W3C - Quality of products

A major change is planned, that will complete the quality system for all products in Simcountry.

This issue is old and to date, only partially solved.

Current status

The quality of weapons and ammunition, has an influence on the fighting power of military units and purchasing them at a high quality can make sense. Some do not think so and they purchase weapons at any quality they wish.

The quality of raw materials is also important because they influence the quality of the products produced by the corporations. Here too, you can decide for yourself what the best way is.

The remaining problem is the products that are used by the country.

It is possible to order these products at any quality you want but it requires manual orders and the quality has very little influence on any other parameters in the country.

Future situation

We will now resolve this last issue.

The ordering strategy screen (Trade menu), where you can set your purchasing strategy for all automatic orders, will be extended with an extra column where quality can be specified.

This will allow you to specify, per product, what quality you want the system to purchase for you.

In addition, we will add a new index to Simcountry: the Quality index.

The quality index will be an average (weighted by the quantity of product used) of all the products a country consumes.

The quality index will include all food products, services, electric power etc. all the products that are used on monthly bases for use by the population.

The index will not include any weapons or products you purchase for strategic reasons. (example: machine parts or trucks).

The quality index will be added a an important factor in the welfare index.

A high quality index means that the country is purchasing higher quality products for its citizens consumption.

If the index is high, the welfare index will increase and influence the productivity of all the corporations in the country.

If your quality index is very high, it will cause all your corporations to increase their production without the need for more workers. It will improve their profitability.

work is started on this feature and it will be added to Simcountry by the end of September or early October.

Nice!

This is a great change, especially the change in the trade menu. Thank you!

At last! Thankyou Tommi, I've been looking forward to this for a long while.

I see this as a double edged sword.

In one instance it is great to auto order certain items or products at a specified level.

Great, but it appears to have come at a cost. When more details of the quality index are provided we will see.

It looks as if the price of quality-adjusted purchase strategies has come at a price. The inclusion of a quality index.

The first item to note is that: The index will not include any weapons or products you purchase for strategic reasons. (example: machine parts or trucks).

The second item to note: The quality index will be added a an important factor in the welfare index.

The first item to question is: Will the quality index play any part in requirements for any specific game level?

From what I gather this will force presidents to order what are atm 100 quality products that have no benefit for ordering over 100 quality, into purchasing at a higher quality in order to influence the pending 'quality index'.

Failure to do so, will have a negative impact on your welfare index which is entirely too hard to figure out as it is.

Am I right in this assumption Tommi or is this not the case. It would be good to expplain if I am wrong as I am probably not the only one to see things this way.

If I am right this will be another increase in costs. So what you could have done manually will now be possible through the automation feature, but we will now have some form of increased costs as a result of this implementation. So if I am right, people, be careful what you wish for.

May the gawds help us all if I am right Lol.

I applaud this coming improvement, it will complete the quality aspect of the game, and make CM useful for country needs.

We had complaints here on the forum about buying products at a high quality without any effect on the performance of the country.

We solved the problem for weapons.
We never had any such problem in corporations.

The last part is consumption products.

If a country takes good care of its citizens and orders high quality products, it pays more for products used in health, education and all the consumption products used by the citizens.

The assumption is that the welfare of the country is then increased. People are happier and one of the side effects is that they also work harder, become more productive and corporations are doing better.

if the country is buying bad quality product, the cost for the government is lower but people hate it, the welfare is down, people may decide to emigrate (if also health and education + social security are bad and salaries in corporations are lousy) and workers become less productive.

Corporations get into lower productivity, produce less and corporate profits decline. This is how the welfare index works for years and now, it will get a new component.

This is a complete cycle of quality and its consequences and we have many such subsystems in the game, each with its own feedback and consequences.

"The quality of raw materials is also important because they influence the quality of the products produced by the corporations. Here too, you can decide for yourself what the best way is."

Will the new system give individual corporations the ability to buy supplies on a multi quality basis?

The new system is only taking care of the products that are consumed by the population and have an influence on their welfare.

Any chance on adding a warehouse feature for countries and ceo's so we can order supplies on a multi quality basis? (Help players with their ASQ strategies)

I'm still not sure if that answered my question tommi. I'll take your response as I was wrong.

With that in mind, what will be the ratio of benefit vs cost tommi? For example, if I buy higher products for my citizens, will the benefit at the very least offset me added costs in materials. Like if my extra cost involved in higher quality country products is %50 then will corporation productivity increase due to higher welfare result in increase in profitability of my corps to cover the increase in higher quality products consumption of country products?

Or in short will the added costs of buying higher quality products turn into higher profits in my corps to at least cover the added costs?

I can imagine the wise president will establish some sort of ASQ for their countries as well as their corps wendy. Of course it will cost but production is the big issue with corps nowadays. This is promised to effect production. With a lot of corp production being reduced I reckon you should be able to work this to at least recoup your costs.
We shall see.

I can gather that it will be an incurred cost. I wonder why this addition of a quality index was masked by the addition of order strategies by quality. As if the benefit of one outweighs the negative result of another.

I'm really surprised that of all the responses that I am the only one who even questioned this at all. Are you guys so bent on saving a few clicks, that you were willing to give up something tangible in return? Because that is what happened here.

I'm not saying that it is a bad thing. I am saying that it is a bad thing that we are always leaning towards an objective with such a degree of tunnel vision blinded by such shortsightedness. This is an interesting tidbit of information to be analyzed.

W3c have you thought to contract your forums to psychiatrists for psychological studies and interpretations? I bet you'd get a handsome contribution for doing so granted you found the right group of Scientists.

I always thought of SimCountry as a huge Psychological ***CONSPIRACY!!!***

Actually, Simcountry was once mentioned on a paper about MMO psychology. Or other some such.

Nimz was the who found it, and looking at Google Scholar, I think it was the Agent-Based Simulation of Leaders paper he posted on IRC.

I suppose I could take a loot at the lot of you, but I'm not a big fan of public choice theory.

Wendy: I feel I did consider the consequences of both changes. Having the quality of products our country buys actually mean something is important and we have talked about it for years. It makes sense if I buy better quality food,furniture, medical supplies, and everything else that I would have happier and more productive Sims. You have a point about the cost of higher Q items and the return we will get in production. We shall see on that one.

But, even if we have a net loss, it has never made sense that everyone upgrades Q on all of their corps and everyone buys 100Q supplies for their country--Yet, all those corps selling 250Q potatoes still sell their products. Who buys them?!? Now they have a market. So it is a plus 1 for realism either way.

Thanks Tom ! I hope my thread had somthing to do with this... "Quality in Corps (Fearless Blue)"

Lol Zen, indeed a +1 for higher q goods consumption.

I agree there should be a benefit for buying higher Q as well, but not at the expense of a negative impact if you do not.


And wow LG, my theory was spot on then. Someone at least considered it. I'll look it over at some point of leisure. The articles look intellectual, especially the 5th.

Good. Only one question for Tom Willard- So is this change why my welfare has crashed in the last two weeks or so?

No. " work is started on this feature and it will be added to Simcountry by the end of September or early October "

Well, I don't remember doing anything to drop welfare so a glitch is the most likely case, or I've just been a n00b and f**ked something up, excuse the French.

This goes to the notion i previously mentioned of the welfare index being entirely too complicated as it is already.

A nice formula for the computation of the index would be nice.

Hopefully included in the game news update with the feature.

This update is a step in the right direction. The quality of products should have more of an impact on our gameplay.

I dont know fatty, I kind of like to have a certain amount of intuition put down to experience, it makes the game intriguing. If we all had the exact formulas, it wouldn't be hard to draw up maxima and minima and have the ideal settings, removing a lot of challenges. Its also challenging to adapt to changes, I know most complain about some of them, me included, but it does keep things interesting...

I fully support this. Ever since Quality was introduced, this has been desperately needed.

I already contract to my country at high quality levels, so I can look forward to a handsome gain then.

CC you misunderstand the request.


If we don't have any idea what goes into how the index is calculated, how can we ever make informed decisions based on a formula to understand why we set variables to any value.

Why,....

Why do you set salaries higher, to increase production.

Why do you set education index to 120, 160, or 200, to increase the quality of professional output or decrease it in opposition with lower settings.

Increasing 'confusion' should not be and adequate substitute for difficulty or intrigue.

If you want a more or increasingly challenging or complex game, simplifying the game to what is tantamount to guessing is not acceptable.

This is the confusion that leads to frustration, not of the challenging sort, but rather the 'deliberate type, which inevitably leads to non renewal.

I do not see a viable excuse for not publishing how the formula that explains how the index is compiled or calculated. This isn't a guessing game.

If it is, why publish game news, why even have outdated documentation. Why have newb help, or information boxes that still have as of yet to be filled in many cases.

Do you feel me now. We don't just make decisions, we make them to achieve a desired result. We achieve these results as due to, in the very least haphazardly educated guesses. Time to take the guessing out of the game.