When you find any bugs in the game please post them here but do not post exploits!
AI Supervirus Takes A LOT more than 10% of profits
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EventHorizon Posts: 23
12/5/2017
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Just a heads up that your description of what the AI supervirus does dramatically underestimates the amount of profits it steals. This is because it takes 10% of all surplus value each turn but when you have a negative value on other turns it doesn't reimburse you 10% of the value of whatever you paid for. In any productive economy profits are realized at the END of a long cycle when you factor in all the costs of production, including the largest cost of building factories, distribution centres, purchasing transports etc. What this virus is doing is taking 10% of all revenues and that is a lot higher, about 10x more than what 10% of profits would be. I'm still pretty new to this game but I'll make the estimate that actual profits only amount to about about 20 to 25% of total revenues at most. So 10% of profits would only add up to about 2 to 2.5% of total revenues. That means if you take 10% of revenues you are effectively cutting people's profits in half, maybe worse (probably much worse for new players who have virtually no cash flow at the beginning, which is unfair and discouraging).
In the case the mercantilists in the game, who focus mainly on trade and don't bother with production, their losing 10% of the sale price, which means they also pay 10% more for the goods they bought and effectively lose about 20% of their profits. For example if you buy goods for 1 million credits and then sell them for 2 million credits you are losing 200,000 credits on a 1 million credit profit.
My suggestion to fix this is to take 10% of profits at the end of 100 turns, rather than taking it every turn for 100 turns so that it more accurately reflects 10% of overall profits.
edited by EventHorizon on 12/5/2017
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+1
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LunaMoth Posts: 47
12/5/2017
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This was a known bug which I guess hasn't been fixed yet.
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
12/7/2017
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Have to think about this one, the wording of "profits" maybe wrong and should be changed to "revenue". Its supposed to take 10% of anything you MAKE, otherwise it wouldn't take anything from people losing money and somehow putting yourself in the red would be a defense against the virus which is kinda silly.
I see what you're saying though, if you're spending and making BILLIONS but barely reaping a few million in actual profits, then to take a 10% hit on your revenue actually costs you 100x of what you normally make.
I think this is by design.
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EventHorizon Posts: 23
12/7/2017
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Actually I think you're kind of refuting your own point there. If the virus was causing you to lose money you could simply halt all sales on that planet for 100 turns, absorbing the relatively small storage costs by comparison, continue production letting demand recover, and then sell off your product once the virus was finished. You could also ship to sell in off world markets, dump in contracts that won't be completed til after the virus period is over, dump into manufacturing higher level products etc etc. Basically you could make your balance sheet read red for the whole time if you were motivated enough to do so. You could just make the percentage like 2 or 3% and leave as it is. I don't know if this balances well against the cost for the player using the virus but it would make it so players would endure it rather than engage in potentially more costly work-arounds.
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