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Can all products be produced at base value?
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 17, 2013 There are some markets that are continually underserved in the game and I wonder if the root cause here is a flaw in the base value that is assigned to the products. Since the warehouse doesn't show us the "true" cost of producing a product, firms that utilize the game's built-in 2x lazy pricing for some products could actually be running at a loss. Even if they use a realistic price that takes into account the actual costs of producing the product, they are penalized on the demand side because the equation looks at how far you are away from the "base value" of the product when determining how much demand there is.I've previously run analysis and come up with a (flawed) "True Base Value" that took into account the base value of the inputs as well as the maintenace/salary costs of the factory that is producing the good. Given the higher maintenance costs on CO vs EoS, you would think that an adjustment to the product base values would also have been made but it seems that has not. I suspect that at the current time there are products that cost more than their base/wholesale value to actually produce (once you take into account the maintenance/salaries of the factory used to produce them). If I could get the updated maintenance/salaries formula, I'll be happy to run an analysis to show this point and maybe Scott will consider adjusting the base values to be more realistic with the costs in the game world. |
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M Burch RJ: Farmerbob CO: Farmerbob Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 151 Karma: 14 Joined: Sep 2, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 29, 2013 Some products definitely seem out of whack. Steel for example. A lot of new players look at what it SAYS it costs to make steel, then at the prices that people charge for it, and it just doesn't make sense. Prorating all of a factory's cost into the cost of a batch of product would seem to make sense. I don't think that's done at this time?
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 55 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 29, 2013 (Last edited on Apr 29, 2013) It is not and it is (or was) noted on the production screen where you start the job that it only includes direct money and materials costs.I get not including store and R&D and executive salaries into the "cost" of a product but when you can directly attribute a cost to the product, it makes sense to do so especially with pricing being so important on the retail side. It's easy to calculate a per-second cost of a particular factory (based on its current size and the daily maintenance/salaries formulas). The job run time and the quantity produced is also known. It's just a matter of taking: $factory_cost_per_sec * $job_runtime_seconds / $quantity produced and adding that value to the money/mats cost that currently gets calculated. === For Steel on the CO server (with 5% maint cost instead of 2%), it definitely looks a little out of whack. Assuming a 1000m^2 Smelter running a 24 hour job (56.5k unit of Steel) and assuming that you get your raw materials at their base value, you're still looking at a real cost of $61.13 per unit which is 20% above the base value of Steel ($50). That's with an EoS multiplier of 61% which has a lower limit of 50% (for VERY large production jobs). The current game code will tell you that the steel actually cost you $27.52 per unit. Factory Name Smelter Factory Cost (per m^2) $30,000 Factory Size 1000 m^2 Daily Maintenance $1,500,000.00 Daily Salaries $398,107.17 Product Name Steel Base Value $50.00 Batch Size 56500 Job Runtime 86412.14779 seconds 24.00337439 hours EoS Multiplier 61.1767% Input Name Quantity (per unit) Price Cost (per unit) Total Total w/ EoS Money $17.0000 $960,500.0000 $587,602.6050 Time (seconds) 250 $0.2197 $54.9221 $3,103,097.6602 $1,898,374.0433 Electricity 20 $0.1000 $2.0000 $113,000.0000 $69,129.7182 Coal 1 $8.0000 $8.0000 $452,000.0000 $276,518.8729 Iron Ore 6 $3.0000 $18.0000 $1,017,000.0000 $622,167.4641 $3,453,792.7035 $61.1291 Google spreadsheet link in case anyone wants to run their own analysis: http://goo.gl/UG5dh (it's read-only but you can download to excel) (EDIT: Derp, reversed the prices for iron ore and coal. Fixed. ) |
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 29, 2013 Glass is another good one where the values are too low.Even producing a maximum size batch (999,999,999) in a 10m^2 plant (not really possible in the game because you can only run a job for 1 week but this gets you the lowest possible overhead costs), you still end up at $1.35 a unit once you factor in the factory costs. That is literally the cheapest you can produce glass for in the game and it's 35% over the "base value". Of course, the game tells you that glass only cost you $0.36 a unit. |
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Brent Goode RJ: BB Goode CO: BB Goode Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 506 Karma: 180 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 29, 2013 This is not the first time you and others have brought this up. And many products have been...mis-valued, on both servers for as long as I have been here. I don't expect Scott to do all the work of figuring out the game for everyone, but I would certainly think asking for a more accurate base value, taking into account true overheads and salaries, would not be unreasonable by players.
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 30, 2013 The other thing to note is that this is compounded at every stage of the production process. So when you have some products like Hot Food items that have multiple steps, the amount the pricing is off for the end product can be significant (hence, the $50 cheeseburgers and $100 chicken wings.)
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M Burch RJ: Farmerbob CO: Farmerbob Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 151 Karma: 14 Joined: Sep 2, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 30, 2013 Aye, asking for a real cost analysis of everything in the game would be counterproductive to the "fun" value. I don't think it would add much to the game for me if Scott were to try to figure out how to allocate executive pay or R&D costs for sugar cane, for instance, for a company that makes sugar, and then makes lots of things from that sugar. There are economic models for calculating that sort of thing, but I think we can smudge that line on the ledgers, or make the breakdown on an advanced page to be perhaps developed at a much later time :)However accounting for factory salaries and maintenance when calculating the cost of produced goods would be highly welcome especially for multiple step finished goods. |
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dan bra RJ: King CO: Post Rating: 1 + / - Total Posts: 55 Karma: 12 Joined: Mar 20, 2013 |
Posted on May 2, 2013 Man this discussion made me realize how bad this under valuation of multiply-staged products is, I keep 10 different kinds of factories just to be able to produce these 3$ demand value burgers. huge waste of land space and i regret ever entering this market.
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on May 3, 2013 Yeah, run the numbers (look at the google spreadsheet i posted, download it, and enter in your own numbers to analyze what you're actually making). Typically, the factory maintenance and salary costs (at least on the CapOL server) are equal or greater than the actual raw mat and money cost to produce the product even after the EoS bonus. I'd love to hear a comment from RJ on how product base values were determined. I imagine there was some logic to this but I haven't teased it out yet from working backwards... |
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Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012 |
Posted on May 3, 2013 Your calculations do make sense, I've updated the script and the cost just doubled.This should make it much easier for people to calculate ideal firm size. I've also updated the maintenance and salary multipliers on the normal server to be the same as the test server so it'll be easier to push updates through. |
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on May 5, 2013 Very cool.. So we are at 2% maintenance for both servers now so it should be a little easier to get at or below base value for most products.I'd still be interested to hear the "vision" behind the current base value prices. :) |
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Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012 |
Posted on May 5, 2013 I'd be glad to enlighten you on what the base value represents, but... I forgot that a year ago. Perhaps it's time to increase it or change its description to something else?
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on May 8, 2013 If you are thinking of rebalancing/clarifying the base values, here are my suggestions/ideas.The base value is defined as the price in raw materials and direct overhead (factory maintenance and salaries) required to produce 1 unit in a 10m^2 factory with no EoS bonus. The suggested retail price would be 2x the base value (adjusted for quality) just like it is today. The idea here is that manufacturers have to balance the increased EoS bonus from larger factory and job runtimes against the increased maintenance and salary costs that come from building larger buildings. Here's a contrived example to illustrate: A widget has a base value of $100 (using the calculation above). Theoretically, with the EoS bonuses, you could produce this as low as $50 _but_ given the non-linear increase in maintenance/salaries, you'd likely end up getting down to somewhere in the $60 range. == You'd have to start with a known value for something. I'd guess electricity and water are pretty close today at $0.10 base value since they're typically listed on B2B in the $0.06 - $0.10 range. So start with that and calculate up. The somewhat tricky thing here is the balancing for products that can be produced at multiple factories or with multiple input recipes (fiberglass for example). There are some that should be equal like Leather but others like Fiberglass should be less expensive at a Petrochem and more at a Airplane or Watercraft Factory (I think there's something similar with the winery and the food processing plants). I'd set the base value to the lowest cost of the possible recipes so, for instance, Fiberglass would be priced based on how much it costs to produce at a Petrochem Plant. Once you've got the initial calculations done, round off the final base values to nice even numbers as much as possible by adjusting the direct cash input for producing the product. This is simple since we're not dealing with EoS bonuses. I'll see if I can whip up and post an Excel that can do these calculations to illustrate and see what the numbers would look like if this was implemented. |
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Paco Co RJ: Mr. Costa CO: Mr. Costa Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 89 Karma: 30 Joined: Mar 8, 2012 |
Posted on May 9, 2013 David, i used you excel sheet to run some numbers and i see that your calculations for building expenses (salaries + maint) for the CO server (didnt check the other) are way off.Im getting 550M with your salaries+maint formulas and my company report says 350M, i already ajusted de 0.02 maint coeficient. maybe the salaries arent ^1.2, i will try to check this and post here if i find something EDIT: i tried ^1.5 and gives me 373M much closer |
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on May 9, 2013 I was running some numbers last night. It looks like the updated formulas are::$total_building_cost * 0.02 = $daily_maintenance_cost 50 * ($building_size^1.2) = $daily_salary_cost That matches what I'm seeing on the EoS server at least. |
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David Archer RJ: BallC CO: BallC Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 142 Karma: 135 Joined: Apr 11, 2012 |
Posted on May 9, 2013 So I used the old JSON dump that some folks posted on the forums from a while ago to get the raw data. Threw it into excel and did the above calculations. It's still not ready to post but my initial observations:1) Excel had trouble calculating some of the values due to circular dependencies. This only affected a few products (sapphire and quartz from the crystal factory). Turning those off temporarily let it chug through and calculate the entire chain of products. 2) The data needs to be scrubbed a bit and updated with the water v purified water changes that went in after it was posted. 3) Most products saw an increase in base value. Some saw a decrease. The ones that didn't change much are ones that I see some players being able to sustain an entire company on at least before when we had unlimited export capacity (halite for instance). |
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