Phony Baloney Budget Estimates
Posted: Feb 16 2006
I'm playing North America in the World scenario and came across a real bad problem with the phony baloney budget estimate system used in SR2010. I'm using up my stocks of every product as I have plenty of everything as I'm capturing a lot from South America. As a result the idiot budget estimate tells me I'm running a trillion dollar import drain which is taking $2.5 to $3 billion a day from my treasury when in fact I'm importing exactly zero. Not a damn increase in unemployment either when in fact in the real world when businesses cut production to burn up stock that means higher unemployment until they turn back on the production facilities.
Since I'm at war with every other region I have no imports or exports so why the heck doesn't my idiot budget estimate take that salient fact into account? If I can't import or export then I should have zero import or export budget regardless of whether I'm producing short and burning up inventory on hand or producing more than demand and ading to my inventory.
The problem is this ultra lame unrealistic budget estimate approach that's only for clueless LaLaLand economists, not for savvy Realworld accountants. BG wants to tout it's economic model as being the most realistic but it's not. While it's more complex it is not more realistic than other civilization style games because atleast they use real numbers for their economic models, not unrealistic budget estimates.
It's time to live up to your hype and make SR2010's economic model more realistic. First and foremost is to dump the idiot budget estimate approach and work only with real numbers for realistic economic performance. That pathetic import/export farce needs to be made real, with real import/export numbers driving the budget estimate. Using the last day's import/export balance to derive a weighted moving average import/export budget estimate would truly improve the realism.
The annualized budget estimates should be for planning purposes only, the real purpose and use of budgets. Budgets are not real, they are guesses as to future performance. As such that annualized budget estimate should be only for player's planning purposes. The actual performance of each day should be tracked with actual costs and income. That way if there are no imports or exports then the player would not gain or lose money with zero import/export activity. As it is a player can gain money in the treasury simply by producing more than demand even though the player did not sell a damn thing. Conversely a player gets screwed by using up stocks because the idiotic budget estimate thinks you're importing when you're actually not.
I've also seen where I'm taking advantage of there being no separate cost per unit for inventory already on hand. Now I've jacked up my production efficiencies so that I'm selling goods on hand cheaper than I produced them. Plus I'm wondering how the heck all those goodies I'm taking from South America for free are being factored into my inventory cost. Oh, that's right they're not because there's no separate cost per unit for inventory on hand.
I also had a good period where I was exporting almost $20 billion per day, yet my idiot budget estimate said I was only generating about $500 billion annually. I was importing zero at the time so I should have had a multi-trillion dollar budget estimate for exports if it actually worked worth a damn. I was doing that while only exporting 90% of my overproduction and I wasn't even exporting all products I had excess production for as I was building up stocks. The way the program calculates that budget estimate for imports/exports is really screwed up.
This unrealistic budget estimate approach needs to be changed to reflect actual economic performance with real numbers derived daily. Then, and only then, can BG tout it's economic model as being the most realistic. Until then that false hype is merely misleading advertising. This could be such an awesome game if it truly lived up to it's hype by truly working with real numbers rather than clueless budget estimates. Please fix the economic model to be more realistic.
Thanks,
Eric Larsen
Since I'm at war with every other region I have no imports or exports so why the heck doesn't my idiot budget estimate take that salient fact into account? If I can't import or export then I should have zero import or export budget regardless of whether I'm producing short and burning up inventory on hand or producing more than demand and ading to my inventory.
The problem is this ultra lame unrealistic budget estimate approach that's only for clueless LaLaLand economists, not for savvy Realworld accountants. BG wants to tout it's economic model as being the most realistic but it's not. While it's more complex it is not more realistic than other civilization style games because atleast they use real numbers for their economic models, not unrealistic budget estimates.
It's time to live up to your hype and make SR2010's economic model more realistic. First and foremost is to dump the idiot budget estimate approach and work only with real numbers for realistic economic performance. That pathetic import/export farce needs to be made real, with real import/export numbers driving the budget estimate. Using the last day's import/export balance to derive a weighted moving average import/export budget estimate would truly improve the realism.
The annualized budget estimates should be for planning purposes only, the real purpose and use of budgets. Budgets are not real, they are guesses as to future performance. As such that annualized budget estimate should be only for player's planning purposes. The actual performance of each day should be tracked with actual costs and income. That way if there are no imports or exports then the player would not gain or lose money with zero import/export activity. As it is a player can gain money in the treasury simply by producing more than demand even though the player did not sell a damn thing. Conversely a player gets screwed by using up stocks because the idiotic budget estimate thinks you're importing when you're actually not.
I've also seen where I'm taking advantage of there being no separate cost per unit for inventory already on hand. Now I've jacked up my production efficiencies so that I'm selling goods on hand cheaper than I produced them. Plus I'm wondering how the heck all those goodies I'm taking from South America for free are being factored into my inventory cost. Oh, that's right they're not because there's no separate cost per unit for inventory on hand.
I also had a good period where I was exporting almost $20 billion per day, yet my idiot budget estimate said I was only generating about $500 billion annually. I was importing zero at the time so I should have had a multi-trillion dollar budget estimate for exports if it actually worked worth a damn. I was doing that while only exporting 90% of my overproduction and I wasn't even exporting all products I had excess production for as I was building up stocks. The way the program calculates that budget estimate for imports/exports is really screwed up.
This unrealistic budget estimate approach needs to be changed to reflect actual economic performance with real numbers derived daily. Then, and only then, can BG tout it's economic model as being the most realistic. Until then that false hype is merely misleading advertising. This could be such an awesome game if it truly lived up to it's hype by truly working with real numbers rather than clueless budget estimates. Please fix the economic model to be more realistic.
Thanks,
Eric Larsen