Exposed: Why Q7 weapons is uneconomic!
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by Releasethe Krakken
When Bhane pointed out earlier this week that he was losing money not making on his Q7 weapons I could not believe it.
Checking however the facts quickly pointed me to the problems for this conundrum which Plato bad analysis of the game brough forth. When Q7 weapons was released they sold at about 45 IEP. Normal computer design involves looking at 3 scenarios:
1. The Best Case Scenario
2. The Realistic or current Scenario
3. The Worst Case Scenario
I will get back to that. First off lets look at the first discrepancy I discovered which is the Resources per product stat. My picture clearly show the problem.
As if one looks at resources per product one must compare it with the weapons specs. Which the following picture shows:
Finally one must visit the market and look at what the weapons is selling for. I composed a picture of the USA market which is a very life market. At the bottom price an item probably lies there for a few seconds:
Its clear from the products per item and the weapons spec the following variables must have been marrie😛
1. Resources per item
2. Uses per item.
This is where the discrepancy started. As its apparent Plato was sleeping on that day. It simply wasnt. From Q1 to Q6 the uses increased by 1 and the items by 10. So Q1 10 Products 1 use, Q6 60 products 6 uses......if we thus threw out Q7 odd ordering this would have been the normal progression:
Hypothethical Q7 70 products 7 uses, Q8 80 products 8 uses, Q9 90 products 9 uses, Q10(teh current Q7) 100 products 10 uses.
Someone seriously messed up the natural progression for an unknown reason.
The Economics of a Q7 weapon:
Finally we will bring price into the equation.
Currently our production is 12 weapons per production cycle:
Now if you have lots of weapon factories you rely on 2 things:
1. Buying WRM
2. Labour
You can do 120 jobs in a day yourself. I was working on 10 jobs and energy of 1200 at the start of morning. Ok so you can do a lot yourself so we will look at 2 scenarios 1 with and 1 without labour:
With Labour
SALES:
12 X 12 = 144 IEP TO 12 X 15 (IRELAND) = 180
COST: WITH LABOUR
WRM: 12 Weapons = 12 x 200 WRM = 2400 WRM * 0.05 = 120 IEP
LABOUR: 22 IEP
TAXES: 1.1573 PER UNIT = 12 X 1.1573 = 13.89
NET PROFIT:-11.89 IEP | 24.11 IEP
WITHOUT LABOR: 10.11 | 46.11
PRICE OF FACTORY FROM Q1 UPGRADE = 1220 GOLD + 10 GOLD = 1230 GOLD
MONETARY PRICE = 1230 * 340 = 418200 IEP
DAYS PER WORKER TO REACH PRICE OF FACTORY:418200 / 24.22 = 17345 OR 47 YEARS !!!!!
DAYS PER MAXIMUM WORKERS:17345 / 10 = 1734 OR 4 YEARS 9 MONTHS
Player can assign up to 10 workers
CONCLUSION AND BRINGING IT INTO PERSPECTIVE:
Before you jumpm up and say but a player can make his own WRM and then use it to make weapons. Yes but first off the WRM he uses has a value.
Is the economics module working: To the extent that there is a demand especially for Q7 weapons. Does the demand equate to better price. No because the market is not controlled. Should it be controlled? Yes the market should be controlled this is a economic simulator of RL or is supposed to be. In RL one wouldnt buy a factory and wait 47 years to break even. In RL prices go mostly up and a profit margin of 100% is more the norm. That is cause in RL the person have mortgages , debts , expenses etc etc. He must ask 100+% profit to make a reasonable profit in the light of life costs. So in bringing this in line with this game we dont have expenses except labour and material or food in own production. The main thing for me is it must make sense.
Paying 1220 gold and waiting 47 years to break even is not realistic. So buy it using plastic..sure you can. All this means is the poor player who spends nothing on the game can never realistically reach or justify the expense. This is not capitalism. A poor person can with good business skills or other life skills reach much money. So in conclusion the economic modulator is atm a good simulator of going bottoms up not making money or running a good business.
Even at top prices which was 40 or so your still looking at a break even rate of 10 years or 1 years 2 months. But then again our gold price was 2000 IEP per gold then. So even if the price jump gold jump. So when the designer went and studied the best and worst case scenarios he did it in a extremely half assed fashion. Most likely the job was handed to an accountant who worked out the most we could be ripped off for before we got angry or the "Our Customer are idiots scenario" Commonly used in online games.
HOW TO FIX IT:
Couple of variables spring into min
😛
1. Raise the number of times a person can work at his own factory
2. Lower the energy demand per 1 work.
3. Increase energy
4. Lower the resources required.
5. Robot workers to augment workforces
6. A bottom price that cannot be lowered for items.
7. A upper price that cannot be raised for items.
8. A Mobile trader or computer trader where you can sell items at a slightly lower price as the bottom price.
9. Increase the WRM production by a factor. Thus lowering cost and prices of WRM.
10. Bring in a set relation between all the prices. Say WRM shifts then Weapons bottoms shifts as well. Basically imagine a graph and all the points is connected.
Lets start at the bottom a Q1 factory needs 10 WRM to produce 1 unit. So the bottom price of it should be atleast equiavalent to 10 WRM or 50 cents. That is your basic break even price. Add on top of that say sales taxes and you have an acceptable bottom price. But what should the Upper price be of the WRM we already calculated it for a Q1 weapon plant so lets say the Upper could be if a Q1 weapon sell for 50 cent only be 0.05 or 5 cent. Its difficult to work out such a fixed price system as one needs a kind of floating mechanism. One price should be able to raise or lower the other one.
11. Lower the prices of all factories and Raw Material buildings
Taking all this and then sitting on your ass and doing the calculations yourself PLATO. This is basic computer design and programming not rocket
science as you will change an algorithm here or a variable there.
WHAT YOU CAN DO KNOW:
Relax your brain as that was quite alot of data to work through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceV62E-c86g
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Comments
Yep, sounds about right. It's tough to run a business here in eRepublik.
You just need to make most of your own WRM. I have a Q7 factory and make a profit.
If that is true, OJ, then you MUST have workers that get paid very little. Or friends that pay far more than market value for the tanks.
Even making all your own WRM in all Q5 factories requires a minimum of 9 work clicks to make one batch of 12 tanks. That means wages cannot be more than 1.25 times the market price of Q7s minus tax.
You are either fibbing about being profitable... or you collude to get more than fair value from some people. But you are not paying fair wages and selling at the fair market, and still maintaining profitability. You have an external factor helping you get more than fair value somewhere to be make this alleged profit..
orangejuice the Q7 weapon factory or any weapon /food is just the cherry on top of the cake that is already there. You just take what you produce and stretch it that little bit more in this case what I refer to as "profits" Yes you get the full price but then if you take away the weapon factory you dont get that much less. If the price drop further you work at less than the value of the WRM. I also produce about enough for a Q7 factory but wont invest in it as per 2400 WRM it just gives me 45 IEP more. Thats why I stopped production in my 5 Q1 weapons one gets a price of 4 WRM per unit and use 10 WRM so there is a value loss of 6 WRM per unit produced.
my point was that the value of that cherry is too little for what you pay for the factory. I will add as another variable Plato can change reducing the cost of factories.If you sell your factory and only worked for yourself you will have 47 years of profit. Now that doesn't sound and isn't right. Its like you own apple but have the profit of your local cafe.
Seems market is saturated in Q7 factory terms, Q8 is on the way.
Not to mention stupid bonus rule punishing manufacturers of small countries.
but what else is there for us to do in this game other than constantly expand what we have? Gold and currency doesn't mean anything other than companies and training to me.
@Bhane Yeah I sell my weapons privately to people who have no interest in this game, who have money and just want weapons delivered to them daily so they can fight. The black market is available to everyone and it isn't an unfair advantage to those that don't or can't utilise it. I am given the same opportunities in this game as everyone else I just seem to have played my cards a little better and a large range of people who I can sell my products to at a higher price than the market.
And I pay market wages fyi.
yeah i never sell weps unless I have a ridiculous stash I need to get rid of. I just use what I make. But a really informative article/comments
Voted.
oh wow...really?!
- q7 was designed to absorb all surplus of weaponraw that's why it uses 200raws and not just 70 (or 100 because of much higher damage bonus)
- in the beginning of q7 so much raw was used that q7weapons were produced with loss
- wages were lowered to get into profit
- because of high raw-prices all lower-quality weapons are produced with loss
(today it's usually "just" q1 to q4)
but you always get the "smart" economists like this guy who just calculate😛 working q3weapons with employees and you lose money
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/canada-039-s-weak-weapons-economy-2180028/1/20
his comments are the best sh.t ever
read also the comment by screamingslave Day 1,860, 09:38 below the next article
btw the raw per q7 weapon is with 0.05cc per unit = 10cc
and the weapons are sold on market here (erussia) for ~11.20cc
so i just need to earn per day 24cc more to buy the weapons than the guy who produces them needs to make them... so for 20weapons i need per day the producer works Xraws to get the raws + his weaponcomp and i work also the Xraws + less then 2 additional raw-companies to get the required money to just buy the weapons and i brought my 30 raw companies for ~5g and less so thats 150gold whereas the q7-weapon producer brought his one weapon-comp for ~1000gold
and even if you sell the weapon for net 15cc at the moment you get merely 5cc profit per weapon-unit
so everyone who has a q7company and is talking about how he makes profit will just earn a loud laughter from me
"so everyone who has a q7company and is talking about how he makes profit will just earn a loud laughter from me"
He just told you that he has friends who overpay for the goods since they have millions of cc they don't care about.
Usually people that mindlessly spend millions of cc without concern will do this because they did not EARN the money. It's easy to spend willy-nilly with ill-gotten gains that may be embezzled from national treasuries, bank or MU orgs, or citizens accounts who farm cc sent from lots of multis. There are many reasons a player may be unconcerned about spending far more than fair market values, and most reasons are not scrupulous. I am just not lucky enough to have friends willing to syphon millions of ill-gotten cc to me.
P.S. Eisen, you should also know the kind of player you are talking to. OJ is also the player that spent his CP term liquidating the national companies and taking the gold as well as lots of currency from the treasury into his own account. A theft he is still proud of to this day.
@Bhane Day 1,876, 12:02
ah ok
well guys buying/selling stuff high priced with/for stolen money are the same as company-owners with everything paid by RL-money
no businessmen because they don't MAKE money they pay for/steal money
could it be that you are new to the game and were gone for a while?
-1. Raise the number of times a person can work at his own factory-
more products nobody buys = prices going lower however raws are as it is at nearly 0.01cc so just productprices will decline further... what is the word for having more than overproduction?
-2. Lower the energy demand per 1 work.-
yes less food needed - nearly nobody needs food now and with that less than nobody will buy food...
-3. Increase energy-
with more energy yes more people will consume but for 10guys who consume 100more energy = 10q5-food you will get one who will produce 10x 180q5-food with the new energy he has...
-4. Lower the resources required.-
yes we have much unsold raw on market so let's make products use up even less of the stuff...
-5. Robot workers to augment workforces-
yes we need more worker who will produce more products which are not needed
-6. A bottom price that cannot be lowered for items.-
yes we need the BOT again who will buy all unneeded stuff - the times with 1g=2600cc were so nice maybe this time we get over 1g=9000cc?
-7. A upper price that cannot be raised for items.-
we won't have problems with stuff being too expensive...
-8. A Mobile trader or computer trader where you can sell items at a slightly lower price as the bottom price.-
see 6.
-9. Increase the WRM production by a factor. Thus lowering cost and prices of WRM.-
yeahyeahyeah! more raw, then we need a new digit for prices below 0.01cc
-10. Bring in a set relation between all the prices. Say WRM shifts then Weapons bottoms shifts as well. Basically imagine a graph and all the points is connected.-
yes kill the economy! why not just new companies that will just print currency, no need for the prduct-thingy. fighting will also be with currency - the one with most money spend in battle will win (fight-button will then be spend-button)
TL,DR
no to all your how-to-fix-things points
No eisenmutter I didnt propose any of those as solution. A variable is a term referring to a set named value in a computer program. For example NumberOfStudents. What I suggested is that Plato took all the variables in consideration and fixed the program by changing some of them or all of them. I cant see how you propose to change it? Often when you change something like the resource requirement for Q7 you create or later on create another problem. Anyway I am a much more experienced gamer than you and know how to fix these problems in games. Usually doing nothing about it is not the solution. Denial is not a river in Africa. A bottom price would be a bottom cap meaning you cant sell your stuff for lower. Players are always pushing their items lower. There is more sophisticated manners to accomplish this. But I am not paid to be their designer so will only propose stuff that they can look at themselves. What you are anyway describing in your responses should be considered in a variable state mechanism If A then B else C etc You should use scenarios where you set out each market and scenario upon scenario running through all of the variables their effects what they could lead to. I am not going through this, this must be their jobs. I'm working on my own projects I have to get them of the ground. Basically I will branch into 4 different directions this year. Each of them requiring massive time.
So this is just loose suggestions which I worked on probably for about an hour. I have no intention on working more on them Point 10 your actually totally wrong it wont ruin the economy. In our country we had what we call Food Boards. Say you come with a load of 1000 tons of maize and you wanted to dump it on our market: our laws said you must pay an import tax so that in the end your prize would be equal to our local price minus perhaps your fuel etc(not 100% certain). This ensured that farmers had a sustainable market and could expand.
And controlling how much of a product could be imported. Again maize if we had like a domestic use of 10 billion ton and our farmers where producing in that year more than the 10 billion there would be a block on all imports.So the market was 100% controlled but far more friendly to the local farmer than letting a producer of say bread import 7 billion and then leaving the local farmer with their hands in their hair.
"Buy Irish First" which I proposed in late December should be considered
@Releasethe Krakken Day 1,876, 13:25
you need like 3 q2food companies to have enough energy for your whole day - that's an investment of just 52g and you will never need to buy food again (stuff like this is why the whole food industry is dead). without managerworking you would need to BUY most of your food in the beginning
with weapons we have on all markets so much low-quality stuff that it is sold below the price of the raws needed - despite the almighty rockets that burn them
the problem is managerworking because it creates overproduction
if you delete it the problem of overproduction and with this sinking prices/no profit inventions like BOT and raw-burning weapons and weapon-burning rockets would be not needed anymore (or just in very small dose)
problem:
- all companies would have to be managed as in V1
- with that all guys with more than 10companies would have to be refunded because nobody could really manage more than 10-20companies (but i think admins don't want to do this)
- the "being manager" would become more complex (and with many people who are too lazy to calculate losing money in this 2click economy now - much more will lose money after managerworking is gone. admins don't want this either, because they want an easy game with constant new players who will buy gold)
- no need for the product and raw-burning inventions (so rockets and q7 would have to be changed or deleted)
see the history of fail from admins here starting at
eisenmutter2 Day 1,867, 11:37 in the comments
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/your-first-gold-investment-a-guide-updated-info--2184328/1/20
they made managerworking with central management on citizen to make it easier on new players and with that we got overproduction - after that they changed variables and stuff to counter the effect and got failure after failure with airstike and q7 just being the topping
@Elite C Day 1,876, 13:47
you know that you can travel to the next cheap country
then buy sh.tloads of cheap weapons and other stuff and then sell it over your irish licence on market in ireland without paying import tax like the normal importer (and without owning any other licences)?
because of this your plan will fail as long as the profit of these in-country-importers is higher then the traveling costs
(+they also can buy on black market = via donation to save the travel-costs too)
you cant always keep stuff simple. for example i tried to sell stuff on a site similar to e-bay. Your product is literally thrown into a haystack with about 3000 to 5000 products. Yes you can pay for better positioning. I just thought WTH find another site. This is the same on this site. PPl will always overproduce cause it takes so long to actually do something here. For example a couple of years ago you decided to move towards Q1 weapon production. So say 40 factories later you one day see i am losing money and heavily. Now changing back to say food production is again very time consuming. Its Ok to design easy stuff to use but then again later on it mustnt be a turtle race or unprofitable.Therefore this game must be seriously rehtough as I am turtling towards the next trend once there it will be unprofitable again. Some day one just will get fed up and say ahh eff it lets try a more complicated game.
Elite C, you aren't the first eIrishman to propose a "Buy Irish First" plan.
Voted !
@Bhane Once again I enjoy your ignorance.
They don't have millions of IEP and they also EARNED all this IEP back when making profit etc was easy. So stop being an idiot and making assumptions..Just look at 5n4keyes...He never bought gold and was worth thousands of IEP (ps he's not one of the people I sell to)
Also that Buy Irish first shite is bullshit, If you can't make a profit. Get someone with foreign citz to sell in a different market and donate back
Why should Irish citizens spend the limited amount of money they have on over priced goods just cause business owners can't make a profit.
I could read all of this if it were political, or military, or even just trolling for the lulz, but I respect those who get off on the economical part of this game... cause i sure as hell don't.
@orangejuicemmm Day 1,877, 12:48
with an investment of more than 1000gold for the company and just a profit of merely 6cc per unit if you get the 15 and something marketprice in ireland net(!)... this hasn't deserved being called 'profit'.
the problem is that the merely 6cc profit is not a product of the bad economy. no. the profit with q7-weapons will never be really high because raw is such a high proportion of the costs per weapon and this will never change*. that's why there will never be high profit with q7 and that's why q7-companies are a joke in my opinion.
*except the admins change it
"@Bhane Once again I enjoy your ignorance."
As always, I enjoy your faux expertise.
Collusion, corruption, or exploitation is the only way to make profit in a Q7. You have proudly shown that using unscrupulous tactics to improve your own personal standing is not beneath you. You have joyously stolen in the past, and you have no compunction about conspiring in the present or future. Don't pretend any economic expertise is the source of your affluence.