What's happening to Economy

Hi folks. I'm still getting my bearings here, but it seems like a while ago the economy on WG went into a tailspin, and now the number of corps in certain key industries' is falling off of a cliff.

Is this just a general swing in the economy, or have I missed a big war going on, or a large empire's demise?

Cheers,
P.

It's up and down all the time. Could have been a big empire gone.

what does the economy going into a tailspin mean.... the price of products is always fluctuating due to supply and demand but id say employment and salaries remains about constant which are the real indicators of how well the economy is doing... any specific changes you've noticed please share

I guess I was talking about the supply levels of products in general.

I usually check the supply/demand data, before building a new corp. It seems that in this game, the price of a product (or at least the listed price), is an imperfect signal on where demand is relative to supply. The price level your corps get products for is a better signal, but that's after the fact, and its difficult to see how many delays/price increases are inputs there.

The supply/demand charts seem to be good signals of where actual prices are going, even if the list prices are held steady by the game.

When I started playing on WG about a month or so ago, oil and electric power were plentiful and relatively 'cheap'. That made many of the businesses that used these inputs profitable.

Lately, oil, power and maybe even more importantly High Tech Service and FMU have seen supply drop/demand increase/actual price increase dramatically. This increases the cost for virtually every other corp, as these four (along with chemicals, which needs oil, oil products and high tech to be produced) are inputs in virtually all other corps.

In short, if these five products are in short supply, as they are now, the economics of many/most other corps go off the cliff.

I know everything is in shortage now the world has collapsed all my corps are facing shortages

I had a near perfect economy just last month, now my game play abilities have been limited because of some unknown reason my economy flipped from perfectly fine to third world. I tried buying more pop to make more jobs and it just got worst, now I can barley play..
Hoping it'll sort its self out soon enough.

As I mentioned above.

The Oil, High Tech and a few other key markets have crashed. They are inputs into virtually every other corp., either directly or indirectly (or both). Many large producers of these items have gone away. This makes income from every other corp, and therefore your state tax and profit sharing from these corps, much less.

I hope I don't piss off the veteran execs by saying it, but I don't think anything will fix it, until we replace that lost supply of these key industries.

the gamemaster needs to step in. there are about 5 or 6 industries which either directly effect the supply or indirectly by a domino. Without supplies the countries will suffer the gamemaster needs to artificially resolve the supply shortage for a few key products or we will have a long term reccesion

No the Game Master does not need to step in. Last time he upped production, it made the Markets annoying. What needs to happen is those folks experiencing shortages should step in, join decent CMs if they have not and build their own Corporations to cover their own shortages. That or wait for others to build Corporations per the shortages, which invariably happens. Learn patience and take advantage of the mechanisms that already exist in the game, to solve your "perceived" issues.
Point being, I am not experiencing your "pains". In fact, my income has held steady, if not increased and both my Ent's MV has gone up. Things look just fine from here...

Agreed with Rage. Filling shortages is the responsibility of players and it is how you make money.

Historically (since I joined about 3 years ago) oil electricity and hi tech services were always deep in the red it's easier when some corps are consistently in the red that way you know the corps you build will be consistently profitable in the long term.... Half my corps are oil corps ATM so I'm happy

That's what I do almost all my corps have a very high demand and were always profitable. Now... nope poof gone, low profits.

Well Ian, it looks like nearly all your Country corps in metudela are short or low on supplies combined with the vast majority not having nearly enough employees. Not sure what your low water mark and order quantities are but looks like you could benefit from bumping them up. Notice your CEO owned Corps are not suffering much at all from either issue.
Your employment levels will increase, but you need to keep an eye on your workers. You have no unemployed High Level Managers at the time of this post, which is bottle necking you and likely why your pop infusion didn't help overly much if at all.
It also looks like you are not taking advantage of your CM. That should help should you choose to do so.

how do you take advantage of your CM

Click 'Common Market', you will see these:
'Common Market Contracts for your Country'
'Accept Contracts for Products your Corporations need'

You can also go by individual corporations, click 'supplies' and then 'common market contracts for your corporation'

Just want to add the newbie perspective on Common Markets.

They can turn your unprofitable/"gee maybe I shouldn't have built that corp." corps into very nice little businesses.

A good way to manage growing a balanced economy in the country.

Cheers.

Ian you have low profits because you have 50% unemployment because you have no hi techs

turn off auto building companies the make junk companies build billion+ shortage companies
105% 5% up works fine
if that don't work immediate buy a few months in

None of my Corporations have approached the limit to go public for a real month now. Anyone else note this? Am I the 'Lone Ranger'?

yeah you have to tweak them right to reach a value of 550 billion.... try lowering taxes make sure they are upgraded and have full employment... make sure your country welfare is good and that the products the corps are producing are in demand... modify buying and selling strategies

Thanks, I did raise taxes of late.

check out "boosting corp values for IPO" thread in the general section got some information on there that helped me bump up my values a little more