PETITION TO GAMEMASTER: Fix Factory Utilization page discrepencies (Little Upsilon)

The previous petition to fix the sliders on the units page worked. It took about 3 weeks to get the attention of the GMs and 2 more weeks to get it fixed. Let's try again.


If you go to the "Factory Utilization" page, do the following test:

Pick 5 non-military non-zero surplus products.
Compare the surplus from the popup (click the product link) with the displayed surplus on the right-most column.

There is a huge discrepency.

I did the test on LU on Jan 2534

Advanced Effectivity Products
Popup surplus 22,221
Display surplus 579

Books And Newspapers
Popup shortage 1,056,448,467
Display shortage -120,200,806

Electric Components
Popup surplus 1,960,123,565
Display surplus -56,486,168 (shortage !!)

Meat
Popup shortage 39,800,987
Display shortage -19,856,120

Services
Popup shortage 9,197,354,470
Display shortage -2,892,626,943


This is only a sample.
These discrepancies have existed since many years but no1 has raised this issue.

I just read WildEyes guide and it reminded me of this bug.


If you would so kind to second this petition, post your name below and it will add to the reply count.

I don't think you are reading the page correctly, simply because there is no popup for surpluses on the Util. page - there is only the raw number in the far column.

-Wild

EDIT:

What popup are you looking at? The utilization page shows just that: utilization. It shows the production capacity of all factories, the actual production, what % utilization the actual production represents given the world capacity. It then shows you the demand and surplus, but there is no surplus popup.

The product popup shows you market surplus. Click on the product name (it's a link underlined).

Market surplus is different from the "surplus" column = discrepancy.

If you need a screenshot, let me know and I'll try to remember how to paste one here.

Ah, you're talking about the discrepancy between the Utilization Page and the "World Market: Demand, Supply, and Prices" page. As I thought, you are reading the utilization page wrong.

The Utilization page shows you the surplus between the raw production vs. raw demand. If you look at the moment, you will see that for AEP the prod last month is 8,775 and the demand was 7,608. Accordingly, the surplus listed on the utilization page is 1,167.

However, the world market condition for AEP puts it at a surplus of 21k, which is shown on the "Demand, Supply, and Prices" page.

The reason this is so, is because the utilization page deals with the corps in a vacuum. Basically, if all you had was the corporation and no other factors in supply (like previous surpluses compounding or players selling stockpiles), then this is the world picture. The other page shows the reality. Both are useful for their own reasons.

It's not entirely intuitive, but once you figure it out it makes a lot of sense and is very useful. It's not uncommon for even experienced players to read these pages wrong. I know it took me a while to work everything out myself.

At the very least the "surplus" column should be renamed to "production surplus" and a new column "market surplus" should be added so you don't have to click on the product popup to get the accurate info every time.

I very rarely used the util page and found it useless until this morning when I read your analysis.