W3C - Raw Materials

We have been asked in the past, many times, about the quality of raw materials.

The issue was, and is, that some raw materials are not needed in a high quality.
You can purchase them at quality 120 and you are OK.

As a result, corporations that produce these materials cannot sell higher quality and make very small profits. There are always shortages as it does not make sense to produce them.

We have promised, several times, that we will, in time, make quality important for all the products in the game.

We have done so gradually, and also increased the range of quality that corporations can use and have an advantage using them.

The quality of raw materials used to make sense up to Q160. Now it makes sense up to Q210.

Recently we have announced that the quality averaging of raw materials will become more realistic and take their price into account.

As a result, the quality of electric power and maintenance products became relevant and it now makes sense to use high quality of these materials.

This is consistent with our promises following repeated requests and it solves the problem we had with maintenance corporations that could hardly sell at Q > 120.

As many times in the past, even players who asked for quality relevance, hate it when it happens but we will continue, product by product, to find solutions for quality of these products and make sure that it applies to all current and upcoming products in Simcountry.

Andy

This is one of the rare times where you and i are in agreement. I approve of these changes in general.

The only problem i can see is some corps like the new maintenance corps use the high price tag items. There's a lot of corps on LU making base maintenance and they barely make a profit because the market price and the cost of the materials is extreme. I have corps making air maintenance buying 180Q goods. I make LESS profit with that corps then a standard corporation, that doesn't include me having to ship bombers from Fearless Blue or in some players cases buy them.

Might i suggest that the GM look at a small drop in goods used to make products over all. Dropping the raw materials by 10% in all corps would increase profits slightly to help balance this effect making the players slightly more happy and at the same time allow the markets to come down from there extreme demands in the markets?

By the way you said you was in Italy, WHAT YOU DO!!! Going to Rome is on my bucket list.

Andy,

I hope you are enjoying your time away. It would be a good idea though if all of the GM are going on holiday at the same time to not make a major change like this one and leave town. You said you were going to do it in a week or 2 but then you did it 4 days after the announcement and did not bother to answer any questions before you made the change.

I have read your explanation. First let me be sure I understand your reason. It was because we couldn't sell high Q FMU and electric power. Well those corps in my enterprise always sold all the high Q product they produced. I have 42 FMU corps and my profits in them went down after the change. Electric power and FMU supplies are still in the red. I am sure you realize that your change destroyed Average Supply Quality that had come to be a game feature used by many players. It was time consuming to set up the needed contracts and make adjustments but if you were a serious player it was worth the time in the high quality products that could be produced using a mix of low Q and high Q raw materials. This allowed those players to achieve improved profits over those who just set their supply quality at a set number and walked away. What is the challenge to that?

This change wrecked profits in my countries and enterprise. Profits are billions lower each game month and I lost trillions in asset value and values continue to fall.

So what is your solution to those of us who invested our time to use ASQ? Are we to just forget ASQ, cancel all the hundreds of contracts and set the supply quality to 210 and just wait to see what happens?

looking through sc for few weeks now, i think it is the concept of quality that is the primary source of our problems in sc

as supersoldier has posted, either the corps needs to be made to create more products with the same cost, or to decrease the cost while still making the same quantity of products as now.

the gm already control how much materials will cost to produce a product, it is attempting to control the price that we can sell what we produce too, thru this quality concept.

so we are getting squeeze from both end, that's why our profit has gone down and asset values have decreased.

if you're going to play so that is fair, why not just start on one end and leave the other end open?

i have manufactured strategic bombs at the top state corp quality of 273, and i made a loss when i'm using my own high quality products as ingredients because the max price for my bomb is pre-set at 2.73x13.90 = 37.95B by gm.

my strategic bombs corps has about 2B monthly running costs (on the low end), so the only way i could even breakeven is that the bombs produced have to be no less than Q173.

there are too many sc products that the quality concept do not make any sense to them. so why can't we price our products base on the actual cost to produce them---that's how things work on earth?

Funny thing, I never noticed any FMU or Electric Power corporation having problems in selling high q goods. In fact, FMU corps were among the most profitable corporations in this game @307 and 342 qualities. After all, I remember it was you Andy who explained some time ago that all products are sold in prices according to their quality and regardless if everyone buys FMUs at 120Q the 307Q FMUs also get sold and form the general pool of supply.

So, with all due respect, since this is a lame excuse, let me "translate" Andy's explanation (after all in my line of work I'm used to speaking on behalf of others):

We are in the process of downsizing Simcountry. We don't believe everything should be valued in trillions. We are cutting down on weapon prices, supplies, C3 raiding rewards and finally profits. We cannot allow good econ players to make so much money as they used to from their countries and (mainly) enterprises. We want to deflate Simcountry and we will never achieve this as long as you keep making 1.5B/game month from your every little corp. So this is the solution we came up with. We will increase your costs in this way without increacing individual goods' prices (because that would contradict our main goal of deflating Simcountry).

Why are you shy to admit it Andy? I honestly think it's a brilliant solution. Just come out and say it. We are an undertanding bunch. Don't insult our intelligence by this "explanation" you posted above (along with the "no internet in Italy" line as if you were in Afghanistan). We can handle the truth lol ;)

P.S. I do think it's a great solution to downsize SC. Trillions was one of the things that annoyed me in this game from Day 1. I just wished you would treat as more like paying customers and less like subjects.

@christos,
i think it's complicated for w3c to be that direct

trillions is way too much money for a country the size of an american state. let's get back to millions and billions, so most of us can visualize comparative to earth economics.

just want to make some kind of logic to this game. it's already challenging enough that i cannot control the cost of raw materials, the wages of my workers, my population growth and decay, my tax rate for my citizens, my own contracts with other players, and so on. how much more challenging can it get if gm already controls how much i can sell my products for?

it's an awesome game, let's make it better. i don't mind using my usd to grow this game, but darn make sure i get some value out of it (even it's just imaginary).

I have noticed that my air transport corps used to produce their product at q=230, using my asq formula. They are suddenly producing q=187 with that same formula, I haven't changed a thing. Thus they went from a profit of 700M/month to LOSING 700M/month. There is no logical explanation for this, other than a glitch in the new "update". Any thoughts?

Ok, I admit, we all do have problems, lol.

Air transport has been in a bit of a glut for a while now.

Chris,

Great interpretation of the GMSpeak. I think you are right. The problem is they are downsizing profits and asset values at an accelerated rate over the decrease in the price of anything else. I have not seen the price of anything - raw materials, products, weapons,ammo, etc decrease by billions in the span of a week. But for many of us our profits decreased by billions in less than a week.

I would think that to do the downsizing would be a massive project that would require an across the board decrease in everything at the same time to make it work without causing so much damage to economies. Doing only one part of it or doing it in the wrong order has bad consequences as we see here. Then there is the issue of many market prices of products that are so low and production is so limited they can never be profitable. That needs to be taken in account too. Maybe it was better to be unrealistic than it is to wreck the whole game. And since the GM has made it clear that there is more to come buckle up and hang on as the ride will likely get bumpier before it's over.

One thing to consider, if their was a 10% decrease in income, matched by a 10% decrease in cost, what would that mean for the guys that have 1-2Q plus in there direct trade account? The guy with 1Q cash hanging out, would gain more than 10% buying power.

Another way to look at it, if you decrease costs, the guy with 1Q Game Cash, effectively is given 100T, in buying power.

Its been said, that after spending years, and thousands of dollars, its not really worth risking your assets in a conflict that you could loose. Sim Country is "top heavy," in the sense that many/most of those with power, are unwilling to risk anything. effectively, making the game, and the political struggle, stale.

Rather than going on and on, i think you get my point.

Although, ASQ itself makes sense. I mean, couldn't you buy a cheapo pot, and still win the local Chili cook-off? Yes, of course!

The new maintenance corporations can purchase the raw materials at Q120 and produce lower quality.

these corporations can be very profitable and will remain profitable also at a lower price.
we will in time, make sure that the quality of these products matters too and once that is done, it will make sense to produce them at a higher quality.

Nobody lost trillions because of these changes.
you can say so but it is not what happened.

The assets went up recently, as they did several times in the past and nobody complained.
the correction, as happened many times in the past, reduced the total assets. it has nothing to do with this change that caused a very small overall effect.

Fact is, that when you pay more for these raw materials, the money is increasing the profit of other corporations.
there is no leak in the system and while some corporations pay more, others earn more and it is the exact same amount.

In such a closed system (as in this case), there could not be any major change in total assets. The reason is the one I mentioned before.

Also, many products are now about 2% cheaper, ammo and weapons prices declined more (we have announced it ahead of time).
This reduced profits a bit (short term) as the stock of raw materials was paid for earlier.
New purchases of raw materials are then cheaper and profits increase.

The total cost of war declined by about 5%.

Josias - Where was the 10% decrease in cost? I know you just used it as an example and it wasn't an exact number but where was the corresponding decrease in cost?

I am not one of those top heavy guys. I am a guy who has played a lot in the past year and I listened and learned from you vets. That is how I learned ASQ and other things that have helped me with the little success I have had. Now we are once again changing things to level a playing field instead of challenging everyone to succeed? I bet those top heavy guys would say that they risked a lot to get where they are now.

And you are right I could win a chili cook off with a cheap pot. But it is the quality and great taste of the chili and the right mix of the ingredients that wins the contest and not the pot.

I just said there was a general decline in pricing of 2%.
Ammo declined much more, some weapons too and as a result, the cost of war declined by 5%.

Some type of ammo went down by 10% or more and the production numbers increased. These were several types of ammo that are in very severe supply shortages and required such a correction.

Corporate profitability remained unchanged..

Point i was making, is that the de-escalation of Sim cash and other features, isn't exactly straight forward.

If you lower profits to downsize. And lower costs to somewhat match. You're still left with huge cash reserves that actually increase dramatically in power. Its not so bad, i mean, the people that have earned it, have done just that. how ever, as the saying goes, you don't want to cut off your nose to spite your face.

And for the record, many of those that have amassed large stock piles, wouldn't have done it, with out a social structure designed to prevent any one from taking advantage of them. That is, they made it a Sim-Crime, to take anything from them. All you have to do, is look at war levels (and why they where created,) to prove that point.

Sim Country has always had the body builders philosophy of "Burry me massive." How ever, that thought process, combined with years of effort, distracts from any real conflict. to the point that it is cruel to pick on any one that can't defend against you. and pointless to fight any one that can!

With the downsizing, i'd imagine we'll eventually get to the point that only the newbs will really be able to play the game, because the vets don't really want to risk fighting each other.

On the face of it, there is indeed a problem.
cash becomes more powerful.
It is however much less severe than you suggest.

It used to be, when there was an unlimited supply of gold coins into the accounts of these players, in exchange for cash.

It is harder to remain very profitable when you have large empires and keep increasing assets.
We see this in many of these accounts.

It is on the other hand also possible to make money in other ways, for all players and some relatively new players, have large assets.

I know it's futile to try and have an honest discussion since any point I raise will just get ignored and instead you will answer a different question (preferably easy and one I never asked in the first place lol) but here I go: before thechange my main (Apo Republic in KB) made 70+B/month with a 70mil pop while rated 14th in defence. I humbly considered this an accomplishment. Now it makes 40B/month if Im lucky. My two enterprises (Apo Inc and Apo Holdings) made 500B/month out of 600 corps and 250B out of320 corps respectively. Now they make HALF of that if Im lucky. The same happened to my coubtries and ceos in LU and FB.

Conclusion: A. I knew the game before the changes and now Im a noob again. B. i had all the wrong corps (over 1.500 in KB, LU and FB C. Andy's explanations stretch the truth (to put it mildly)

Andy stated "Nobody lost trillions because of these changes.
you can say so but it is not what happened."


Really Andy? I guess you must have a different definition of lost. How about decreased? Declined? Let's don't play word games you know what happened.

My countries total asset values decreased after your change. For example, the line graph for total assets for my leader country shows a constant downward trend. On December 3445 my total assets had already declined to 127 Trillion. On May 3447 my total assets are now at 117 Trillion. Maybe that isn't lost to you but that value is lost for me and it continues to decline each game month. I say so and it did happen. Your own charts and graphs prove it.