Fuel (and Bitumen) Still OP?

[Whiskiz]

Don't even need oil to produce, can just buy it and still make high profit.

Hardest settings then put a fuel refinery down, buy oil, buy power, residential etc down, train setup down and sell the Fuel and Bitumen for $$$

Is this still the case?

Kinda unfortunate if so, needing to restrict yourself due to gameplay imbalance(s) especially on the hardest difficulty setting.

[thorstein92]

Goods have autobalance system.
First export factory is quite op.
Each next drive down export price to minimal or negative margin.

[Growbag]

If you look at the road map you will see a Geological Office is planned- I am hoping there will be need for prospecting and research to unlock full Oil processing.

[TheAmishStig]

The starting prices have come down a bit which has helped, but yeah...the combination of having a 5-in-4-out ratio (the highest in the game), and the unreal price-to-production ratio (125 tons of one, 75 tons of the other, with prices for each in the R200 range) still exists.

If you're interested in such a thing, voluntarily limiting refineries to 160 employees [or if you're looking for a bigger challenge, 120 or even 80] does a very good job of taking the feelings of cheatiness out of them. I've been playing that way for a while now.

[Whiskiz]

Originally posted by thorstein92:

Goods have autobalance system.
First export factory is quite op.
Each next drive down export price to minimal or negative margin.

It might be meant to work that way but currently it doesn't - unless you need to trade in much more amounts than i currently am (around 150t Fuel every 2min or so) and even then amounts are so big that it really doesn't matter.

And that's actually a great idea, it'd solve the issues of all these kinds of games - once you start making money it ballooning from there and it basically giving you unlimited funds before long.

Forcing you to branch out and keep producing more and more to stay afloat instead.

Geological Office and better balancing of Oil and/or Fuel in general would be good. It also doesn't help that Bitumen is made as Fuel at the same time and same place, carried by the same cargo type, giving you a free second resource to complement the fuel production to sell.

[adriankowaty]

I am currently playing a game with custom difficulty (easy starting funds and citizen reactions to avoid mass deaths/immigrations, no day/night cycle because I have seeing issues and for night is problematic to watch things and to plan in this game, lock according year for vehicles, pollution on, fuel on max settings, education on) and I have two refineries, processing imported oil for export (one refinery purchases oil from Soviet block and exports it to Soviet block, the other one does the same but for NATO countries) and I noticed that for now, my oil export constitute around 40-60% of my ruble income per year (depending on if including vehicle export to Soviet block or not). I have other industries (vehicle industry, clothing industry and half-working steel industry) and majority of my income comes from selling fuel and bitumen, then vehicles, then steel and then clothing. For clothing factories, I use them to supply my domestic market, just as I do the same for food and alcohol industries. So far, oil refineries are decent but costs of imported oil keep growing if you have more than one refinery, even when you divide it that one rellies on dollars and other on rubles.
So overall, they are very good, but not OP as they used to be.

[Whiskiz]

but the increased fuel and bitumen output from increased imported oil then balances things out still, no?

again i haven't personally noticed the market rates change and that's with a refinery with 7 oil rigs pumping into it.

speaking of which then there's the whole thing of not even having to import oil in the first place - i just started on hard and was able to put down the full setup of oil to fuel/bitumen to then be taken by rail, with just bought power.

Taking it to Caizina down South-West border with oil production and the rest of the setup at the lake not too far North-East from there. enough room for approx 7 oil rigs with an output average of 90%

(no population map)

tis early access though so maybe there's more important things to work on than specific resource balance, it's just unfortunate and hopefully the whole economy balancing thing gets adjusted as needed at the very least.

Especially when there's still basic options like not even being able to see let alone load from your save files while ingame, to be worked on. Etc.

[MG83]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

Don't even need oil to produce, can just buy it and still make high profit.

Hardest settings then put a fuel refinery down, buy oil, buy power, residential etc down, train setup down and sell the Fuel and Bitumen for $$$

Is this still the case?

Kinda unfortunate if so, needing to restrict yourself due to gameplay imbalance(s) especially on the hardest difficulty setting.

yes oil is good starter. however seems people dont get it . prices are not stable . when you buy oil and sell fue l bitument for 4 year it becomes less than 9 ruble profit per worker. starts with 33 at 1960. Oil is profitable at that period of time due to its market price. its not the best way to maintain your economy. Try to export massively fuel and bitumen by buying oil and processing at refinery and sell it back. open 5x refinery and try. you will see it is not feasible.

in the game there is time of window and market price that is good for a particular production.

market is also effected how much you buy or sell. therefore game is developed acording to your play style.

yes refinery is so far best option to start. but why do you guyz are so obsessed with it i dont understand. In real life its also oil business is the best . many nations also including russia has the oil industry as their economy back bone.

if you want other things to do you can do you are not limited to it. try massive clothing export or massive food export however at the end you will realise that what important is to produce "everything"

[boksiora]

Can you add more industries in next versions, such as:

- food industry
- computer production
- furniture production
- milk industry
- weapon industry
- car industry
- electronic devices industry

[udowaechter]

Cars and electronics are already here.

Cow farms should also produce milk as food.

[TheAmishStig]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

but the increased fuel and bitumen output from increased imported oil then balances things out still, no?

again i haven't personally noticed the market rates change and that's with a refinery with 7 oil rigs pumping into it.

speaking of which then there's the whole thing of not even having to import oil in the first place - i just started on hard and was able to put down the full setup of oil to fuel/bitumen to then be taken by rail, with just bought power.

Taking it to Caizina down South-West border with oil production and the rest of the setup at the lake not too far North-East from there. enough room for approx 7 oil rigs with an output average of 90%

(no population map)

tis early access though so maybe there's more important things to work on than specific resource balance, it's just unfortunate and hopefully the whole economy balancing thing gets adjusted as needed at the very least.

Especially when there's still basic options like not even being able to see let alone load from your save files while ingame, to be worked on. Etc.

7 rigs? That's about 50 tons per day in, so 25 tons of fuel and 15 tons of bitumen per day out...minus whatever you're using domestically (if you're not exporting it, it doesn't affect prices), minus whatever you're importing for asphalt plants / gas stations / forklifts / train fueling stations (as importing a material offsets the market movement from exporting a material)...that's not going to be enough to move the needle at a noticeable rate...but if you come back in 1-2 in game years' time, you will see a difference. At R5k in sale price per day, that's about right for any 'good enough to fund game start' industry.

Market price movement is a factor of volume over time...net movement of that specific resource over that alliance's borders, factored over a rolling X-day period ...and the reason you're not seeing any drastic movement is because running one refinery at barely 20% capacity you're not moving drastic amounts of product. If it was running full tilt [250 tons of oil in, for 125 tons of fuel and 75 tons of bitumen out, every single day, and all of it going over the border], that'd be enough to halve the price in less than a year.

The danger from importing anything to make processed anything is that the imports will drive the price of the raw material up, while the exports will drive the price of the finished materials down, and eventually you won't have any margin, or even start turning a loss. [See 'Meat'. 2 tons of Cows costs more than 1 ton of Meat, so you lose money if you rely on imported cows]

Originally posted by MG83:

yes refinery is so far best option to start. but why do you guyz are so obsessed with it i dont understand. In real life its also oil business is the best . many nations also including russia has the oil industry as their economy back bone.

Me personally? Not because it's good, but because it's too good, even among the end-game industries.

I want the game to be the best it can be, and the best games give the player meaningful choices..."Go with oil unless you're so bored with winning that you want to handicap yourself" is not a meaningful choice, it's a clear indication that part of the game is out of round.