W3C - Price ceiling for Products

The price of products on the market depends on supply and demand.
However, there is a ceiling and there is a bottom price that prevent pricing from going very high or sinking too low.

Run away pricing can create havoc, both ways. It can influence profitability and can cause corporations to bankrupt.

we do not think that the bottom and the ceiling should be removed, but we could increase the range.

Do you think we should allow market prices to increase more when the market is short of products or allow prices to fall more when there are surpluses?

or should we allow this for weapons only?

From our point of view, such a wider range will make the market and world economy more interesting and much less predictable.

fully support this, do it for all corporations not just weapons.

I used to hate the price controls, but I somewhat softened when I realised there is a massive mismatch between total demand of all goods and services and what can actually be produced by total population. Shortages of supplies in corporations is aggravating this problem.

Also, it is no coincidence massive shortages surfaces in some certain types of products (maintenance products). Supplies are often in shortage (so production stops causing shortages to aggravate) but the profitability at 100% production is the same for corporation who dont have this problem. Supplies of these corporations tends to be volatile themselvs, like Light Artillery for Def Wpn maintenance. But those are price capped as well. Cargo Shuttles are not profitable at max price, is volatile and Assets maintenance needs them as supplies. Light Artillery is profitable, but not more than ammo defense for example, but Light Artillery is in surplus often as well, but ammo not so.

So: the fact that there are shortages is because of mismatch and the fact that shortages present themselves in certain products is because of the above.

Maybe implementing a GM general account to rule-based control demand and supply instead of pricing would be more feasible. Then no price ceilings are needed. Or increase product output levels (of non-military) and decrease prices accordingly, but I dont know what effect this has on country budgets.

The fact that so many products are in chronic supply shortages is problematic if we lift the ceiling.
Players could build corporations to benefit from better profitability but they cannot build them all.

since this morning, we allow C3 countries to build more.
the reason is that these C3 countries are increasing their population, consume more and with the same number of corporations, shortages could increase.
They will build corporations that are needed most.
you can see the numbers on the utilization page.

let's see what happens next.

if needed you can also reduce numbers of workers needed in corporations, then more of them will be built to reduce shortages

Andy,
I totally disagree with your thinking here about price range. I'll be selling my product at a higher price but also paying more for my supplies. At best my profit margin will be the same.

The last time I looked, a product needs to be selling in the top quarter of it's price range for the corp to be profitable. Let's say I manufacture a product that goes into surplus and the price hits bottom. When it goes into demand, with the current price increase rate. it's only going to take that much longer for the corp to be profitable again.

Since C3's don't care about profit they will start building corps that loose money as soon as there is a shortage. I have seen where a product price rises to a profitable amount at the same time it's going back into surplus.

If anything I would like to see a tightening of prices.

Creating more corporations by making them smaller is one of the ways.
we would like to add corporations in C3 countries that had large unemployment. (already started to happen) and prevent major movements because one step too far will cause the market to decline broadly.

A wider spread of pricing will increase profitability when the price is high (same labor cost, same fixed cost), partial increase in the cost of raw materials and an increase in income.

a lower bottom, will help to clean up.
more corporations will bankrupt, creating room for new ones, producing products that are in short supply.

The reasons for not doing this are:
- few players react to extreme profitability. They do not build.
- There is a shortage in too many products. Even if players want to build, they cannot build so many.

Short term, we will try to balance a bit. prevent even worse shortages and resolve the largest problems.

C3 countries build corporations that are producing products that are in short supply. These are profitable.
C3 countries should be profitable. many now are not and the reason is their defense which improved recently but at an increased defense costs.

Some corps have 80-90% of their cost going to supplies, I don't think there would be a noticeable increase in profit.

If player corps still need to be 90B$ in debt to close it will still take real months before they close. On that I was thinking what if the price snapped back to the base price every time it crossed the surplus/shortage line. The price would get to the bottom or top days ahead of what it does now.

Most players are not going to build corps that are a pain to manage. I own Assets Maint, Def Weapons Maint and Military Base Maint. Every day I set up 10 to 20 direct sales or short term contracts to keep them running. The other option, immediate orders is still time consuming and costly.
To top it off there is little reward in scoring for keeping these corps producing at 100%. I get a whopping 100 point common market bonus. Gee I got 200 for just buying a space center.

Supply and demand forces could be increased in stages without too many unforeseen circumstances. Might increase probability.

After the introduction of resources I gave up on the raw materials market Andy.

I had over a thousand oil corporations I was forced to rebuild and that soured me.

If you remove or increase the build cap on my CEO I will happily plug the shortages as best I can.

I have an enterprise with 120+ corporations.
all of them are natural resources.

It is extremely profitable.

People will make their own choices.

There is no urgent need at all to widen the price spread.
I thought people hated it so I suggested a widening.

It seems you are all OK with it.

I think that many here think that if products sell for a little less than the max, corporations will not be profitable.

we have no intentions to intervene in the markets and remove the shortages.
we just do not want them to get worse and some special hard cases should be softened.

Many corporations are gradually becoming a bit larger, not smaller.
they produce a bit more too.
This will probably prevent worse shortages.

if worse is coming, we will allow C3s to build even a bit more. It will create many new corporations.