Problem settings prices

Hello everyone,

I started playing simcountry a couple of days ago. Right now I'm playing as CEO and President.
While settings prices in my corps I noticed that it really doesn't matter what prices I set. For instance, I have two corps, both oil, I set one to 200% and one to 120%. Both companies sell their products and the difference between them is only 114M where I expect the difference at least 300M. Does anyone have an idea what I'm doing wrong here?

you can only sell at (Quality x Market Price) or lower, every order you set above that will automatically be sold at that level

When you set the price you want above the price x quality, the products look very expensive on the market.
Most products are offered at a lower price.

The products you sell must have buyers or otherwise they will not be sold.
There is nobody around who asks to purchase products at a price which is higher than the market price x quality. they can get it for less.

Thank you both for the answers.
What I expect to see is exactly what you're explaining here, Andy.
I expect that if I increase the sales percentage of a company that this woudld have an effect on sales, thus the price chart would fluctuate and "random" amounts of cash flowing in. The bad news here is, it doesn't.
To demonstrate,since your gm, take a look at Sultana National oil. I played around with pricing and put it way up to a 320% high. No effect whatsoever.
I just did the same trick on Panotro oil in my country (april 3065) and waiting to see what happens.
I checked automation, contracts, everything and I can't see which this setting does that. So that's basically my beginners question.

Basically Sultana, what the GM isn't telling you is that pricing strategies are non functional. You will get the market price x the quality % is all (approx). There is no point in asking for more. I find best price works well, although -10 may help sell some products quicker if there is an oversupply of them. Of course, the actual cash you receive will vary with the market price.

Thanks for your reply. That just leaves me with one question, why do I even have the option to set a price if it doesn't have any effect on gameplay whatsoever? Why not leave out that option to set a price, because this setting has zero effect on gameplay.
This makes me wonder about another question;Which other settings are non functional and which ones are functional? This will make it a lot easier to play since now i'm focussing on something that doesn't even work.

Just to be sure that we're not going into a discussion if I understand this all correctly. I have uploaded one of the sales graphs from my company to http://i.imgur.com/LuKgCMu.png .

During this graph I have set prices either at 320% or 120% for one or more months. If anyone can point out exactly where the 320% starts and where the 120% starts, feel free to do so.

when a product is in short supply, offering to purchase at quality + 8 or 10, will slightly increase the price you pay but will increase the chance you do get the product.

when selling into an oversupplied market, setting the price slightly under quality, will make the product look cheaper and increase the chance it is sold.

during trading, products are sorted by their relative price. It is computed by use of the product market price, the quality and what you ask for (or want to pay for).

when you go to the extreme, there will be no buyers. The trading procedure has to make compromises to make trades happen but it will not force expensive products on buyers who do not want to pay for them.

Andy, hypothetically, if there was a product offered on the market for say 5 times market price at X quality, and an order for the exact amount of that product at X quality with 5 times market price offered...would that order be filled, and at those prices?

Not at 5x as it is beyond the market limit. at a lower level probably yes.

We would love to extend the market limits but in the current state of the market, it will cause severe damage.

In the past, there were some errors from time to time and a product limit was set 10x higher.

the price exploded, and the only one to find out about it, was our database "sanity" procedure.
nobody made any profit out of it.

Even now, we have electric power and nuclear power and on some places, there is a significant price difference and a potential to make direct profit. It does not happen.

well Andy, I made quite a Profit when the Price was 'out of control'. My Enterprise Corps made about 1B Profit and more per month each without me needing to do any supplys tweaking and cant remember having any supply problems

By going out of control, I mean 10 times higher.
this never happened with the general market.
The price ranges did not change much in terms of percentages off the standard price.

You made 1B or more in profit when product pricing was 3 times higher or more.

Now, corporations may make 0.4 - 0.6 in profit, which is relatively more than before.

It is very hard for long time players to get used to the 10 x lower numbers in Simcountry. (even much more than 10 to 1 over the past years). I understand that.
it seems that people struggle with it for a long time.

Most players however, came in when the numbers were already lower and have no problem with it.
most countries are profitable, and where profits used to be 50B per game month, they are now at 6 or 7B but prices are also 10 times lower.
maybe one of these days, you may get used to it.

I remember a gold coin went for 4T, then 0.4T now 0.04T. I don't know when you came in but we are happy we do not have this kind of numbers any more.

I dont believe that is my problem.

The issues I moan about are the removal of choices and options and conditions in which a devoted player, an intelligent maybe player, can gain advantage over the occasional casual maybe free player.

I have absolutely no issue with anyone who likes to be a casual free player, I feel there should be reward for dedication/skill though, that's what always made SC excellent and seems to be being eroded.

I agree with the statement made here by Crafty that he sent at 12.49am on the 1st June. Only time will tell if the changes made already and future changes planned will benefit all players new and old and free players or paying players.

Well, not looking at a topic for a week makes sure that there's something interesting to read.
That's exactly my point, Andy. I have been playing a couple of times before, play it for some months, quit it, and play again two or three years later. I think this is the fourth time I played.
What I remember most is the tweaking of the price, which I think is a lot of fun. For me now, it only turned from tweaking prices into tweaking quality.

I do agree with crafty, it would be more fun and more realistic if you get something in return for the amount of time which you spent in the game. The more time you spent the higher the reward, should make it more interesting for hardcore players.