W3C - Some news, preannouncement

Things will continue along as normal, since none of the markets will be disrupted, this has to mean that the supply fairy will magically create the supplies to keep the industries going.


So nothing will change, and I expect unless selenium is worth in the hundreds of thousands, per unit and it translates to a 1 unit of product to 1 cargo unit. It will be ignored. Though that assumption is going purely on memory, since I don't know what the current costs would be. It's been awhile, but I take it that things are no longer free.

I'm not even going to get started on FMUs. I understand the logic of their creation, but I have my own opinions on their application.

First and essential in the discussion:

all products, independent of place of production and trading, can be bought and sold on all worlds between players and in contracts.
This remains true for everything, including nuclear weapons, Selenium and all future new products.

Most products used by the population and products used in the production of most used products will continue to be traded on all the markets in all the worlds.
This will allow players who are not interested in the space trading, space mining or space war to continue and play as they do now.

In addition, there will be products that are produced on one world only but can be traded everywhere.

Players who are interested in additional functions, will be able to participate in the space trading, mining etc.
It will give them more game functionality. The products that are involved will in general be used in industries that require high game levels.

All well and good, but how those interventions have appeared on this end to players are as follows:

Shortages have no meaning or bearing. The only time I remember a shortage of a commodity actually halting production was either due to database issues where some weapon corp had a call for the same supply commodity twice and only filled the need once or pre-Factory Maintenance Unit, where upgrading corporations causes a Services/High Tech Services see-saw effect. I distinctly remember in 2003 having to frequently immediately order services or high tech services, or build my own corporations to supply them and then manually cut contracts to my other corporations. Thus the common market was born. To keep many of them operational, whereas now, I don't experience shortages

The Factory Maintenance Unit, I would consider one of the poorest examples to cite for a thriving economy, since if you run out of Factory Maintenance Units the produc

@Green "Not to mention click, click, click, click. Endless, boring, clickity clicking. Just to move commodities around. Utterly dull."

I agree 100%

Like regular trading on individual worlds, we need the same simplicity in space trading.

When trading on any world we don't load trucks, railcars, ocean liners with products. We offer the goods on the world market and magic the products are sold.

We need the same magic for space trade. Any country with a space center should have the ability to directly trade on the space market. Instead of using cargo shuttles, just charge each trade a percentage fee and be done with it. Also, CEO's should be allowed to space trade as well.

This cargo shuttle thing is way to much micromanagement.


*****
And a little reality would be nice here.

Space trading should be cost prohibitive to most if not all current world produc

You will probably find the space shuttles are needed for space wars.

How else am i gonna pirate your goodies being transfered round the worlds

Yeah? well I hope it goes the same way as the Apollo program and the series of shuttles. i.e. in the bin.

There are shortages on the market and as a result, the products increase in price.
none of our interventions reversed any of these shortages or caused a decline in the price.

A very large number of corporations, are not producing at 100% because of these shortages and we never intervene.many corporations are bankrupted every day because of this. They cannot produce due to the shortages, they get into debt and bankrupt when production remains very low for a prolonged period.

factory maintenance units are not produced in sufficient numbers although the situation is improving.

once a sort of a balance will be in sight, corporations will stop production if they do not have the product.
if we do it now, many corporations will stop or we will have to intervene.

with new space trading functions and more diversity in the way products get to the markets, we will allow wider price ranges and possibilities to create very pro

That is my main concern with this specialist products thing. Sure, with Strat bombers, I understand (having built 2 strat bomber corps + 1 strat bomber bomb corp before the cutoff) with the world trading, but for normal items?

Maestro is right in saying that it would not be cost effective to move smaller units. Say you sell 100,000 units of computers. How do you make up the cost of transport by doing that?

This is the reason when I built my country, my refusal to go the let the CEO handle things route was to diversify my corps, so if one corp goes into prolonged green spells, other corps will cover it. Keep my portfolio protected from oversupply, and wait. Classic case was when Industrial Equipment was in a massive greenspell, I kept it going, and now it's back in the black.

One thing that no one has picked up on is exhausting natural supplies. I understand that this is realism, makes perfect sense. What is conce

I'm all for cargo shuttles being part of space wars and space exploration.

Yes, the price of quality and effectivity products has hit the ceiling on Little Upsilon. Nothing new there. Things hit the ceiling all the time. P/E ratios are moving around based upon whether their product is flagged as in a surplus or shortage, nothing new or exciting there.

Factory maintenance units will never go into surplus. The community is now brainwashed to instantly snap these up if they see a surplus, even though there is no actual need.

I will agree with you on your interventions not reversing a situation or affecting a price. But pricing, I don't care about. That should move with whatever the commodity is flagged as, shortage or surplus. I do however fondly remember air transport going from a 4.x+ billion short fall once to a 1.x billion short fall. Nothing else was affected by this.

But if you do have intentions to actually cause the situation where a shortfall in a product has meaning, then the who

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

I assume that part of the impetus behind corporations having level requirements to build was an attempt to force people to diversify their holdings. A more effective method from my view would be to force people to address shortages. If there's a consistent shortage in something, production should halt, forcing people to address the problem. If my chemicals corporation stopped production because there's a shortage of sulphur. I'd think about going out and getting a sulphur corporation active. Whereas, if I did take steps to monopolize the sulphur industry and then witheld the production, no one would notice.<!-/Quote-!>

This used to be the case in the very early years of the game, and it was indeed alot more fun.

Like logging in to find everything ground to a halt because there's a 4 billion unit services shortage for the world. Those were the days.

i agree with White Darkness

Failures need to be added.
Make CM worth while, make buying higher Q worth something.

A Wheat corp uses 106FMU monthly
A Sub Nuke corp uses 96 monthly

WHY DOES FOOD NEED MORE FMU THEN A NUKE!?!?

"A very large number of corporations, are not producing at 100% because of these shortages and we never intervene.many corporations are bankrupted every day because of this. They cannot produce due to the shortages, they get into debt and bankrupt when production remains very low for a prolonged period."

Missed this part from you earlier,Tommi. The only time I've seen a shortage actually interfere with production for any of the corporations I've had in my possession since 2009 was due to either database issues, or my setting ridiculous trade strategies that just wouldn't work. Otherwise, that 4B shortfall in air transport as an example has been around since '09 when I re-signed up and has had no impact, though at the time when my empire was intact it did cause me to build 4 air transport corporations per country, because there was a guaranteed sale. A guaranteed sale, because most people don't bother.

The number of FMUs used by corporations, depends mainly on their quality level.

As I said, PE levels are falling because of a change in the way we compute PE ratios.

this is why we are tweaking the conditions for an IPO.
we hope in fact that there will be more IPOs in the future and a smaller number of state corporations.

public a private corporations contribute more to the countries where they reside. we have done this to stimulate these types of corporations, not to block them.

The price of upgrading products did not just hit the ceiling. you probably did not look.
the ceiling went way up and their profitability increased.

we think that with the current functionality, and added space functions including the automation, there is a lot to improve in the trading and economy of Simcountry.

quality is a factor in an increasing number of products.
weapons, ammunition, space industry, and all raw

Aye, I'll agree with you there. The number of FMUs depends on their quality level. A more stable scenario than High Tech Services consumption increasing.

2009, FMU consumption for all corporations was 66 at full upgrade level.

2011, varies wildly, in an apparent range from 90-125.

P/E doesn't really pertain to the aspects of supply/demand consumption, whether the calculations change or not.

The price of quality and effectivity upgrades on Little Upsilon are ceilinged. The shortage for effectivity is 13,756 at the moment and for quality 15,492. The prices for both are at approximately 300M per upgrade. The graphs of the price changes are now moving up and down in a wave style. What price commodities do once they hit the ceiling. There was a marked steady increase previously, but again, not really important. The prices could be 1 SC$ or 1 million.

There is, I was one of the "pioneers" of spa

I'm still not sure about limited natural resources. Yes, I know it's a smarter thing to do (breaks the rich econ countries only mining oil), but it depends how you look at it.

The way I see it, one mining company should pretty much have unlimited resources to play with. I mean, one major oil company in a massive country should have plenty of room. However, have more than one, and you'll lose out on reserves.

Even if this isn't the case, then you will have to watch what is limited. You cannot limit wood for instance, it would be sustainable farming. Oil can't be limited that much, there is oil shale.

I am more interested about resources in space. If someone owns an asteroid, is there an infinite amount of resources? Also, how would it function, is it like another country, connected via space shuttles? That is interesting.

On that note, I have a few strat bombers to sell, they're drainin

Mining asteroids....I like this idea.

mining asteroids, combine that with throwing rocks, and then I'd be interested.

White Darkness has it exactly.

Jozi has so many fun ideas. Then a few complaints, and W3C steps back from the fun aspect.

This is just a game, yet there's so much fear about free markets. Now I can see if in real life people would be afraid about things like not having any dairy farms in New York City, to supply everyone with milk. You'd have to rely on private companies outside the city to produce enough milk, and then rely on private companies to transport it into the city. What if no one wants to do it? No milk and cereal! We'd have no milk in our coffee! The city would grind to a halt! Getting rid of the dairy farms in NYC would be playing with fire, and I understand why in real life we don't do things like that, even though personally I think we'd manage. But this is just a game. Ditch the price controls and the "interventions" and let's have a real free economy. And no war protection on FB, either, w

I am concerned about lack of interventions though. After all, where would the FMUs come from? Those are in constant demand.

TL;DR: There are many things that need addressing in this game, many changes that need to be made to the core game, and there is no reason to add a whole new field (space) full of bugs to an already buggy game.

Seriously, guys, you're going to have more of a shot at maintaining your player base (and income) if you just fix the core game and leave space alone for a while.

warfreak, FMUs are in demand constantly for a combination of things.

1. Since we have "infinite supply" effectively, we have infinite growth without consequences, so we build what is deemed to make the most profit. To counteract this to a degree since the sheer volume of corporations gets unwieldy, the GMs increase corporation size. Invariably this means the things use more staff and consume more FMUs. But the FMU corporations consume more as well. As it stands, a single FMU corp could not supply the FMUs necessary to all the corporations that supply it if they were all fully upgraded. 12 commodities counting FMU come in, and 765 are produced. Estimating a 95 average consumption (probably higher), that's 8 of the 12 supplied. Admittedly, those sources can probably support 2 or 3 FMU corps, so that helps counterbalance things.

2. People are to a degree brainwashed. If there is (and it has happened) a FM

hey, i'd like to throw out again, a request for a teaser about space war??

are we building orbital weapons platforms? space mines? pirate ships? what? i'm sure if you had it all figured out, you'd do the update, i'm just wanting a taste of whats coming. and partially how to plan ahead for it.

I think the amount of FMU needs is a bit too high. After all, I remember seeing on the forums that a fully upgraded FMU corp produces enough for itself, and another upgraded corp. We basically need 1 FMU corp for every other corp for it to breakeven.

I don't have a stack of FMU/Elec/Oil corps. I have one FMU, 1 Elec, 1 Oil, 1 Gasoline, I diversify my corps. Don't put all my eggs in one basket. So if the magical supply fairy were to disappear, I would be safe, worse comes to worst, I can supply my own country pretty well.

If we were to remove the black hole of FMUs and all, then either reduce the FMUs needed for maintenance, or increase production (and supply). For electricity, make that directly tied in with Nuclear, they are exactly the same.

Nuclear power is more or less dead at this stage. It doesn't make sense that there can be a surplus of nuclear and a shortage of electric at the same time. They're