy a product manufacture by my B corp at much cheaper price than the world market price for this product?

when i was new, if any one asked questions about CMs, then the answer from a vet would always be, "If you don't know how to use a CM, then don't use it."

and they would leave it at that.

the context of this discussion only furthers that ideology.

if you are having to much difficulty with a CM, then cancel all your contracts, and set you corporation supplies to 200.

if you want to do something beyond that, manually buy EP, FMU, and HP at 120 quality, and manually sell them to your corps. as those are the most costly, least beneficial supplies, over all.

other wise, their is enough info in this thread to explore ASQ, that is "Average Supply Quality."

Xon, thing you have to remember, this is a Game. it can not complete imitate real life, but comes as close as the GM can. And they are constantly trying to improve it.

If you think that something should work a specific way, try sending the GM a mail, asking them how something works, why it works that way instead of another.

again, you must remember that NO computer game is going to simulate the real world 100%, and no one would really want that.

@josias,
thanks for that short answer

many things in here actually opposite of earth economics?

it would be nice if the game could stimulate earth more realistically, perhaps not 100% but at least better than sc does now.

i read this game has been around for about 10 years? must be a real passion from the owner to keep it up for us

i'm resetting my corps over....but would be nicer to understand why works this way and not that way. i got at least an earth year to test out this game

well, your kinda right, and kinda wrong

if i had employees, and i bought them all mechanical pencils, for 2-3 dollars each, or regular type for like what 25 cents each? wouldn't make much difference to final results, but one would save some money.

their are many other ways, in real life that a boss can buy cheap products, that don't do much for effecting the final production, or sales, while decreasing the cost. At work the boss bought a water trailer, rather than a truck, saved like 10K dollars, and the job still gets done, even though its a pain in the ass to the workers.

and thats the concept that i've thrown out here. that some supplies have a lower effect on sales, than other supplies. if your making Books, then the paper you use would have a greater effect, than the quality of chairs in the lobby. all tho one would think that quality of whats printed would be more important than just the quality of paper its printed on.

its one of those enth details that get lost in a Game. and a certain amount of grace should be afforded the GMs for such things.

perhaps, as i'm thinking about it

if you had a use for say Industrial Eq, which comes in many varieties. How ever, a bran new tractor, will cost 100K or more, for good quality. a low q, or used tractor, would be half the cost, and allow you to preform the same job. And perhaps, higher quality services, that would be, better operators, and mechanics, would compensate, and keep the EQ running longer, and at a higher performance level.

unless you can figure out a way to buy cheap goods from your CM, the only way to get them, is via world market.

the problem with buying cheap goods via contract, means that you have to tank a corp to produce lower Quality, how ever, do to the game machanics, low q corps, just don't make money. hosing a one corp to feed 20ish corps, would be cool, but when your talking things like FMUs, you'd need one for every 6ish. so just trying to keep the low q FMUs via contract, you're hosing 1/6 or your corps. and thats just FMUs, that says nothing for EP, or some of the other stuff you'd want low.

an alternate suggestion, would be to allow players to run their corps like normal, but exchange High Quality, for Higher Production of lower products. Like a Cars corp that would otherwise produce 240Q, could instead, produce twice as many 120Q cars, with the supply, upgrades, and salaries levels. i mean, giving the option to the player to adjust that. i've suggested that before, but it got ignored. its one way, but again, its something that talking to the GM might be best.

problem with your thought process, is that cost, is still cost. regardless of the source. if the source in in-house, then its still a cost. and if you are buying higher than usable Q, its money you are spending, with out any benefit. You wouldn't expect a 20M Diamond necklace to go for 5M, just because it was made locally? No, the maker of the necklace will still want his 20M, regardless of the buyer. If the buyer would prefer a 5M necklace, he should look for cheaper product. Which may be of foreign origin!

as far as some products not really being realistic to have a Q level, like EP. well, i wouldn't say your right, but you do have a point. thats one of those things that I ignore, do to this being a game, and therefore imperfect.

@josias,
as i already said, that "quality" is a subjective term.it should be efficiency or productivity if we're dealing with the manufacturing process.

i agree with you that a 200Q ingredient should get twice the result for the outcome, if the normal 100Q is bypass for the higher 200Q. this would make more sense to us earth players.

on another note on quality, there are certain products that quality is really just a perception of the people judging them. on earth, you cannot tell people that their lexus is not as good as the bmw.

it is very obvious that an earth lexus car has much better parts in it than a toyota camry. that's why there are these two names to distinguish them from each other.

in order for the game to work better, we need to know the true cost (all the costs) of a product from the beginning to the end. once the product comes out of the manufacturing process and retail for sale, we know that its cost is say $10 SC. we should be independent to price this product from that true cost on. such as i have suggested, that the average price on the local market maybe $20, the common market maybe $40, and the world market maybe $80. this is perpahs the best way to make the local and common market works, otherwise it is a waste of time trying to setup contracts in this two lower markets. as existing i can buy a oil at the world market at the same price as directly from my oil corp, so why should i not just keep doing that?

why would players want to be in a common market together if all of them could get what they want on the world market at the same price?

business is not that complicated, it is simply that you have to price your product to cover your true cost, operating cost, and have enough profit to grow the business.

business owners who lack this basic understand may price their product at $5 even though they bought the product at $10.

there are price or cost differences, the farther you are from the source then the higher/more this difference is.

From what im getting, you can build corps. that you want to use on the CM, like services, high tech services, etc. and since other corps use so much of that supply, a higher Q of it will affect the Q of the product more so than other less used supplies.

But is it even worth it to use a CM to trade those supplies? you are buying market price * Q and selling the product at market price * Q right? does having supply Q at 170, then trading across services at Q 230 affect the Q of the product so much that it increases the profit enough to cover the increased cost of the Services supply?

So far all my corps are spending a lot to buy high Q services, and other Supplies on the CM, but the Q of supplies in stock is not changing rapidly enough to show any increase in the final products quality. Still sticking with it, to see if i can eventually get the most used supplies higher, to make the product Q max out, or come close.

So far most of my Corps. are still running a high profit, even at 300 salary index, and in some cases, 1M+ in supply use per month.
Only those in an over supply on the WM seem to take a hard hit, like EP, took a nose dive from well over -5B supply and demand...

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But is it even worth it to use a CM to trade those supplies? you are buying market price * Q and selling the product at market price * Q right? does having supply Q at 170, then trading across services at Q 230 affect the Q of the product so much that it increases the profit enough to cover the increased cost of the Services supply? CN<!-/Quote-!>

Yes.

how ever, their is no "universal" supply. Services are probably the one that works with the most products. but things like paper, with the 800,000 Units of wood being the strongest supply, the 15,000 services would have little effect.

how ever, try this. take a fully upgraded Air Transport Corp. Set your supplies to 120. Then contract your services to it. you can manually buy from the corp, to lower its supply, so that the new services contract doesn't have to fight with a large stock pile of the wrong Q. give it a week, maybe as few as a couple days. and check it. then with the same corp, add a contract for "books and newpaper" and you'll find that it'll do even better.

For Serivices, try contracting AT, and probably BnN and/or HTS.

then try what i call a "supply train," contract services to a Sand Corp, contract that sand to a Cement Corp. and then contract that cement to a Construction corp.

i was trying do a train supply system, but i think it just back fire.

i'm experiencing so much issues with common market because the contracts are directly from corp to corp, so problems with the supply corp will cause a chain affect throughout---no good

it does not make sense to buy your own high Q back into your production process because the resultant Q isn't much different, and you're paying higher price for high Q.

buy and sell on the world market seems to be better for most products, and only products that seem to work well in cm are those you can't get from the world market.

yeah, learn a lesson here, world #7 back to #18
trying this common market concept, and had to start from ground zero again.

and nope, i have not gotten any from the gm on my questions yet....about a week now. i thought that being premium would at least have them pay a bit of attention to me for what i said---doesn't seem like it this far