W3C - The Quality of Maintenance Products

The Quality of maintenance products is currently not relevant as teir function does not change with a higher quality.

we will change this ASAP and reduce the need for maintenance products if their quality is high.

the reduction will be steeper than the increase in price. Example: Q240 will reduce the number of products needed to less than 50% of what was needed at Q120.

There are more products in Simcountry that do not have any quality advantage. We will continue to improve and make sure that in the future, quality will matter for all the products.

question, regarding this, and contracts.

if you use the the auto-accept via CM, will it recognize the "adjusted," need for FMUs. That is, if the the corp requires 87 FMUs, at 120 Q, (or what ever it turns out,) will the auto-contract feature recognize that the Higher Quality material contracted would be over contracted if it does the base amount, so instead it recognizes the lower, more efficient amount needed for the contract?

and please do this! this sounds like an easier version of ASQ!

The way you purchase the maintenance units has nothing to do with this.
you can purchase them by contracts, on the market or in direct trading.

They will end up in the country or the corporation with a certain quality. This will not change at all.

this change will influence the consumption of these units by the corporations.
if their quality is higher, smaller numbers will be used.

well, it does have something to do with it.

perhaps an easier way to explain it, is that the needed amount will change after the contract is made, as a result of the contract, (which would be the point of the contract.) so when ever you set up a contract, (with or w/o the CM) the needed amount will automatically decline while the corp continues to buy more than it needs.

w/o a fail safe, we'd need to either manually set up our contracts, and just abandon the CMs further. Or constantly adjusting contracts, both which kinda defeats the point of contracts.

sounds like you'd end up with allot of newbs asking why their corps keep loosing money. When they are paying over double for a key resource, via a feature that was intended to make things cheaper.

Josias has a point. Every corp uses 87 units montly without regard for quality. If quality becomes relevant, a corp will end up getting 87 on contract but spending 30 or 40, stockpiling huge amounts of FMUs and, thus, failing in the long run unless the FMU contracts are cancelled (or the stckpiles are sold)

Perhaps Andy is referring to military maintenance products?

I like this change but there are problems. Adding a feature that lets you modify, instead of only cancelling existing common market contracts would help.

well, for one, i really hope they don't shy away from this for the contract issue. it'd be pretty easy to work-around

the easiest way, would be to use the "contract full production to yourself, and accept," at the bottom or your corp page. doing that for several dozen FMU corps might be tedious, but it'd be a one time thing. Then maybe once every other RL month, you use the "trade with own corporations," and max out supply. giving that 120 Game Months 300Q would last a very long time, before the corps would need to be resupplied.

the problem with contracts can be worked around, but not very easily. considering that the Game Masters change production levels, supply usage, max/average quality, if you figure the exact number of FMUs you need, it wount be long before you have to re-figure, and set it up again. And manually setting hundreds of contracts, isn't very realistic, then having to do it, someti

I have long thought you should be able to cancel excess product in a contract, rather than having to cancel the entire contract.

I think that the suggestion of resetting your contracts once a month or even longer is not so bad.
there are more parameters that can change the required numbers, like welfare, and a changing mix of corporations may also require a different set of contracts.

The quality problem for the maintenance products must be resolved.
It is now being developed and may or may not make it in the next update.