Confused, and can't figure this out...

Hello,
I'm somewhat of a beginner to this game, and I'm having major difficulties figuring out how to handle corporations, hiring, and the associated settings.
My main problem right now:
Employment in corporations.
I've been making corporations even when I don't have enough workers for one (those pesky little high tech engineers!) assuming that workers will automatically migrate to those corporations once they're available (I'm assuming that corporation priority is equally distributed..If I'm totally wrong please tell me). I'm noticing that about 30% of my corporations are only empoying 10% of the required workers, although many are available. For example, one corporation only employs 10% of low-level workers, although I have about 600k unemplyed low level workers in my country. How does this happen? Furthermore, to reduce my engineer problem, I've closed down an unneeded corporation, and those engineers literally disappeared into thin air!
I would be extremely grateful if somebody here posted a detailed, "noob" orientated explanation on how to handle corps (I use all state owned, so keep that in mind, and I will not change that). Something that explains employment, nationalizaton (I obviously know how this works in real life but how does it work in the game).
Thank you very much in advance, for any replies that come!

welcome to the game,

don't build corp that you don't have the proper workers for, it will just eat your money every month.

workers may be distributed evenly to corps if your salary are the same, if salary setting not the same then workers will gravitates to higher paying corps.

some one did tell me that it's better to have say 10 corps that each does 100% then 100 corps that each does 10%...the logic in this would be that you need each corps to cover its cost of operation.

the education priorities have alwasy been confusing to me and i think probably most players too, 'cause i have yet to know of any one can explain to me.

read my various posts on this forum, i have addressed them.

good luck and try very hard to have fun in sc

Thanks XON! I will put off mass production of corps for now
Does anybody else have input?

i suppose, a general outline of how the education system works. well, i'm trying to figure that one out a little better right now. but i thought it was mostly straight forward.

the higher the education index, the more you can train/educate, to better paying positions. while maintaining enough of the low grade professions to match. your education priorities should add up to 120. and in terms of over all benefit, 120 EI should be a starting point. most players run it at 150-200, to be able to train more high tech.

for a idea of what to set them
teachers/uni, 4
health care professionals, 4 for cruising or 5 to build up
LLM 5-8
MLM 5-8 for no army, 12 for a basic defense, 15+ for any serious military, 18 min for a heavy war slave, probably 20 or more, MLM are used as officers.
HLM 8-12
Exe 5-9
HTE 12 min, 15-20
HTS 12 min, 15-18
HTX 12 min, 12-15, sometimes 18, but this one can hurt if you over train, as they have short careers.

i use these numbers to run my EI, and Health Indexes, in the 115-125 range. You may need to adjust it to fit your goals, and your country needs. Countries some times might have allot of one profession retire all at once. so its fairly important to Shepard it to your ends.

and for the Education Index, EI, the indivual indexes, of school, and such, should be even. The EI is based on the lowest, not an average, (same for the Transportation Index,)

is that what you where looking for?

the confusion on education index is that in this game you should keep your "unemployed" more thaan your "needed"

the definitions for "unemployed" on earth are
(1) you have the qualifications, but there is no job for you
(2) there are lots of jobs, but you got no qualification for any of them

these two definitions are not define in sc, so you have to keep guessing, as i have posted on this forum in my varous posts.

it would be nice if sc can simply show how many positions are vacant and how many workers are available, then you can match workers and positions. it is not the case in sc, or that i just cannot find how to match these. also i have yet to find any country that has employment = 100% as we do have for corps in the country. should be done the same way for country as is being done for corps to lessen the confusion for most people.

scratches head

i can think of 2 ways off the top of my head to get the info you want. you can get that by clicking on the "Employment Index," it lists total professionals, employed, and unemployed, needed for 100% production, and needed for new schools, hospitals, and corps, for each worker type, with 18 month graphs, and an age category break down. thats allot of detail.

secondly, from "Education Priorities," it will lists the needed for 100% production, and of course you can adjust your education priorities, to focus more attention on the areas that need it.

from their, you can change professionals, or select it from the drop down menus, under labor, and it will give you the same info, minus Exe, and HTXs. this is where you can demote workers like Teachers, or LLM to worker types that you might be low on. This one was probably good to make me brush over. look at the age range of Nurses, they start at an age range, younger than HLWs, if you demote nurses to HLW, they will revert to their original jobs, as they are 2 young to be HLWs. but they are fine for MLW, go figure, but thats how it works. usually LLW, and teachers are the highest source of demotions to HLW

not sure about any one else, but this feature seems to be obsolete to me. i never have a need to demote professionals. In the past their was a pop issue, that resulted in players needing to demote at least 50K to HLW, every day, (50K was the max you could demote at once, back then.) but since they have fixed that, by running your education priorities right, I have no need to manually do it any more.

employment in a country, RL or SC, will never reach 100%. in the real world, you want it over 95%, while in sim country, do to the imperfections of the game 90-95% is good, it is possible to go over 95% in SC, but one must be aware that the GM can change staffing levels of corps, at any time. Corps Staffing is currently very stable, but their was a period of a couple RL years, that every time you fixed your workers, the GM would do it again. once they reached their goals, they stopped, and things have been pretty stable since.

@josias,
the best employment i had in sc is about 97%, so i think it is impossible to reach 100% because the definition for unemployment in sc seems to be those who do not qualify for jobs and those that sitting around because there are no job available for them.

to get about 97% i had to demote many highly educated workers because my country is too educated

the ability to move demote should be for all professions, that higher profession can always be demote to lower professions. the way it is now, you got only the 3 lowest professions that you can demote to and none of these 3 can be demoted to the others either.

Xon, it really sounds like every game feature you have difficulty with, is the GMs fault, for not following your same logic.

as it is, the game works, many people have mastered the ability to manage a Sim-Countries work force. and guide their countries to untold riches. with less smooth game features than we have now.

if you think something should be more convenient for you, talk to the GM, rather than b-ing on the beginners forum. please.

@josias,
i'm trying to follow the logic of this game.

my emails to gm have no replies for many weeks now.

this game is very challenging, particularly that if you been taught to walk forward all your life and now many features here asking you to walk backward.

for example, can anyone please explain this game's logic to have a price set and then use that price as a base to determine the new prices for that product base on the quality of that product again? where is the foundation? as i have said in a post of mine, the market price for a strategic bomb is $13.90 at Q100, and i have been looking at other players' costs to produce this product; i seen some players with production cost as low as $1.70B per month to high of over $2.00B per month. thus at the low end, a yearly cost would be $20.40B and at the hig end would be $24.00B. note a corp can only produce one unit of this product per year. i have yet to figure out how to produce this product such that i can be under the $13.90B market price. i'm trying very hard to understand the difference in quality of this product at Q100, Q200, Q300, and so on. i would be grateful if anyone please explain these differences.

this is an awesome game on how to manage resources, so i'm still trying to understand its logic. i hope that my posts on this forum will help provide me the answers i need to be very good in this game. i read the game docs over and over, but this forum has provided me more answers than the docs.

thank you for your attention. your help is sincerely appreciated

XON think of your bomb analogy like cars. Say the cheepest car you can get cost 13.9 that would be a Q100 a crappy cheep car starting at $10k us dollars if it were real.

If you were building that car in the real world you would be using Q100 resources cheep labor and the like. And nobody would buy it for 40k. In this game those cars would be built in a factory with low payroll say 150 and low resource quality bought from corporations you control for market price that is fixed by the GM. Unless you tried to make crappy bombs/cars you could not make a bomb/car that the GM would let you sell for 13.9 because with out trying you will likely end up buying at least some resources over 120Q.

If you go the other rout. Make say Porches or really good bombs. You would be a fool to sell them at 10k/13.9. And in this game the GM will not let you because the only reason would be to "help a friend/yourself" and there are plenty of other ways in the game to do that...simply transfer money etc. If you were to do that in real life you could sell a Porsche to your brother for a Dollar. But your brother would still have to pay tax of the Fair Market Value of a new Porsche. In this game the GM makes high end goods only sellable for their idea of Fair Market Value. (you can argue about their choices of fair prices but please just yell at your screen.)

Those players with a cost to produce at say 24B are not and can not sell the finished product at 13.9. They are selling Q250 or so at the lowest GM price for that product AT THAT QUALITY LEVEL. And on the open market they are probably asking GM Quality price + 200% (the game cap on raising your asking price on the open market).

So to sum it up. My guess as to why you are having problems is. You are buying all your resources and componets at the Quality market price + 150-200%. Then when you sell them even if you ask for Market Q Price + 200% with what you payed in payroll and resources there is no or almost no profit left.

I am still quite new...less than a week. But one of the first things i learned is. If i want to sell stuff and make money i need to control how much i pay for what it takes to make the stuff.

Look at any of your corporations...the resources you bought last. It will say the Market price at the time of the sale and what you payed at the time of the sale. I am guessing you are paying a lot more than the market price.

Figure out what some of your biggest expenses are resource wise for what you want your end product to be. Then build a corp or two for each of those expenses and maybe the biggest expense of those new corps as well. Then contract to yourself to sell. With a contract you pay Market price + Quality with no 150-200% markup. You will have better results. Even more so if you stop your boycott of Enterprises where you can manufacture your resources in non president nations with payroll at 200 or less with full happy production then sell it to your safe nation finished goods corps with the expensive 300 make the nation happy wages. And do what pleases you with the profits.

I have read a lot of your posts. Your fairly smart but you seem to get an idea and run with it never looking outside the box. You can either have fun with this game tweaking things to try and do better. Or have fun yelling at the screen because you dont want it to be like it is...or just find a different game. Everyone has things they dont like and feel free to express it here...once. But every post you make it seems you reply to the topic then complain about something that may or may not be related. We get it. Some of it we probably even agree with but after you have complained once or so. Let it go because nobody goes to the newbie or help forums to hear complaints. They come here to help or learn or be sociable and friendly...mostly. Nobody in school hung out with the crabby kid that kept crying.....I probably should leave this paragraph out because it may sound rude and if so i apologize. You seem like a good person and this game has a steep learning curve and i believe you really do mean well.

@erin,
when you been long enough in sc, you might see what i've been saying.

on quality, as far as i know, on earth, a hydrogen is a hydrogen. if the atomic structure is different then it would not be a hydrogen.

you have any clue as to why the world market price set for a hydrogen bomb (strategic bomb) is 13.9B when the cost to produce it is at least 24B? in free enterprise america, we always set our price higher than our cost. if you set your price lower than what it cost to produce the product, then you will be bankrupting your corp?

your main problem is imagining you are running an economy and country on earth. you are not on earth, you are on simcountry, discard your earth logic and use simcountry knowledge to play simcountry.

oops forgot to put @XON there

aaron, i'd like to learn from you then.

please advise your logic on how i can turn at least 1B profit per corp?

i'm looking forward to learn from your sc knowledge

The base pricing of all products is set for the corporations to be profitable.
This varies by product and food product might be less profitable than some high tech products.

However, at base pricing they are profitable ,and at higher qualities they can be even more profitable.
If there is an oversupply, they might become unprofitable and even bankrupt.

Nuclear weapons are extremely profitable and are sold for gold coins on a space station.
Production cost is much lower than the base price and the same price in gold coins is frequently a multiply of the base price.

We see some players making large profits and gaining gold coins by selling such products.
Their cost is in SC $, the revenue is in gold coins.

@andy,
i have been searching for products that are profitable at the base price at Q100, please let me know what these products are. i have look through my own corps as well as many other players' corps to find products that are profitable at the gm set world market prices for them.

as i've posted already, game level 1 products chemicals and oil are much more profitable than game level 5 products such as advanced effectivity products and advanced quality products.

for example, comparing these corps at the max upgrades: 200 for country corp and 225 for enterprise corp

my XON 1 Oil 1 corp has max production capacity of 30,000,000 tons per year, and its last year's cost of $26,138.39M and last year's income of $37,912.89M at about average Q233. the base price for oil is $374 per ton. is this corp profitable producing at base price at Q100?

my enterprise's XON E1 Products Effectivity 1 corp has max production of 72 upgrades per year, and its last year's cost of $34,523.19M and income of $30,309.60M at about average Q296. the gm base market price for this product is set at $132.50M SC per upgrade. is this corp profitable producing this product at Q100?

i have not seen the base prices for these products change in the last several earth months either.

Minimum quality is 120.
If you purchase all your raw materials at Q120 and upgrade your corporation, it will be profitable.
all corporations are.

just make sure you have hiring levels at 100%, production at a high level (check the welfare index), and the product is not in oversupply.

Under these conditions, the corporation will always be profitable. At higher quality levels, they will be very profitable.

This has been the case during the entire history of the game. levels may have changed, but then numbers, salaries, pricing used to be different too.

There are no exceptions. It is very easy to keep corporations profitable and nearly all of them, in all the worlds are.

@andy,

thanks

perhaps i am buying the quality too high at 240 for enterprise corps and 190 for country corps?

most of my corps are at max upgrades, but some are still not profitable.

basically you're saying that buy at 120 and just max the upgrade for the corps, they should be profitable if at 100% hiring and at least 100% production?

isn't the other side of welfare is salary? i've seen few at 120 and most at the high end of 300. i have tried the high end, and my rationale is that highly pay workers contribute to the individual taxes for the country? am i wrong, or what am i missing?

Andy your statement is true for most corporations but not all. As Super and I pointed out in another thread, there is a bunch of corporation types that by (flawed) design cannot be profitable whatever we do, except of course for the rare occasion that many of their supplies are in the green and undervalued. These are (among others):

Conventional Missiles
Cruise Missiles (Land and Ship Based)
Plutonium
WG Uranium

In all these corps the price does not move of course, so there's no case of supply and demand: The problem is their fundamental design.

Q 120 is low. You can be profitable if you purchase at 120.
but purchasing at Q200 in fully upgraded corporations is much better.

welfare is essential.
100 is low.
It can get to 120-125 and you produce 25% more.
for this, you need salaries to be in the 300 range, and the corporation must be in a country that has a good welfare index.
115 should be easy to reach, 123 is much better.

Of course we know all that. I had an enterprise on KB, Apo Inc, that was making 500B+/month from 620 corporations (before the recent changes of course - now it's making around 300B lol, but that's another story). The point I'm trying to make is that either at 120Q or 200Q or whatever Q supply and with 130+ welfare (as I have in my countries) and with whatever salaries you want, there's little you can do to make profitable these corporations I mentioned above (Conventional, Cruise etc).

what is the formula for the welfare index?

so i should be buying at Q200 for my 200 upgraded country corps, and their salaries be at 300?

@andy,
don't think you have answer my questions regarding my oil corp and effectivity corp above?

unless my math is wrong, these corps are not profitable if they produce Q120 products? simply just divided the difference of the incomes and expenses with my output quality, then multiply that by 1.20?

that has been my whole arguement that the price of a product should not be base on the output quality times the pre-set world market price. it must be base on the quantity of product being produced and the costs to produce such product? therefore, more efficient corps should have lower costs than corps that presidents/ceos pay no attention to while leaving them on automation?