My desire for long term build is gone.
We've been through at least one full cycle of the economy since the Food intro.
Another change that seems to have happened is production costs. I've not been able to produce most of the input component electronics (in Electronics mfg buildings) cheaper than the market anymore.
I thought that was temporary (as, before the change, from time to time the market for individual items had been cheaper), but it has been rather consistently so across all Quad input components since the change.
I can still produce Quads cheaper so long as I had cheaper inventory from before the change. That last bit of cheap inventory (OBCs) just ran out today.
Buying OBC from the market now will
reduce my existing profit to half of what it now is (about 1/3 of profit I had before the change).
As some suggested above and elsewhere, I looked at focusing on another electronics product.
The prime candidate would be Smartphones - through the full economic cycle I can buy from the Exchange and sell at a profit - which fluctuates between 50% to 90% of what I've been getting with Quads recently. The others fluctuate too much from economy to economy to be reliably profitable.
That (evidently new) handicap on production essentially closes the door to that reorientation with my 3x existing Level 12 Electronics mfg buildings (Quads are produced in my Level 16 AS Electronics mfg building - the only retailable electronics to do so - so, that building is a lame duck now).
I could switch away from sales bonus orientation to production orientation - but that would render my 8x Level 24 Electronic Stores as unprofitable.
BTW, I already have 3 maxed out Recreational buildings - giving me +9 bonuses on each of production and sales (paying SimBoosts weekly to maintain them).
Even if I were to reorient to production, how many SimBoosts (real out of pocket costs) will that take?
(Sidenote: Imagine if I hadn't waited for a full economic cycle and jumped in on these suggestions to see the real potential impact).
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In the meantime...
I've not made any headway on Rank.
In fact, it fluctuates wildly now. There was one or two days since the change where my company was below 200 - yippee!
But now it will range between 250s to 210s fairly regularly.
Before the change I was in the 210s (#212 on Oct 12 before I invested in upgrades to my mfg buildings - ironically, to make space for some Food building investments), regularly making 5 to 10+ step rank improvement a month, with only minor fluctuations along the way.
My goal was to continue to tweak and improve the business model to break 100.
Now that seems impossible, and fluctuations are so wide as to render any
signal value from rank worthless.
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It is a conundrum:
1) Scrap the Mfg buildings and retain the Electronics stores - some profit but nowhere near what it used to be - not clear that there is room for improvement anymore and it doesn't seem that it would move the needle positively on Rank, even if there were some semblance of improvement to be had.
2) Scrap the Electronics stores - would need to reorient to mfg (see discussion above), which would also impact 3x Level 10 Gas Stations.
3) Scrap it all and focus on something completely new. But what?
Any of these choices will generate a HUGE loss to absorb.
And, in the end, it comes down to, is it worth the effort?
Who says another change (announced or not) won't kibosh that, 3 months, 12 months, 24 months later?
4) There is a fourth choice - play the game like this recent change indicates it should be played.
Save up and wait for the next introduction and go all in. Make unicorn profits and cash out.
It takes far less personal energy and investment in the game and provides superior results and enjoyment vs long term build.
I am convinced that will continue to be the mode unless the mechanism for implementing changes is changed (to something like multiple game worlds
simcompanies.proboards.com/post/4945/thread ).
The game designers are human - they just don't have the capacity to reliably predict the impacts of their changes (see post above about item #6, for example).
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There is probably enough growth in player population that the laments of one of the relatively few players in Electronics Retail (willing to publicly express themselves) just don't matter.
It looks like success, so disappointing / angering (and shedding - that I know of) a few long term players doesn't really matter.