Raw materials costs are getting uncontrollable.

No. These formulas are not correct:

First, when a corporation has "last price paid", that can still average with other supplies already in stock. As an estimate, it may actually be Ok, because usually auto-orders do occur when supplies are low or very low. Still, there is margin for errors there.

Next, the corporation at greater than 100% utilization, uses (based on observation and rough calculations) to also use more supplies. This further can be confirmed by the cotracting (auto-contracts) which will show "100%" contracted for supplies, but then still come up short of what is needed. Finally, if you check the supply levels, month-over-month, they do not all drop by exactly one-world-month amounts...it's usually something like 1.1 for enterprise corporations, fully upgraded, using roughly 300 salaries and located in "free countries" aka 'Simcountry' owner.

Finally, it is useful

I think I compensated for utilization by multiplying each product by utilization.

For example with "Chemicals" I multiplied:
20,000 * 3262 * 1.189 to get the cost of 77570360.

I assumed that a corporation with 118.9% utilization would use 118.9% of the quoted supplies. In the case of Chemicals (20,000) the real usage would be 23780. Is this wrong?

The averaging of new supply prices with existing ones does present a slight problem.

Well, most likely it's wrong for every product, but, yes, that would help improve the estimate. It may actually do the converse, and error on the other side...so, actualy raw material amount usage increases may be say +8.5%, but, that formula would cause it to be +18.9%.

For example, one of the largest costs is "maintenance", and that is not even included in that table. It is a supply like others, but just happens to be itemized differently. For that case, it has been observed almost always to not increase its usage with higher productivity %. Other supplies seem to vary, but only have in-direct evidence of that based on tracking common market contract %s. Maybe someone else has more details.

In addition, the amount of supplies needed, and likely used (as a corollary), have been almost ceaselessly changing for a very long time. Even "Andy" admitted, to a degree, that this is still occurring. If you ask t

When I observed the information last game month, I pasted the entire "Available Materials" box into a spreadsheet... I just didn't include everything in the table here to save space. So here is a comparison of product stocks.

New information from: March 11 2957
This month utilization is reported as 119.1%

C

CorporatePartner

All worlds

20 Apr 2012 07:13Link

Very nice...incisive. Did that happen with each corporation that you were referencing/watching (for this topic)?

fyi: just checked some Oil corporations at different hiring/utilization levels (production level: 82.5/99.7/108.5), with same upgrades, similar countries, etc. and maintenance used appears equal. Materials costs also rose with increased utilization in all 3 as well (materials (Ms): 1429/1725/1886).

C

CorporatePartner

All worlds

20 Apr 2012 08:25Link

Scarlet checked those Oils (in his countries) and actually they have not stabilized costs yet, due to being former State corporations...so, maybe can monitor them and report again later.

R

Rob kennedy

All worlds

20 Apr 2012 11:59Link

finance indexs appear too be dropping again wtf

S

Scarlet

All worlds

20 Apr 2012 12:44Link

Update:
(Disclaimer: Obvious speculation is obvious.)

Okay, we figured out that 'local trading' from enterprise to corporations (Space Inc) and 'direct trading' from corporations to corporations (tested corp in Overrike Manufacturing to corp in Space Inc) are bought at the correct price (as measured by change in cash levels).

Whether this causes a reduction in the discrepancy of Raw Materials Cost between expected/actual numbers is unknown, but what is known is that these methods of selling to corps are working fine. If filling a corporation through these methods does not cause a reduction in the discrepancy, I believe that the Raw Materials Cost glitch is an error in the P&L value and not an error that manifests in the corporate cash flow. However, given observations of affected corporations, the latter is most likely the case.

Regardless, most corporations do not buy their

C

Crafty

All worlds

20 Apr 2012 17:27Link

If there was a glitch as you call it I feel sure it would have been addressed by now.

So we are back to the 'complexity' of the game that the children enjoy, supposedly. In other words many of us dont understand it, but instead of saying so, point the finger of accusation at the the very thing they dont understand. Child like indeed.

This has to be one of the most in depth threads and analysis of some game mechanics that I have seen, (with a surprisingly astute and coherent contribution from CP) and I wish you good luck in getting to the bottom of it.

A

Andy

All worlds

20 Apr 2012 22:24Link

I did not go into this because I saw some things like:
"maybe it is the name change". come on.

I can never claim for 100% that there is no error that depends on something "arbitrary" but we never had such an error before.

My take on it is that there are indeed many parameters that make it very hard to predict and even more complex because all these parameters and processes have a built in delay and also depend on the existing data which is different from country to country and make the process proceed differently in each case.

Keep looking. This is always interesting.
I can add that when we make a complex change, like recently, we can in most cases predict the end result but we cannot always predict the path, the ups and downs on the way and the time it will take to get there.

S

Scarlet

All worlds

21 Apr 2012 21:17Link

Crafty, it isn't "real" complexity if it's just bad information. Take corporations selling their production to the world market. They NEVER sell for the "advertised" price. The difference is obvious enough that it can neither be accounted for by trade strategies or by changes in market price. Take a corporation that's been selling all its production to the world market, then contract its production to one of your countries and watch the graph.

Timestamp: Aug 3178

Here are two corporations (same trade strategies [-1/-5], quality difference of 1.6, market price fluctuating in a range of 2%, both having sold all production in the last two months):

Corporation:
https://sim01.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=11

C

Crafty

All worlds

21 Apr 2012 21:51Link

Scarlet, sorry bud, but the market is not that cut and dried. This is one of the complexities that I talk of. By no means do I pretend to understand it but one of the main reasons for my continuing here is my enjoyment of trying to gain my best understanding of these fluffy complexities.

One of the others is getting to talk to such wonder people as yourself

S

Scarlet

All worlds

21 Apr 2012 23:55Link

I've never seen a corporation sell to the world market even close to market price, much less above. Even in markets whose market price is rising:
https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=2924557
Should be at least NEAR 6,102.97M accounting for production, trade strategy, and the current (i.e. higher) market price.

Actual Value: 5,489.60M
This is 10.05% lower than expected in a rising market.

If the question is, what is market price? It is an inflated value used to determine the price of contracts and direct sales. It does not appear to have much to do with prices on the market. Find me a single corporation that sold its products at or above market price or even within 2% below market price and we can talk. Trade strategies are NOT tied to market price as advertised.

This is not complexity because this essentially mean I have no idea what

C

Crafty

All worlds

22 Apr 2012 00:19Link

Ok, now I have to believe Andy. Look at this for improved profit I hope this continues every month, what do you reckon the chances are?

WOW

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Scarlet

All worlds

22 Apr 2012 00:35Link

Unlikely, that appears to be a temporary spike in Profit Transfer brought on by a "double month" of production sales in state corporations. It looks like your corps were selling on a one month delay, and are now selling on a zero month delay.

C

Christopher Michael Thompson

All worlds

22 Apr 2012 02:19Link

Wow......I wish they would jump up like that.......and STAY.

Scarlet is right however on this point.

S

Scarlet

All worlds

22 Apr 2012 08:36Link

Anyway, I purchased another "infected" enterprise with my "clean" account.

https://sim02.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=w3graph&miTable=enthist&miKey=16339&miColumn=vEnterpriseMonthMaterials

Yet another sharp drop in raw materials cost.

C

Crafty

All worlds

22 Apr 2012 19:44Link

Dunno scarlet, this is still unexplained.

But going back to my graph...(yes I did realise that, thanks for the comments) that does show what a change in trade strategies can do in terms of selling promptly. I will be monitoring further months of income and see if an increase in profit is permanent.

C

Christopher Michael Thompson

All worlds

22 Apr 2012 22:25Link

CC, didn't mean to be patronizing with my comment.....I see how that looks now.

?

All worlds

07 Nov 2012 10:00Link

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Product	Stock (Feb)	Stock (Mar)	Used	Quoted	% of quoted	Last Price Paid	Cost
Chemicals	154498	130687	23811	20000	119.0550%	3262	77671482
Electric Components	1285791	1119110	166681	140000	119.0579%	1782	297025542
Electric Power	14513	13620	893	750	119.0667%	163998	146450214