Tool for Modders to Improve Mod Gameplay Balance

[rlqhd5256]

The Method You can Check B2C and B2B Profitability for your Mod.

[Introduction]

I started this project for profitability balanced Game to share with but as I progress, that goes too complex and beyond my ability.
However I got another nice results to share with you.

(I’m not good at English, I’m from South Korea, So You could see some sentence with wrong grammars and words. Please Take it into account.)

I made B2C, B2B Profitability Reference you can check, test, and adjust your own Mod.
This is on Piermario’s RealWorld Mod. I used his Product_Type.DBF, Manufacturing.DBF.
Always Thanks for his work and sharing Mod Files.



[What You can check]

1) Product’s Profitability in manufacturing Process
2) Each Product’s B2C, B2B, Total Profit per person
3) Product Classes’ B2C, B2B, Total Profit per person
4) You can check and adjust your own Mod’s profitability with my Excel format and Function.

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[Linked Excel File] :: You can get it in the End of the Post.
In my Linked Excel File, You can see three spread Sheets.

1) Product_Type
:: I did not touch but this need to make function work in other sheet.
2) Manufacturing Sheet
:: This is main workplace. Original Table + Extended Columns(Coloered Ones)
:: This sheet have all the results and procedures I infer the Profit per Person in B2C and B2B
:: I set to show all the Memos I wrote about Concept and Functions, You can Hide it in Review Tap.
:: This sheet has too much cols. So you need to drag the cols and hide them for watching the B2C, B2B Profit at a glance. Also you can hide rows.
3) Classification
:: Profit per Person by Product Class.



[How Can you Adjust Profitability]

1) Change the Price
2) Change the Demand
3) Change the Output Quantity
4) Change the Input Quantity

But I recommend you to change 3), 4).
3), 4) can work in a Manufacturing Sheet so you can check profit at a glance.



[Inference Process]

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[Link you can download] :: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zNwzYj ... sp=sharing


Please read a memos I wrote in Excel File.
These look little messy but I tried my best to explain. If you have a Question, Please Let me know.

[rlqhd5256]

In fact I made Low Profitability Mode in my own, It was funny. Don’t Set local’s Competition very high. This was too hard.

1) Only a few AI grows up and only a few Products did reached $1 billion of revenue.
2) To survive, AI focused on Brand and R&D.
3) For profitability, Their Price Ratings always were Minus,
but if other competitor joins, Price competition starts,
their Profitability got hurt seriously and threaten their whole Company’s survival.
4) Some of the AI do not produce their own product but import and do a retail. 1st Valued Corporate was Retail Company.

Here is Manufacturing.DBF I adjust to have low profitability. It works with Realworld Mod.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bpkQ6Y ... sp=sharing

Enjoy the game.

[Brutus]

Thank you so much for this excel sheet! Lovely work my friend! Much thanks! <3

I plugged in my mod data and it works great. Looks way better than the excel sheet I was working with myself

If I could offer a little advise to improve the excel sheet and usefulness;

Profit per person is great BUT another great way to measure how useful a product is to simply see the total marketsize or revenue of a product which is the price x demand (+ demand from B2B). Very useful to see how big & important a product is!

I know of one more improvement too 'profitability' by measuring 'profitability per factory'. Some products have production multipliers (PROD_SPEED) in manufacturing.dbf. One manufacturing unit producing cars outputs 3x more total value per unit than a normal unit. Meaning that while cars are only at 40% profitability, one factory unit can output 40% x 3 in total profit! Do you understand what I mean? Producing cars is much more profitable than 40% profitability would make you believe because each manufacturing unit produces 3 x more than a normal unit does (thus 3x total profit!). CPU is also a good example. It produces 2x more than normal. You make much more money (profit) selling CPU's and Cars than if you built a different factory. This can be HUGELY important in how profitable a product really is.

Profitability per person IS NOT Profitability per Factory.

Profitability x prod_speed IS Profitability per Factory.

Profitability per Factory can be much more important to the player than profitability per person as it determines the Return on Investment (ROI) per product. Thus it determines true profitability!

Only a few products use PROD_SPEED > 100, in vanilla these are
Car 300
Motorcycle 200
Desktop Computer 200
CPU 200
Engine 200
Wheel & Tire 200

All of these products are superior to produce because of this and more profitable. But in RealWorld there are MANY more products which use the multiplier. This can impact which product is most profitable by a lot!

Just thought you wanted to know.

Much thanks and happy gaming!

[rlqhd5256]

Thanks for your Feedback

I understood and That makes sense.
At the time I posted this topic, I was too impatient to fully explain what my intention is.
I'm sorry for that.

Profit per person is great BUT another great way to measure how useful a product is to simply see the total marketsize or revenue of a product which is the price x demand (+ demand from B2B). Very useful to see how big & important a product is!

At first, I started this work for balancing the profitability to be more realistic; Realistic Gross Margin. As you know, Products' cost were too low for Gross Margin to be almost about 90%.(This is super unrealistic) So I needed to adjust manufacturing sector in the Manufacturing.DBF.

<Price*Demand - Cost = Profit>
Chaning Price, and Demand is issue in Market size. That does not take Cost into account. So I thought Profit per Person can be Cost related Market Size. And with this, I can adjust Profitability and Cost related Market Size things at once in Manufacturing.DBF And while adjusting the profit, I changed output/Input mixing ratio. This led Input's profit per person to be Outlier. So I added B2B sector for check.

I know of one more improvement too 'profitability' by measuring 'profitability per factory'. Some products have production multipliers (PROD_SPEED) in manufacturing.dbf. One manufacturing unit producing cars outputs 3x more total value per unit than a normal unit. Meaning that while cars are only at 40% profitability, one factory unit can output 40% x 3 in total profit! Do you understand what I mean? Producing cars is much more profitable than 40% profitability would make you believe because each manufacturing unit produces 3 x more than a normal unit does (thus 3x total profit!). CPU is also a good example. It produces 2x more than normal. You make much more money (profit) selling CPU's and Cars than if you built a different factory. This can be HUGELY important in how profitable a product really is.

I assumed "If All the demand is met fully through the whole Population or a One Person".
And how fast Factory Speed is, One output unit needs same input unit.
So Production Speed, That was not matter to me.

But As you know, Caplab's City map size is rather small so we have limit Resources. In that view, Profit per Factory could be Good measure, I guess.

[Brutus]

Thanks for your Feedback

I understood and That makes sense.
At the time I posted this topic, I was too impatient to fully explain what my intention is.
I'm sorry for that.

No thank you for sharing your work with everyone

I did actually find one bug/mistake in your spreadsheet. If you look at the semi-products group, you will see that column Y, Z, AA do not produce numbers for most semi-products. This is incorrect. This is because the formula = input / output * 'consumer demand', but semi-products don't have DEMAND but only GROSS D_DEM.

Therefore the original formula does not keep track of demand from other semi-products. This does not matter in your spreadsheet if you only want to know 'profitability %', but if you want to know the total profit per person or the marketsize then this does matter.

The formula should be: ( input / output ) * ( DEMAND + Gross D_DEM )

example old formula : column Y: =$E2/$C2*$V2
example new formula : column Y: =$E2/$C2*($V2+$AB2)

Also update column Z and AA same way to get the correct numbers.

Right now for example; ENGINE does not list demand for STEEL in column Y. This means STEEL does not have the correct demand listed for the B2B calculation of the product and therefore incorrect 'profit per person' calculations for STEEL are the result.