Why do default settings attempt to destroy new players?

I'm gonna go ahead and bump the topic of 'Any Quality' purchases being the norm. I know there won't be the political will among the vets to change this. For every veteran whose strategy is to max quality on all their corps, there's a newbie paying the increased price with no benefit. It's a tax on the new, for the benefit of the old.

The quality system doesn't even make any sense to begin with. Where is the value coming from, other than the fact that the newbies and the AI are forced to pay extra? My population is eating high quality chocolate right now and paying 4x the price, but what is the net benefit to them? Or to my country as a whole? There is none. All things being equal, the lowest price is the best one. If you folks went into Walmart and looked at two *identical* products, and one cost $1 and the other was $4, which would you buy? Half the world's countries are buying the $4 chocolate. That's the level of absurdity we're dealing with here, and it's probably due in large part to what Kitsune is pointing out: that newbies are set up to buy this crap by default.

I will be shot down or ignored, of course. Free markets are scary beasts, and nobody in this forum knows how to stay on top of a game that doesn't automatically reward people who managed to click "Auto upgrade quality" with a second click to stop ordering FMUs at $12 million a pop.

The real fix is a return to the free market, as enumerated in my Suggestions post. There should be more material profit generated by the system overall, so it wouldn't have to be an us-or-them mentality on the economy. The commodity relationships could be tuned to make the overall challenge easier, and then we wouldn't have to depend on selling overpriced (but worthless) crap to newbies in order to survive financially. Economic strategy should mean diversification of investments and securing supplies of critical materials for oneself. An elimination of the GM market manipulation would mean it wouldn't always be the same five or six commodities that serve as the cash cows - the economic picture could *gasp* ... change on its own! And quality upgrades shouldn't be such a "no-brainer" until such time as high quality products have a purpose that actually makes people want them. A purpose above and beyond "making the next high quality item and selling it to the next guy, until ultimately a noob buys it unwittingly".

But I digress. Until the developers make me an honorary member of their team, and allow me to help with macroeconomic calculations & the program tweaking that ought to follow, the economic sim will be broken and the winning strategies will be counterintuitive and lacking in variety. Not really my problem - I'm just a $12 member. Anyway, sorry for the rant.

Go to the dollar store and grab any $1 generic chocolate bar. Then go to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania the difference in quality is from earth to the 12th planet.

That's real life. There's a realizable difference in real life. No gameplay mechanism has been built into simcountry to make quality meaningful.

Where's the difference in the two products in-game? One has a higher meaningless number. My people aren't happier after eating the high quality chocolate bar, are they? They aren't more productive. They aren't wealthier. There's no effect. No effect means that we're talking about substantially identical products.

Well I can give you a few examples of the value of quality.

100 quality weapons vs. 250 quality weapons.
100 quality supplies vs. 190 quality supplies.
100 quality nuclear defense vs 250 quality nuclear defense.

The incentives are there. Ultimately the choice to make use of them is yours.

And to answer your question, yes people are happier after eating that high quality Chocolate Bar. High Quality Chocolate gets eaten. Consumers go back for more. More Sales = More profit = Branding. This is Name Brand vs. Generic. The success or failure in each case or product is based upon quality.

Also, I agree 'Any Quality' shouldn't be the default for automation. Without a doubt it shouldn't be the default no argument there. But this doesn't diminish the importance in quality in the game.

Are you saying that 250 quality weapons are 2.5x as effective as 100 quality weapons? That's pretty significant if it's true. I can't find this in the documentation anywhere, and I haven't fought any wars yet. Is it true? I'd love to find out that it is. And that high quality hospitals serve more patients, high quality roads require less maintenance, high quality schools fit more students, and so on. Is any of this going on, or is quality just a pipe dream?

And sure, you can make the argument that consumers "enjoy" a higher quality more and so they choose the higher quality number. But SimCountry has nothing resembling the concept of branding, brand loyalty, or even a value to represent consumer satisfaction. There's still literally no reason why a president should ever allow consumers to buy the higher quality, higher priced item. Presidents who do allow cash to flow out of the country for benefits that are in no way quantified or recorded, shall heretofore be considered "suckers." Newbies and the AI are just being auto-suckered.

1. The Quality of Military Units [ top ]
The maximum quality of weapons and ammunition in military units is increased to 250. Also the maximum fighting level is increased to 250.

This increases the quality range and allows for the creation of high quality units. The maximum quality will be increased even further in the future

Game news, have a read.

Game news you say.. okay, lots of stuff in there that I hadn't found anywhere else - thank you. I've never seen the below mentioned "quality index", does anyone know where to find it? The news was published a few years ago.


174. The Quality Index [ top ]

A new index will be added to simcountry, measuring the quality of products the country is purchasing for use by the population. The average will be weighted, with products that are being used in larger quantities, having more influence on the average than ones that are used in very small quantities. The index will depend on consumption products only and will not include weapons and ammunition. The index will be used as a component in the total score of the country and it will be used as a component in the country welfare index.

Another 'work in progress'.

Things don't happen very quickly around here. Another attraction of the game if you ask me, I'm not into instant gratification... well... maybe in some circumstances :P

Funny that you should mention instant gratification. I just established "Mistress Jan's Bordello", a services corporation in the Glorious Slave Country of Ross.