Suggsestions: higher difficulty, better AI

[kg79]

Hello!
I always start the game with insane difficulty settings. E.g. I run the RW MOD script and have only 2 million plus an advanced start for the AI. I modified the script to get the AI to be more aggressive, and let them have much higher expertise. Also I raise the competence of the locals. The only things I turn down is that I shorten the advanced start to 2 years, because it gets boring not beeing able to do anything else than stock trading for too long and I turn inverse inflation off, because I regard this as unrealistic. But when I have set up my first stores and expanded, then entered the production market things pretty soon develop exponential and I swim in money, I just have to take care that there is nowhere a shortage. Then a point comes where I have to deside if I want to conquer the world or to start a new game. So I think everything becomes too easy too soon.

The main reason for this is that i think that running retail stores gives me too much profit. I haven't analised this very deeply, but I think a profit of 1-2 million per month for a convinience store or 2-3 million for a supermarket is much too high. And it's not about the profits on products inself: often I make just 30% margin because with my settings the competition is tight. I think it is more about the running costs of the stores which are too low and a much too high throughput. Also the builing costs of a building are too low: they are that low that they don't even count compared to the land costs. It's not very realistic that you build a supermarket and are able just after one year to build another one just out of the profits. Another reason for this is surely the multiple floors feature. I love it, because I like to sell a large variety of products. But with this feature the costs should raise at least at the factor of 3. Also the differences between the store types should be greater: yes, a discount mega store sells more than a small shop, but the difference should be higher. Also I think that the shop types do not really attract different customers: a discount megastore does not have a bonus for price concerend customers and a special store like computer shop does not atrract more quality or brand concerned people. If you want you could just sell software or computers in a discount mega store without any disadvantages.

So I would like to suggest at least some new scripting options to be able to influence this stuff. I would prefer script than the modding level, because it would make it more flexible and would work with a unmodded game as well as with every mod.

Additionally I would suggest some more options for the staff to have them to follow your philosophy:
It should be possible to advice the COO/CEO only to buy seaport goods and/or local goods. Also they should be able to only buy goods without a price agreement. This settings should be in the main screen with their policies so that they would be applied globaly, but also per purchase units in the shops, so you would have some units just buying pruducts from your corperation / group, some just local seeport goods, and so on. Also you should be able to tell them on which customer segment they should concentrate by picking the main concern they should focus on when buying.

Also it seems for me that the slider max profit - balanced - max market share is too tight. I have seen many situation where the COO though having the slider maxed to the right did not lower the prices for products with very high competition and good supply and always forced the price to a markup above 100%, resulting in the competition selling their products and him dumping the stuff and looking for other goods. I understand "max marketshare" that he should always go that far as he can, even making loss when "never sell below costs" is unchecked.

[David]

I think it is more about the running costs of the stores which are too low and a much too high throughput. Also the builing costs of a building are too low: they are that low that they don't even count compared to the land costs. It's not very realistic that you build a supermarket and are able just after one year to build another one just out of the profits. Another reason for this is surely the multiple floors feature.

Currently when a retail store has more than one floor, each additional floor will incur an additional expense that equals to the base operating expense of the store, which you can see on the Build menu (shortcut key: 'B')

Let's say that the base monthly expense of a department store is $60K, when you add two floors to it, its monthly expense will become $60K x 3 = $180K.

And all functional units (i.e. purchasing units and sales units) have their own operating costs.

So it seems that the multiple floors feature does not really reduce the operating costs per product, other than just saving the setup cost of building the retail store and the land purchase cost.

We are open to your idea of adding a script variable. Please let us know how exactly you want this to work and your rationale for it.

[kg79]

You may be right, i did not make an accurate calc about this. If every additional floor adds costs than it is okay.

For the scripting part I would suggest similar options like we have for changing the manufacturing abilities:

Store Costs = 100 // generaly influencing retail store costs (setup and running costs), 100 being standard

Store type costs = <type of the store>, 100 // influencing the same way special store types e.g. just computer stores

Store type focus = <type of the store>,100,100,100 // infuencing the focused customer concern, e.g. price / quality / brand. 100 = standard

Example:
Store type focus = Discount Megastore,150,80,50 would mean that it attracts 50% more price concerned customers, while 20% less quality concerned and 50% less brand concerned customers like a standard megastore would do. The COOs should take this also into acount when looking for products.

Similar modifiers could also work for the store capacity / throughput

[David]

Store Costs = 100 // generaly influencing retail store costs (setup and running costs), 100 being standard

I'm delighted to let you know that the dev team will implement the above script variable in the next major version 6.7.00.