Login
Ratjoy.com » Forums » EoS Newbie Station » Competing against a bot

Competing against a bot


Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 [8] Next
Brent Goode
RJ: BB Goode
CO: BB Goode

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 506
Karma: 180
Joined: Apr 5, 2012
"i'm not here to throw millions at people expecting to make 50x out of a $1 product."

I agree wholeheartedly. Contrary to popular myth, it is not the "job" of the players to make the economy work. It is the job of the developers to make the economy work, and make it fun enough to attract enough people to make it work at its highest levels.

It is even more amazing here(alpha server) to see things on the B2B at 90%-200% of current retails. What are people thinking?
Brent Goode
RJ: BB Goode
CO: BB Goode

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 506
Karma: 180
Joined: Apr 5, 2012
For what it is worth, I don't think exports are prorated for Q anymore. I have been testing this a bit, and ALL I get is the base price. Yet another "tweak" that has further eroded the quality of the game, and the player experience.
Aaron Barr
RJ: Aaron
CO: Aaron

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 81
Karma: 74
Joined: Apr 13, 2012
It still is, but now its not based off 0, I guess its based on some calculated average quality. When you go into the sell box where you change the quantity you can hover over the "actual price" text and see what it is. For instance petroleum will only increase the price above 17.21 quality. Pretty steep but I guess its assuming you're a leading producer if you are bothering to export.

Seems like it should be the opposite effect though. I always thought the export was for new companies that can't sell B2B yet because their quality is far below competitors and export would allow them some revenue as they build up. But right now export is only helpful if you have a big tech advantage.
Cian Kemp
RJ: Cian Kemp
CO: Cian Kemp

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 183
Karma: 58
Joined: Apr 9, 2012
With the increased cost of building maintenance, export is a good way to bankrupt yourself slowly. Even if you make a small bit of "profit" on your sales, the hidden costs of maintenance and salaries drives you bankrupt over time.

Right now the only way to make money is to either: 1) Supply stuff on the b2b for other companies (like mine) who aren't completely vertically integrated, 2) Pick a retail product that you can make with available products on the b2b (or secure a supplier for) and produce and sell it in your stores, or 3) vertically integrate and produce the entire supply chain.

There is also the option to be store only and sell imports or b2b sourced retail goods, but that option is getting less and less viable as average retail prices drop and leave the import prices in the dust. And most of the b2b sourced retail goods are horribly overpriced. Anything I put up I try to price at around 1/2 the average retail price, but most of the products I see on the b2b are HIGHER than the average retail price.
Moe Jack
RJ: Moejack
CO: Moe Jack

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 128
Karma: 74
Joined: Apr 7, 2012
here's another stupid thing. Look at clay vs. iron ore. Clay takes almost twice as long to make, it costs almost 3X as much, but the wholesale isn't even 2X the wholesale for iron ore.

that's just stupid, imho.
Aaron Barr
RJ: Aaron
CO: Aaron

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 81
Karma: 74
Joined: Apr 13, 2012
Yeah, theres definitely some balance issues. Polyester thread vs Plastic for instance. 3.50 compared to 5 wholesale value. While polyester thread is indeed cheaper on materials it takes longer to produce. With overhead costs on the new server being so much higher time for production is a very significant part of your production costs as BallC and others have shown.

Makes it difficult at times to negotiate prices when the consumers of these products start asking why the supplier is listing products with vastly different "wholesale" costs at the same price on B2B. Also people who shop merely by saying "I'm not paying over 5 times wholesale" will just skip things assuming they are being ripped off.

I guess this is just echoing the complaint that has been brought up time and again that production time should be factored into the cost displayed in your warehouse. And also that perhaps there could be some standardized formula used to determine "wholesale" that is displayed for a product. Perhaps the cost to produce 1 item in a size 10m^2 factory? Then just use that wholesale price as the price for it being an "ingredient" in progressively more complex products. Since everyone with some sense will be gaining the EoS bonuses to cut their own costs down.
Cian Kemp
RJ: Cian Kemp
CO: Cian Kemp

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 183
Karma: 58
Joined: Apr 9, 2012
You also have to take into account the time to sell them and the investment needed. With the new changes, the higher end goods (cars, boats, especially aircraft) sell a lot slower, and all the buildings and research for them have always cost more. I expect the big value passenger jets will be very difficult to sell - making that $32 value (which I'm not entirely sure how you've calculated) a bit less overpowered.

I'll have to see how I do today, but so far my aircraft company is making less than my electronics or clothing companies. Yesterday's numbers show 25.6 million in store sales revenue, 1.15 in salary, 8.5 in maintenance, 7.93 mil in production, and 4.66 mil in b2b purchases (although I still have some helicopters left over to sell, so part of that would go forward to today). And I've invested 170 mil in buildings and about 60 million in research.

Store sales will probably be better today (24 hour sales page shows 7 helicopters sold in the last 24 hours, which would be 30.8 mil revenue at the price I sold them at). Compare to my clothing company, which has about an equivalent net worth, which collected $60 mil in revenue even with some of its stores down for upgrades. Granted, it has more of its net worth in buildings and less in research - but not double.

I expect aircraft will end up pretty profitable after I get it built up and start selling all the aircraft types, but I don't think it will end up being 16x as good as jewelry and designer apparel like your numbers indicate.

Not that I don't agree that the product tree needs a shakedown - profitability in hot food is pretty poor compared to clothing and electronics and sporting goods and such. I just don't think aircraft and watercraft are quite as good as your numbers seem to indicate (I wouldn't want a new company going "Whoa! watercraft and aircraft are hugely profitable! I'll sell my business and start one of those!")
Cian Kemp
RJ: Cian Kemp
CO: Cian Kemp

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 183
Karma: 58
Joined: Apr 9, 2012
Ah, well in regards to the business jet the main time component isn't in the assembly but the components. Take a helicopter rotor - $10,000 wholesale and 33333 seconds to produce. The body and the wings and the FMS of the business jet are only $3/sec. The turbine engines are 2. And the factory for all this costs 5x as much as most other factories, so you get a decent bit of hidden cost there as well (especially in the rotors, which by your made up numbers are "losing" money).

Your numbers are a bit flawed anyway for any comparison, in that you need to be taking into account the value added rather than just the base value. In the case of the business jet the value added is only 185000 after subtracting the base value of the components and the cash going into it. Although in this case fruit still sucks, since the value added of an apple is a mere 5 cents.

Comparing apple to electricity using the value added approach gets you 1 cent per second on apples and 14 cents per second on electricity. Considering it costs you about 2.9 cents per second to run an apple farm, no wonder fruit isn't very profitable (and it would never be viable to sell at base price).
Richard Ripberger
RJ: Rip
CO: Rip

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 153
Karma: 78
Joined: Mar 28, 2012
The other things that could account for that is high skilled labor isn't more costly than non-skilled as would be working the fields and such. The labor cost of equal size airplane factory and plantation should have a ten-fold difference.


Thinking on this further it would scale a lot better if in fact it was tied to the product itself rather than the factory. This could also help track it into product cost and maybe resolve the entire issue of factories having labor costs even when they are being upgraded.
Brent Goode
RJ: BB Goode
CO: BB Goode

Post Rating: 0
+ / -

Total Posts: 506
Karma: 180
Joined: Apr 5, 2012
No Freaking Bots!!!!!

There, feel better Ball?
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 [8] Next


You need to register or login to post a reply.