Necessity impact on Demand

[rlilje]

I'm currently working on a MOD (that I intend to share on this forum in the future) and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on how the Necessity Index value (Product_Types.dbf) effects product demand.

I understand demand works as follows: A demand of 10 would indicates a typical consumer would purchase 10 units annually. If the Price column for said product was $5 you could expect a consumer to spend $50 annually on the product (10 units X $5). I appreciate this is simplified as the PRICE column reflects the maximum price before it negatively impacts the product rating, often prices will be below this level - but you get the gist.

Where I'm unclear is how Necessity Index impacts Demand. The description in the Advanced Modding resource states: The necessity index of the product. Enter a value from 0 to 10 here and it will automatically be multiplied by 10 to become 0 to 100 in the game.

Is the Necessity Index simply a representation of a percentage of a cities population who will purchase said product? For example - In a city with a population of 1M people, a product with a necessity index of 50% would result in approximately 500K consumers for this particular product.

Does real wage rate act as an additional modifier? For example - a city with a lower wage rate will more likely focus purchasing items on with a high necessity index? The description under Enhanced Macroeconomic Simulation http://www.capitalismlab.com/enhanced-m ... ation.html seems to indicate this.

If I'm on the right path I see it working as:

((City Population x Necessity Index) x Real wage modifier) x Product Demand = potential items sold annually

Using numbers from above examples, and a city real wage of 65 would result as such:

1M x %50 = 500000 potential consumers
500000 x .65 = 325000 potential consumers after adjusting for Real Wage
325000 x 10 = 3.25M items of said product sold annually

I appreciate other factors will result in further reducing actual demand (competition, price etc) - I'm just trying how they roughly impact each other. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[eleaza]

I believe necessity index only affect demand during different economic status. A 100 necessity index products have almost no change on demand whether it's recession or boom. But a low necessity index will have drastic changes on demand, during recession it will have very few demand, but boom time will have significantly more demand.

Though, this is from past experience, I'm not sure exactly how much impact with different necessity index. But for products like cars with just 10 necessity index, I've observe a difference up to more than 4 times, when in recession all the demand in 3 cities can be filled with 1 factory, but in boom time 4 fully operational factories can not meet those demand.

[rlilje]

I believe necessity index only affect demand during different economic status. A 100 necessity index products have almost no change on demand whether it's recession or boom. But a low necessity index will have drastic changes on demand, during recession it will have very few demand, but boom time will have significantly more demand.

Though, this is from past experience, I'm not sure exactly how much impact with different necessity index. But for products like cars with just 10 necessity index, I've observe a difference up to more than 4 times, when in recession all the demand in 3 cities can be filled with 1 factory, but in boom time 4 fully operational factories can not meet those demand.

This makes sense and reflects basically what is said in the Enhanced Macroeconomic Simulation page. I am curious to get a sense of how much each increment of 10% in necessity impacts demand during recession and booms. I might have to experiment a little to see if I can get a better sense. Your example above is really helpful.

The MOD I'm creating is very much focused on the consumer electronics industry - which means a lot of low necessity products. The CE industry always takes a beating during recessions so setting lower rates makes complete sense - I can certainly use products from the base game to determine a good starting point.

[eleaza]

This makes sense and reflects basically what is said in the Enhanced Macroeconomic Simulation page. I am curious to get a sense of how much each increment of 10% in necessity impacts demand during recession and booms. I might have to experiment a little to see if I can get a better sense. Your example above is really helpful.

The MOD I'm creating is very much focused on the consumer electronics industry - which means a lot of low necessity products. The CE industry always takes a beating during recessions so setting lower rates makes complete sense - I can certainly use products from the base game to determine a good starting point.

I am curious, is it possible to set necessity index beyond 10? (more than 100%), what would happen, the mod just crash automatically? If not is it possible for some products to sell more in recession, but sell less in boom time?