Buy packages and conditional pop expenses

[circadianwolf]

This is my understanding of how pop needs & buy packages work. Please let me know if I am missing something.

1. Buy packages are determined solely by SOL/Wealth. Pop needs (in terms of category and amount) can't be influenced by anything other than this - there are no conditional needs.
2. For a specific pop need, pops will always create buy orders equal to an amount of goods that at equilibrium/base prices (buy orders = sell orders) sum to the value of the need specified in the buy package of their current SOL/Wealth. E.g. pops will always spend between £15 and £26 on heating (per 10,000 pops) if all prices are at 0% change from base.
3. This means that it is not possible for a good to be intrinsically better at fulfilling a need. The only thing that reduces pops' spending on needs is the relative market price (the + or - % displayed on the market table). Electricity, for example, is not intrinsically more efficient at meeting pops' heating needs than wood or coal; it is weighted significantly more and can cover 100% of the need rather than 60%, but unless Electricity's relative market price is significantly cheaper than its base price (or other heating goods are significantly more expensive than their base price), pops are spending the same amount of money on heating once electricity comes into play as before.
4. The selection of what goods are bought to fulfill a specified need can be influenced by script weight (a fixed number), max/min proportions (also fixed), taboos and obsessions (not nation specific), and possibly bans (only used for the opium wars and prohibition in vanilla), in addition to the current market price. This means that pops may sometimes purchase (create buy orders for) a more expensive good (in terms of market prices) to fulfill a need rather than a cheaper one, but only within the bounds of the price system (e.g. max +75%/-75% of base price).

I was studying these mechanisms in search of a way to implement Private Schools/Health Care as services purchased by pops at a market price, while Public Schools/Health Care would remain funded by the government. Unfortunately I can't see a way of implementing something like this. (This is also setting aside tying pop consumption of these goods to pop modifiers, i.e. the actual education access/mortality effects.) You could implement Private Schools/Clinics buildings that produce Education/Health Care goods that pops buy as part of their buy packages, but there's no way to change that spending under Public Education/Health Care (other than making the money spent on it go to the government instead of private hands). Perhaps this, combined with different outputs between the Private and Public buildings, could be seen as a reasonable approximation of tax-funded education/health care, but it's frustrating to me I can't find a better solution. Am I missing anything?

 

[Life is Comedy]

Havent modded V3 yet (was bit with Real Life stuff). And Will probably never understand this Obsession of thoose Kind of consumers Goods.

Anyway, If a good Is at ITS Minimum price (-75%) does It still allow For Other Goods tò be baught ?

You could add the "education" Need, and have two Goods fulfilling It : private and public.
Public Is produced by admin Building (you have to build Thema anyway) as a secondary automatic PM (once you have Not No schooling, Like bureacrats) With real hughe quantities that unless weird Situation prices Will Always be around the minimum.
Then yoy have Tour private Building producing private education (inspired by art accadamies)
Similari could be done with health. Possiby unifying the public One as public Services tò save performance.

Also Not exportable (Services electricity)

 

[WAlex101]

@circadianwolf​

I agree about points 1-3, but point 4 seems to not work that way in practice.
The expectation is, that if no maximum/minimum requirements, no obsessions/taboos/bans are in the way,
and no weights apply (or at least for goods with the same weight in a category) prioritize the cheapest goods and bring the relative prices to the same level, because that would be the cheapest way to fullfill a category.

I think the consumption aligns much more (although not perfectly) with the sell orders, instead of the actual prices.


Perhaps the most extreme example might be the household items category:
This is what it is supposed to look like:

Expectation:
If possible, they should spend as much as possible on the cheaper good between Furniture and Glass, and only spend on Paper if Paper is really cheap.


Practice:

Vastly overspending on Glass and Paper
(Increasing input prices for Urban Centers, Construction and Government Administration etc. in the process.
Good for the Glass and Paper makers I guess, and sucks hard for Furniture manufacturers.)

Pop buy distribution resembles the Sell Orders more (though not perfectly, they still buy a tiny bit more Furniture than Glass) than the actual prices.