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Requests for electricity


Mark Moeder
RJ: Uduak Mwenye
CO: Fluffy

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The markets for electricity on CO are somewhat disturbed. The B2B prices are rising as a response to people (e.g. Me) requesting unlimited elec for a fairly high price. Electricity is so cheap that I can buy all I want and barely notice it in my expenses. However, this presents a problem for the starting companies that don't have the cash to do this.

Do any of you also recognize this problem? I remember similar problems way back when rich players were buying up all the electricity from the B2B, leaving none for the others. It seems that the request functionality, combined with the low price, facilitates this.
Paul Jikanski
RJ: Paul Jikanski
CO: Paul Jikanski

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When you're not a mega corp it can be a rather large problem. When your company is worth less than say 10-50 million or maybe more the cost of electricity being $0.06 or $0.20 is a huge difference.
On CapOL side I just started a couple weeks ago and sometimes I find myself avoiding production waiting for electricity and water prices to go down so I don't go broke buying both of them, then not having the cash to even start the productions. Also limiting expansion to save money to allow for larger requests of cheap elec and water hoping a large utilities company decides to help out a small retail company, hah. But requests don't always get filled when they could just sell it for twice as much to some else.

On EoS side it's not a problem at all, because I have the margins with economies of scale to where spending money on electricity that will last a week or so of productions is a good deal no matter the price when it's just small change per unit.

But when you're spending more on just electricity or water per day than salaries and maintenance, yes it is a problem.
M Burch
RJ: Farmerbob
CO: Farmerbob

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I got fed up with the electricity market myself. All of my production companies start with a coal mine, water well, and power station now. It's worth three building slots to know you don't have to depend on an unregulated market.
dan bra
RJ: King
CO:

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@burch are you insane? i would sell a kidney to get 3 more building slots at each company :)

and on topic:
I think the true problem lie in the fact that big companies has often the same (if not more) marginal profit than a small company. so as paul said - the flactuation of price of an ingredient make a huge difference for the small but not for the big.

The only solution that will work, in my opinion, would be to make sure smaller companies will have an inherently higher marginal profits than bigger companies, and to do it by placing higher nerfs on the bigger ones.
Paul Jikanski
RJ: Paul Jikanski
CO: Paul Jikanski

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Not sure how good an idea this is so let me know what you think.

We could add a feature giving companies with less than X net worth a subsidiary on utility goods until reaching X net worth. Perhaps a government NPC agency/company that only sells elec/water/gas and only to companies owned by players with less than X net worth, maybe at exactly 2x the base value or something, so it's not like they'd be getting free utilities. The player net worth cap would only allow new players to take advantage of the subsidiary, so megacorps and already-established players could not benefit without cheating.
This would be similar to the current feature, where companies lower than level 5 get "free" (instant) expansion below 500m2 by RJ Construction.

For an external reference/example, the game OpenTTD (open source/free transport tycoon) had government subsidiaries where towns would pay extra cash for a specific good for a specific amount of time in order to attract new business to their town.


Offtopic: when you're playing a new company, 3 building slots doesn't really make a difference since you usually only have a couple factories and a store :) Unless you're getting cash injections from your swiss bank account.
Mark Moeder
RJ: Uduak Mwenye
CO: Fluffy

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Or we could somehow decrease the amount of electricity needed by smaller companies, and raise the cost of electricity. Then (like you suggested) we could have a daily maintenaince cost in electricity proportional to the total m² of the company.
M Burch
RJ: Farmerbob
CO: Farmerbob

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Heh, the three slots I use for coal, water, and power are well worth the headache reduction factor.

Additionally, you can use B2B quests to subsidize electricity and water purchases.
John Cook
RJ:
CO: The Monopoly Guy

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I, for one, welcome the disruptive price fluctuations caused by our mega-corp overlords.

If this game becomes too easy and stable by design it'll get boring in five days. Problems like these keep managing a company interesting, offer opportunities and drive players to come up with a solution to the shortage. Price stability and low cost should be the result of player activity, not Mr. Scott ex Machina.

Wait, you're all mega-corp overlords...

Now I don't know how much it costs for you giant monsters to set up a new company or buy more land, but for a noob like me this spike in electricity has already paid off my initial investment in a power plant, so I must come to the opposite conclusion: the spike in electricity prices, for now, is beneficial to small companies who can supply it more cheaply and quickly... if at a low volume at first...

My question and suggestion is, what is Fluffy doing with all that electricity, why isn't there a cost to stockpiling giant volumes in warehouses so that he can't, by himself, increase the rate of entropy of the universe, and doesn't he know all that fur and electricity don't go well together and he'll probably die of extreme static discharge?
Hajji Pajji
RJ: Trade Merchant
CO: VonDutch

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Holy smokes John Cook! You sound like a damn Capitalist!

Welcome to Capitalism Online!

Keep preaching the good word!
Mark Moeder
RJ: Uduak Mwenye
CO: Fluffy

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I use it to power my giant "laser" of death. The fluffiness is just a front for my ultimate goal of total Econosia domination.


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