Is it better to.... (Golden Rainbow)

have a corporation in your country producing weapons you need (ie light tank ammo) @ 100 quality and contract full production to yourself

OR

Is it better to upgrade the corp to produce the highest quality product and then buy your weapons on the open market (and specify 100 quality)?

Good question. Probably the first option is more economical. Because the profit from the high quality producing corp would be less then the running costs of the low quality producing corporation (weapon/ammo costs go back into the corp so technically its not a cost to your country in the larger picture). Just a guess though I haven't crunched any numbers.

It must depend on what you mean by "better", making your own costs your country less as Angus88 points out, and you can control the low quality corp. running costs to some extent, mine makes a profit as well as supplying the country, hence you're getting economical weapons, great for increasing defense index or other needs. On the other hand a fully upgraded weapons corp selling on the markets would surely give you greater profits, though remember the extra cost of upgrades, greater quality supplies and higher salaries, so for purely commercial gain, after your initial investments the top spec corp. must win out...no?

My weapons corps that I keep at 100 quality make a profit...but not much. I was just wondering if anyone had crunched the numbers.

For most products, on world trade, when you sell, you get +10%(and up) markup on market price, so even those corps, selling to World Trade, would make 10% more money than they would, contracted out. While you could, then, buy the 100Q from World Trade, at market price.

Overall an upgrade is ~160M (one point) which lasts, lets say, a game year. So, does your company sell enough product that 1% of (Market Price * Monthly Production * 12) is greater or less than 160M. For most products, such is the case. It would not be the case, where base price is actually more than market price; but those have been corrected, and now, market is always higher.

At least, that's the impression that my 1111 days of playing SC give me.

The best way is not to build weapon corps at all and buy the weapons on the open market. If you must build the corps yourself only do it with your CEO account in somebody else's nation. Weapon corps don't make much profit (if at all) and consume valuable sim citizens that could be producing more profitable goods.

Weapon Corps don't make much profit? I guess white giant's different from LU.
Our best performers are OA2A's and a few other missiles corps.

Ive contracted weapons from my corps to my countries before and it sure seemed to be a drain on the country as a whole.Affecting cash on hand and FI.

I rather have controll of my income and buy large amounts of ammo when I can afford it.As opposed to having a couple of contracts yeilding 30-60 lots of ammo.

I have weapons corps on FB that have been very very good to me- but if contracted they yeild only market price.

There would have to be a severe shortage for me to justify a contract

Ammo corporations do very well without using a lot of workers. Weapons, i.e. heavy tanks, light tanks, don't do very well because you can't produce a lot of them.

Hear hear, anyone wanna buy an upgraded light tank corp...

I don't know which is better, but I try and keep all of my production at higher then 200 Quality...