Selling products not the same with selling strategy.

I set my selling strategies at +200 on the current quality and set to follow the quality. Problem is system sells it at quality level.
Example:
My corp produce 200 QA, i set it at 400% of market price but it sell it at 200%

I tried to sell it manually but I could not set it at +200 but instead the maximum selling only gave me the same as the product level.
Example:
My corp produce 200 QA, with 1000 market price. The maximum allowed price is 2000.

By the way I am on premium account.

why would anyone want to purchase products of Q200 for 400% of the market price?
there are no buyers at this price.

The best is to sell them at 190 and be sure they are selling.

your corporations will become profitable. Make sure you purchase raw materials at 160-170 and mot more.

If a corp wants to continue production in times of deep shortages other corps will have to buy what is available. I see this problem to, the laws of supply and demand. buy at 100 (no stock) ->125 (no stock)... 450!. Not saying it should go that far.

I think the problem is when something like this happens it feels like you have no control over your sales price. This IS problematic, if the game lets you sell something at 500% no one will buy it, but then it shouldn't sell instead of selling it lower. At least let the player be able to find the point of diminishing return.

Also it would seem by my observation (potentially false) that selling at +195 works better, because there are some glitches in which it travels above the plus 195 so if it isn't possible to set higher than +200 but you attempt it may revert you there. At 195 it doesn't seem to sell at +195 but it does seem to bring better returns than when I had them at +200, or when I had them all set at a flat 800.

I think the problem is one of perception. I set my trade strategies the same way - primarily because most of the products I sell are in chronic shortage. And it's a lot easier to set one trade strategy, then going through a large number of corporations and setting them individually.

And the products do sell - they do not remain in inventory long.

If no one is buying at that price, it should go from none, to some left, to too high and etc.

The problem is that the decision to sell them at that price is ostensibly being allowed, and then not granted at the point of sale. Instead the products are being bought at a discount the seller did not authorize. If they won't sell, let them remain in the inventory. Don't defraud the seller by agreeing to the sale, and then defaulting on the agreed upon price.

This problem also extends to sales by enterprises and countries. I recently sold 40 million units of a product at a 2500 SC$ asking price (reduced by 5% per month, and received nowhere near the expected figures.

As a guess, your "smoothing" procedures are not working correctly.. Instead of waiting a month to drop the figure on asking price, they are doing so constantly until they find a demand for the product.

Let me amplify a bit - was in a rush to catch my transportation.

At 400% above market - no one CAN buy your product - at least not on the open market. There's a market ceiling of 296%. You also lose roughly 20 points of quality as well across the entire quality spectrum. (the difference between inherent quality and marketing position, perhaps.) I'm unsure at this point whether that cap also applies to contracts and/or direct sales.

The rest of the above is MY current problem (and not sure if it ties into yours as well, though it seems plausible), and a huge one. If I can find the dock workers who are selling my products out the back door at a deep discount, I will be be condemned for committing atrocities.

The thing is, active players will build those product that are high in demand expecting a higher income.

No one may buy at 400% but that is the risk we am taking with. Anyway prices will be lowered by some percentage if not bought. Also, why it allow us to ask for 400% if not granted anyway?

The markets changed in the past year when quality became a more important issue and you can specify the quality of products you want to use.

many have reduced the quality level they purchase and it forced others to follow.
now the quality used, and produced is lower than before.

The interface does allow you to specify anything but the market is doing what the market must do which is to find buyers for the offers.

leaving products unsold is not an option on a large scale. offering at 400 and selling at 190 many months later will have the corporation bankrupted much earlier.
Corporations cannot stop selling or they die.

Yeah, I understand but that's the risk of every player.

If that could not be done, then better remove the +200 option on the selling strategy. That way people will not gave a wrong thinking.

Don't want to derail the topic, it is mostly on target. There definiately are risks with market stability if corps don't get their stuff because they don't buy the overly high priced items, and I agee with the statements that it is the risk of the seller, but could be also with the buyer having no reasonable choices on the market. That is the free market though that is how it works. When making decisions the way things are simply picking any price over a certain low level will be the same, then set salaries based on the country and your done? Wow not cool.

There are ways to reduce not eliminate but reduce the risk. Every corp's profitability is close to even then, with a multiplicity of the distance of the market price away from it's base price. The problem on one side is that with some kind of funky negoitiating on sales price reduces profitibility and allows people to waste money on upgrades and supply qualities they don't need, and on the otherside it is the risk of market instability.

So I've got the solution =). If you wanted to solve our issue, this is what you can do. You can let us sell our stuff for whatever we want, but instead of having it based on market price have it based on base price. This wouldn't be too helpful alone, but if you enstate parameters for buying and selling instead of % drops than it should reduce the risk. Having the buying and selling price based on a static value instead of a dynamic changing one it should remedy the dangers of market fluctuation killing corporations.

So if i say i want 200 but will go as low as 110, i'll be safe. if you want 215 but will go as low 200 you might have problems, but its your own fault. Once the stock is left over after the first round then the negotiation process could kick in going as low is the minimum sales price. The first round is simple all transactions that satisfy the original asking price.

This would be a hybrid and a compromise that should accomadate the concerns of both sides. And my linquistics aren't always that good so... don't know how easy to understand it is. Andy we all know you make the decisions (i think) and you need to ensure the playibility. but this game is a treat when games just keep getting easier and this one actually requires some intellegence. So i think my solution will bring different levels of competition and that is the only reason the free market works like it is supposed to. Survival of the fittest

If prices escalate out of control players can always start running their own supply lines. I feel kind of shafted not knowing there was a price ceiling, and when I found out about it, I still didn't know the level, I still don't know if 296 incorporates quality or not. Does quality 120 have the same maximum sales price as 220? Are my products that have qualities close to 350 the same quality as a 296 product? Is a product at quality level 96 have the same potential as a product at 296?

Scarlett put a post in awhile back concerning this. Be right back, going to go and find it - before I make a hash out of this.

This is from Scarlett's post in General - Enterprise topic.

3) Supply Quality
There's a lot you can do for supply quality. The average quality of the supplies a corporation uses (weighted by amount used) minus 100 is multipled by the Production Process Quality (see quality upgrades) to produce the quality of the products you sell. The effectiveness of supply quality for private corps caps out at 170 I believe (because private corps have a 333 sale quality cap, and I believe earlier research indicated a maximum sale price of 300% market price no matter the quality either way).

A product of quality 96 (if you could make such a beast) - would actually have the same POTENTIAL selling price as a 296 quality product if trade strategies were set to +200, and follow quality exactly.

Things to consider: the market doesn't just make 1 purchase/sale per game month. It runs multiples. The 296 quality product - if it has upgraded it's quality process is going to sell first. In a down market that can be crucial.

You're also not selling your order to a specific buyer - but to the market as a whole. Where it is mated with other products to average out quality for specific buyers.

And I am making a hash out of this. Read Scarlett's post - much of this is explained better than I can do.

Regards,
M. Ney

Andy, in regards to:

"The interface does allow you to specify anything but the market is doing what the market must do which is to find buyers for the offers."

With the current system - minus the mandatory price ceiling - that would still be the same. Products would still sell to the market, if there are enough other products being produced for the buyer's average quality. If not, the product would still stay in inventory. As it should now.

"leaving products unsold is not an option on a large scale. offering at 400 and selling at 190 many months later will have the corporation bankrupted much earlier.
Corporations cannot stop selling or they die."

Corporations can also sell their entire inventory to an Enterprise on a recurring basis (or a country etc.) And corporations can continually receive cash transfers from their parent entity. As it stands now, a corporation can be run at a loss indefinitely, as long as cash reserves can prop it up. Hence the market cycles. That's been the subject of a few threads.

I get the reason for the ceilings, I disagree, but I get it. Without mating up products the entire market would hit a hard bottom - a sobering experience for all. And definitely harder to do if you increase the range of prices in contracted goods and services. But it's also something that should be allowed. The buyer and seller must both have some freedom of autonomy.

As I said earlier, it's mainly a matter of perception. If you are wanting everyone to match or trail quality - simply disallowing ANY sale attempt above quality would solve the problem of perception, allow for an influx of cheaper goods on the market, and help to promote market stability.


It's the allowing of the sale attempt, and then the refusal to pay the asked price, while still removing the goods from inventory at a discount that is creating the problem.


Let the market find it's own footing. As you also said:

"many have reduced the quality level they purchase and it forced others to follow.
now the quality used, and produced is lower than before."

If it was good for us once, it could be good for us again.


Thank you for your time and consideration,
M. Ney

"many have reduced the quality level they purchase and it forced others to follow.
now the quality used, and produced is lower than before."

I'm not sure I believe that statement as it is presented. I dont have the data the GM have but..
For one, countries must now buy at 120Q, no longer 100. Higher markups of 30/10 or 60/20 are not advised, you need to make higher Q products with a lower mark up; hence higher quality supplies. In fact, to sell a product at Q333 (if that were possible) would require you to produce a Q343 product and sell at 10 below following Andys advice.

Weapon qualities have increased for sure, so we are all buying those at higher Q. And country supply quality is said to be influencing welfare more in the future.

So where, Andy, do you see the reduction in quality purchased? I dont neccessarily disagree with the fundemental philosophy of your market controls, but I dont think you can use this statement as an arguement for it.

Unless of course you can prove me wrong...

Errr... Bump?

Voting Poll for this problem is up, plz have a look and vote

Where can we find the voting link?
Thanks

Found it and voted.

Voting is done, when are we going to see this implemented/fixed?

Patiance, they answer the votes about once a month so I'll guess it'll be about 1-2 Weeks until we get a response. Btw I saw it wasnt broken but the game news said some months ago that they switch of the feature, so I hope they simply switch it back on so prices will be able to rise when short on supply ^^

Almost everything passes on the polls so that doesn't mean anything. There was a poll to allow an imaginery government style to be added to the from of government options that passed. So... don't get your hopes too high on this one. I agree this is problematic but they are focused on balancing and stability(which takes some fun out).

True, but balance and stability could be archieved in better ways. I think you could stabilize the market far better by making it easier/faster to obtain new Corps that produce products that are short on supply. If you want to stop market-fluctuations on prices you fix it at a reasonable price but at the moment its like:
*woho* product is short on supply -> sell at market price
*dang* product supply is bigger then demand -> sell at market price minus something -> marketprice drops
*woho* product is back to be short on supply -> sell at new lower market price
and so on...
Of course this is not on a day to day basis, but the long-run as there is no way to sell above market-price. And it wouldnt be that bad if you dont have to pay salaries, fixed costs...
So the end of the song would be to balance all of those influences, but that would be like if you dont have Industry-Corps, High-Tech-Corps,... but just 'Uni-Sex-Corps' that produce 'Uni-Sex-Product' by consuming 'Uni-Sex-Products' handing you a fixed Amount of cash every month.
Iknow that sounds pessimistic and surely that wouldnt happen anytime soon in such an extent but have seen this happen to quite a few good games and dont want to see this happen here too ;)

+1

also you get to set what Q you want to buy but not what price for them. So Andy i don't see how your first post is a valid response.

My premium account is soon to expire. Unless this problem is solve I will not extend it.