Raw materials costs are getting uncontrollable.

It seems like almost all of my countries and enterprises are simply paying too much for raw materials.

Here is an example.

Corporation A (mine, "Vulpinian Holdings") makes Household Products in a c3 country and pays 300 salary. It orders supplies at 140 quality and pays ~2.6 billion per game month for these.

Corporation B (not mine) in the exact same country also produces Household Products. It pays the same salary, 300. It orders supplies at 160 quality, a bit higher than mine. It pays ~1.9B per month for this.

Why is my corporation ordering lower quality supplies and paying more for them?

I see this happen consistently across my enterprises and countries. Most of my private and state corporations are paying exorbitant amounts for raw materials and do not produce profit at all any more.

Why is this occurring? What am I missing?

To further add to the confusion, here is another corporation to look at (sorry HTML tag didn't work):
https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=3141000

in my other enterprise [Kitsunebi] on the same world produces HHP with salary 300 and orders 150 quality supplies. Basically the same trade strategies. Paying only ~1.9B per month.

Agreed.

Similar thing with me; have 2 CEO's on GR. I was comparing corporations in them, same country, same product, same settings, same taxes (0%), yet my 'cursed' CEO costs across the board were higher than my other CEO. I compared many corps., and it was the same. Coincidentally, Columbia Commerce Consortium's total market value for all corps have dropped close to 60% since the GM's started moving numbers down. It is down considerably more than my other CEO percentage wise (Carolina GCX).

I keep wondering, when does the devaluation of this particular CEO end?? And why are the cost higher, when my settings are exactly the same in every category as my other CEO?

I am not blaming the GM's for this, however. I may be doing something to cause this, though I have tried everything in the book so to speak, to at least slow down the downward spiral that CCC is taking.

Andy, if have the time, could you look at the drop of value of my CEO (Columbia Commerce Consortium) and see if it out of the norm.

I would greatly appreciate anything you could do.

Thanks!

Bumping.

What's going on here? Why are certain private (and state) corporations paying so much for raw materials when others aren't?

I agree with Kitsune

I've noted this a few times among different CEO's. WTH is going on

Yep. My minds eye caught this a long while ago. I'm exhausted at finding where my profits are draining to in my CEOs especially :S

The value of corporations is declining with all other numbers.
Income and cost declined and the difference too so if earning per share is down, PE ratio restores itself by reducing the price of the shares.

measured in gold coins over time:
a year ago (or two) a very large corporations was values at 0.5-1.0 gold coin, not it is doing around 7.

We have not pushed this down, it is the result of declining numbers.
check the value of your account in gold coins. If you have done recently as good as before, the value has jumped in the past year.

the total world value used to be 3.5M gold coins, now it is 12M+.

Raw material pricing depends on the market. create some corporations that produce materials your corporations use a lot and contract it to them at a good price.

If you look at the "last price paid" column on the "available materials" section for each corporation, you will see this:

First Example Corporation, "Louth Household Products" from my enterprise "Vulpinian Holdings"

Product Avg Quality Last Price Paid
Chemicals 144 $3465
Electric Components 144 $1563
Electric Power 137 $165575
Electronic Components 146 $1813
Factory Maintenance Units 135 $4.19M
Glass 142 $2404
High Tech Services 142 $1553
Plastics 142 $2223
Services 139 $1576


Second Example Corporation, "Omega Household Products 15", in the same country as the first:
Product Avg. Quality Last Price Paid
Chemicals 167 $4052
Electric Components 154 $1514
Electric Power 154 $202253
Electronic Components 164 $2097
Factory Maintenance Units 162 $5.16M
Glass 166 $2916
High Tech Services 162 $1814
Plastics 159 $2467
Services 157 $1727

Finally, if you look at the third example corporation "Batangas Household Products" from my second LU enterprise, which is in a different country but uses basically the same trade strategies as the first:

Product Avg Quality Last Price Paid
Chemicals 145 $3539
Electric Components 150 $1599
Electric Power 156 $198783
Electronic Components $1777
Factory Maintenance 151 $4.74M
Glass 148 $2501
High Tech Services 156 $1733
Plastics 144 $2147
Services 151 $1634

You can see from this that the first example corporation buys slightly lower quality materials on average than the other two and according to "Last Price Paid" it is also paying less for these. This is entirely logical.

Here is the part that isn't.

From "Profit&Loss Statement -- Current Month", we see the item "Raw Materials Used."

Louth Household Products: $2670M
Omega Household Products 15: $1945M
Batangas Household Products: $1857M

If the average quality of materials and "last price paid" is mostly lower in Louth Household Products than in either of the other two, why is the listed "Raw Materials Used" cost so much higher? That's the part of this that doesn't make sense.

Further, "Vulpinian Holdings" seems to be similarly overpaying in all of its private corporations (but not any of its public corporations) as compared to other corporations on the same world.
On the other hand, my second LU enterprise "Kitsunebi" is apparently not overpaying on any of its corporations (I don't think - haven't had the time to look at every single one). This phenomenon seems to be centered on certain enterprises, as well as on state corporations (most of my state corporations across the worlds have very high "Raw Materials Used" costs).

This is not the only example of strangeness in raw materials used costs. I could look around on LU and also the other worlds and find different examples of this from various different enterprises and players.

I am less concerned about a simple lack of profit than I am about these numbers not adding up. Is this a bug? Intended feature? If intended, what is the criteria that makes this apply in certain cases and not others?

I don't know how the question could be explained any better than what Kitsune stated.

Could it be buying strategies, paying more because you dont get it for a month or two? To compound this the slight difference in Q ordered may matter as from what I understand the game tries to fill orders of a certain Q with offers of the same Q, if this cant be fufilled then it will do a best match.

Hard to believe, but vaguely possible that a slightly different Q order would take longer to be fufilled??? and so the 8 or 10% strategy mark up comes into play. Probably I'm clutching at straws and hopefully Andy will find out and explain exactly what is going on.

How about this thesis. Older corps buy first. Younger corps get the scraps and higher prices if product stocks are sold out at lower qualities. The older your private corps the further up in line they are to get the lower cost supplies.

kitsune. How old are those corps? Is the older one getting the better supply prices? Just curious.

Cheers.

LOL redman, but hey, most people do make and offer higher Q product, so the higher Q requests are more likely to get filled first. I wonder if the box on the corp page shows the price at the time the order was first considered or if it actually reflects any markup due to your purchasing strategy.

Also, Is the production in these corps the same?

That's an interesting theory Redman. I don't think that is it though.

Corporation Start Dates:
Louth Household Products: March 15 2714
Omega Household Products 15: July 15 2015
Batangas Household Products: June 15 2843

The corporation that is paying more for materials is Louth, which is the middle child of the three. It is owned by Vulpinian Holdings which is my (renamed a few times) first enterprise on LU. Batangas Household Products is owned by Kitsunebi which was my second enterprise on LU. And Omega Household Products 15 is actually Laguna's corp and as you can see it is very old.

Production Levels:
Louth: 107.3%
Omega: 107.3%
Batangas: 111.6%

All 3 pay 300 salaries.

Louth and Batangas use very similar trade strategies so that seems unlikely to be the cause.
Louth: Start at 91%, increase by 9% each month.
Batangas: Start at 92%, increase by 8% each month.

Also, here is another example corporation.
Public HHP corporation.

This corporation is a public corporation owned by Vulpinian Holdings. Buys 140Q average materials. Same trade strategy as Louth: Start at 91%, increase by 9% every month.
Production: 126%
Raw Materials Used: $1905M

Another thing I noticed Kitsune is that with the market price for goods swinging Violently, one month a product is market price 4321 and the very next month it is 2432. The violent market price shifts lend themselves to this problem as well I think.

It's hard just keeping trade strategies set without having to change them, so our corps are getting the same when they buy supplies. With all the changes we are getting it's very difficult to adjust correctly before they change it again.

Oh! This is my corp. I hadn't noticed. I wish I knew the answer, but I don't.

Imagine if you never had a moment to look so deeply. Into the abyss....

https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=enthist&miKey=21145&miColumn=vEnterpriseMonthMaterials

It appears that this enterprise has become "un-cursed" after I purchased it. This seems relevant to this thread.

That is a very interesting graph.

I was hoping that I had presented enough evidence of a materials cost anomaly to provoke a serious GM response.
Since I did not get one, I am currently arranging a few side-by-side comparisons with the exact same settings on LU and GR to hopefully prove that Something Is Not Quite Right...at which point I will send an email to the gamemaster.

I'm not going to let this one go easily...it has been the death of a few of my enterprises.

Not only is costs going up but the GM DESPERATELY needs to lower the country resource.

With everything being dropped countries still make tons of that fee. The GM should lower them to 15-20% this would allow taxes to play a much bigger role

Super, we're talking about glitches here. Not about game balance.

https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=enthist&miKey=21362&miColumn=vEnterpriseMonthMaterials

The player that sold the enterprise seems to have had the "curse" moved to his other enterprise.

EDIT: I went ahead and sent the GMs an e-mail. I hope they fix this soon (and I hope the glitch isn't actually inexplicable reductions in the costs of raw materials, haha).

Hmmm. I'm well interested to see how this one turns out.

Me 3

Me 4.
I don't think there is any glitch here.
just erratic raw material pricing that will average out.