Quality, Production, and Pricing

Hello! I have a suggestion for corporation quality, since I have seen a number of people complain about how the system works since I started playing.

The Problem and Summary of the Solution:

The problem: More things are produced at higher Q than is needed or ordered. We need to match buyer and seller at the right Q for the right price. The solution I propose is a slight alteration in the way final product Q and production volume work.

I suggest that these two should work together, so that when a corporation places high Q product on the market it can sell as EITHER the standard number of produced units at their actual quality OR an equivalent *value* or lower Q units (for example, 100 units of 200Q electric power could sell as 150 units of 150Q power - or whatever the correct math would be. Judge the concept, not my mathematics please).

Thus, quality would potentially affect volume sold depending on the world market situation, but it would not change the value of goods sold.

Hopefully this change will introduce a SLIGHT profitability to sales, but nothing unbalanced.

I think this would be a step in the right direction for the current product quality system. The GMs, at their discretion, may decide that only certain corporations can operate in this way. For instance, you can't really slice up a car, but you can certainly "water-down" almost all of the agricultural and food products produced at a high Q, same for services, same for utilities, mining (i.e., you can give someone a lot of ore, but not as refined even though it's the same value of metal in it).

Let me know what you think.

ADVANTAGES:
This would not affect the overall profitability of corporations, but it would help the market for both buyers AND sellers. I don't know if the GM currently subsidizes certain situations when there isn't an exact match for requested quality, but this essentially solves the issue if that happens.

This suggestion continues to encourage the development of high quality products.

I do not think the reverse procedure should be implemented (i.e. lower Q products should not combine and be sold as a lower volume of high Q).

Drawbacks:
Coding?

NOTE: This does NOT suggest that high quality corps also get a boost in production. HIGHER QUALITY SHOULD NOT EQUATE TO HIGHER BASE PRODUCTION.

In this suggestion HIGHER QUALITY GOODS CAN ONLY BE SPLIT APART INTO AN EQUIVALENT VOLUME OF LOWER QUALITY GOODS BASED ON THE BASE PRICE OF THE GOODS IN QUESTION. This would occur automatically via the world market when there is a disparity in requested Q and offered Q.

To avoid flooding the market with low Q goods, this would only occur in the fulfilling of low Q orders. The equivalent value would be subtracted from the seller's stock and added to the buyer's stock.

In essence, this is a slight move away from unit-based market to a value-based market which works within the present system.

This suggestion may be unnecessary, but I think I read in the game docs that right now the game simply averages the quality/value between buyer and seller when there is a disparity in product Q offered and requested. That seems silly. And clearly, you shouldn't be able to buy something that doesn't exist on the market.

The question that prompted this suggestion was: who is selling me all this 120Q crap I'm buying? Even my regular corps buy at 190Q, but everything produces at 200+. I don't see anyone selling lower Q goods unless they just built the corporation.

Maybe the GM could better explain how these things currently work.

This suggestion is not about fixing short-term market problems or impacting the current supply/demand.

This is a long-term solution to fix market instability and make sense of producing high Q products. In the long run, corporations will be more consistent and players will less easily manipulate the market with their spending space (i.e. ordering and then dumping millions of low-Q goods). Additionally, players can still do low-Q purchasing to make profit off of price variations; however, it will not throw the market out of balance with huge surplus/deficits when these fluctuations actually represent significantly lower quality orders than the market average of quality produced!

The short-term impact may result in more good staying on the market. But eventually excess corps will close and people will continue to buy higher Q. Is this not what the GMs want?

So I order 30k things at 120 quality and 11k things are so are removed from the market?

This destroys the market for upgrades, electricity, and many other things.

No

Either that, or orders should sit on the market until there is a quality match for them. And I ask you: who is producing 120Q things except for the corporations which are in the process of upgrading?

You are concerned about the short-term effects of this change. As with all changes, the market will adapt.

The is a solution looking for a problem. In the simplest terms.

What is the problem that exists now?

How does this fix the stated problem?

How will this affect players?

Just because you are not aware of the problem does not mean it does not exist.

The problem is the way market orders are matched between buyer and seller is unrealistic. No one is going to sell their 200Q products for 120Q. Therefore, something is happening behind the scenes to fill the gap between quality produced and quality purchased. Either, we need to fix what goes on behind the scenes when orders resolve, OR transactions need to sit on the market until their actual value is met by a buyer or seller.

Personally, I'm not in favor of transactions sitting around because that WOULD throw the game into chaos. This suggestion addresses what goes on in the background of the world market.

This has been a problem in Sim Country for as long as there have been quality upgrades. All experienced players know this.

The GM, in the past, has admitted to averaging out sales. I don't know if they still do this, but I would be very curious to learn how all the different qualities get worked out on the world market.

Don't make me find Genie or Nimz and go digging through old IRC logs.

winter sun i like the suggestion.... i cant see any adverse side affects to this proposal.... i imagine it could still use some development though to be integrated with things like the corp effectivity and more indicators showing at which qualities products are being ordered so producers can adapt....... ive always wondered how its possible that everyone buys at low quality and sells at high quality (excluding weapons) but somehow the GM makes it work

Aries i imagine if you order 30,000 of 120 quality product then 30,000 product of 120 quality would be taken out of the world supply and put in your inventory

obviously it would be up to someone to actually produce said product at 120 quality the GM wouldnt be doing the quality "splitting" it would be each individual player