Country Supplies Too Expensive?

I have been playing about now with countries on each of the worlds, but I seem to be encountering the same problem on each of them.

Although I can get the country to make 4-6B profit a month, the cost of supplies the countries buy automatically each month, are spending my cash much faster than this despite requesting 120 quality. I also turned off buying military supplies.

I can see how there would be an economy of scale, if I had a much larger country population, and more corps, but is that the only solution? Will my corps become SO much more profitable when upgraded that it will make up this shortfall?

My best country is Last Bastion on LU.

Any advice welcome please, happy to answer questions.

No advice yet, as I'm also new.

All I can say is, that I'm currently having a profit of 20B....which equals the beginner bonus!

So I'm really wondering the same as you: will I ever be able to make a sound profit that will - for example - allow keeping a decent army?

But, obviously, this must be possible because other players are doing it.

So far I think the key is to gradually increase population income (=taxes) and make state corporations profitable.

The latter doesn't seem to be able to earn your nation that much, so my bet is it's the population tax that should save you.

OR heavy buying/selling on the market? But I'm not willing to sink that much time into the game.

What are your salaries Ted? The population will buy the stuff your country buys and that should cover the costs easily. But the population needs a decent income to buy stuff, so welfare and salaries of at least 250 (I would say) should make this happen. If you're currently paying less, bump it up a bit slowly slowly. The corps will make more product too to cover the extra salary expense and then some probably.

Post script: Having just looked at your country Last Bastion then I dont think you are doing too bad. The supplies bought are not your problem, the 150B that you have had to send to your corps in the last year is. This will improve greatly as your corps finish upgrading.

I have all my government salaries at 150, and all my corp salaries at 250. Are you saying I should have them all at 250?

Does increasing the salary of government workers increase my revenue somehow? Thanks for taking a look.

Nah, keep your govt salaries at 75% of your average corp salary, this is important when you have your hiring right up there at 95% or so. Else you will find nurses and co. moving to industry where they earn more and that will cause your hospitals and schools to close.

I said about salaries before I checked your country out. So your corp salaries should be ok, you could raise the govt salaries a bit, it will increase your govt costs though, but make the population slightly richer so they have more $$$ to invest in the IFs and to contribute to the health and education costs. It's not really a big deal, just a sort of tweak to get the most out of your country when everything else is set.

ok, well I shall try having gov at 200 and corp at 250 for a while and see how I get on. I had asked for a little development aid on four worlds, but no luck yet. This month I am also selling as many of my weapon reserves as I can.

The hope is that just a little more cash should see me through to when my month on month income and expenses stop my net cash position from decreasing.

Check out the security council members for each world you are on and message their main country directly. My membership of some, or at least one, has expired. I think I did try for you on KB but you had too much cash. And if you've reached game level 3 on a world you wont get aid on that world regardless.

Thank Crafty. I realized I had ammunition reserves, so I have sold them. I am also now noticing that my population are paying for the resources and I am not loosing money like I was. It's much better and will improve with more upgrading no doubt.

My next question is, How far does this benefit extend? I say a post where someone had salaries at 1000 and that was bad for his country. To what level can I raise the salaries, and still see a positive result, any ideas please?

Let your corps upgrade first. That costs enough!

Drew was experimenting with uber high salaries which in theory would greatly improve your citizens welfare. So much so that it used to be possible to get your population pay more for the health and education than it actually cost.

From the thread about this it seems the game mechanics don't allow for this strategy any more. Shame, because IMO it is a perfectly valid strategy.

But anyway, get your corps upgraded, then you could set 300 for salaries, and further to 350, much above that I see the corps suffering. It depends on your personal staregy I guess.

I think the main thing to guide you is if you have your corps production at very close to 120 then you wont increase the corps health much further. This 120 depends heavily on your country welfare but the salary pays a significant part too. So my idea is to get the production to 120 without setting salaries above

SO my corps are still upgrading nicely, but I find that even although my profit is 10B a month, that my country is still slowly loosing money.

The only explanation I can see is that the supplies it buys for the population cost more than the population pays for them.

My reserve assets are all sold now, and I hope to be able to figure this out before I run out of funds again.

Last Bastion on LU if anyone has any ideas please.

Gov salaries 200, corp salaries 250, enterprise corps 250, i have about 20 back to work and special clinics too.

Ted, like I said before, your financial drain is the amount you have to send to your corps. $75B this year already and its only June. Check the 'Automatic cash transfers' on the yearly statement of your finance page.

So the solution is to fix your corps up some.

First off, reduce your asking price, try best price for now.
Second, and this is important, you are taking 50% tax and then 50% of any profit. This is causing your corps to lose money every month which the country then has to send back to the corps to keep them afloat. Personally, I would either set tax to 75% and profit transfer to 0 if I were running state corps only, or 0% tax and 80 - 85% profit transfer if you want to keep a mix of state and CEO.

Your welfare is good, your corps make money, everything else is in place, trust me, do like I suggest and try it for a while. You WILL see the difference.

ok, ill try giving that a go, thanks again