Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Subsidiary DLC for Capitalism Lab
kazenorin
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Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by kazenorin »

My parent company produces automobiles and other stuff, and I setup a subsidiary whose CEO has high retail expertise to sell these goods.

It turns out that the subsidiary CEO would stop purchasing retails despite ample supplies and no competitors around.
And ultimately, the retail stores - in this case, automobile outlets - start to sell nothing and experience great losses.


Is this a bug or am I doing anything wrong?

Here my save for this case:
subsidiary-stopped-purchasing.zip
(3.26 MiB) Downloaded 74 times
A lot of my retailer subsidiary, v2Mart's automobile outlets refuse to sell stuff.

Actually, there's something like that happening to my supermarkets too - where a perfectly profitable product got stopped retailing and I don't know whats happening...

The version is v4.3.18 Release, running only with the Subsidiary DLC

-----
Edit:

I found the issue to stem from low supplies.
The AI seem to want to switch to another product/supplier and keep writing off inventory, back and forth...
To the extent it couldn't sell anything...

So is this a bug?

Also, every time I load from a in-progress game results in a GroupArray[] is Deleted Error...
Spac3y
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by Spac3y »

You might need to tweak supply level tolerance bar so he doesnt change on a low level supply
kazenorin
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by kazenorin »

Spac3y wrote:You might need to tweak supply level tolerance bar so he doesnt change on a low level supply
I tried, even at max it's the same.

For curiosity's sake, I tried putting that at minimum too but I don't see a difference.
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David
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by David »

We have improved the AI on this and made a new patch v4.3.20, which you may download from:
http://12299.cdn.beyondhosting.net/capl ... 204310.zip

Then extract the ZIP file to your Capitalism Lab program folder. You can open your Capitalism Lab program folder by right-clicking on the Capitalism Lab game icon and select “Properties”, then select “Open File Location” to open the folder.

Please note that this patch v4.3.20 is not ready for a public release. Please let me know if it resolves your issue and it creates any new issues. If it works well, we will then proceed to make it an official release.
kazenorin
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by kazenorin »

David wrote:We have improved the AI on this and made a new patch v4.3.20, which you may download from:
http://12299.cdn.beyondhosting.net/capl ... 204310.zip

Then extract the ZIP file to your Capitalism Lab program folder. You can open your Capitalism Lab program folder by right-clicking on the Capitalism Lab game icon and select “Properties”, then select “Open File Location” to open the folder.

Please note that this patch v4.3.20 is not ready for a public release. Please let me know if it resolves your issue and it creates any new issues. If it works well, we will then proceed to make it an official release.
As for this version, while the retail AI still has a tendency to fall into the "Switch Product" -> "Buyout all available supply & Write-off stock of previous product" -> "Create temporary shortage" cycle, its much better. (Only tried at maximum shortage toleration)

Along with replacing a few of the retail layouts that connects multiple purchase units to multiple sales unit, and closing down a few unprofitable retail stores to ease the shortages, I manage to bring the monthly inventory write-off expense from $100m to less than $10m in 2 years. Since my largest competitor had around $20m write-off, so that's probably more normal.

I loaded the game and ran it a few times implementing these changes, it somehow consistently takes around 2 years for the AI to bail out of the write-off cycle.

I would say that it's somewhat solved, at least the old version it writes off stuff very very fast.
I also stopped receiving that GroupArray[] is Deleted Error loading a game while in-game.

Just that it's very important to make sure shortages aren't prominent as the AI reacts to shortages a lot faster than myself. Interestingly, my COO doesn't seem to react that fast despite similar settings but much fewer stores to manage (expertise and personality issue?).
This write-off "self-fulfilling shortage cycle" didn't always happen - my retail subsidiary was established around ten years before it started creating around $1b write-off in less than 2 years (in the old version).

Intrigued by this I loaded an older save dated 2015, where it started racking up losses.
It used to be profitable in 2014 (had ~$1.4b lifetime operating profit in 7 years) and pract

-----------------

Unrelated to this patch, last night I found that for manufacturing subsidiaries' "Group Sale" limitation doesn't work.
It didn't work in the v4.3.18 version, and it still doesn't in the .20 version.

Other retailers simply buys out everything available and I am sure I clicked that "Group Sale" button before the supply and demand bars appeared.

This can be reproduced with the above save as well, by building a factory to product tablet computers with my subsidiary "v2Computing"
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David
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by David »

Unrelated to this patch, last night I found that for manufacturing subsidiaries' "Group Sale" limitation doesn't work.
It didn't work in the v4.3.18 version, and it still doesn't in the .20 version.

Other retailers simply buys out everything available and I am sure I clicked that "Group Sale" button before the supply and demand bars appeared.

This can be reproduced with the above save as well, by building a factory to product tablet computers with my subsidiary "v2Computing"
Did you mean the [Group] button shown in the attached screenshot?

Could you explain in more detail about the problem? Did you enable [Internal Sale] as well?
Attachments
group sale.png
group sale.png (1.41 MiB) Viewed 1708 times
kazenorin
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by kazenorin »

David wrote:
Unrelated to this patch, last night I found that for manufacturing subsidiaries' "Group Sale" limitation doesn't work.
It didn't work in the v4.3.18 version, and it still doesn't in the .20 version.

Other retailers simply buys out everything available and I am sure I clicked that "Group Sale" button before the supply and demand bars appeared.

This can be reproduced with the above save as well, by building a factory to product tablet computers with my subsidiary "v2Computing"
Did you mean the [Group] button shown in the attached screenshot?

Could you explain in more detail about the problem? Did you enable [Internal Sale] as well?
Ah, right. I was talking about the [Group] button. I probably didn't turn on [Internal Sale].

I did that again making sure that [Group] and [Internal Sale] button were both switched on before the Supply and Demand bar appeared. It seems to work. And once I un-toggle the [Internal Sale] button, lots of competitors are buying from it. So that's probably the situation I was talking about and probably not an issue. It's still as in Cap2 where you can't easily cut orders from competitors though but that another talk.
kazenorin
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by kazenorin »

Found another write-off loop problem :?

Retail Sub buys soaps and sells it for a while, decides that its not selling very well and switches it to another product. Loop.

Pricing Strategy of the sub CEO is in the middle/balanced.

Unlikely related to shortages, because this time, the production has been ramped up.

Possible workarounds: add inventory unit in between so stuff doesn't get written off that quick.
Attachments
subsidiary-switching-products.zip
one of v2Mart's supermarket "Switcher", demonstrates this.
(3.42 MiB) Downloaded 77 times
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David
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by David »

We have fixed the bug.
Here is a special version 4.3.21 with the fix for you to load your save game:
http://12299.cdn.beyondhosting.net/capl ... 214310.zip


Later, when you are going to start a new game, you may download the latest Release version from the forum http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=7


If you still encounter any issues, let me know.
kazenorin
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Re: Bug? Subsidiary CEO stops purchasing retail goods

Post by kazenorin »

David wrote:We have fixed the bug.
Here is a special version 4.3.21 with the fix for you to load your save game:
http://12299.cdn.beyondhosting.net/capl ... 214310.zip


Later, when you are going to start a new game, you may download the latest Release version from the forum http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=7


If you still encounter any issues, let me know.
Thanks for the prompt fix :)

However, the subsidiary's exact same store on the same save seems to be doing the same thing:
Switches from Shampoo -> Soap -> Cola and writing-off all stocks.
But less frequent.

Maybe I should start a new game with the new version?
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