W3C - Game news November 16, 2024

1. New Products added to Simcountry

Three new products are added to Simcountry, the products are Electric Cars, Electric Cars Batteries and Car Parts. The products are increasing the weight of the car industry that was until now limited.

2. Car Parts

Car parts will be used in all types of cars and trucks. Until now, there were cars and trucks. we are now adding electric cars and will soon add electric trucks.

Car Parts can be produced in all worlds. Their use is very limited at this time, to allow some time for the creation of new corporations.

3. Electric Cars Batteries

Electric Cars Batteries will be used in electric cars and later in electric trucks. The production process of Car batteries is using Silver. Each car battery, that can be used to power an electric car, will contain one KG of Silver (about 2 pounds).

4. Electric Cars

Electric cars are now part of the game. Electric cars will be added to the products that are consumed by the population. This will be a gradual process that will start with small numbers. At a later stage, a large part of cars used by the population will be electric cars.

5. Population numbers on Tiny Atlas

The population in countries in Tiny Atlas will gradually increase to the level of 10-12 millions. in addition, the population booster that is used to transfer population to TA, is now increased from 100.000 to 200.000 per game month. The booster remains free of charge.

6. Tiny Atlas corporations

Many types of corporations on TA are now employing smaller numbers of workers. The feature is implemented for corporations that produced natural resources.

More types of corporations on TA will be updated in the same way and will, in the future, employ a smaller number of workers.

The change will enable countries in TA to build more corporations with smaller population numbers.

7. The Worlds Document, Beginners document and the Corporations document

The worlds document was updated to include more information about TA. The corporations document now includes more descriptions of products, including the three new products that were added to Simcountry.

Nice.

I notice none of the new corporations use baradium. What is the plan for this product?

In addition,
many new natural resources were discovered recently and added to countries on Tiny Atlas.

Some of the discovered resources were not available on TA before.

Baradium will be used in two products that are linked to the electric car and truck industry.

The next upgrade will include these products.

Metadium is now being used in the electric car industry and it is also used in the production of Baradium.

Andy,

Demand for Silver on Little Upsilon currently (Jan 5253, game date) outstrips supply by nearly 1,000 to 1. Demand 8,573,056. Supply 8,640. With only 68 Corporations producing Silver on the planet.

Most active players don't have Silver deposits left in their countries, and as such, cannot setup new Silver mines. The shortage has gotten so severe that many corporations that use Silver can no longer produce goods.

Considering you are planning to add additional Silver demand from new products, we need an increase to the availability of Silver deposits, or an increase in how much silver each mine produces, or a reduction in how much Silver each Corporation needs to operate, otherwise the shortages will only get worse.

Little upsilon has over 3000 countries without a president.

There isn't a shortage of silver, there's an entitlement attitude.

David,

hymy is right.
you can get as much silver as you need in these Countries.

also, Tiny Atlas has Silver deposits in almost all countries.
Producing it requires smaller number of workers.

The alternative is to stay away from industries that use silver.
There are not many such industries and there are plenty of other products to produce.

Andy,

I was more concerned that the shortage of silver was going to create shortages in the goods that require it, which would create shortages of goods that use those goods as inputs, and so on, eventually causing supply indexes to fall, damaging the functionality of the whole game economy.

It hasn't cascaded that far yet, but the shortage is worsening. I wanted to bring the situation to everyone's attention before it gets out of control.

I understand your concern.

we had such situations many times before.
It never crushed the market in a serious way.

Silver has a limited use and it is already coming in from TA.

Andy,

If I can make a suggestion on a needed fix by the GM?

As a long time player one issue I have noticed over the years is that when issues like this happen it is due to "excessive buying" buy corporations because of the games mechanics.

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I encourage you to look at any of the hundreds of corporations that cannot produce because of the lack of silver.
Nearly all of them have outstanding orders for 1200-1300 units of silver.
Based that the corps only use 20 units a month, this means they are trying to purchase 65 months of supplies. This goes into a key point I will discuss below.

(Below link is an example of this over buying)
https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgiw?ccorptrade&miCorpNumber=3464549

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What ends up happening is the when the game cannot buy resources, so when it hit's a low point orders more resources, when the orders are not filled it reorders the same amount, this creates a self perpetuating cycle.
(see link below)

https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=tldhist&miKey=119&miColumn=vTradeSurplus

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This has been a issue for a very long time and I would encourage the GM to set some kind of system in place to where corporations CANNOT overbuy past a certain amount.
When overbuying like this happens it creates a death spiral that players cannot address and is a game mechanics issue.

The simples fix to be honest would be to add a code that says auto orders cannot exceed more then 12months of any of the needed supplies.
This would prevent run away markets while preventing massive disturbances within the game markets.

Everything SuperSoldier says above is true, I'm pretty sure the GM is also aware of this.

It's interesting, because in the earliest days, this didn't happen. It's something, that I'm pretty sure started after 2008. But I could be wrong.

I believe that fixing it would smooth out these wild swings in the market, but I'm not sure it's a silver bullet for all supply problems, or the ultimate problem itself.

SuperSoldierRCP,

The mechanism you are talking about helps keep markets functioning.

When there is a large shortage on the global market (many more buy orders than sell orders), the game automatically adds a percentage of that shortage for sale (making goods out of thin air to help reduce the shortage).

By having corporations keep ordering the goods they can't buy, over and over, it makes the global market imbalance appear larger, which causes market balance mechanism to create more goods.

It's counter-intuitive, but it helps the game balance itself.

Supersoldier,

We will look into repeat orders that can cumulate.
If there is a problem we will fix it but it will not diminish the shortages.

Corporation limits are 120 month supplies.

Reducing the number of months will require players to babysit the corporations with much more clicking.
It will be an effort to reduce the storage on the market but will do nothing to resolve the shortages in production.

Silver is one of the products that will be purchased by countries, many times from their own corporations and they will supply all their corporations need for silver, with a single click, up to the level of 120 months supply.
This is very efficient and reduces clicking.
This is the way players supply their corporations on TA.

The large orders for Silver are by countries that are buying the product and store it. Corporations have a limit of 120 months. Countries don't.

they purchase much more than corporations will.

But the problem is in the shortage in production.
As long as production levels in the world are lower than what is needed, there will be a growing shortage.

the solution is to increase production.
Silver is very profitable.
There are thousands of deposits in many countries.
You can find (C3) countries with a lot of silver, conquer one, produce Silver and contract it to yourself.
Then, sell 120 month worth of silver to the corporations that are using it.

You can also use an enterprise to start silver corporations all over the place and contract the silver in the same way.

And you can also stay away from corporations that are using silver.

but production will have to increase one way or another.
TA has huge deposits too.

Silver is everywhere on all the worlds and somehow, you conclude that you need to ask the gamemaster to resolve the shortage and the suggested solution is not by increasing production but by changing the way trading it is done which will change nothing.

There is a little challenge here for players to help themselves,
Take it.

Daniel,

You describe blanket interventions to resolve shortages.
this is not what happens.
Some products in Simcountry are used in nearly everything.
the system will intervene if there is a danger for a major collapse.

These interventions are small and they do not change shortages into a surplus.

If disastrous shortages occur, and the shortage becomes huge compared to the usage, a small percentage of the usage might be added.

Silver is not a product that can cause a disaster.
The market will survive even if some silver consuming corporations will disappear.

what we do from time to time:

when we see a structural shortage, mainly with raw materials, and no reaction by players to resolve it, we may decide to change the trading model for that specific product and allow the price to increase to higher levels.

The natural resources functions and products are becoming a challenge
and it is a relative new aspect in the game.
New products, including those recently added, are all dependent on rare
natural resources.
You can do without these products but your supply index might decline a bit over time and it can reduce the economic potential of countries.