Too much economy of scale?

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Too much economy of scale?

Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 Now that the economy of scale code has kicked in, I must say as one of the larger companies that I think a 50% asymptote is too much. Suddenly I'm making nearly twice as much product, in the same amount of time, with the same ingredient inputs. It's a double whammy - nearly double the production speed, nearly half the input cost - that essentially makes me nearly four times as efficient. And that's a huge hurdle for a newbie to overcome. Maybe something in the 90-95% range?
Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 5, 2012) And before you mention it, yes, I do realise that I'll be paying more in upkeep/etc. than a newbie. I still think the scale benefit is too high.
Josh Millard RJ: Tex Corman CO: J. Quaff Arabica Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 167 Karma: 231 Joined: Apr 3, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 5, 2012) It's worse (better?) than that; not only is the scale bonus really, really significant for each step, it's multiplicative for multi-step production. A cookie that gets made three steps up the chain from the wheat it's sourced from uses approaching x0.5 the wheat for wheat-to-flour, x0.5 the wheat-product for flour-to-cookie-dough, and 0.5x again for dough-to-cookie. I'm using essentially an eighth of the source wheat per cookie as I was yesterday. The math that FishBike suggested this morning in the other thread would mitigate this a lot; the economy of scale is a great addition but right now it's sort of crazily explosive in power and it's going to be a big, weird day for production as a result.
Fish Bike RJ: FishBike CO: FishBike Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 22 Karma: 51 Joined: Mar 29, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 There's also the amusing effect that apparently when you filter water now, you end up with more water than you started with. Which means, I guess, you could buy a small amount of water on the market and then filter it repeatedly until you have a decent inventory. Then just keep filtering it and tap off the excess for other uses. Heh.
Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 5, 2012) Thanks Fish Bikes... I'll fix that one NOW. As for the too much economies of scale - I believe this one is the intention, it'll be beneficial as long as you don't reach your ideal firm size.
Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 5, 2012) And that's fine, Scott. I get it. It's just that double is so big that it's not just a game tweak, it's a completely different game than it was yesterday. As Josh mentions, the ingredient chains are completely FUBARed. You've effectively crippled ingredient producers. For instance, roast beef sandwiches. One branch of the supply tree goes RBS <- 0.2mayo <- 0.2vinegar <- 1malt <- 1glass bottle <- 0.08silica. Yesterday, I needed 1 silica sand for every 312.5 roast beef sandwiches. Today, I'll say my ingredient efficiency is 1.8, so I multiply that by 1.8^5 and I only need 1 silica for every 5,905 sandwiches. And I've got literally hundreds of such chains. If I'm a silica mogul, I'm screwed. If I'm a silica-producing newbie, I'm quitting. I like the economy of scale idea! I just don't like the (pun intended) scale* of it. I do want to say that in the several months I've been playing this game, I think this is the first time you've made a change where my reaction wasn't, "Cool, how do I make this work for me?" but more on the "WTF?" end of the (ahem) scale. And even the concept is fine, you just (IMHO) put the wrong parameter in. Dial it back a bit and you've got another winner. Edit: Yet another side effect: Until people can ramp up their stores, the effective near-doubling of factory capacity overnight is going to do massively wonky things to the supply side of the supply-and-demand balance...maybe give people a free advertising bump to mitigate this?
Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 BTW, you could fix the water gusher by requiring 2 water for the ingredient! (And naturally changing the input cost.)
Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 I made several changes over the lunch break. Major thanks for pointing them out and to Fish Bike for the solutions.
Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 5, 2012) Another minor note, some of the numbers are going red even before one hits "max" now...and when I go to filter 62.2M water only 57.2M comes out the other end. I think I have a leaky pipe. Edit: Ah, you did use my fix. That explains the leak, never mind then.
Reiter Hexenmeister RJ: Schwarze Spiegel Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Joined: Mar 27, 2012	Posted on Apr 5, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 5, 2012) I'm think that as in real world do, benefits of economy of scale, must be traslated to supply chain production costs, production time, quantity sell and/or sale price bonus, for example, to produce a strawberry Q20 actually costs me 0.21, with eos bonus (e.g. 15%) perhaps can costs 0.18, sell +15% units in stores at +15% price, make an advantage in revenue. This make a bigger company be more efficient than a small, In that way, tycoons can produce more goods with less resources, without crazying manufacturing. To avoid big differences in the game, can be compensated with a company revenue based progresive tax: 0% < 10k, 5% < 20k, 10% < 50k, 15% < 100k, and so. And if not too complicated making some expenses acreditable for taxes and other not. Respect to effects on most products I have a bonus, but on filtered water when game changes, ever I obtain less than entered aprox 80%, now with new change I need 2 water Q0 to produce 1 water Q14 (50%). The effect of eos don't affect in same manner to all.

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