Economy is still broken somehow.

[rbilka]

Where can i find bug-tracker for this game? I wish to report few bugs still in latest 7-3-1.

But first few questions / maybe bugs:
1. Daily Expenses: What means "Facilities"? I was thinking it means "Annual Maintenance" for facilities.
2. Every "industry building" type have "Annual Maintenance: -$", so nothing?
3. When i click "Put facility offline", what that means? I was hoping it decrease "Annual Maintenance" to cca 5% or equal, but it seems to me it has no impact at all. Or where i can see change?
5. "Bulk sales" should be able to set to % of Markup, and not to $/U like it is now.
6. Oil and other "low value" resources are not showing exact price, but only "round price", for example 12$. But somethimes, when your production cost is 11,51$, and market sell is for 12,49$, you can still have more than 10% profit, but you see production 12, sell 12, and minimal price 12. That is not good enought, there shoud be longer decimal number. This can be solved also by solving point 6.
7. Production costs for OIL are calculated wrongly. When i not import OIL (nor any other comodity/resource), my production costs of OIL should be stable. There should be no connection with world market selling prices. My own oil production price should be related ONLY to my own "production price" of eletricity and perhaps low income wages. Right now it seems that production cost and market prices are somehow linked together.

[number47]

Where can i find bug-tracker for this game? I wish to report few bugs still in latest 7-2-73.

The latest game version is 7.3.1.

[rbilka]

Where can i find bug-tracker for this game? I wish to report few bugs still in latest 7-2-73.

The latest game version is 7.3.1.

Sorry, of course i mean 7.3.1 .

[number47]

Balt will give you better response but I'll answer from my experience in red:

But first few questions / maybe bugs:
1. Daily Expenses: What means "Facilities"? I was thinking it means "Annual Maintenance" for facilities.
-I believe you are right and that it means "annual maintenence" but scaled to daily amount if you are using daily expenses overview instead of annual.
2. Every "industry building" type have "Annual Maintenance: -$", so nothing?
-I also noticed this but never gave it much thought. Always though the value is either 0 or very close to zero.
3. When i click "Put facility offline", what that means? I was hoping it decrease "Annual Maintenance" to cca 5% or equal, but it seems to me it has no impact at all. Or where i can see change?
-from my experience it decreases maintenence for sure (you just need to consider that annual-daily amount scale), and it also decreases employment (at least it seamed to do that for me but I could be wrong on this one).
5. "Bulk sales" should be able to set to % of Markup, and not to $/U like it is now.
-generaly no comment on this. maybe just that % might not work well since the AI will never buy it for more than current market price anyway...
6. Oil and other "low value" resources are not showing exact price, but only "round price", for example 12$. But somethimes, when your production cost is 11,51$, and market sell is for 12,49$, you can still have more than 10% profit, but you see production 12, sell 12, and minimal price 12. That is not good enought, there shoud be longer decimal number. This can be solved also by solving point 6.
-this may be true but even when both values are the same the little arrow always points either up (green) or down (red) so you get the general idea where are you heading.
7. Production costs for OIL are calculated wrongly. When i not import OIL (nor any other comodity/resource), my production costs of OIL should be stable. There should be no connection with world market selling prices. My own oil production price should be related ONLY to my own "production price" of eletricity and perhaps low income wages. Right now it seems that production cost and market prices are somehow linked together.
-not sure how exactly these are calculated but I know GDP/c has a huge impact on all production costs (not to mention intlation%)

[Balthagor]

I will?

1. number47 is correct
2. noted, I'll investigate, not sure without checking
3. It puts the facility offline as in shut down, closed. number47's comments are correct.
4. M.I.A.
5. Works as designed, no changes planned.
6. Works as designed, no changes planned.
7. as per number47, there are a number of factors. I've seen no evidence that it's not working as designed.

#5 and 6 are not bugs, those are requests for feature changes. I did answer this thread but putting multiple different questions in one thread creates a confusing thread. We've indicated before that these sort of threads will often go unanswered. One topic per thread is preferred.

[number47]

I will?

I left out "probably" in

Balt will _______ give you better response but I'll answer from my experience in red:

[Hullu Hevonen]

I will?

1. number47 is correct
2. noted, I'll investigate, not sure without checking
3. It puts the facility offline as in shut down, closed. number47's comments are correct.
4. M.I.A.
5. Works as designed, no changes planned.
6. Works as designed, no changes planned.
7. as per number47, there are a number of factors. I've seen no evidence that it's not working as designed.

#5 and 6 are not bugs, those are requests for feature changes. I did answer this thread but putting multiple different questions in one thread creates a confusing thread. We've indicated before that these sort of threads will often go unanswered. One topic per thread is preferred.

So you prefer us to spam , I have tons of ideas . Though in my forum experience, if you bundle a few ideas in one thread and manage to connect these to each other somehow, you get the best responses.

[Balthagor]

If they're all connected, it's acceptable, but if we're discussing facility maintenance costs it won't really be relevant to oil production prices.

Look at the layout of the updated SupremeWiki. Fairly isolated articles with cross links where needed and a working search function. That's the best way to do triage of data.

[rbilka]

7. is not working correctly, i have tested that specially.

1. Example:
-------------
Build 500 oil pumps, and than try to produce oil on 100% (do not sell anything) for about 1-2months. Than put all facilities offline. And you will see, that production costs are changing.
Even when you start selling that oil to the world market as fast as you can, you will se, that your own production cost are changing without reason. There seems to be 10% +- difference - correlation betweend world market price, and your production costs. That means when world market price rise from 12 to 35, production costs changes from 11 to 31.5, and than backwords (when you start selling that oil).

2. Example:
-------------
Very simmilar problem is also in other (maybe all) production facilities (customers goods, industry goods and eq).
Create self-sustainable economy, and stabilize GDP on +- the same level.
Dont buy or sell anything, just try to maintain GDP on the same level, (thru social spending or just give money to other nations.
Hurry up game for few months, and you will see, that your production costs are changing dramatically, when world market prices of OIL or Electricity changes.
Why? When you have stable self-sustainable economy and stable GDP (= in this game wages), you should have stable costs of production.

Solution:
----------

Every supply of any resource in nation (for example OIL) should have its own average acquisition price=cost, and that supply of resorce become asset.
When every day new amount of OIL surplus is created, first, the value of current daily surplus should be callculated depending on current production costs.
And after that, surplus should be added to the nation supply of resource, with direct correlation/calculation of average asset value.
Than, in next day, all production facilities should calculate its own production costs based on those national supply/asset average price.
When you don't have any supply of resource, than necessary amount of resources should be buyed day beffore from world market for world market price.

[Fistalis]

haven't played enough to check this either way but uh.. inflation could be whats driving up your production prices. Not only your countries internal inflation but iirc from the patch notes there is worldwide inflation that effects the base costs of everything.

[Balthagor]

...that production costs are changing...

changing = working correctly

...changing without reason...

The reason may not be clear, but there is a reason. And no, I do not know the reason, I did not code the economic model. But just because you don't see the reason does not mean it is broken. Fistalis' comment about inflation is a good example, there are lots of factors that could be affecting it. I will see if we can check this a bit further.

[rbilka]

...changing without reason...

The reason may not be clear, but there is a reason. And no, I do not know the reason, I did not code the economic model. But just because you don't see the reason does not mean it is broken. Fistalis' comment about inflation is a good example, there are lots of factors that could be affecting it. I will see if we can check this a bit further.

Thank you.

When it is rising up from 11/12 to 33/35 (production cost/market price) ... it can be WORLD inflation, ok. But even if it happens only in 30 mabye 60 days ?
But when it comes back from 33/35 to 11/12 (production cost/market price) ... than it is deflation?

Rising prices are OK, because when I am not selling production from 500 OIL pumps, market prices are rising, and when I start selling them again, world market prices decreases, that is OK.
But my own production costs should be not rising! Again, understand, that my economy is completly self-sustained and stable, GPD is stable, very small population imigration. Those are far too big changes for period od 30-90 days.

I am convinced, there is BUG in economy calculation. So production costs are rising or decreasing with direct correlation with market prices!!! When you have 10% markup, it would be 10% markup thru whole period of time (11/12 to 33/35 and back).

WHAT IS WRONG:
It seems to me, that production costs are calculated every day directly only from: (actual global market price) * (some variable of GDP) .
When you are selling too much, world market prices decreases, and also you prodution prices decreases. There is direct correlation (around 10%) between this two values.
Regardless of true price and amount of already aquired oil/electricity/etc (=assets) in nation supply.
Imagine example, that i have electricity, oil, coal, wood and metal completly FREE from another nation. My production costs should be therefore only price of wages (calculated from GPD).

Another question (not related to the previous findings/bug):
Are facility maitenance calculated also in production costs? Ot they are only calculated as budget expenditures?

[Balthagor]

I believe facility costs are separate from the cost/unit calculations of a commodity.

[George Geczy]

During the development of Update 3 (and as part of some of the beta-test versions of U3 released over the last few months), a number of economic changes were made.

One set of changes involved the calculation of production costs as resource availability and gdp values change, etc.

While at first glance it may seem that a country (ie, US) should not have its production costs change due to external factors (such as a world shortage), this actually only holds true for a perfect state-controlled system. In reality, the US (and even the communist countries of the 1950's) have market forces affect the costs of their goods. In a capitalist economy this would include things like profits to the corporations, etc.

So when the world price of oil rises, even the cost that the US government pays to buy its own oil goes up.

This is admittedly imprecise and maybe even a bit arbitrary, but it is more realistic than having an world "OPEC" price for oil at $60/barrel and having the US govt pay $6/barrel to produce its own oil. More importantly, this change significantly increased both the realism of the economic model, and also improved the gameplay, preventing many exploits and ahistorical results.

-- George.

[Hullu Hevonen]

During the development of Update 3 (and as part of some of the beta-test versions of U3 released over the last few months), a number of economic changes were made.

One set of changes involved the calculation of production costs as resource availability and gdp values change, etc.

While at first glance it may seem that a country (ie, US) should not have its production costs change due to external factors (such as a world shortage), this actually only holds true for a perfect state-controlled system. In reality, the US (and even the communist countries of the 1950's) have market forces affect the costs of their goods. In a capitalist economy this would include things like profits to the corporations, etc.

So when the world price of oil rises, even the cost that the US government pays to buy its own oil goes up.

This is admittedly imprecise and maybe even a bit arbitrary, but it is more realistic than having an world "OPEC" price for oil at $60/barrel and having the US govt pay $6/barrel to produce its own oil. More importantly, this change significantly increased both the realism of the economic model, and also improved the gameplay, preventing many exploits and ahistorical results.

-- George.

Plus if the US would sell it's oil for say 6$ domestically while rest of the world sells internationally at 60$, this would trigger a massive black market where, people from Mexico and Canada smuggle oil to their country and then sell it to the rest of the world making profit of your oil