What is SimCorp?

SimCorp is a persistent, player-driven economic simulation where you build a company from scratch, compete in a living market, and grow a regional business into a large industrial network. It features deep production chains, a live market, regional specialization, quality tiers, and long-term progression.

Your First 30 Minutes

1. Register & Choose a Region

Create your account and start in Central Heartland if you want the broadest early access to farming, storage, and market logistics. You begin with $75,000 cash, a starter storage pool, and no buildings.

2. Build Your First Structures

Start with a Water Pump and a Farm. These unlock a dependable early agriculture loop and give you the inputs needed for several downstream chains. From there, add storage or a simple processor before jumping into heavier industry.

3. Start Producing

Queue Pump Water first. Once you have water online, start Harvest Seeds and then move into crops that support your next goal. Production happens in real time, so planning around cycle length matters.

4. Sell on the Market

Open the Market panel and create a Sell Order for your first surplus goods. Price it competitively, watch the order book, and remember that transport costs vary by region.

5. Upgrade & Expand

Reinvest profits into building upgrades, power coverage, and a second chain. A Sawmill, Mill, Warehouse, or Smelter are all solid early expansion paths depending on what inputs you already control.

Core Game Loop

The fundamental loop of SimCorp is: Extract → Refine → Manufacture → Sell. Raw materials (Tier 0) are processed into refined goods (Tier 1), assembled into components (Tier 2), and combined into high-value finished products (Tier 3). Higher tiers earn exponentially more but require deeper supply chains.

Key Concepts

How the Market Works

SimCorp uses a live order-book market. Human companies and named sector corporations place buy and sell orders, and trades execute when prices overlap. The main market hub is in the Central Heartland region.

Order Types

Sell Orders: List items you've produced for other companies to buy. Set your price and quantity, and the order remains open until it fills, is cancelled, or is replaced by a better strategy.

Buy Orders: Request items at a price you're willing to pay. If a matching sell order exists, the trade executes instantly.

Quality-Based Pricing

Item quality directly affects market value. Higher-quality goods are usually easier to move at a premium, especially in tighter markets or in consumer-facing chains.

Transport Costs

Moving goods between regions incurs transport costs as a percentage of item value. Nearby regions are cheaper; distant trade routes cost more. Research Logistics Network to reduce costs by 40%.

Market Support

When player activity is thin, the broader economy is supported by named sector corporations and fallback liquidity systems that help keep critical inputs and outputs moving. The exact mix can change as the game evolves, so the best read is always the live order book in front of you.

Transport Cost Matrix

Transport costs are a percentage of item value charged when moving goods between regions.

Overview

The retail system lets you sell finished goods directly to local consumer demand through specialized storefronts. Stores work on timed sales cycles rather than instant liquidation, so inventory mix, district fit, and pacing all matter.

Store Controls

Every retail building includes an Allow Retail Sales switch and a Max sell % control. This lets you decide whether a store should actively move inventory and how much of the region's stock it is allowed to release into retail.

Retail Buildings

What Drives Quality

Output quality comes from a mix of your building level, input quality, researched improvements, workforce performance, and maintenance condition. The exact weighting can change as the systems evolve, but better inputs and better operations consistently produce better goods.

Building Upgrades

Higher building levels reliably improve your quality ceiling and make it easier to move out of the basic tiers.

Input Quality

Higher-quality inputs support higher-quality outputs. If one weak link keeps dragging down a chain, improving that input often has a bigger effect than upgrading the final building again.

Research, Labor, and Upkeep

Research upgrades, skilled workers, and good maintenance all help stabilize premium output. Neglecting upkeep can undo a lot of investment elsewhere.

Quality Tiers

Quality Decay

Perishable items (agriculture and food categories) lose 1 quality level per 6 hours in storage. Use the Cold Chain Logistics tech to reduce decay by 50%. Plan your production and sales timing carefully.

Technologies are researched using Research Points generated by your Research Lab. Each tech costs points and may require prerequisite technologies. Effects are permanent and company-wide.

XP System

Your company gains experience points (XP) for every action. Level up to unlock additional building slots and capacity.

XP Rewards

Level Requirements

Overview

When you reach quality milestones, you can prestige — resetting your buildings, inventory, cash, and level to start fresh with permanent bonuses. These bonuses compound across multiple prestige resets, creating an ever-accelerating growth loop.

Prestige Tiers

Bonus Stacking

Prestige bonuses multiply across resets. Achieving Bronze (1.1×) then Silver (1.2×) gives you a 1.32× total cash multiplier. The prestige loop accelerates your progression exponentially with each cycle.

Overview

Every production building consumes power. Without sufficient reserves, production is blocked. You can generate electricity yourself, keep a reserve floor on hand, and export the surplus into a live power market for other companies to buy through the grid.

Power Generation

Grid Exports

Power plants can contribute reserve to the grid without emptying themselves. Each plant can be set to export to grid and maintain a minimum on-hand reserve. Only reserve above that floor is listed for sale, which keeps your own factories protected while still feeding the economy.

Power Consumption

Each building type draws power during production. Higher-tier production buildings consume significantly more energy:

Material Requirements

Every building requires cash + construction materials to build. Producing key materials yourself can significantly reduce expansion costs and gives you more control over your growth pace.

Self-Production Savings

Upgrade Costs

Upgrading buildings also requires materials, and those costs scale upward with building level. Plan your upgrade path carefully, because late-stage improvements become much more expensive in both cash and inputs.

Economic Events

The game engine randomly triggers economic events that temporarily alter market conditions. These create opportunities for savvy traders and challenges for the unprepared.

Seasonal Events

Tied to real-world dates, seasonal events activate automatically and last 24–72 hours.

Overview

SimCorp includes named sector corporations that actively produce, trade, and compete in the economy. They help keep critical supply chains moving, support market activity, and make the world feel populated even when human activity is light.

How They Show Up

These companies can appear in the leaderboard, participate in market activity, and support different parts of the economy such as agriculture, extraction, refining, assembly, power, housing, retail, and logistics.

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