Ask Aries

This game is complex. Just as you think you understand some things, you learn enough to know that there is more stuff that you don't know. I am not as active as I once was but I typically visit this site about once/day. This thread will be for asking the most complex questions. If you asked your friends and asked your federation and you lack an answer that completely satisfies you, then bring your concern here. Other game experts can feel free to answer questions presented here first and if they answer as adequately as I ever could I will point out the correctness of their reply and move to other inquiries. I will attempt to answer one unanswered question, if there is one, each day.

So, ask away..

Today I will re-post a question that was asked the other day in a federation I am a part of and the answer I gave to it. The federation member was wondering why their spending limit was not replenishing each game month, though they were not placing orders for anything. The answer was that they were part of a common market and had contracts for many items that he needed. Whether it is working as intended, or not, the game treats purchases placed through contracts as a bigger burden on your country's spending limit then items you either purchase manually or that are placed as a result of auto-orders (auto-order strategy can be found at trade->"order strategy and quality").

Let me give an example:

If an item's current market price is $100 and you purchase it at 300 quality, you will spend $300 ($100 * 3.00). So $300 will be deducted from your funds to complete the purchase. If you place this order manually or through an auto-order, only $100 will be deducted from your spending space, the amount equal to the market price of the item. However, if you purchased the item through a contract, the full $300 would be deducted from your spending space, the amount equal to the full cost of the item, including quality.

The consequences of this effect on spending space is that if you sign many contracts, the burden on your spending space is several times greater than if you purchased the items manually or through auto-orders. Further, spending space is not robust enough to account for many purchases made through contracts. Sign too many to meet your country's needs for the many products your country consumes and your spending space will be reduced each month and possibly push into negative amounts. This will remove your ability to make manual purchases at all and put off auto-orders, leading to shortages of basic goods.

In conclusion, if you are a member of a common market, take care to sign just a few contracts and monitor the effect on your spending space. If you don't, you can find yourself unable to make military purchases or see your supply index fall which will affect your welfare index.

cya tomorrow!

I don't know if I have experienced this yet, but I have contracts with all my state corporations selling to my country. In return it gives me a higher supply score and I believe the other state corps buys those products. All my state corps are still profitable even tho they may be paying a premium price as you mentioned above. You mentioned spending space, is what I'm doing good or should I reconsider to lower my spending plan.

I've not tested enough to verify everything but I've tested enough to know common market is not the way to go on many things.

I've had every single product needed by my countries contracted through the common market with the exception of Air force Maintenance.

Who came up with the bright idea to have a consumable needed by countries you couldn't obtain everything necessary to produce on your particular world?. At least with glass, selenium is available if your trade strategies are decent and countries don't "NEED IT" directly.

Anyway what I found was there was not enough spending space available to purchase everything and still have enough to buy Air Force Maintenance and I was always running a shortage and had no space to manually enter a purchase.

Additionally this effected my CEO's as the products they were contracting were selling for much less than they would on the open market. So I was buying for more and selling for less, with no improvement in welfare.

So for now, I'm saying "to heck with that" and purchasing only ammunition under contract. It will still effect my CEO as rather than making money those corps are losing money every time THEY need to purchase supplies or I'm going to need a LOT of ammunition corps. You would think with the amount of ammo my meager Army burns through in a month I wouldn't need to upgrade their fighting ability.

It is my "HOPE" the trade off in ammunition upgrades will cancel that out but if not, I will forego the common market entirely. (I actually came to that conclusion years ago but a lot has changed so I figured I'd at least try)

IMHO the meager supply score is greatly outweighed by the damage you do to your countries and corps by buying on the common market.

The only time I've seen corps involved in the common market make even meager gains is when the product offered on the common market is no more than 10% of the standard production.

But, maybe I'm doing it wrong

I don't want to hijack the thread so I will keep my input here as small as possible. This is a great thread Aries.

Yankee, I hope your concerns about the limitations and near "penalties" for using a CM are thoroughly examined by the GMs. It shouldn't be this way especially if we are to use CMs as a social tool to promote cooperation among players and federations. Some sort of benefit other than score needs to be added to balance the pain using a CM can bring. Also a benefit that outweighs the penalty and entices utilization of CMs from player to player. Just my thought here.

Jhinkk: I would recommend checking your spending space from month to month to make sure it is staying adequate to purchase things you don't make and for any possible military purchases. I should have mentioned that you can view your available spending space by visiting "Boosters->Spending Space" or "Boosters->Military Spending Space".

Your state corps themselves suffer no adverse effects from the contracts unless the market price for such products does not remain at a consistent profitable level. It is never wise to produce an item for your own use if it is possible to purchase the same item at a low market price. You should also take care not to purchase more items for your country than you need.

Finally, there is a whole other consideration on the quality of items that you want that your country to stock and consume. Items the citizens use goes into the calculation of your country's Consumption Index, which you can view on your country's "Business" page. Your Consumption Index is a factor in your country's very important Welfare Index. Items to consider are things like different food products and other consumer goods like cars and mobile devices. Such items are mostly reimbursed by your citizens and the reimbursement amount can be found in the "Cash YTD" tab of your finance page next to "Spending by the Population". These items you want to purchase at a very high quality.

Other items are consumed by your government. While these items also contribute to your consumption index, no reimbursement occurs from your populace and these items are simply consumed and reflected as a government cost. It is wise to minimize the cost of these items by purchasing them at a very low quality to control government cost. Items in this category include things like airplane fuel (used by your military), medical equipment (used by hospitals), and books and newspapers (used by schools). Since it does not make sense to run corps making a low quality product, it never makes sense to produce these types of items and sell them to yourself.

A full list of things that I have identified to be worthwhile to purchase at low quality for your country is as follows:

Aircraft Fuel
Books And Newspapers
Medical Equipment
Medical Materials
Military Services
Military Supplies
Pharmaceutical Products
Road Maintenance
Services
Traintracks maintenance
Water maintenance

All of these items I would not recommend contracting to your country and instead setting your ordering strategy to purchase them from the world market at a low (120) quality.

A third time of item you may have noticed I have omitted are the various military maintenance products, such as airforce maintenance and defensive weapon maintenance. According to documentation, purchasing these items at a higher quality reduces the number of items consumed for maintaining your military. Theoretically, you should be saving money by purchasing these products at a higher quality. I am not aware of proper testing completed to prove this and an opportunity to test and improve our knowledge in this area exists.

I will add for Jhinkk and anyone else who has an inquiry that it is likely worthwhile to post your country/enterprise and world for more specific advice.

cya tomorrow!

I have noticed that any product you buy at a higher quality reduces the number consumed, at least by the country.

Well now Yankee, that is a useful observation. I need to pay attention a bit more.

I figured I'd give it one more try.

It doesn't appear permanent where ammunition consumption is concerned.

Initially it was 22% less when 250 quality ammo was injected into the system over 120-122 quality. However, over time with no increase in weapons consumption has once again risen to the point it's only one or two units less than before.

I was actually expecting it to drop even more as the higher quality ammo made it to the air wings (etc) but so far that does not appear to be the case.

The only thing I can think of that may be effecting it at this point, consumption is based on the amount and quality of ammo sitting in storage and right now that is extremely low as I got rid (well my CEO has it) of all my low quality ammo sitting there.

There may be some "dilution" factor as it mixes with what is in the units and my "in stock" ammo where I am testing is way down from the amount initially dumped in. So far I've seen no indication of my country sneaking in a low quality order and my set points should prevent that anyway.

Other consumables used by the country seem to be stable or continuing to drop though. To bad I didn't pay as close attention to those items as far as cost/consumption.

Cost by the country and spending by the population is coming closer to zeroing out.

My CEO's are taking the hit from reduced profits from the corps. I don't think that's ever going to change. It might though, there is very little I need I'm having to buy off the open market at this moment so eventually higher quality production may have an effect.

I can afford to hang on for a while now that I'm looking for something specific. However it could simply be the common market is never going to be viable unless you have multiple players involved to spread out some of the "hurt".

I sorta remember coming to that conclusion when I was on GR.

Hi Yankee. You have brought up the question of ammunition quality and its effect on monthly consumption related to weapon/unit upkeep. This is an instance where I recall crunching some data on this before and I found my post where I did so and will re-post my data here.

From March 23, 2016 in Response to Dominik on the thread "Military. units running outta supplys and fuel" on the Problems forum:

"Number of weapons on those units would help. I am going to look at that attack and bombing wing and compare some of my own data. I will assume the 22,500 fighter missiles are meant to supply 300 fighter planes, as default fighter ammo runs 75 missiles/plane.

This means your 300 fighter planes are consuming 45 missiles/month according to the data you posted from your trade page. According to your spending page, the value of your consumed ammunition is $663.12M/game month and it identifies the quality of the consumed ammo to be be 207. The missiles in your stock are 207 quality while you said your units are at 300 quality. Because I have your world as KB, I can check that world's market price for fighter missiles and find it to be $7.12M.

This means 45 missiles times 207 quality (2.07) times $7.12M should be close to what we find on the "spending" tab of the finance page. I get $663.2M on my calculator with that which is close enough to what our spending page said, $663.12 (I believe quality is rounded to 2 decimal places in our data but figured for more for costs). Your fighters appear to use .15 missiles each worth about $2.21M.

Now, I can compare to my own consumption. My data:

Country: CC6
World: LU
Fighter Planes: 8000
Fighter Missiles used/month (Trade Page): 904
Fighter Missile cost/month (Spending Page): 24,773.42M SC$
Fighter Missile quality (Spending Page): 385
Fighter Missiles used/Fighter: .113
Fighter Missile cost of missile used/fighter: $3.1

You: Each fighter uses .15 missiles/month worth $2.21M (at 207 qua)
Me: Each fighter uses .113 missiles/month worth $3.1M (at 385 qua)

It appears the data validated the game news article I posted, showing higher quality ammo is used less than lower quality. Interestingly, the value of fighter missile ammo my fighters are using still come out higher/plane. The last thing it may be worth looking at would be to count your units and stock missiles and confirm that the total number of missing missiles comes out to the same number as the trade page, in your case "45". It is also worth checking to see which missiles seem to be consumed, the higher quality missiles in your unit or the lower quality in your stock. Does this all make sense? This is what you can do with data."

From my data, it indeed appeared that the number of missiles consumed is reduced with a higher quality stock but not reduced enough to achieve savings relative to a lower quality stock. This might be why the decrease in consumption did not meet your expectation when you injected higher quality products.

cya tomorrow!

Thanks Aries,

It seems your data is confirming what I am more or less becoming to believe, which is basically:

Unless you are intending aggressive expansion against another player or, you are at a point where it's likely to become enticing to another player, higher quality is probably not worth it at least, in the short run.

I've not fought a war where "quality" or "fighting ability" of the unit came into play. Those changes occurred after my "heydays" on GR.

The Soviets use to say "quantity has a quality of it's own" however, I don't know if that actually rings true.

Obviously it's important to not run out of ammo (or weapons) in a war however, does the "fighting ability" make a real difference these days?

Seems you've built an empire with both quality and quantity which I assume has measurable benefits. I'm still at the point where I believe "butter is more important than guns".

But I haven't got much to lose if I misjudge either

Hi Aries. I'm United Liberty on Kebir Blue. I think I'm running a pretty tight ship in my country. There's one thing that's kind of irking me. The population growth rate is steadily declining. Used to be almost a lot, but is going down now.

My question is, how do I reverse this and get my population growth rate positive?

Hi Aries. What can I do to get my country making more money. The country's England on LU. Thanks

Yankee, I can tell you with absolute certainty that high quality offensive units demolish low quality or even medium quality defensive units.

In my war with Aries I had an ungodly amount of Air defense, all at 300 quality. The 450Q air wings he used ripped right through the 3 wings at 300 at an alarming rate. I can only imagine what 600 quality mobile units would would do to 450 quality.

My conclusion after that exchange is that it is entirely wasteful trying to defend a country. Aries didn't even have any allies he was the only attacker. My air defense may have held if I had 450 quality units too, but I didn't have the time to upgrade all my wares that fast. Maybe things have been tweaked again and testing would shed some light but for all the reductions in the costs of war in general, that statement isn't exactly true if you have to foot defense costs like that. Not to mention to the costs of upgrading a few hundred thousand interceptors and helos, but 10's of millions of ammo as well. The costs get ridiculous.

So in war, yes you definitely want high quality everything. Hordes of low quality will simply be swept aside in the event of war.

It always has been a wasted effort to defend a country. If you don't start the war with the ability to attack and gain air superiority you will eventually lose. Unless of course you're being attacked by someone that simply has no business doing so but, I doubt the war engine would let that happen anyway (would it?).

I've only looked at a couple of Aries's countries but from what I've seen, I can't imagine the number of years it would take to be anything more than a slight annoyance.

I really have no idea what he's got ready to go in the space stations or to transfer from other worlds. I'm not into the space part of this game and really have no interest in that anyway (yet).

Aries is not someone I'd care to upset. Unless of course I was completely sick of playing or, wanted for some silly reason to start over.

Yeah the point of bringing up Aries is that is the only war i can give an example from that occurred after quality came into play. I'm not suggesting one attack him, although I am certain at some point I will suffer from boredom so....

Defense is difficult but possible with the right preparation and necessary if you have built an empire worth defending. My Defense Readiness Guide on the Beginner's forum is a good place to start theorizing where to begin for a good defense. Many advantages lay with the attacker, as they mostly control the time and location of any war. The game gives the attacker tools to shield anything they don't want to commit to battle. A successful defense is one where you are prepared to setup bad trades for the attacker, where their losses in materials are more crippling than your own. Psycho Honey is right in that quality is very important in defense and offense. It is very difficult to overcome a quality advantage backed by a sound strategy.

I didn't have a lot of time today. Will try to pick up some other questions here soon.

cya tomorrow!

Hey Aries, I am having some trouble bring some slave countries I have acquired back to a healthy economy, any tips on that? They are in debt and I cannot build any new corps; would pulling a loan be worth the extra debt? I plan on using these countries as extra cash flow, and them not making any cash is putting a stop into my plans.

SeizeForce: The cause of your gradual population growth decline is an increase in your population's average age. This can be found if you click "population" from your country's home page. Your population growth is basically only determined by two things. Your health index (how high it is) and your average age (how low it is). Most countries who achieve economic success and good population growth do it in concert with a good health index. However, a higher health index gradually raises average age. If you were to attempt to correct this with an even higher health index, it becomes a losing battle. Your average age will rise to even higher levels and bring an inevitable decline in your population.

Several solutions have been attempted by different players. First, I recommend maintaining a moderate health index. One enough for a good economy but not too high. I like around 120. Beyond that, there are strategies to use the "transfer pop" function and worker exchanges to influence your population number and average age. I have had some success with lowering average age by transferring workers out. A domino effect can occur with a declining average age. Combining this effect with my knowledge that purchased pop (with gold coins) tends to be a similar age than the existing country pop, I have been able to purchase a low of younger population for my empire. My LU empire's population of over 2.65 billion (in 10 countries) was largely made possible by this tactic.

I thread with a similar discussion and a thread with another population strategy are here:

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/1/24202.html?1421188466

https://www.simcountry.com/discus/messages/16295/25416.html?

Good luck!

-On the questions about improving your country's profits etc., I have decided not to answer those types of general questions. An answer to such questions would be inevitably me telling you what to do. There are many ways to go about running your country successfully and I would rather you find your own way. You may want absolute control for example, and run your own corps, or prefer to make a CEO-friendly country. Many strategies are perfectly fine if it keeps you interested in the game and works for you.

Preferably, I would rather you ask a more specific question that touches on your interest in improving your country. More specific questions on a certain corps' profit, your government costs etc. If you are not sure how to get started, look for ideas in the way other players run their countries. You can start by looking at my empire, if you wish, on LU. My main country is Candinnalm. My countries still do relatively well, though I would warn that I have not actively run them in months. Their basic strategies are in place though and my finances are open. One standout area of my countries will be their rich investment funds, which I have always enriched to create a wealthy country.

cya tomorrow!

Aries, thank you. One thing I have noticed though is with the contracts with my state corps it gives me a huge boost to my finance or welfare score for my country. Btw just want say thank you for starting this topic and helping us beginners.
My country is Brookston on Gr.

Hey Aries,
In the documents concerning upgrading the quality of your weapons and ammo it says this "For some weapons, very high quality levels do not make sense because the destruction capacity at quality 200 may already reach 100%. In cases where upgrading is just costly and does not help, max levels will be implemented per weapon and ammunition type, to prevent players from spending their money for zero effect.". Do you know any effective "max" fighting levels for certain kinds of weapons and ammunitions you might want to share?

Hi Aries,
I've been reading along on your thread and couldn't be more appreciative of this kind of initiatives to provide in-depth help to others!
<3

Porter: The quality of weapons and ammo improve the hit chance of targets they attack and reduce the hit chance of weapons that shoot at them. In many cases, you are going to want to upgrade the key weapons you plan to use to conduct wars to the highest levels you can afford. However, there are several instances where upgrades don't make sense, and one way to tell is to determine the role of the weapon. For example, special forces unit are useful to airdrop on an enemy map and capture/"paint" territory. However, its effectiveness in its job makes no difference if it is 120 qua or 450 qua.

Another instance to consider is the role your weapon will be used for in attacks. The closest examples to the text you cited are very accurate weapons like laser guided bombs and cruise missiles. These weapons have very high to hit chances on many targets and upgrades will do little to improve this. However, the stealth bombers and cruise batteries themselves are subject to counter-attack and higher quality weapons and ammo can reduce the chance of their loss.

Lastly, consider that the upgrade products themselves are of a fixed cost. The cost of improving the quality of, say, a tank shell or missile is the same. So, some items make more sense to acquire at a higher quality and never upgrade.

That's all for tonight. It's my wife's birthday and I have to go.

cya tomorrow!

Many thanks Aries you have been most helpful.

Jonni: No problem. Hey, I sent an email to the gamemaster email some time back identifying a problem with alerts not being sent to player email addresses. Have you guys had a chance to look at it? thanks!

silentiger073: Glad you have found useful information here. Feel free to ask questions of your own if you wish.