W3C - Quality of raw materials

Please think this through. This will result in lower profits and income for everyone. I think part of the issue is that not everyone used Average Supply Quality (ASQ) so they don't understand what is being taken away from all of us as players. When this change happens you will set up a corporation, set the supply quality to the highest quality, get it staffed and just sit and wait to see what the GM wants to pay you for your product. You will be nothing but a C3 when it comes to your corporations. If you think that because you don't use ASQ then this won't effect you then you are mistaken. First you will no longer have the option to choose to use it. You will pay more to produce your corps' products because you will have to buy higher quality raw materials than you do now. Much more than the 170 or 180 most who don't use ASQ buy at now. Since the GM has set the sale price so you can't charge more for your more expensive to produce product. All resulting in less profit for you. And those countries with CEOs in them will see less income from them as many CEOs use ASQ so when the CEO makes less profit then your country will receive less income. And even if the CEO didn't use ASQ he is still going to make less profit resulting in less income to your country. Combine that with the GMs constant decreases in C3 warring profitability and think about how you are going to fund your country.

There will be no need for common markets. The biggest use for a common market was for players who used Average Supply Quality to set up the contracts they needed to make ASQ work. Since with the GMs change we all will be buying only the highest quality raw materials for all of our corporations why would I want to set up a contract for every raw material? I will just buy it from the world market - no contracts needed - and if there is a shortage I can just buy what I need immediately. Some misunderstand common markets - for example if your CM required you offer 10 percent of your product if it wasn't bought in the CM it sold on the world market so you lost nothing. It wasn't a reserve that just set on the shelf. And whether you sell it on the world market or the CM it sells for the same price for that quality.

Before you drink the GM koolaid on this you need to think it through. They are hoping you don't. And if it is like every other change we have seen recently I am waiting for when the GM will sell us some booster for this for a few gold coins of course.

Mr Gamemaster - Please respond in depth to Aries excellent question -
"Can we have additional information of why this change is being made. Are there any benefits to players who spend extra time on their economy in this? "

ASQ, makes since with some things. like with country supplies, the quality of Cable TV services, and Medical Material, would have a more profound effect, than the Quality of jewerly, or sports.

For Corps, the same concept rings true. how ever, not quiet so perfect. a jewelry corp should get more value, from the quality of Gold, than from the quality of FMUs. regardless, of the actual amount used.

perhaps, rather than getting rid of ASQ all together. asign a primary supply for each corp, and assign that supply, double the value. For instance, Aircraft Fuel, should have twice the Quality effect on Air Transport corps, than the rest of the supplies.

Rather than just hacking/slashing game features. You can put a * or some other icon next to the primary supply.

Additionally, why not fix CM issues. Its hard to use. Why not actually fix the "offer," so that you can actually set a percentage, less than 100%. Because that feature is just broken. It only works if you type in 100%. If you type in something less, it just adds it to whats already there, even if that raises it over 100%. or allow corporations a the ability to buy different Q supplies, like countries.

I am trying to believe there is or will be a reason for this adjustment. Regardless of what the reasons are, tampering with ASQ is crazy in my opinion. The question raised by Airies is quite important and it will be unfair if the GM goes ahead with this plan without responding to that.

Ending Average Supply Quality as a tool available to players to improve their chance to make a profit is a very bad idea. It is the primary method for anyone to be able to set themselves apart in their corporations. There is a lot of good information in prior posts on this topic that I am not going to repeat. But I will add that countries are going to try to offset the loss of profits and the days of zero and low taxes in countries will end. And CEOs will try to find ways to offset it as well including cutting salaries and once taxes get above 30 percent move to C3s. I fail to see a solid reason to take this away from us. High Q products can and are produced now at a much less production cost through ASQ than what the GM is proposing to do.

GM - how about answer Aries questions.

Nice to see you Myon

I think the proposed plan by the GM is unfair and will not be fixing anything. The ASQ is the foundation for many player's economic strategy, and changing it is absoultuley absurd. If a change like this goes through, profits will decrease, and would be changing a foundation of simcountry economics. I urge the GMs to drop this plan at once.

Ok GM... what's up.. come talk to uncle Tony.. something must have tweaked for you to state something as crazy as you have! Are you mad?? seriously take a long look at the comments above, you guys back at the office are scratching your brains wondering why people are leaving this game! come on guys really.. your going to improve the game by taking a away a great feature in it?? Once again.. like my counter parts, I call for you to answer Aries question.

the ASQ is already a whacky idea, adding one more variable to it will make it worst

the current price is base on quality
the future price will be base on quality x current price (as an ingredient cost to the next product using this product)

unless all c3 are designed to supply low Q products to presidents' high Q products, else who will feed the system?

take a simple calculus view of the current ASQ equation, as the Q approach infinity then the ASQ also approach infinity?
the reality is what is the ultimate Q for any product in sc?

why can't we just keep this game simple?
the cost of product manufacturing = material quantity x material cost + workers compensation + cost of money (i.e. intersts) + any other item to produce the produce

the price of a product = wanted profit for growth + cost of product manufacturing

i'd like to point out, that this appears to be a pretty popular feature. although its really more of a bug. but there are allot of people, politely displaying their disapproval of this change.

the reason this isn't more popular, it that it is difficult to learn, and set up. its a breeze once you get it.

so, i would challenge the GMs to reverse there direction on this, and investigate making the process easier, with expanded buying, and contract features. so that every one can use it.

if the market contained less of a quality faerie, that is if the input/output quality of the market was more strict, (not completely.) then advanced buying strategies, would make more sense.

Josias,

You are right ASQ is a concept that someone has to take time to learn. It isn't a process with an automatic setting that is so popular with many. At first I disregarded it and I came to regret all the time I did not use it. Those who use ASQ know the impact this simple concept makes on profits.

For those who could care less about ASQ let's forget about ASQ and look at what the GM said and what it means to you.
He said "It becomes important to purchase all raw materials at a high quality."
It is unlikely that high quality will mean the 150 to 180 quality level at which most players who do not use ASQ currently buy their raw materials. If that was high enough the GM would not have had to make that statement. High quality is 300 Q. I think it is safe to say that 300 Q raw materials will continue to cost more than 150 to 180 Q raw materials. Please tell me how you will be more profitable when you have to buy more expensive high quality raw materials at a price you cannot control and sell the product which will cost more to produce at a price you cannot control.

With this change we are losing the opportunity to control any major part of the production process.
And this change will result in less profits which will have a ripple effect throughout everyone's economy throughout every world.

GM - Where is your response to Aries' questions?

Somebody or multiple people please add this topic to the voting forum. I would, but I cannot for a couple of weeks. (i'm the one who put up no limits for number of corps for enterprises).

Actually, if a bunch of you all put up a voting poll regarding the matter, that will demonstrate how strongly we all feel about it.

GM: You need to answer the questions and concerns that are being raised here, specifically those raised by Aries, Josias and Jack regarding the reasoning that is behind this.
Look, your rating/rewards system is completely bogus, and it certainly takes no intellectual skill to develop a first rate country or empire, wars can be won merely with money and a 5th. grade reading ability, the only true spice that this game possesses is in the arena of Economics and without reason or explanation you feel, apparently in the interest of stupidity i.e. most of us are surely not smart enough , you want to gut the only challenging aspect of this game.
You need to mitigate this superior attitude that you feel allows you to set down edicts, and present your reasonings and answer these very valid concerns, we are not children, we are your boss, we pay your salaries, we demand answers!

allow players to set their own prices to their products

i don't need to make a 3000% profit margin when i sell from my A corp to all my other corps

let's be bit more realistic?

the current ASQ concept requires too much mathematical skills, and does not even make sense if you put a top limit on quality

the top limit quality for any product would be pure energy that most earth players should understand, 'cause that's the purest form or most fluidic of any matter in this universe?

XON - Can I give you a quick lesson in the "current ASQ Concept" which is about to be the last ASQ concept? And bless your heart, I promise you don't have to have any math skills to do it.

1 - Pick any corporation.
2 - Go to Available Materials (raw materials)
Choose 2 (sometimes it takes 3 and rarely 4) of the least expensive materials used in large quantities. Often it is services and high tech services in many corps. Contract the purchase of those 2 or 3 materials at high quality (270 or higher, the higher the better). This is where being a member of a CM made it easier to do the contracts.
3 - Set the corporation's supply level to 120
4 - You have just done ASQ

It does take some time to do. It did make corporations more profitable. It does work because of mathematics of which you had to do none. I will choose mathematics every time over your "pure energy".

Andy

PLEASE PLEASE just stop

There is so many things that are BROKEN!!!

Can you PLEASE just fix what needs fixing before you add updates like this?

Amen. My thoughts exactly. If it aint broken, why fix it?

GM - This isn't even a change that is needed or wanted. It isn't to fix something that is broken because it isn't broken. You are simply taking something away that has become a game feature that is accessible to all players if they wanted to use it. Even free players that are restricted from doing so many things could do Average Supply Quality and improve their profits and grow their countries.

And you have yet to answer Aries' questions or define what you mean by high quality raw materials. Answer the questions in detail and tell us the number.

@jack,
thank you

i understand ASQ, it's a whacky idea because there is a limit to Q yet the equation/formula to compute it does not say that. you would only learn that by trial-n-error or your friends will only tell you.

to have a decent common market is to be able to buy and sell everyt product in that market, without choosing to go outside it, if your corps there have sufficient products to supply each other.

we cannot have a normal common market, because the price of any product is automatic base on a set price times its quality.

this set price seems to be arbitrary, because have any of you be able to produce a product even close to it. for me, my production costs for any product is either way lower than this gm set market price or way higher than this gm set market price. i understand that the game has to have playability too, but this isn't the way to do it

why not just tell all players that the quality of any product for any state corp cannot exceed 273? the equation for ASQ has no limit, yet the reality is that 273 is the limit? and if you want a bit higher Q then do a ceo corp?

you can test this concept that price is base on quality on earth too. go to two car dealers, one sells bmw and the other sells ford. tell the bmw dealer that in your personal judgement a bmw has lower quality than a ford, therefore the bmw dealer must sell you a bmw at a price that is lower than the price for a ford. i bet the bmw dealer would kick you out of his lot

quality is a judgement call per a person, it is not something you can meaure such cost or expense?

I would like to pressure the GMs to these inquires.

Common Markets kills economy, it does not work, straight forward World Trade is the only way to work it. I don't kinda trust Common Market if it was my own.

Common Markets can be very beneficial. In my case, they helped my enterprise to grow and flourish

@Star Foth

I am just wondering if I missing something, I am gussing the Common Market only works on Any Quality? Not a straight forward 200 ASQ but then, I do realize that the Common Market charges a lot more than the World Trade. Which is my opinion though. Im thinking not to risk it again even if its on Any Quality. Im trying different strategy before I truly make up my damn mind.

I am thinking trying that again but with Any Quality.

common market will work if you vote yes on my proposal at public voting

if my proposal is implimented, then you can set your own prices for your products that you want to use as ingredients to your other corps.

cm does not now work because the price is auto set by gm already, so you pay lot higher for your own products because your product is lot higher quality than on those on the world market

the current design of the cm now seems to be that gm do not want you to exclusively focus on your own cm members, and you still have to interact with the world community as well. the pre-set price is a deter for you to get too focus on your cm.

for asq to work well, just work out the max output quality from the ingredients you have available....it works only well when there are lots of cheap ingredients on the world market. but if when everyone is producing high quality products, then cm will be dead. but there is max to asq too. you have to play within the borders set by gm.

i am suspecting that's why thousands of c3 must exist to produce these low quality ingredients for players to survive via the eco route, otherwise being warlords will require that you must constantly raid to survive cashflow problems. thus c3 serve these two very critical roles for the game, else everything will crash?

when you run out of sc$, then you must buy gc with usd in order to keep your assets in the game.

introducing one more variables into the equation will accelerate expenses of operations, thus accelerate the rate that players may buy more gc.

interesting design for the game

let's help make this an awesome game, so we can have more fun

Ive decided to skip the CM, its too risky for now from what I learned, you are too right XON, the CM is broken with high cost issues. Now, I have to replace all the old ones and start from scratch and go from there, since the CM and the strategy has ruined it.

i'm trying to use ASQ, but how do the units of measurements work out?

the ingredients are measure in units, kilograms, kwh, systems, tons, and so on....

are we suppose to ignore the unit of measurements when you do ASQ?

if not, then what are the converstions for all the units of measurements in this game?

this new idea of adding sc$ to it will need a conversion factor too?

please help?