Economy and cash system

In my county's Cash Changes - Year To Date report I see where there are material purchases which the games say are basically consumer goods that are purchased by the country on behalf of the population, it goes on to say that it is used and paid for by the population and is not a government expense. If that is the case then total material purchased by the government should equal total spending by population. In my country this isn't the case, purchased material always out weight spending by population and I end up having to take the loses. If it is not a government expense then I shouldn't be the one taking loses. I MAY BE INTERPRETING THE DATA WRONG, if so can someone put forward a theory that makes sense.

Also the ammunition purchases that appear on my cash account, frankly it should be there.
Ammunition purchases for the military should be factored into the annual military budget and then the military should live within its means. The military should be allowed free reign over my country finances and be allow to purchased a trillion dollar worth of ammo without my approval that absurd. Also ammo purchases are not capital expenditure like building new school hospital or roads so they should be budgeted for and should not appear in my cash account.

The country supplies, like you mentioned, have been a point of irritation to players for a long time. What happens, is certain costs can be bypassed. You can do this by lowering your Government salaries, while keeping your industry salaries high. it cuts out allot or your country's monthly expenses, but at price of the government taking on extra costs, via country supplies.

as far as your military goes. your thinking that any purchase/growth of your military should be budgeted for. and if it isn't budgeted, then it isn't purchased. but thats not how it works in SC. your military budget, is just the cost to maintain your weapons/ammo, and pay your soldiers. how ever, its kinda crazy. try manually purchasing high quality military services. and watch your military upkeep go up, even though you've already purchased your services, the monthly cost will go up, because you have to pay a second time, (and at super high rates if you buy high quality m-services,)

which might partially shine light on how it works. your country will purchase the military services, and supplies. that will show up under the cash tab, in your country finances. then, as your military uses the supplies/services, it will add it into your monthly budget, and charge you a second time. So if you buy high q stuff, you'll pay maybe 2-3 times as much as you need, then pay 2-3 times again, monthly, until you use it up. while your military isn't really better off.

i can't tell you this next part exact. but both your population, and government will pay a percent, or part, based on their salaries. so higher government salaries, will end up resulting in more contributions to cover the purchase costs. Further, higher payed citizens, pay more. but they also demand more. building corps that use allot of high tech seniors, HTS, or high tech execs, HTX, will result in a higher percent of your pop, making more money, paying higher taxes, and paying higher contributions to the Investment funds, and country supplies. While having less tech heavy corps keep the over all salary levels in the country down, and lowering the demand for the most expensive country supplies, like jewerly. Their is a middle ground of balance, between gov salaries, corp salaries, and corps types, that can bring a positive balance.

if you think that it should work different, try sending the GM a message. they are usually really good at explaining things, via email.

for the record, you can make adjustments to your country, supplies, salary levels, and corp types, to actually gain a positive number on your supply costs. while still maintaining high profits in your corps, and over all in your country. their's a few tricky parts to learn first, but it does work. i've mentioned all the parts. i think

Wow, that's some great information. I've never realized that the supplies used was actually increasing my country costs.

shrug, i find it fun to be able to baby my country and get a few extra B where others are paying. and most of what i do, to make this money, actually makes more sense in the real world. that is, i raise my gov salaries above my state.

thats how it works every where i've been. state and county jobs, are among the highest paying jobs. but in sim country, its opposite that, to save a buck. so when we do something silly, to save a buck, the GM will eventually write it in some where else. and thats kinda what happened with country supplies. if you increase your gov salaries in comparison to your state, or country controlled public corps, then the inflow/outflow will make more sense.

plus high country consumption quality, would be the last part to really bring it out. as the contributions will increase, with the increased salaries, and multiply with the higher quality supplies. building corps with higher amounts of HTS, and HTX, will increase the percent provided from the population.

so when the gov starts to take a stronger roll, the population will contribute more, and your sim-economy will be much more robust. not everything in life can be measured with a ruler.

josias your saying that if my gov is payed the same as my corps and i have a nice high quality for consumables than the extra parole to gov workers will come back via consumption?

yes, but take it slow and easy

the first time you try this. i'd recommend lowering corp salaries, more than raising gov salaries tho. raising gov salaries increases all your government cost. so if you have a large military, or health index, you might notice more increase in costs, than the rest of what i said would compensate. lowering your corp salaries will not increase costs, it will negatively effect your income tax, but your corps will probably increase their profits do to lower salaries and less raw material used, and will compensate for the lower income tax.

thing is, their are many, many parts to SC, that all effect each other. i can't just tell you to run your gov sals over your corp sals. its only straight forward for me. because of a few other things i do.

For instance. i try to run my health indexes in 120-130 range. I've been doing allot of observing country growth rates. and i've found a more modest approach to your HI, and EI. Will give you the same results, in the long run. At a much reduced cost, and minus some of the other problems people experience by over building these.

So for me, to raise my gov, is considerably cheaper than others. I'm able to have the same effect, with less, while others just keep building more and more hospitals to keep up.

I mean, a country that has doctors camping out on every street corner, for any emergency, is gonna have some short and long term problems. financially, first, and in the long run, will have some dramatic population growth problems. That usually the only answer you'll get, is to just build more hospitals (or buy more pop) making the problem even worse.

so with a more modest health, education, and transportation system. you can assign a more realistic salary range to your government workers. and your private citizens, will be more on board with their end, and contribute more.

further, by modest index numbers, you avoid certain health and education pitfalls, like nasty pop bubbles, increased pop age (i.e. reduced birth rates,) and over training LLWs, and MLWs. That last one is hard to grasp, i know, but it really isn't good for your country.

with any kind of military, i'd recommend running your gov/corp salaries in the 120/100 range. with out a significant military, you can go higher, like 250/200. or play around with it. The GM state that corps are the most profitable in the 300-500 range. give that a try.

im still confused about how exactly increased government salaries are beneficial

I think i see part of it. But can you clarify how this ties into the pop's spending on consumables and the quality of the consumable index? what are the targets for this in general? I try to keep my health trans and edu around 150 and my corp production loves it. Dropping it a little to lower salaries all around can make sense if the savings from lower pay is not out weighed by the loss of production. And if i can get the pop to pay more for consumables than i spend on them this would help make this a better way to go.

I would like more info on the consumable part of the balance.

nope, no formula.

its all tanking lol

It is all tanking WTF!!!!!

The strange part about it is my 2 best econs where the ones hit the hardest. Whats up with that?

well, as far as trans goes, according to the docs, above 120, doesn't have as much effect. so you could probably, reduce that to the 120-125 range, or just stop keeping it up, and let your normal pop growth outrun it.

i've been examining health and education indexes, and priorities pretty closely, in the last few months. and seriously, long run, 120-125 education index, will work best. but then again, thats just my word, don't take that 2 seriously.

but to explain my thought. the more you educate, well, those people don't come from no where. they are trained out of your workers. no it might seem advantageous to have more trained professionals, than skilled and unskilled labor. how ever, by over training, you create a vacuum. a demand for mlw, and hlw, as those are being educated to higher level positions, leaving fewer and fewer to wash the dishes. heart breaking, i know. how ever, when that happens, your country will automatically retire allot of the older professionals, and they'll take up jobs in the llw, and mlw categories. increasing the average age of your workers, lowering birthrates, and causing worker shortages as your country keeps training retirees to be llw. its not necessary to spend that much effort to maintain a high tech work force while still having a balanced economy of agriculture, mining, and such

but then, i could be wrong, check it out for yourself, try running a virgin C3 for 6ish months, just for fun.

to continue my thought, health works the same way, their are disadvantages of super high HIs. ironically, left unchecked, a high HI, can have the opposite of the desired effect. Maintaining a healthy respect of all your countries needs, results in a healthy country. its not all about the numbers.

mixing that with what i originally was talking about, trimming my indexes to the minimum of what i need, greatly counters the con-effects of high indexes, while keeping my running costs low enough to justify a high gov salary.

so i guess, rather than trying to imitate what i say. understand the jist, experiment to prove me right or wrong, then figure out how to apply it to your style.

if i had the choice, i would definitely pay my government workers more than private corps pay their workers.

i would want the best people to work for me, because i owned the country

when you overeducate you can always just do a labor transfer and make your unused skilled back to laborers gotta love communism

people work for the government for half the pay they could make in the private sector because my education index is 50

if your happy with the way you do it, then carry on. i'm just explaining that their is a deeper level of country management, than the buy/build/rinse/repeat method that is so prevalent in SC.

no one will know any of this, if no one talks about it, and no one will talk about it, if the GM change the rules every time some one tries to explain something complicated. (hint hint W3C.)

everything's working fine as it should, well it is for us , maybe you guys are missing something

The spending and income from materials should end up about equal.
difference may occur due to changes in the pricing between the time materials were purchased and paid by the country and the time they were consumed.

The amounts are not the same in most months because supplies are bought when there are shortages. sometime a few products are bought and sometimes many.
Consumption is more stable.

some players tend to purchase and sell materials and further confuse the equation.

weapons and materials are not on the monthly cost and are showing on the cash balance when they are purchased.
if you do not purchase or have no army, these amounts will disappear.

It was not done like this in the past and we had many complaints about army cost that was changing strongly from month to month.

@andy,
a more transparent system for every one to track where they have bought and sold, (debit and credit), would surely eliminate many questions that have been asked.

the base price of any product does not change, the price of a product only change due to its quality so regardless of when/time you bought such product it's the same price.

i have not notice any change in price due to shortage or oversupply of any product in the market, so perhaps it is incorrect to say that price is depended on supply and demand in this game? as i have said before, the concept of quality is very subjective so it's like having a price for every color of a product, that's what seems to be complicating this game.

i do buy 100 months of inventory, but i don't think many others are buying this high volume so my action alone would be insignificant. but if all players and c3 are buying large volume, because they realize that price do not change, then sure i can go along with your explanation that the time of buying makes a difference.

i am jack's complete lack of surprise

If you did not see any change in price due to shortages or oversupply, you probably did not look.

It is obvious, all over the markets and it works in this way since day one. There is no other way to change the price.

All transactions are logged and you can see all the details. I am sure you did not look. It was in the game news some weeks ago.