A Few questions on running Corps. (Golden Rainbow)

As a newbie, I ask your patience here.

I understand this game is quite complicated. There are, however, a few questions I have that should be easy, but I can't figure or find the answer.

How do you stop buying 90 FMU's at 4x the market price, when you only need 3 per month? I understand that there are automatic purchases, but how do you stop that kind of crazyness before it happens?

When/if you buy population, is it evenly distributed across age groups; and are they in each education level, or all just workers?(Or can you simply buy a certain level of worker that you need?)

Can you retain your products in a factory to be used in the same factory? Such as save the FMU's from an FMU factory to be used in the comming month(s) in that factory? (I'm not sure if there's a difference between Enterprise and Country stocks here. I've just begun to figure our Local Mkt/Common Mkt advantages, but it doesn't seem like you can very easily establish completely self-sustaining industries)

A more complicated question:

Why is it that some products sit in inventory and give you that big red TOO HIGH sign, when the market is clearly undersupplied (half a red bar so)? I've tried adjusting to Best Price/100% market with time and qual adjusts/ and even selling at a loss for a while, but still the imbalances remain, even over a couple of months..meanwhile other firms I look at sell out at 400% of market price?

Thanks for any help, and I'm sorry if I'm repeating questions already answered, but after reading Wikis and Forums for 2 half days, I have't seen the answers.

Shouldn't be a problem, the cost of many FMUs now will be the same as buying 2 per month, you may make negative profit that year but will make up the following years that corporation doesn't need to buy them. Higher price paid means you bought FMUs with higher quality of 100 (higher quality higher price) and/or the market price when you bought them was higher then the market price now. Set your corporations supply quality between 190 and 196 (190 recommended by most players) this will set a preference for achieving that average quality. Basically there is a much lower chance your corporation will waste money on higher quality goods that have negative effect to your bottom line.

I've found that you receive mainly workers from population, but I'm not sure if your countries education index and priorities have anything to do with it.

I think you can but its not worth the effort.

If 2 months worth of production sit in the corporation it will say too high. Just because there is a market deficit, doesn't mean buyers will buy any quality of goods for any price. The majority of product orders for countries are best price, if the country can wait (which they can) they will for a better price. After a while the order will be converted to immediate where they will buy any product currently offered on the market. Ammo and weapons in a deficit market have a much higher likelihood of immediate orders, because the leaders have to manually place these orders a lot of the time and may not be in the position to wait around for a better price. Corporation orders controlled by successful players will have a quality preference, too high (not an issue) or too quality and you will be picked last if they are in the position to be fussy and if your talking about FMU (which is an incredibly large market) then they probably can. After quality the corporation will buy a set price if no products are offered at that price that month they will usually offer a higher price next month. If you set a trade strategy where within 5 months your product is offered below market price you will not have any wasted production for your corporation (unless operating in a severe surplus market), even if it says too high. 60% above market price (following quality) and decreasing by 15% each month of unsold production is a decent strategy, or 30% (following quality) decreasing by 10% each month is a quicker sale strategy.

Thank you Angus, those were very helpful answers. Most especially that sales process analysis. I will pay much closer attention to quality levels all around.

Is it generally good to go with automatic upgrades to your factories, or do some players try to control upgrades to keep them at or below that 190 level to match the buying strategy you mentioned?

I've now had a couple of months of Common Market/Local Market sales practice, and I am getting quite a few unfilled orders. Do you need to manually reserve output to fill commonwealth and local market orders, or will the factory automatically reserve for contracts signed and accepted this way?(some of the unfilled may be because the factory is not operating at 100% capacity, and the auto-contracting to commonwealth/local may be promising up to the full capacity or my set % of full capacity??)

Also, I believe I've seen products that pile up in inventory switch over into the "Product in Stock but not Offered on the Market" category. Are these products ever reoffered automatically, or do you have to manually sell these or reoffer them somehow?

Thank you again for your help.

Yes quality upgrades are basically guaranteed to increase the corporation profits, keeping 190 quality level will probably get you a lot easier sales, but highest quality possible will produce your more profits. Efficiency upgrades slightly increase your overall salary cost, but hire less people, and hire much more workers (which you have little control of manipulating numbers), with efficiency upgrades its generally accepted that your country can support more numbers of efficient corporations, then normal efficiency corporations.

Common market > Contracts > Offer products. Down the bottom you can set the % you want to offer and to what market, your corporations will automatically reserve this amount for market contracts if this is not bought on the common market it then gets offered on the international market. You need to re-enter this setting for new corporations built.

Oh make sure you set corporation sale strategies to increase with product quality, otherwise you will loose money offering higher quality product for the price of low quality product.

That all makes alot of sense, thank you again for those tips.

I read that follow quality option, and it did seem a good way to go. I also read a sales strategy that seems to be working out ok for me. I guess a corp just has to run for a year or two to really start making money?

At the rate I seem to be progressing, I'm still perplexed about how corps get to be so large and profitable, but perhaps that will come with experience.

Upgrade both quality and efficiency, and do so automatically. Links are: Corps> automatic system. Increade salaries of you corp is suffering worker shortages, and is selling well. Sometimes more is better.
Trade strats are not meant to be set and forgotten. Check out the market conditions every day, and adjust accordongly.
Contracts are the way to get FMU's and other hard to get supplies.. The corp will not automatically take what it has made and use it.
And yes, this is a Very difficult game!
Control the quality of the supplies it does buy.
Links are:Corps> Supplies quality.

And yes, this is a Very difficult game.

Thank you both for those strategy points.

To this point, I've been using my own Elec Power and FMU plants to subsidize production in just about every other plant. I know folks say its better to sell on the open market to get the better pricing, but I've been trying to stay ahead of the curve on these plants, especially FMU, and selling only about 60% or so in the Common Mkt. I'm sure I'd be bankrupt otherwise.
In any case, I believe I've noticed that un-upgraded FMU's(or any other un-upgraded product for that matter) don't really sell well in even 50% red-bar markets. Hopefully this strategy will continue to work well.

Another question. What do you think about not quality upgrading at all things like feedstocks (soybeans, cacao, corn, feed, wheat) and basic foods (fish, butter). Just efficiency upgrades should improve the worker/productivity mix I hope, but do I really need to build a better fish??

I'm happy to say I am finally turning a meager profit in a few of my Enterprise run corporations (que the harps, 'hallelujah'). Does anyone strive to run all public corps? Or are there some that you should keep private?