Contracting corps to myself and getting more population (Little Upsilon)

I am trying to setup corp contracts to myself and came across a few questions that I didn't see any answers on hyet (And this site doesn't have a SEARCH feature!!!!)

1) Is it worth setting up contracts to my country so I buy from myself instead of outside?

2) I see that when I setup up corp contracts to my own contry, I can NOT set the price. It's set to the existing market value. Can this be changed?

3) When setting up corp contracts to myself, should I set them up to my country or to each corp that needs the production?

4) Is there an easier way to manage the supplies used? I have to open 2 windows to setup contracts. One is for the contracts I want to setup, the otehr is the page where I see what I am consuming. But if I want to contract to my corps directly, I have to see what each corp is using individually??

5) I see how you can TRADE population with another country and you can BID on population with game coins but is there any way to buy populations directly from another country?

Thanks!

1. Yes and no. If your selling weapons/ammo, under the right conditions (100 quality) then its saves you some money. All other corporations will most likely oversupply then what is needed by your country, so you will be wasting money buying goods that you don't need. The main advantage of direct trading is increase score and security of supply, since local trading will produce low quantity of supply, their are negligible benefits from it.

2. Prices are market price x quality/100
so 100 quality goods are bought at market price, 250 quality goods are bought at 2.5 times market price. You can't change contract prices.

3. If its a national weapons/ammo corp, then contracting full production to country is a good idea, or strategic corps you might want to engage in local trading. Don't engage in local trading for any other reason, you won't be able to produce all the supplies the country/corporations need, common market trading can.

4. I'd recommend you join a common market if you want to trade this way, AAA for all and laws of economics are large common markets, that can offer the largest quantities and variety of goods to trade with you.
Common market > contracts > offer _______
here you can offer goods from your corps, offer the % of production you are willing to trade in direct contracts (common markets have varying minimum figures).

Common market > contracts > accept _______
accepting contracts will make contracts with all corporations that require the raw materials need in the previous step. So say you have a factory maintenance unit corp, and your gold corporation consumes 2 FMUs a month, it will have a contract of 2 FMUs from your factory maintenance unit corporation.
Note this is not recommended, as local and common market trading are usually higher quality, and past a quality point your corps waste money on quality that has no effect on their end product (this is 196 at completely upgraded corps, but most people use 190 as a safe measure) you have no say into what quality you receive from the contracts, the world market you do.

Common market > contracts > country ______
same as corporate raw materials but for the goods your country consumes. This is ok, because any the goods your country buys are in turn sold at a higher price to your citizens.

Any goods not traded in contracts will be sold on the world market.

5. If you have an empire (you control 2 or more counties) then you can directly transfer population, otherwise you need trade population on the cash market.

Well, local trading may not often be a good idea, but when your factory maintenance corp has a critical shortage of factory maintenance units, it's probably time to make an exception. I don't know how that happened. I had a factory maintenance corp with "too much" unsold production and that corp AND ANOTHER factory maintenance corp facing shortages that even immediate orders weren't taking care of.

Wow, thanks for the info. This is quite an in-depth game which I really enjoy.

I am already part of AAA for all common market so what what i understand, it would be more pratical to use them instead of local trading. That is what is odd about this game, I would have expected that local trading from within would be cheaper as you are basically trading with yourself.

I need to get my gear to work towards my 2nd country. I hope to be able to have a specialized country of educated folk that i can dispense with to my other countries

Thanks for the nfo. I bet you had fun learning this stuff

Good info. I see that private corporations have to pay for country resources used. Do state corporations use country resources too? Coz it doesn't show that they have to pay for them. If this is the case, then can I send electric power to my country for my corporations to use?

Here's a question along this line. If you want to produce say bread for your country to buy, and (eventually) even your empire to buy, if the country is happy with 100 level bread, does it make sense to NOT buy upgrades to food factories?

Or maybe just buy efficiency upgrades for the labor savings? And when folks say there's savings with the upgrades, are they taking into account the added cost of the increase in FMU usage. (No wonder thats the dearest good in the game ex-energy).

The docs say you'll recoup your investment in upgrades on "most" things. I'm wondering if food or goods for solely country consumption are things that you may not?

Also, what do better quality weapons that you will sell to yourself get you besides higher cost????

Thanks.