W3C - Trading in Simcountry (Little Upsilon)

"Out of curiosity, how come the system YOU invented and presented to us as realistic simulator, could work for 7 years and now YOU refuse to pay for the difference? What is YOUR exact problem with paying the difference? YOUR closed system argument does not hold water, because the game never was, and with the ability to inject in-game cash through the Cash Market into the system from outside, never will be anything close to the imaginary closed system YOU like to use as the irrefutable argument in this debate.

Why should YOU not pay the difference? It certainly does not bother those who play this .. game."

Of course, we all know the answer is the Cash Market. Due to the cashout, the GM has a financial interest in not paying. There is no other reason that makes sense.

But we all know Tom will deny this to high heaven...

@ Petra's suggestion: Easiest and fairest multiplier would be (sold quality/ordered quality).

So 333/190=somewhere around 1.75

if I ordered 100 quality=333/100=3.33

and if I sold 100 quality to someone ordering 190, 100/190=0.53

and so on.

Easy system in which high-quality goods are WORTH more. Period.

I would support that as a mechanism to reconcile demand for moderate to low quality with supply of high quality. It is akin to dilution IRL...we still pay for the high quality price, but we dilute it to make it last longer.

After reading all the replies and most carefully parsing Tom's comments, I believe I grasp the problem.

Many of us, myself included, have been looking at SC's macroeconomy through the filter of capitalist, free market economic principles. This is in error, a false premise.

The SimEconomy is a command economy with some trappings of free markets. The costs of production, supply and demand levels, and most importantly prices are determined by central planning.
Therefore, when we discuss "The Market", we unconsciously add the word "Free" in front of it with all that it falsely implies. There are other forms of markets and economic systems. We simply are not educated in their mechanics nor culturally conditioned to think in their terms.

Tom is referring to markets and buying and selling within the context of SC's command economy, the mechanics by which transactions are processed. The rules that apply in that context are not the classical Laws of Supply and Demand to determine pricing and "who gets what" with which we are all familiar and conditioned to. We think in terms of positive utility that justifies paying higher prices for some real or perceived advantage. That is not the case in Marxist economic theory.
Our economies are consumer driven, with supply nearly always "green", satisfying immediate demand. In Marxist economies, supply is nearly always red, ensuring that there is no overproduction. With fixed pricing, the consumer may wait for demand to be satisfied, but the price will be the same.

SimCountry uses a hybrid approach the retains the central control of command economics but allows for some fluctuations based on buying/selling strategies. The Supply and Demand curves are not reconciling production and demand to arrive at price as we are accustomed to, but within the SimEconomy reconcile quality and asking price to arrive at a negotiated quality/ price compromise. This is the "averaging" of which Tom speaks. This is why our products continue to sell, despite the difference between requested and produced quality. So, Tom is not dissembling when he describes how the SimMarket is functioning. It simply a matter of two different systems using the same terms and language.

One must remember that in any command economy, the imperatives and priorities of the central planners will take precendence over the desires of suppliers or consumers. The central planner endeavours to oversee and control the distribution of goods and services while retaining control of the overall supply and prices. This W3C does.
Their priorities are to maintain a somewhat stable exchange that avoids an untimely degree of shortage, ensures a measure of profitabilty for producers, and requires minimal direct intervention. How this is accomplished is through their own system, however. Attempting to apply conventional economic thinking to this system is pointless. It has its own rules.

To be fair, it does accomplish what a completely free market system would not within the game.
We have stable prices and profits and are rarely plagued by unfillable shortages.
A completely free market system as utilized in other games like the WarCraft Auction House would result in supply attempting to meet immediate demand which would be disastrous for this system. Laguna is perfectly correct to point out that "green" markets are to avoided at all costs. Overproduction or even insufficiently "red" markets would strangle our ability to sell at any price quite quickly.

In conclusion, we must simply accept that our central planners are intent upon reducing the monetary mass within the SimEconomy, scaling back every aspect of the game, and will likely use the tools of negative utility(something is useful because it mitigates or negates negative consequences) to do so.
We must trust that some degree of profitability, perhaps not as much as we might like, will be maintained, but be prepared for W3C to continually go too far in adjustments that require other adjustments to offset.

This is going to be a painful, messy process.

We can only hope the ends are worth the means.

Of course we must accept the dictate, and these debates over game mechanics are just rhetorical exercises.

What we should, actually what W3C should, really debate or ask is:

What is good and bad game design?

Where good game design is such design which is able to draw in enough players who will, through paying for the game, allow the game designers and game owners to get paid for the service they provide and make a profit on top of that.

Not to scam enough players who will dump their money into the game, and when they'll find out what is really going on they will leave. We all seen that happened many times, and that is why the game more or less stagnates over the years instead of growing.

What we should, actually what W3C should, really debate or ask is:

What can we do, what kind of features and improvements can we make, to gain more players or to make current players happier?


And we end up with what?


I do not want to pay you vs I want you to pay me!



This is just .. sad.

I wonder what would happen if there were no willing sellers under Tom's scheme.

If the owners of large enterprises "struck" and refused to sell product until sellers are paid for the quality of produce.

A market cannot function without sellers, no matter what kind of market it is.

If Tom will not listen, perhaps it is time for me to explore the possibility of organizing enterprises in a sellers' strike.

If I may say something. . .


We are all so . . . %#%#&

LoL no really we are.

No naval war = no fun

No profit = no fun

no fun = no money for w3c

By all means I am a fighter and will not quit until I see the results of such changes make this game unplayable.

But so far, from what i have seen, Given recent game changes or a combination of them have made things really impossible.

For example. . . Worker issues.

As easily as the problem was created, it could be wriiten into the programming and fixed.

Why it has not, eludes me. But to alot of people here it is quite obvious. We are getting jerked off(excuse my vulgarity).

Another example

While it is quite possible to fight naval and longer distance wars then border to border conflicts, naval changes have severely hampered this part of the game. 400 nfps has to overcome all kinds of def batts to eventually and effectively hit targets.


This alone is not a deterrence to naval battles. But consider that ammo will reduce in quality and quantity. It takes an astronomical amount of time to build up the ammo needed to take a well defended country. NFP missiles are quite expensive as well. Now you still have to get several other categories of weapon ammo to be say "ready" to attempt a battle.

No matter which way you do it ammo first or weapons first, it will be highly expensive to play the war game. We know its smarter to get ammo first, but now it will disappear while you wait for weapons. This is crazy.

As an example

I recently with the utmost futility fought a war with Laguna on FB I went through 15K nfps and 800K missiles in about 15 rl minutes of fighting. I was attacking the lightest defended target and still lost astronomical amounts of weapons and ammo.

This is rediculous, I "MIGHT" have moved his index a point or two, IF THAT

In response Croseus was attacking my country. I will readily admit that I neglected defense and had about 40 int wings up and NO DEF batts OR TANKS OR ART and NO GARRISONS. It seriously took him 8 hours to take that country.

That is rediculous.

Nothing about either side of those battles is realistic.

If I had 15K planes to send at a defense knowing the defender has thousands of batts and interceptors, why in the heck would I only send 400 at a time to get slaughtered. There is nothing close to realistic about that.

If I have no land defense, and only a small air defense, why would it take a superior force all that time to conquer a relatively defenseless nation? There is nothing realistic about that either.

This game is marketed and advertised as a realistic economic and war simulation game. I can see recent changes to both sides of the game that have destroyed either side. You cannot war unless you wanna pay an astronomical amount of money on all things necessary to have a meaningful war. You cannot fall back to the economic side because there are changes here to go against this as well.

Especially worker and population issues.

Why does a country of 40 to 60 mil gain pop and continue gaining? Simple answer : Because you want it to. You program them to.
Why does a country of 80 to one hundred mil lose pop? Simple answer: because you want them to, you programmed them to.

If a country half my size gains pop with a modest health index, a country twice the size of that one with a high health index and cost, should gain about the same or really in all seriousness gain double. The fact that it doesn't is BS. Its written that way. Why isn't w3c cap;ping pop limits so people aren't buying pop and fruitlessly converting workers every month. I have two twenty mil pop countries that i have been transferring workers out of to keep up on this. Some months I bring in as many as 70 - 80K high level workers and 150 - 200K medium level workers on top of the 50K i can change from nurses to high level workers. Only to log off for tw game months ( overnight ), then log on to find that 65% of the MLW have disappeared and HLW vanished and only have about 20 K with a shortage of 50K. In only two months where did they go?? I understand that they only return to work at 10
5 at a time per game month, but where did the remaining workers go???? I was also under the impression that nurses are relatively young part of the work force. So given the fact that i have been converting them for over a real month shouldn't the age of these nurses being converted slow the rate of shortages in the HLW dept? If they are retirng and/or dying, yet i replace them every month with fresh young workers, what gives??? Why are they disappearing so fast?


Its stuff like this that makes everything meaningless. IMO

I really just wanted to say the first and second line of this post. I am not sure how I got to rambling on about all this. OOOPS.

Tom, I don't see why your averaging of quality and price can't be tilted toward whether a product is in high supply or high demand.

If a product is in high demand, the buyer should pay more, the seller get more.

If a product is in high supply, the buyer should pay less, the seller get less.


For something like ammo, I should be able to get a higher price than say coffee. Very high demand item, vs. an item in high supply.


Maybe another solution, on top of what you're suggesting, is to let the top price float a little higher? You have 0.3 on the low end, and 1.8 on the high end. I think the high end should be changed to say 2.25 or even 2.7. 0.3 is less than 1/3 of market price, while 1.8 is not even double. If you raise the ceiling some, it would allow for more profitability on the products which are in high demand. This would in turn, cause players to build more of these corporations, hoping for a greater return. This would then improve the balance of supply/demand for these corporations over time.


Your problem with the simple averaging of quality, is you are making UPGRADES useless. You are making HIGH QUALITY useless. It is unintentionally tanking profitability of corporations. Further changes in this regard will only serve to hurt profitability even more. I don't even recommend to most players to even make truly public corporations anymore, as they are next to worthless except in your own countries, and even there, the extra value is marginal at best.

Make HIGH quality useful, somehow, someway. Otherwise, your implementation of this averaging stuff in full, will TANK the profits of everyone, based on how corporations are set up, and how quality works currently.

We the players, play your game, and are able to do MUCH more testing as a whole, because there is so much more data for us to work with as a whole. Look at some regular countries, look at how they are set up. I don't think any of us are trying to take advantage of what you're trying to propose, we're just trying to protect the viability of this game. Profits will continue to sink with your changes, and maybe then, when finally no one is profitable, you will see that you guys made mistakes, when its far too late to fix. Your customer base gone. NO ONE wants to play a game where they can't succeed. That's the route you're going down.

Q

I agree with Shcyzmattica on the worker issues. Its getting quite ridiculous and absurd. Your latest change made things WORSE for MLW/HLW.

Q

Tom, another simple solution until you get to the bigger ones.

Change the C3 demand from 100 to 190 for its corporations. As 190 is optimal, they should be ordering optimal? I remember you guys saying that it would be raised from 100 to 150, but you're saying its still 100.


Is your goal honestly just to MAKE SURE profits go down to 0 over time?

Look at your # of Enterprises. They are WAY down from what they used to be. This is the part of the game which is suffering the most.

Q

I think I love ya Wendy!!LOL that saved me a lot of typing!!

All the MLW and HLW must go on permanent Holiday!!

I know they don't die! At least the SC figures tell me that1

is the game for sale yet?

Show a little more respect, coolwind. If your contribution isn't even disguised as constructive, don't bother.

I apologise John. A light-hearted comment misplaced.

Now, 200 interceptors just wiped the floor with my 1000 fighter planes when taking a C3......

The drones in the same unit took no losses though, but still, what next? Tanks that can't attack a jeep???

OMG.

I think Tom has managed to unite me, Wendy and Stu in the common cause of universal objection to GM taking a wrecking ball to gameplay.

My, has hell frozen over.

I never thought I would be agreeing with Wendy, and i'm sorry, but this sucks.

1000 fighters lost trying to take out a C3 air def unit? Man.....

*sigh*

guess I may as well sell the guns for gold coins and stay in war protection. what an exhilarating existence!

@ Tom

I really enjoy this game, but I have never before these last few weeks seen more than one or two experienced players upset about something somewhat small. Now, most of my peers as well as players who have considerable experience are becoming increasingly frustrated, and many are leaving. I honestly didn't think I'd ever see myself saying this, but I don't know if I will continue to extend my countries. If I can't make money and I can't really fight, whats the point in having the countries?

Contemplate the first causality of this change:

Shortage
Thu Mar 3, 2377 The citizens of Lance of Longinus are complaining of shortages. There is a shortage of Coffee.

Coffee shortage. My sims no longer have the hype to endure such hardships.

And I want to know whats going on here;

Facilities Demolished
Thu Mar 3, 2377 Due to a lack of Senior Doctors, Etruria was unable to maintain its Hospitals. Their number has been reduced from 1081 to 1080 hospitals.

I have a load of them unemployed, so many that I can even build more hospitals.

As mentioned in this thread and in several others, the game mechanics for product quality are funny. It is especially painful when applied to the common markets. For the first two months of playing this game, I had a self-sufficient country, using local markets for over 95% of my imports. That was a big mistake because my state corps were buying from each other at Q296, and half my corps were losing money. I had to cancel all my common market imports as well, as I was buying supplies at Q360. My country was burning through Q296 water maintenance units, and training soldiers with Q296 missiles. The higher my common market score climbed, peaking in the mid 800's, the lower my financial index fell. There is no logic in this system, as my attempts at employing the common market system to achieve self-sufficiency become counterproductive and ultimately detrimental toward my balance sheet.

"If C3s are ordering 100Q goods, and I am producing 296, 333, etc Q goods, instead of averaging the prices, why don't I get paid for the 333Q, and my goods morph into the equivalent 100Q goods "

I think some of the ideas mentioned in this thread may actually work, but what about Q368 production plants, roads, and maintenance units? Would selling one Q368 government facility equal 3.6 Q100 facilities? Did someone mention that perhaps individual production plants can decrease in quality each month, and need to be repurchased when the quality hits 0?

"When it is implemented and you offered a product of Q350 and received payment at 290 it means that the match was a requested quality of 230. "

I don't see the logic in averaging the proposed sale price and the proposed buy price. We're not bargaining at the flea market. You say $10, I say $2 and we settle for $6. I get a $10 product for 6 bucks, sweet! Except that next time, nobody will make the $10 product anymore because the cost of the extra quality is not recovered. So he'll start making $6 products, and of course I'll bid $2, so we average out at $4, which causes the seller to reduce quality again next time, etc, etc. The averaging system only works if there is more utility in a $10 product than for a $2 product or if corporations with Q100 products were inherently profitable anyway, then corps wouldn't mind averaging system as much, as anything over Q100 would be extra income anyway.

Furthermore, if we start averaging, then astute players will automatically overinflate their prices to compensate for the averaging effect, to the effect of pricing a Q350 product at 600 prices to maintain their current level of profitability. The end result is no loss for a few, and bankruptcies for many others, especially those CEOs and Presidents who don't want to purchase Q350 government facilities and Q333 factory maintenance units.

Whatever, I'm just a rambling noob anyway.

Tom, your AVERAGING in reality does NOT HAPPEN!

Quality 370 product:

If I sell at 300, 330, 370, or 400, I get the SAME PRICE RANGE in the end. You know what it is? 290-297!

Quality 333 product:

If I sell at 300, 333, or 360, I get the SAME PRICE RANGE in the end. You know what it is? 290-297!

You know what the ONLY difference is in these situations? The 400% for the 370, and the 360% for the 333, take a month or two to sell all the product. The rest sell same month. Result ends up being the SAME. There is NO AVERAGING.


Tom, would you like for me to post DOZENS of mathematical examples of this phenomenon? Better yet, would you prefer a few HUNDRED to better get the point across?

And I will reiterate once again, as you don't seem to get it. CONTRACTS ARE HAVING THE SAME PROBLEMS. Contracts above about 296 quality or so DON'T WORK, they only give you about 296.


Admit to the populace of the game, that you have a PRICE CAP in place, and get it over with.

I can provide for you hundreds upon hundreds of examples of this being reality. Unfortunately, I don't desire to flood the forum doing so, or wasting a few hours of my time doing so.


You are purposely deceiving everyone as to reality. How many more times do I have to explain what is really happening for you to understand it or get it?

MANY other players can attest to the exact same results. So would you prefer THOUSANDS of combined examples then? Would this maybe prove the point?

Remove the price cap on goods, let the market control the prices as before. The C3's have nothing to do with it, we both know this. The price cap is there to REDUCE cash levels. Period.

People ought to listen to Quaxocal there a bit more. (people = w3c). :3

I honestly cannot believe that a business in this line of work takes no cogniscance of customer complaints, and most of them should be easy to fix.

The simplest point has not been answered even yet:-

If a corp sells ALL the product in the game month at the asking price 333 then why doesn't the dollar revenue match up with these sales?

All I've seen from the GMs is incomprehensible, evasive waffle.

Maybe Tom should explain how C3's MAGICALLY produce 185 quality product out of 100 quality corporations/100 quality supplies?

Yeah, man, what the hell?! I want a magic +85 to my corps' quality!


Welcome to "The Kingdom of Soreno"

President: No President
Presidency start date: -
World: Little Upsilon
Continent: Hercula Major
Region: Vanguard


Bokarra Boats
Product: Boats
Latest Market Price: Click to see history 558,611 SC$ per boat
Corporation Type: state corporation
Founded: April 6 2376
Total Number of Shares Outstanding: 100 Million
Shares you own: 0
Percentage of Shares owned: 0.0%
Estimated Market Value in Gold Coins: 0.02 GC
Located in: The Kingdom of Soreno
Controlled by: The Kingdom of Soreno
Public Offering: perform a Public Offering


General Data
Products Sold Current Month 1,960.16M SC$
Cash Available Now 47,249.90M SC$ Click to see history

Products Sold Last Year 17,096.05M SC$
Profit Last Year 10,707.48M SC$
Net Profit Last Year 5,613.28M SC$
Products Sold Last Month 1,982.37M SC$ Click to see history
Profit Last Month 1,267.51M SC$ Click to see history
Net Profit Last Month 665.44M SC$ Click to see history
Assets 56,864.68M SC$ Click to see history
Market Value 10,682.54M SC$ Click to see history
Outstanding Loans 0.00M SC$ Click to see history
Value of Supplies 2,958.42M SC$ Click to see history
Production Last Month 1,760 Click to see history
Production Level Last Month 100.50 % Click to see history
Employment Level Last Month 100.00 % Click to see history
Production Process Quality 100 Click to see history
Quality of the Product 185.0 Click to see history
Production Process Effectivity 100 Click to see history
Welfare Index 100.5 Click to see history


Available Materials and Contracted Services
Product Stock (Unit) Monthly Use Stock Months Avg. Quality Last Price Paid Market Price
Aluminum 221,866 tons 20,000 11.1 100 978 SC$ 833 SC$
Chemicals 310,720 tons 30,000 10.4 100 1,184 SC$ 971 SC$
Computers 49,079 systems 5,000 9.8 100 1,013 SC$ 859 SC$
Electric Power 4,376 million kwhs 375 11.7 103 83,859 SC$ 74,464 SC$
Electronic Components 2,814,096 units 275,000 10.2 100 423 SC$ 361 SC$
Factory Maintenance Units 23 units 3 7.7 101 3.02M SC$ 2.50M SC$
High Tech Services 1,293,844 units 75,000 17.3 104 323 SC$ 302 SC$
Plastics 293,715 tons 25,000 11.7 101 432 SC$ 357 SC$
Services 1,676,641 units 150,000 11.2 100 345 SC$ 324 SC$
Steel 81,192 tons 7,500 10.8 100 1,020 SC$ 977 SC$