Some newbie questions about procurement

[icylogic]

Hi, I’m new to cap lab, and I have some questions about the production line.

How do you choose between self-production and procurement? In the beginner tips on wiki it says
“ You never have to do everything yourself. Quite often, I buy several semi products from competitors. You dont have to make everything yourself. ”

However I found producing everything myself seems always better because it’s way cheaper so I could insanely lower the price of my end products to win the competition. When I do not have enough cash, I’d like to start from producing end products, and then the semi-products, finally some raw materials.

The only drawback I saw is that at early game when I don’t have enough research labs, the quality for some semi-products are not good as imports. So the time I start to self produce everything is when I have earned my first a few millions and start building many research labs (which has a bonus that the stock price will drop so I could buyback some of my stocks).

So what are some cases that procurement is always better than self-production? Maybe for some special products? Do you eventually do it your self for the whole production line as I do? Which is not very realistic, though.