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NPC companies


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Paul Jikanski
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If you are referring to System News I haven't had an update since the 12th, which was about 92Q companies, and before that the 8th announcing the update. And yes it was at $5.00
Brent Goode
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Why do I have NPC companies selling me stuff I haven't listed for? I am "buying" helicopter parts for my jewelry company that are not showing up in my warehouse?
Christopher Fowler
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That sounds an awful like a bug of some kind. You should probably file a report with Scott so that you can get it resolved or so you can verify if it is a bug of some kind. I may have said it just a few posts ago but it bears repeating - if you think something is a bug, you report it. It's just a rule of thumb when it comes to beta testing.
Hajji Pajji
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Stop hijacking my thread... Haha

I just started out on CO and I have to ask, doesn't having NPC sell simple things that new players make hurt them?

I love having NPC and its a great way to upgrade the old import/export but it has to add obstacles for new players?
Christopher Fowler
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Well put simply the updates in my opinion make it easier for players to make money on retail and export by using the NPC companies as both consumer and supplier. Furthermore NPC companies have a fixed quality level on their products so for the most part you can make a better product and then price it at a more affordable level than the NPCs, thus beating them at their own game. Just invest in that research and development and you should do alright.
Hajji Pajji
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1) why do we have 4 NPC companies selling goods and sometimes 3 of them selling same goods at same quality?

2) when trying to fill your store shelves and looking in the B2B under your specific store category, it would be nice to turn off NPC search option. To look for only player built items
Paul Jikanski
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@ Hajji
@ 2)-- I suggested this when the update was first launched, and Scott said something along the lines of that he will NOT add a feature to filter between player and NPC requests & B2B posts. For what reason, I don't know, but I'm sure 8 out of 10 players would greatly appreciate an option to show/hide NPC companies. Despite the goal of the B2B revamp, I use it less than now before the update.
M Burch
RJ: Farmerbob
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The player base is still not large enough to offer a robust market for everything across the board, so NPC's fill the gap. However they do so in a way which, for the most part, provides low quality goods with little real value for direct resale.

However the items CAN be highly valuable for use in creating finished products, allowing a new player, say, with an interest in the Gelatin market to concentrate on providing their own power, water, and base gelatin. Then they can buy fruit or fruit concentrates from the NPC market if no players are around selling it, and make their Gelatin of various flavors.

I'd have no problems turning off the option to see NPC goods, but I strongly support the need for such goods to be available on the market.

Now, if you see that there are NPC's selling goods that are incredibly low cost per unit, then I'd create a thread asking that to be addressed. It should not be possible to buy large numbers of something from the NPC market and then turn around and sell it for huge profits in stores. Some profit, sure, but you should not be able to command a significant part of the market with low quality NPC goods.

So, IMHO, as long as we watch for broken products and report them, and so long as NPC goods quality is low, I think we're fine?
Paul Jikanski
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Yeah, I think we're fine. I don't really mean to complain here. I don't dislike the new system at all, I think it's a good system. It's just that 1 of my companies only makes money by selling on the B2B market (haven't built a single store), and the only thing the company purchases from B2B is electricity which comes from other players, so in that sense, for that company, an option to filter out NPC companies (considering 100% of the company's B2B interaction is with other players, never with NPC's) would be nice. Another company of mine, however, only uses the B2B to purchase electricity and empty bottles, and often times to sell excess goods to the NPC's requests, so for this company I may filter out the player's posts and requests.


Speaking of broken products, last night or perhaps yesterday sometime, the MSRP for my food products have all doubled, one nearly tripled, with nothing having changed on my end. What would cause this? My Q level is still the same, and the WASP doesn't seem to have risen more than 2-5 dollars on each item.
M Burch
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There has been some recent fiddling with valuation of goods, to allow them to track wage and maintenance costs for factories, which means that items started costing more, which then resulted in further corrections to adjust what the base value of the item is to the NPC buyers.

There have been some pretty significant fluctuations I have seen as well, but they seem to be intentional. If you see anything terribly broken, report it, but otherwise I think you are seeing price shifting due to valuation changes.
Paul Jikanski
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This would make sense. Also before I Always just used MSRP, but after the recent "fluctuations" of MSRP, the sales dropped by ~75% at the new MSRP compared to the original, so I've been messing with prices more now based on how fast my production is. With the old MSRP my factories could always keep up with the sales demand, having 3-5 days worth of goods on the shelves at all times. At the new MSRP it's all over 7+ days, when before the "fluctuations" I would have 3-5 days of goods at the MSRP.
Would this indicate a need to change the sales rate of the products since the value is more accurate now based on production cost?
M Burch
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Remember that other people on the market taking up market share will also impact your share. The other day I stopped selling cheap watermelons in my grocery store, and switched to sugar cane because my sugar cane production had finally gotten to a point where I could sell enough of it to be worth keeping on store shelves. So in a matter of 15 minutes, I went from supplying 33% of the world market of Watermelons at 100+ QL to 0%.

This most likely caused some pretty significant shifts in the market shares of other watermelon sellers.

So there are the game adjustments, then there are the player adjustments that also occur.

Wouldn't hurt to put up a new thread asking for a review of "problem" products though.
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