New corp types. (Fearless Blue)

Is there any point to adding more corp types? It seems to me that the general feeling is that some corp types are the most profitable. Take a look at good player countries and they are loaded with a handfull of different corp types. Why add features player are just not going to use?

Well that said I am a sucker for diversity and have corps of many types. Maybe I should be saying make corps more equal in their profitability to encourage players to branch out away from the usual FMU and electricity etc

not a sucker for diversity any more
All my Solid Missile Fuel Corps are sucking money.
I will be cutting back on the diversity until I see a new Corp type make money over time.

One of my solid missile fuel corps has lost 50B in a day! Ouch.

I built five solid missile fuel corps on LU. They're all losing an incredible amount of money and had a lot of debt so I closed them. And if things don't do well on LU, they don't do well period -_-

Come to think of it, the game forced me to build a car engine corp in one country I conquered that has a load of debt and it's losing money too. It's a state corp, no CRU payment, and it can't make money. 200k workers...

Engines are doing alright on LU and Solid Missile Fuel is improving; however, over 20 SMF corps have closed down recently on LU.

They may have potential to be profitable once the situation stabilizes some. The good news is that the GM has stopped the massive infusions of stock.

Solid fuel corporations, when upgraded will be very profitable. the same applies for all corporations if they are upgraded and sell high quality products.

The profitability depends on the market price which depends on demand and supply. If there is an oversupply, the price will decline and corporations will not be profitable.

This is how the market works and this is also the way corporations are designed.

A corporation cannot make a 50B loss in a month or even a year. The monthly cost of a corporation can be 4B and if it does not sell anything, this will be the max loss.

Cash can decline by 50B in a single month but this is because corporations purchase raw materials in very large quantities.

The materials are used in the following months while nothing needs to be purchased. products are sold and the cash comes back.
It is important to understand this and it is explained.

You should also read the recent game news on corporations.

The building of NEW corporations will depend on your game level.

Some types will be reserved to higher level players only. This is in the making and will become very important.

Many high tech corporations, and the soon to be added space related products corporations, aviation, some high tech weapons and nuclear industries will become more profitable but will require a higher game level to build.

other changes in the corporations game will include:

1. Multiple products per corporation with higher and lower classes.
2. Setup of your own corporations and the freedom to make whatever new products of your own design.

We did indeed add solid missile fuel to the market to prevent shortages in corporations that use it in the production of missiles.

while temporarily adding the product, we never turned a shortage into an oversupply.
we have just reduced the shortage to prevent other corporations from collapsing.

This is standard procedure when new products are added to Simcountry and we stop the interventions once the market stabilizes.

In this case, we will keep an eye on it as more missile producing corporations gradually switch to the used of Solid missile fuel and demand will increase.

We do not think that active players lost such corporations or at least they could easily keep them going.
Solid fuel corporations that closed are in general ones that where automatically created in C3 countries where these corporations are never supported at the start and only survive if they are able to get the raw materials they need and sell relatively low quality.

Sorry Tom, wrong. I had a solid rocket fuel corp go to 60B debt and close within a year. I could have pumped cash into it to keep it going, but at that rate of loss it did not seem sensible.

You have not as of yet introduced any factoring for quality of weapons so I would presume most people buy missiles at Q100, hence the need for high quality missile fuel, which is what you suggest we produce, is negated. This arguement may not stand for nuclear weapons I understand. Eveyone I talk to says the new fuel corps are losing money so please dont be in denial. I am sure things will level out, but for the time being I for one will be staying away from them.

CraftyCockney

I have to disagree about how stock was added. In the first year of Solid Fuel, my 2 corps sold very little, because the supply was way in excess of demand. I even lost several months of production because it could not be sold.

Like Crafty, I too was surprised at how quickly these Fuel corps went into debt. So far they are absolute cows, and several players have closed theirs down.

I will keep my 2 open while they upgrade, and if they become as profitable as you say, I will open many more, but right now I am looking at them simply as an experiment.

Tom,

I love this game and think that you are doing a pretty good job in developing it. I have often been a defender of SC.

I love the idea of tying some corps to country level, because it makes Levels more relevant, so I am looking forward to those changes.

I look forward to future profits in the new corps coming out, and I will always build some to test them out.

Have fun.

Plato

Solid missile fuel corporations are by design profitable at quality 100. same as all other corporations. not extremely profitable but reasonable.

If market price is going down, they become less profitable quite quickly. with higher quality, which is paid for to a degree even if the buyer is buying lower quality, they become very profitable.

They belong to the larger size corporations that have more potential for profit when producing at full capacity and at high quality than smaller ones.

The corporations are very large and use huge amounts of raw materials which they purchase for a year long.
This is where the debt came from. It is not a loss but the money sits in the value of the raw materials. you can see it specified on the corporation page.

if you give them the money they need at the start, they will use the materials, sell the product and get the cash back.

I have

Products Sold Last Year	28,855.13M SC$
Profit Last Year	-25,848.64M SC$
Net Profit Last Year	-25,848.64M SC$
Products Sold Last Month	3,267.25M SC$
Profit Last Month	-3,114.62M SC$
Net Profit Last Month	-3,114.62M SC$
Production Process Quality	180
Quality of the Product	235.3

Naturally, I got

Founded:	November 30 2706
Current date:	May 31 2710
Source [of debt]	Amount
Tree of Knowledge	20.00B SC$
Tree of Life	10.00B SC$
Tree of Life	10.00B SC$
CEO Incorporated	10.00B SC$

Because the game isn't processing or displaying information correctly. You know something is wrong when the supply is 0 with 150 corps and the demand is negative. Link to faulty in-game information.

Now that you touched the quality issue of weapons, I will pre-announce what we intend to publish on the game news this week.

The war engine will be updated within several weeks, to take into account the quality of the army units.
The quality of the army units will depend on several factors:

1. The quality of the weapons (average)
2. Weapons and ammunition upgrading products that will be introduced into simcountry.
3. The quality of the ammunition (Average).

In time, a unit at quality 200 will be much stronger that a unit at quality 100. The army unit quality could be raised much higher.

this may in time allow for a smaller number of very high quality units.

the feature will be introduced in small increments with the introduction of the "Max Unit Quality" property that will be increased in small steps.

It means that if the property will be set to 120 (it is now at 100), the units will fight at their own quality but at a max quality of 120.
In time we will increase the max to 500 or even 1000 or remove the limit.

The gradual introduction is intended as a way to prevent big changes to the war process and allow people to start increasing their quality.

when units are damaged and new weapons are added or ammunition is supplied, the quality will be recomputed based on weighted average.

This feature was described before and promised long time ago.

Laguna,

We will see what it does in the next year.
the sales amount is already quite high

The products price is probably not very high which is where the problem is.
we expect sales can reach even 70B.

The market information on FB isn't being displayed correctly.
Demand is never negative. And the market price isn't 10 000$.

Market price for Solid Missile Fuel isn't being computed correctly.
For instance, on WG it should be near the max of what it can be.

I have no idea why Solid Missile Fuel isn't being sold when the market suffers shortage, and the selling strategy is reasonable.
This probably is happening on all worlds.


There are problems for this specific market. Give it a look and I sent you an email.

I am glad the Solid Fuel is designed to be profitable at Q100. My problem since the introduction of this new corp is that the GM adds MILLIONS of units of product so often that these corps will never be profitable as long as that continues.

The GM adds so much product that the price is rock bottom and the market is not sustainable as it currently exists.

Either the GM is going to be the supplier of this product or we fend for ourselves.

Right now, I am about to close 2 Fuel corps and write these off as one of the many corp types that can never be consistently profitable.

I tried to use the Profit screen to pump cash into my solid missle fuel. I kept keying in the amount and reentering, but my cash balance never changed. I tried other corps and the cash showed up immediately. These kind of glitches makes the game a chore. Anyone want a corp and 3 countries?

Solid Missile Fuel - I agree that it started very unprofitable, but I had thought this was based on the added supply and the low price of it. For this reason, I actually bought up the entire amount of the extra supply (20 million units) one month in order to trade it later for more money. My investment is paying off, as the price has since about doubled.

That said, my 3 solid missile fuel corporations that I just checked all lost over 4.5 billion last month. None of them have shown signs of being profitable and all are at 160 quality.

In fact, when I worked it out, I found the following:

Price: 10,761 SC$ per unit
Units produced: 179,798
Quality: 208.6

Income if all items sold at market price x quality: 4,036,005,895.908 (about 4 billion)

My expenses (with nothing sold) are: 4,527.55M SC$ (about 4.5 billion)

This is with solid missile fuel at $10,761, or $ 761 above the base price of 10,000.

The easy solution is to increase production to 220,000, temporarily, and then to lower this number, if needed, later. I think this is a better way to phase-in this new item then to just artifically create supply.

Again, as more data is avalible, the production could be lowered later, however, I think temporary increases in production are a good way to spurr new corporations to be created for new market types, and will help to ensure that new adopters for these corporation types are not discrouaged from adopting to other new corporate types.