W3C - Corporations

Following the last upgrade, some corporations produce a little more and are hiring proportionally more workers.

This results in a slow reduction of the number of corporations in all worlds.

we need to do so from time to time to keep the total number of corporations in Simcountry under some "soft" limit.

some databases can run out of control and the huge number of transactions can slow us down.

In the past weeks, the change was about 2%.
the total production per world remains unchanged.

Such changes as always, are very small and gradual and cause no harm, nor do they change the market situation.

I checked today and unfortunately, large shortages (too large) prevail.

Small harmless changes... I don't think so. I had to close 850 oil corporations on LU from the last small change just to keep the oil market profitable for everyone else. I understand what you are trying to do, and I accept the change, which is why I built 850 new corporations in various other sectors to replace the things I closed down.

Andy, the way the market in this game is designed requires that massive shortages must exist. Every product has a minimum price and a maximum price. When a product is in surplus, it ticks down a notch toward the minimum price and when it is in shortage, it ticks up a notch toward maximum price. All products in this game are only profitable when they are at or near the maximum price. A large percentage of the corporations in this game are owned by C3 countries. C3 countries close corporations that are not profitable and try to open new corporations in sectors that are in shortage. The moment a product enters sur

If you are interested in another example of the boom/bust cycle, just look at the defensive weapon maintenance. It really underlines john galts point.

When the DWM weren't in the red I made 0 profit with them. They were fully upgraded, ceo owned corps with a salary of 350 and they ran about 0.7-1.4B loss per game month per corp. Now that the supply is in the red I am earning money on them again.

Thank you Letsie. You are also a very strong Econ player so I knew you would completely understand what I am saying. Trying to end shortages in this game is impossible without completely changing the way the market works. The best we can accomplish is keeping the shortages small enough so that you never have to wait more than 1 or 2 game months to get your product. The key word is keeping the product in shortage though so that it is profitable still. I would say that most products are at that point already. The ones in massive shortage also have massive production, so it's not long before your order gets filled since it is first come first serve.

John,
there was no need to close 850 corporations.
C3s close corporations very quickly and stabilize the market.
this is by design.
I see the number of oil corporations increasing.

If there is an oil oversupply, it takes some time before the corporations start losing money. Then many are closed and soon enough the situation goes back to normal.

it is cheaper than closing then and start again with new corporations, upgrading them etc.

I think that oil is now short, so are other products that were in oversupply recently.

It is true that large shortages are better than large oversupply.

However, we had shortages that left many corporations with very low production due to lack of supplies. Thousands of corporations produced nothing.
this can destroy the market very quickly and cause 50% of corporations to close in a day.
We have no way of getting them back quickly. It could take weeks and require manual addition of products.

we have measures against it.
we call them interventions and they are automatic.
If a shortage becomes absurdly high, then 10% of the shortage is added to the market. Only a small number of essential products are treated like this.

The number of interventions rose very high a month ago. It is back to normal.

we can add products to the list but are very reluctant to do so.

I explained interventions here many times in the past.

Andy I had over 50% of LU oil production. Around 2000 corps total. There werent enough c3 corps to reasonably close to end the surplus. I had to take action. Its not something I would do needlessly as it was extremely expensive for me to do but it had to be done.

You could also not close any of them and see what the market does. Maybe some would be closed but obvious not so many as we now see new oil corporations being created.

I dont anticipate much new oil creation on LU. 3000 corps seems to be the sweet spot now. Was around 5000 before that. Oil crashed hard because demand for oil dropped massively due to all the electric power closures. Electric power has stabilized now so oil demand has held steady.

With all due respect but I am going to steer this discussion back to the real problem, corporations do not make much or any profit when there is not a shortage on the market.
If you want to see another example of the boom/bust cycle take a look at my country Lets A.

When the markets for services are deep in the red I earn around 320B per game month after all the expanses have been paid.

When the service markets are in the green I earn around 180B. That is a HUGE drop.

There is just an enormous gap between the lowest and highest prices being paid for a product. And if you do not get a price somewhere in the top 70% your corporation is not going to be profitable.

I have two examples from WG that I would like to share.
Someone dumped 2B electric creating a huge surplus. At he current production rate it will take several years to get to a shortage. It will then take several more years before the price recovers to a profitable level.

Chemicals were in surplus for a while and the price hit bottom. When it went into shortage it took a while for the corps to become profitable again.
During this time corps were closing even though there was a shortage.

I believe part of the problem is the slow linear change in price, as the supply changes. If there is a huge surplus the price should plummet and skyrocket on a big shortage. I think this would cause corps to close sooner and keep corps from closing in a shortage.

Someone dumped 3 billion electric on FB also haha. I am pretty sure it is rhou69919 because his finance page is showing huge amounts of materials sold every month.

Edit: Just looked at WG and his CEO is also showing large materials sold every month. Definitely him. Wonder why he is dumping so much.

I see many more products with shortages than ones with over supply.

Having shortages in all products, always, makes it a little simple.
I hope for a dynamic market, with surprises but at the end, it depends on players.

sudden dumping or buying, causes a local shortage but there is very often a followup effect on other products, shortages cause other shortages and oversupply causes closings and then other shortages.

this is more interesting than a stable predictable markets.

Andy, would you consider adding more ways how to trade goods? I mean improving trade strategies page with selling strategy and also adding price, not only amount and quality.


That would be interesting to have and this would allow to stabilize markets much more by players themselves, setting buy/sale strategies.

Question on Over/shortage if there is a massive shortage do c3's build to compasate for that I would think the goeal here a in real world if demand for widgets is 1000 there shold be 1000 produced

Thoughts?

Evader, C3s do respond to market conditions and will close companies in surplus and open new ones in shortage.

Thanks John

Market shortages make the game more realistic.

I agree the trade strategy page could use a few tweaks as well.

Perhaps an option that changes price based on supply. High setting for market deficit and a low setting for market surplus.

That might help with the cycles in the market.

Trade strategies right now dont do anything. Everyone buys at market price no matter what. I couldnt find any differences in the testing I have done.

The priority of building corporations in general, depends on the size of the shortage.
the product showing the largest shortage in terms of number of corporations needed, will be served first.

meaning, C3s will build these corporations if they have the manpower.

In my experience, sell strategies do work.
setting the numbers correctly could be tricky.

Sell strategies definitely work.

Set a corporation with sell strategy and one with best strategy. They always seem to sell at same price on market from the testing I have done

I’ll test it again of course to be sure. I may be wrong.

Thew parameters you set are included in each transaction.
some times it has more or less effect, depending on what the buyers what to pay.

sell strategies in general, do not guarantee anything.

purchasing strategies, if you offer more than market price, are more likely to be followed.

John can I give you a setting to try?

Sell 200, drop 1 per month
Sell 100 drop 10 per month

It is a bit of an extreme example but if you do this with a product that is deep in the red with 2 corps that are fully upgraded you can see a difference in income over a longer period of time.