GM TAKE NOTICE FB >HIGH TECH SERVICES<

Andy

Is there any news on the game issue?
A lot of products are BILLIONS in the negative and its causing really severe shortages.

Look, if the gamemaster interferes with like the only possible interesting to happen in the economy, there's no point in even having a game here.

Once again i agree brost. People need to learn to adapt and be willing to change things up a bit. And yes that can mean that you need to build a lot of new corps and take down your old corps.

ahh, but look at it from this point of view, Your a new players, that has to swipe their card, buy game cash to build up a stock pile of back up supplies... probably not going to stay

The GM can't really let the econ collapse, i've considered ways to create mass chaos, even tried to recruit players to do such. but the GM safe guards prevent it, and it is probably for the best. if you want to war, we have battlefield, leave the guys alone that want to be left alone.

although, if you want to do damage w/o showing your face, try asking the GM for espionage and sabotage features

this is a country building game, after all

I've had no trouble with HTS...probably because I bought up surplus before. I suggest everyone play the game.

There are safe guards in the market to prevent a collapse.
this is explained here periodically as an answers to concerns about GM interventions.

now, for the first time I think, some ask us to intervene.

The automatic intervention to prevent a collapse only, is triggered by unspecified conditions. Not by players requests.

You now have more possibilities to set corporate stocks and we think that many have done so, creating a shortage in some products.

Solving the problem by an intervention, will help very short term, however, the big orders will not come back for some time.

This, together with an early intervention, will create a flood of products later.

As you might know, we never intervene to remove products from the market. Oversupply just causes corporate failures and in this way, a reduction of supply quantities.

Hey Andy, this intervention of the game mechanics that kicks in on big supply demands and injects stuff could be handled as if there was a 'gm-storage' that will go into the negative when injecting products to the market. And if it's negative it could buy those numbers back out of the market until it reaches 0 again. In my opinion this would help keeping the effects of product injections small.

A more direct solution would be to allow easier retooling of factories, 1 gc per switch is a huge limitation. If instead the corporation just stopped producing anything for like 6 game months, you could see more production going to needed categories sooner. Plus, this is something that would require player action rather than system action.

players themselves can buy surplus supplies, and wait for shortages to sell them back, and make a profit. us players tend to complain about GM intervention, when we can play the game, make money, and have fun, preforming a function that we complain to the GM regardless of they do. whether they interject into the market, or not

I just hope the GM doesn't intervene at all. The markets are already settling down. Sure there are still shortages but those are not even half of what they were.

I just wish people would accept that things can get ugly once in a while.

And yeah, I think this is the first time anybody has asked the GM to intervene in the markets. I think certain players are unaware that the system has a very generous automatic intervention capable of propping up industries with zero production.

While I do think they need to tone down that automatic intervention system, my point wasn't about game mechanics earlier so much as people need to stop complaining every time they need to adjust... especially when they don't actually understand the situation. It isn't the game's fault when a player is bad.

In either case, Orbiter, don't think to tell me how I should play the game. You know exactly where you can shove that narrow-minded opinion. You really miss the entire point of messing with the market if you are suggesting wars and sabotage as alternatives.

thats right, lets make a game that only you can play, might get a little lonely, but hey, you'd win, and thats all that matters right?

The game that I play already exists.

with a hand full of gold coins, for extra spending, one person alone, could collapse any worlds econ, i could do it by myself, their are any number of products i could choose, if the GM just let it collapse, every time a player got the notion, their wouldn't be any other players. their should be some form of econ warfare, but we don't really have a way to focus it, every one suffers.

the GM have in the past talked about country resources, and partial conquests, and with this allowing monopolies. this would allow a group to control oil, or copper, or, or, or, they could set above normal prices, and wars between countries could result in "partial victories," where the winner could gain control of a particular resource

until they guys that pay their 4 dollars, and don't talk to any one don't get bothered by world events, their really is no point in allowing the econ to collapse, its not a narrow point of view, its necessary for the game to continue. if you weren't so stuck on yourself, you'd understand that

also, this isn't the first time players have complained, it happened a few years ago, the GM let things go, hoping that the players would respond, services and hts where in huge demand then, the GM expected the player base to respond by building more of those, i did, but over all, not enough where built, and players complained.

this one is a bit different tho. the GM recently increased the over-all profitablity of corps, and lessened their efforts to correct markets. this was along with the increased production of some corps. so they increased production, for higher profits, and removed safe guards, with the thought that corps, making more money, would be better able to survive the down swing, and over all, be slightly more profitable. this is just the first time since then, that we've really got hammered.

yes players should be able to adjust, and players should invest some of their profits into back up supplies, especially when those supplies are green. this is fun, to me atleast, if you look above, i was prepared for this type of thing

my point is, that if you where just starting this game, and you corps day after day, where short of one supply of the other, how long before you just stopped logging in? a week? a month?

one of the big differences between FB and other worlds, why FB felt this first, and hardest, is has fewer players, their is often larger shortages of key supplies, when other worlds are much more mellow.

FB is a wonderful place for econ, and maybe along with the "fearless," part of the name, the econ can be more hazardous, while the other worlds can be more protected? if thats a middle ground that we can agree on?

You make several good points orbiter.

So here is an interesting question, do new players need 'corporate protection'? To make sure they don't quit?

With the new game function allowing you to go to corps>manange>supplies and change the low water mark and reorder quantity can automatically help prevent shortages. my min setting is 24 mo low water and 9-12 mo reorder at the 24 mos. create a buffer.

+1 orbiter: only reason to collapse the market is to be evil or drain someone in vendetta. greed would be a motivator as well. it would be a i don't care player. add to that the extra you get from wars and it builds up and gets dumped in the market. while that goes on, you lose corps and supply changes, they don't need supplies. after a while a big draw in the market for the new corps comes. That takes time. it happened when people realized they were over contracted when the GM changes the required supplies in corps a while ago as well. people realized some thing was wrong and mob mentality can collapse a market. many selling all at once could change supply/demand by billions of units. point is yep, many ways to sink the ship so to speak. and yep, not worth it. everyone loses in the long run.

Wow 24 months watermark. Really? So your corps have more than 2 years of supplies in them? or am I just stupid and not understanding the whole watermark thing?

how many businesses by 2 years of back printer paper, or computer chairs, its allot of money, and then they aren't stored in a "bag of holding" but we can do it in SC, and pretty much have to!

you understand it jock, but try as we may, we play a game, that just can't imitate real life completely, i guess another way of looking at it, 24 game months, 2 game years, is 4 real days. so really he's just stocking up on 4 real days of stuff

as far as "corporate protection," for newbs, i don't know, the GM are the ones that make those decisions in the end, i'll have to pass on that one

Its a lot of money for sure. Seems unsustainable? I'm guessing here but 2 year supply is upwards of 10B probably. Most corps don't make that in a year. Plus those supplies aren't completely safe. If I remember right quakes wipe out corps. Radiation damage can close them aswell. My memory's a little fuzzy so I could be wrong. Plus there's hostile bids to take into account or sneak attacks.

one thing that i calculate into my planning, is game level, i make sure i've got a high enough game level to counter bid on my own shuttle corps, they hold more value in supplies than the corp value, like double

@jock, yes, remember the game will get it up to 24 mos. So yes there is a start up cost to it. after its over 24 mos supply it will order like normal. yes I said 24 mos, my main is higher since secured. I think i used 9 mos reorder. so it still works the same once the start up is done. Mostly the corps pay the bill.
TY orbiter, you're right on the money. stockpile it some to give it time. higher low level mark give your corp time to order goods and never run out. usually the only shortages I get is a corp you must sale to directly, like space corps.
i've had about 100 earthquakes, some losing 3 corps, that is life. All life is a risk. Yes you can lose some stuff. I have had less than 100 corps lost in EQ. If you in war danger I can understand less of a buffer, but a fully upgraded corp, 24 months goes fast and the default settings are 4 LWL and 12 Reorder. 4 mos for a fully upgraded corp is really 2.8 mos, 24 is like 18-20 mos.
point to take is 4-12 is not enough to prevent shortages and you may have to adjust it, if 24 is too high, slowly change it, try 8 and 12, then 12 and 12 later. make it as small as you can while still having time for the corp to reorder is the goal. A strong CM with many products helps as well Jock.
Jock I play FB as well as other planets, yes you may want to limit it a little more to the min on FB if your in danger of being attacked. But while the market was green, I did this to help the market and to secure my corps supplies. The only shortages I get is if I forget to load a SCMU or something up manually.

It seems the only 2 choices is a buffer or strong CM supply. I recommend the use of both to help combat the shortages. I used 24 mos, but try it lower like i said 8, that a day of supplies for a fully upgraded corp. Yes you can lose them, is it worth it is your decision. Is the loss of production cost you more than the loss of supplies in the small event of an EQ? Now war for FB I can understand that more. ANTI NUKES are your friends! lol

As far as this corp protection, are we talking blocking ceos. this is a practice I use mostly. Blocking the ceos prevents bids and offers, but you can turn it off to allow someone to build, accept the corp request and set it back to block. once you accept, the block will not prevent the offer from building. I keep this option on in my countries to prevent takeovers. it does not prevent public corp take overs with stocks however.

One last point, there are more than one way to do things and we must do something to prevent the problems described. You can wait for the GM to help, if they do, or you can take matters into your own hands and try to prevent it using what tools we have to work with, this new one they added hits the spot for me! I am glad they finally added it to corps as well as countries supplies. Everyone has a different set of variables and general advice needs to be taken into perspective of your own situation.

Personally I am trying 6 and 12 Months. Seems to be working, mostly. Aside from having to sell Plastics from personal stock, I have had no real annoying issues during this. My only issue was how long it took me to remember I had I had the Plastics
My only concern with the Huge stock purchases is products bought at max price all at once, instead of being split it up. NOt a huge concern mind you, just something nagging at the back of my head.

The shortages are now smaller than they have been several days ago. I see corporations and countries that are waiting for supplies but what we see is a single order in nearly all cases.

Multiple orders are placed automatically when shortages get out of hand.

We think that there are three main reasons for the shortages and there might be a connection between the first two:

1. More players are buying to influence the markets.
2. More players are offering products on space stations. The reason is that such trades earn them gold coins.

The third reason is unrelated.
The increase in storage in corporations that follows the new feature that allows you to set the order size of raw materials for your corporations.