W3C - Cash in Simcountry (White Giant)

Tom, 100-200 corporations in each world will NOT NOT NOT reduce ammo prices or demand.

You really don't get it do you?


This is ammo supply/demand on Golden Rainbow as of this moment:

Defensive missiles-

The demand for this product was 2,293,707 last month.
The supply was 29,885.


Anti-Aircraft missiles-

The demand for this product was 1,911,528 last month.
The supply was 26,190


Missile interceptor missiles -

The demand for this product was 3,106,109 last month.
The supply was 29,616.


How is a couple hundred corporations going to solve this? How would SEVERAL THOUSAND corporations of EACH TYPE solve this?

There are between 1000 and 2000 of each type of ammo corp on Golden Rainbow, with a couple outliers.

Demand is greater than supply, by factors of 50 or MORE!


Do you even play this game at all? Laguna has enormous assets and play time on ALL 5 WORLDS. I would think he knows what he's talking about.


Tom, I have noticed you are systematically ignoring every post I put in your threads, and I'm ok with that. But it is pretty bad when I have to repeatedly point out the lies and mistakes in your logic and what you say for everyone else to see. I realize I'm being quite blunt about all of this, but I'm getting to the breaking point with all this.

Your spin on everything is NOT going to work anymore. Players are going to know the truth. One way or another.

Q

"A suggestion:

can we all log into our countries and each one of us will build 5 to 10 ammunition corporations in each country?

there are many workers free in many countries and 100-200 corporations in each world will probably reduce ammunition prices and cut the cost of war. this will be great for everyone.
and the cost in the countries will fall. even in the ones where it did not fall until now.

yes?"

Why? Where is the profit incentive for us?

Before you undertook your Quality Nerfing, ammunition corps were somewhat more profitable than other corps. This was because shortages were severe enough that we could use aggressive trade strategies such as charging 400 for 333 product and still sell product.

Now, we cannot get paid for aggressive trade strategies. The profit motive in building a munitions corp is no different than that in building a plastics corp anymore.

After I noticed the change I stopped building ammo corps in my CEOs. Look in my CEOs on LU and you will see that they have plenty of old ammo corps, those built before your Quality Nerfing.

Laguna,

I am afraid you do not get the economy of C3s but that is not important.

If C3s have free workers or even 50% of what they need, they start a corporation.

There is a priority for the ones needed most and C3s have many ammo corporations.

in the game news tomorrow, you will be able to read that we intend to start closing corporations in C3s, that produce products that are in oversupply.
this will free workers and the automatic building of corporations will hopefully do the right thing.
Unfortunately, we have more shortages but some ammo corporations may stop producing because they lack raw materials. so all new corporations are welcome.

Very useful information Q. Please keep posting. Regardless of whether or not Tom responds, I will get a laugh when I see you post statistics such as you did above.

Thanks
EO

24,000 High Level workers is NOT sufficient for large population countries, Tom. MANY players have complained about this for MONTHS, and you and W3C refuse to listen or do anything about it.

This needs to be on a sliding scale based on population or workforce population (recommend the latter).

24.000 per game month?
I have several large population countries running and it is easy to build one or more corporations each month.

we can also just forget the whole education system and move unlimited numbers around.
For now, I would not like to trivialize the game.

I know how auto-build determines which corps are created. You don't need to post it on the game news for me.

What I meant is if that if X market had only been supplied at 50% and a weapon market at 50% as well, the weapon market would get priority over the other. That shortage would be considered more severe by whatever factor you so desire. That is why I said "higher priority".

I do get your point of lack of supply though.

Tom, your countries are NOT large. 60 Million is NOT large.

Tommi on Golden Rainbow: Population Size 58,798,905

For those of us who are at say 90 or 100 Million, the problem is extremely severe. Combine this with another issue, the LARGE amount of retirees each month, and the shortages become worse.


I will repeat. MANY players have complained about this for MONTHS.

You know how I get around the HLW problem? I have to CONVERT approximately 30-40K of something else each month. And this is just to prevent shortages. That leaves me next to nothing to build a corporation with.

Oh, and if I try to stockpile HLW, you know what happens? They MAGICALLY convert to LLW! And don't tell me I'm wrong, as I and others have seen HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of HLW disappear in ONE game month this way, and change into LLW.

Solution is easy: Adjust the 24K upward for larger countries, on a sliding scale, or even an absolute if you prefer (say 48K for those above 60 or 70M).

Q

If you don't want to eclipse the education system, you can make the amount of HLWs that is converted each month depend of the Education Index, instead of being a fixed 24 000.

For X Index, you get w HLWs converted. For 2x index, you get 2w. Or 3/2w. Or whatever is reasonable.

LG's solution is also a very good one.

Tom, your country on LU - Tommi has a pop of 61 million and makes 25B per month. You have 25% unemployment - most of which are LLW's and you have a shortage of HLW's.

No offence - but your own country defeats your arguments.

Everyone, boycott Tommi on LU

LOL Stuart.

I checked his country on GR, it has low numbers of MLW/HLW (in the 20K's each). But it has almost 50K Executives! 37K high tech executives! Full employment though of the corps, and 90% overall.


By the way, it was said MONTHS ago you guys would fix the employment % issue I raised months ago in SC chat to I believe it was YOU Tom. Employment above 96% is next to impossible to achieve.

Q

" I am mostly playing this game of pretend becasue it used to give me the chance to have large amounts of pretend money." yes I must agree with nute here, i did love playing because there was no limit. I could make cash buy gc's, save cash in my ceo's, what ever I wanted to do. so Tom I must ask you now are you trying to run people off from playing this game?

Tom, look what you've done. You've got Jason agreeing with Nute!

If you get Wendy agreeing on this, the world might come to an end.

"24.000 per game month?
I have several large population countries running and it is easy to build one or more corporations each month.

we can also just forget the whole education system and move unlimited numbers around.
For now, I would not like to trivialize the game."

Hmm. I went digging through the exclusive poll results to find the solution I proposed to this NEARLY TWO YEARS ago. Of course you never implemented it and the shortages continued no matter how you tweaked the workers amounts.

790. Educational Priorities Status: We agree [ top ]

Detailed Description:

We should have the option to set "vocational training" priorities...i.e. set priorities for the ratio of LLW/MLW/HLW like we do with managers, doctors, teachers, execs, etc. now.

W3Creative, if it is worried about sudden changes in the balance of workers, could even set it up so you have two separate "totals" to juggle, one for workers and one for professionals, if they didn't want a flood of workers to suddenly get promoted to professionals through such a system. This way changes would not take place overnight, but would take a bit of time, like altering priorities for professionals does now.

The mechanism for establishing priorities for LLW/MLW/HLW would work identically to setting priorities for professionals.

It would also give players a reasonably efficient way to react to the infamous staff requirement changes that W3 has been known to implement from time to time, and increase the importance of having a good educational system, because players would be able to do more with a good educational system.

50 gamers voted for the proposal.
17 gamers voted against the proposal.

The proposal has been ACCEPTED.

W3Creative reaction:

This point was talked about many times with a lot of proposals. We agree that there is a problem here. Most proposals to-date, had a disadvantage of making the whole education system obsolete by trivializing the movement of workers between the three groups.

This proposal is the first (Or we really missed something in the past which is possible) that we think can be introduced, solve the problem we have, and not destroy the education system, which is essential in the game.

It is not very easy to implement as it cuts through many parts of the game and requires that removal of the current procedure and all the corrections and tunings that take place on top of it. We will however implement it.

Point 1. SimCountry product markets are not free markets. There is no such thing as "base pricing" in free markets. They are command markets.

eg The CEO of Nike does not call Washington DC to ask what he may charge for a pair of basketball shoes. SimProducts,in comparison, are priced by you, W3C.

eg Your adjustments to base pricing show weapons pricing declining in the face of outrageous demand. In a free market, prices would skyrocket in such a scenario. Please do not insult our intelligence by implying that players, individually or collectively, can move prices outside their programmed ranges by their own actions. Players dumping or buying alters supply or demand numbers, but most assuredly does not significantly alter prices. You know that, Tom, and explained price ranging in another thread.

Therefore, the costs of militaries, war stocks, and simcombat operations rests entirely in W3C's hands.

Point 2. If the education system drew solely from the pool of LLW as claimed, high index education would logically show LLW shortages as the full mass of LLW within a particular demographic "went to college" instead of entering the labor force. This is the exact opposite of the current situation. LLW numbers are excessive while HLW shortages, with no demand from upgrades, continue to plague many empires.

Something is not functioning as advertised. Furthermore, the dissappearance of large numbers of professionals, that cannot be explained by population bubbles, continues to occur regularly.

With all due respect, Mr. Williard, there is a large hole in your ship and you are taking on water. The passengers are warning you that the craft is sinking, but as long as the view looks rosy from the bridge, you sail on into disaster.

You would do very well to listen most closely to Laguna and act upon his advice.

willard, i don't know how you can build corps. in my countries there are great shortages in hlw and now in mlw's. and i don't have enough higher level professionals. and these are in countries with over 150 education indexes.

I wonder why Tommi has 20 trillion in cash...

Good point Loki!

FORUM:

Tom Willard (White Giant)
Monday, February 16, 2009 - 02:14 am Click here to edit this post 24.000 per game month?
I have several large population countries running and it is easy to build one or more corporations each month.

we can also just forget the whole education system and move unlimited numbers around.
For now, I would not like to trivialize the game.

====================================================================

GAME NEWS:

14. Medium Level Workers and other worker shortages [ top ]

Some structural shortages keep showing up in some countries, and some players wonder what the reason is for these shortages.

Most shortages show up in very populous countries that have excellent education. The number of people educated each month exceeds in fact the number of students in these countries. This should not happen and the education system should be updated to limit the number of graduates.

As a result of this error, the number of professionals is growing too fast, too high and they come from the numbers of workers. The education system does not produce new people. It moves people from one group to another. Too many workers are in fact being graduated into high level professionals and the number of workers is declining.

We can keep tuning the algorithm that decides where to take the workers from. We have done so again in today?s update. It is either low level workers or medium level workers. The tuning of the numbers does not change the fundamental problem of too many graduates in an overheated education system.

We plan to update the education system and make sure it will never produce more people coming out, graduated, than the number of students going into the education system. This will solve the problem once and for all.

In the mean time, countries that have that problem are converting professionals back to workers. Instead, you can tune down the education system, reducing the numbers of graduates and mainly the number of unemployed graduates and by doing so, solve the problem of low workers numbers.

============================================================


DISCREPANCY?

Yes.


And by the way, tuning down the education system doesn't work. All it has done for me is continue to produce worker shortages, while giving me less professionals each month to convert.

Hello,

their seems to be an explosion of posts from W3C, it seems as if they are actually trying to communicate with the players

this is a good step, perhaps a bit late

W3C, i'm sorry i have no other place to post this...so it will be here, as it seems approriate

"The US has a GNP of probably 10T with a population of 300 Millions.

Cash reserves in china are now 1.4T with a population of 1.4 billions. "

this was to make an example that the current money system in sc, is unrealistic

IT IS UNREALISTIC, it is a game

i have tanks, that don't shoot, if shot at, and have tanks that just will not allow me to shoot...

i understand that we have offensive weapons, and defensive weapons. no problem their. i understand that offensive weapons, attack, and do not defend, and visa versa... still no problem. but why force all this realism, into the econ market, when my units, will not respond with weapons that are appropiate to the situation?

to add to this, ammo reduction. to be fair, that is what is going on, ammo reduction... W3C, please back off, we are playing a game. their are many more things to make the "realistic" before you start going after ammo supplies...

to add to that, many people play this game, as a long term game. their are hundreds of 3 month games i can play... but i play this one, because i can build an empire, over time. many of the change that YOU W3C are making, YOU ARE MAKING IT HARDER TO PLAY THE VERY GAME YOU DESIGNED

you are slowing taking away the flavor, now i must say, over all, i agree with many of the changes, lower the cash levels, ok. the whole quality thing, whats the point of selling 333q if no one is wanting to buy that? over all, i get it, i get what you are trying to do. but you seem to have forgotten, this is a GAME. you have to give us, a cool feature, for everything you take away. but you seem to approach this, from the perspective, of each feature you take away is cool...

that is what the players are taking about, when they say you aren't listening to your customer base... you take things away, and expect us to think, "wow this is great, i'm making less money now, how realistic..."

jeese, give us, weapons that fight both ways... give us "beach heads," give us limited secured mode... stop taking, start giving...

Josias

You would like to know who is tuco Tom Willard?

tuco is niemand, however, tuco proved his ability to grasp game mechanics in dozens of online games where he came on top among 100s or 1000s of competitors.

tuco also likes to believe he has the ability to predict or to spot a "success" from a "failure" not only due to his understanding "how things work", but also because he has diverse empirical experiences to compare with and draw conclusions from.

tuco is also arrogant, but its hard not to be when his predictions, unlike predictions of majority or even the so called "experts", come true more often than not.

Anything else you would like to know about tuco Tom Willard?

If I wanted to be an ass I would now ask:

Who is Tom Willard?

I meant it as a joke, tuco, and he didn't know. There is no need to be petulant.


You said GR started with 45Q of cash and you wished to diminished that amount by a factor of 1/10. Well, GR now has 6.6Q and I own 1.9Q of that. Assuming I would behave as it is expected and asked, that amount would have already dropped to 4,5Q. So, it would appear you have already reached your target on what cash reserves are concerned.

Also, you can't set just aims for the amount of cash a world should have. That will largely depend on the amount of paying players there are in each world. There more there are, the more cash there should be.


You were wondering why the richest players in this game refuse to exchange their cash into GCs. There are about 6, 7 players that stand out than more than most. I haven't spoken with them as to why they convert or not their cash into GCs, but I can speak for myself, as the richest player in the game. I don't convert my cash into GCs because I don't want to. I'm not waiting for opportunity or dominance. I simply don't want to. I earned my game cash so I could have the GCs necessary to keep my registration and wage wars. I don't want to have a huge pile of GCs to continuously temp me to convert them to real cash instead.

As far as Financial Services and other changes go, I will ignore them. I will ignore them because I won't allow you to determine my decisions for me. You can try to influence, but you are imposing more than influencing. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar too. Allowing the Gamemaster to sell GCs is a sort of honey.


Don't think that by diverging this conversation to other issues I will forget what matters:
Financial Services - the butchers of success, the place where money disappears.
Quality Cap - what happens when you sell a product of 360 quality? It is sold as one of 296. Don't be surprised if you can't pay the bills.
Compensating Quality - apparently, the game can't find the kindness in its heart to pay the difference in quality when a higher quality product is sold as if it was of inferior quality after nearly 8 years. Can't allow the game to create more of that money to build up those cash reserves now, can we?


Why does it cost you to remove financial services and undo the changes done that really hinder our profitability? Mind you I'm not speaking of the scaling back of income and cost.

I can see the direction this has been going for over a year now, but reasons behind it are still a mystery to me. Show me, and show them, the whole picture. Tell me what you think is wrong, not what can be improved.

I refer to Keith Allaire's 2 year old proposal(see above) and one line in the W3C response to the worker problem.

"It is not very easy to implement as it cuts through many parts of the game and requires that removal of the current procedure and all the corrections and tunings that take place on top of it. We will however implement it."

As i have alluded to in previous posts, I believe that to correct this problem and many of the other problems we are complaining about, would require fundamental systemic changes, not easily addressed. I'm not an IT person, so I can't speak with authority on this, but it would seem that the system, over the years, has become so complex that unless the whole system is scrapped or tons or person hours and money are infused into fixing the present system, it will continue to be a patch job and not work properly. I'm not tuco, but I'll make a few predictions of my own. (1)Players and W3c will continue to argue about continued systemic problems with the game. (2)W3C will continue to state that there are no real problems--it's a matter of incaccurate perceptions on the part of the players. (3) Seasoned players will continue to leave the game. (4) New players will be unable to build empires with the constraints of the current system and will stay with the game only a few months. (5) Out of frustration, Laguna will leave the game, leaving no viable mediator between players and gm. (6) SC will either be sold or will cease to exist, since it has been unable to turn a profit since the beginning.

Call me a cynic, but my nearly 50 years in business and professional life have given me a few insights that only come from my many screw ups and a few successes along the way.

it's clear Tom has an agenda and a specific viewpoint, and won't dare let "puny" player perspectives impose on his omniscient developer view.