[SCRIPT] B2B: Mastering the Semi Products

[counting]

Yeah... tried twice with with 5 - 6 R&D centers, and was burning 2 million in cash per month. Could last about 3 years before bankruptcy. On the current game I'm up to 22 years, and even at 10 years there would have been barely enough free cash flow to cover 2 million. There just isn't a strong enough revenue stream in semis to support that kind of expense.

As it turns out, mid-game has the AIs getting into price wars with each other anyway. Tech/quality doesn't matter if you can't hit their price points. Right now I've seen nearly all my lines drop off to very little revenue, except CPUs where I have a monopoly. I'll try to run this test game to year 25 and then upload for folks to see what a B2B game looks like.

The middleman challenge is a challenge for a good reason , many details need to be attended to in order to survive. But I like the feel of it, since it gives player a genuine sense of pressure in time, a lot like running a real business, always watching out business relationships, paying attention to current market "movement", trying to cost down as much as possible, and generally just find a way to keep cash barely enough to sustain day-to-day operations. Plan for the future from day-one, and every day since.

One very important thing is to treat your downstream AIs as your "friends", you really need their business to thrive, all your income comes from them, and be very careful, NEVER let them run out (i.e. your outlet of warehouse/factories should always have higher yellow supply bar than orange demand bar, since once an AI customer is lost, it's very difficult to get them back). Another thing is to understand your limit, your revenue is very limited, don't try to out compete everyone. Healthy competition sometimes help you rather than hurt you, like always keeping some semi-products competitors alive, allow new comers have cheap options to start their business, and not going into price war. Learn to co-exist with competitors at all time and find the best production/price sweet-spot. Your competitor's extra product can sometimes be your emergency import supply when you can't support a sudden influx of demand from downstream customers. Also more than 2 competitors usually means if you temporarily fall behind a tech, you can buy a second hand tech in time from the second runner, rather than wait for your own R&D. Even artificially create shortage in certain semi-products, so the over-all price can rise. Fight for survival amount giants is a lot more "fun", than actually being the giant.

Many interesting things and strategies can be used though, looking forward to see what you can come up with

[infoscott]

As promised, a test game at year 2015, 25 years into a B2B scripted scenario. The economy is booming, you have no debt, and over 100 million in cash. In about 18 months, the 10 year research program in automobile parts will become available. A few months after that your glass/plastic/steel techs will be around 100. You will be the clear tech leader in automotive semi products.

The AI has a well developed car market that happens to be using very low tech parts. Can you manage your cash and supply lines to create a new auto parts network? If you don't and your CPU market shrinks, you could be left with barely enough cash flow to meet payroll.

[counting]

As promised, a test game at year 2015, 25 years into a B2B scripted scenario. The economy is booming, you have no debt, and over 100 million in cash. In about 18 months, the 10 year research program in automobile parts will become available. A few months after that your glass/plastic/steel techs will be around 100. You will be the clear tech leader in automotive semi products.

The AI has a well developed car market that happens to be using very low tech parts. Can you manage your cash and supply lines to create a new auto parts network? If you don't and your CPU market shrinks, you could be left with barely enough cash flow to meet payroll.

Finally have time to take a good look at it, and it's very interesting as a scenario of its own. Lots of expenses can be cut down, some re-arrangement of warehouses and factories could improve the profit margin significantly. Some factories are idle without any sales at all, perhaps a preparation for the automobile parts? Automobile semi-products sometimes are quite difficult to cut in (especially wheels & tires), and generally speaking, and AI over-all auto-retail volume need to be encouraged, bc AI rarely be able to fully utilized production. However it really could be a great opportunities and relatively lucrative.

One thing I am curious though, why didn't you build your HQ? At least it's a easier way of inspecting AI's current tech level.

BTW, loading saved game, seems to disable the script, maybe it really should be packaged as scenarios than pure script.

[infoscott]

As promised, a test game at year 2015, 25 years into a B2B scripted scenario. The economy is booming, you have no debt, and over 100 million in cash. In about 18 months, the 10 year research program in automobile parts will become available. A few months after that your glass/plastic/steel techs will be around 100. You will be the clear tech leader in automotive semi products.

The AI has a well developed car market that happens to be using very low tech parts. Can you manage your cash and supply lines to create a new auto parts network? If you don't and your CPU market shrinks, you could be left with barely enough cash flow to meet payroll.

Finally have time to take a good look at it, and it's very interesting as a scenario of its own. Lots of expenses can be cut down, some re-arrangement of warehouses and factories could improve the profit margin significantly. Some factories are idle without any sales at all, perhaps a preparation for the automobile parts? Automobile semi-products sometimes are quite difficult to cut in (especially wheels & tires), and generally speaking, and AI over-all auto-retail volume need to be encouraged, bc AI rarely be able to fully utilized production. However it really could be a great opportunities and relatively lucrative.

I didn't optimize in the last couple of years, because I was just trying to run out the clock to year 25 and save the file. In the big picture, I didn't mind leaving non-critical operating efficiencies for another player to fix while they were waiting for the auto R&D results to arrive.

Regarding products like steel and CCDs, there was several brutal price wars by the AIs that I just decided to wait out. I believe Year 25 was coming out of a recession, so likely there were several firms that pulled out and would have allowed me to reenter those markets.

One thing I am curious though, why didn't you build your HQ? At least it's a easier way of inspecting AI's current tech level.

BTW, loading saved game, seems to disable the script, maybe it really should be packaged as scenarios than pure script.

HQ: I thought about it early game, and almost none of the benefits given by a HQ would serve a semi products player, especially the C-suite. I didn't think about it in midgame because I expected to be the tech leader in my product line. As it turned out, I was watching my cash flow and researching just enough so nobody would have an advantage over me. But I certainly wasn't ahead of the pack in that respect. It would be a great catch up to buy some leading techs and divert the R&D labs to something else.

Script locks: It is a known bug that saved games do not respect LOCKS for the firm building menu in the scripts. David says that should be fixed in the 2.7 release.

Scenario: Running it to 25 years was a proof of concept for the B2B business model, but I had liked the idea of ES maybe running with it as a nifty scenario

[counting]

Well, running B2B businesses require a lot of planning, and I was planning a mod for even more semi-product, and deeper supply chain, where it would take 4 or 5 steps from raw materials to retail.

Right now, I've planned about 2/3 of the products I'd like to exist, and about 2/3 of them are semi-products. Retail products currently are all electronics, and I was wondering to add different automobiles, like smart cars, hybrids, sports, luxury, trucks into the mix. Should be able to reach 100 to 120 products in total, and maintain 2/3 as semis. (since almost no use for crops, I was thinking only to use them as "artwork" or "designs" input for software, but too many left unused, I was concerning it would affect AIs ability to properly conduct businesses. Maybe I should just use farmland like never running out oil field, natural gas of sort.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 98/pubhtml

Are you familiar with automobile industries and their production chain?, I could use some help.

[infoscott]

Well, running B2B businesses require a lot of planning, and I was planning a mod for even more semi-product, and deeper supply chain, where it would take 4 or 5 steps from raw materials to retail.

Right now, I've planned about 2/3 of the products I'd like to exist, and about 2/3 of them are semi-products. Retail products currently are all electronics, and I was wondering to add different automobiles, like smart cars, hybrids, sports, luxury, trucks into the mix. Should be able to reach 100 to 120 products in total, and maintain 2/3 as semis. (since almost no use for crops, I was thinking only to use them as "artwork" or "designs" input for software, but too many left unused, I was concerning it would affect AIs ability to properly conduct businesses. Maybe I should just use farmland like never running out oil field, natural gas of sort.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 98/pubhtml

Are you familiar with automobile industries and their production chain?, I could use some help.

Because of safety issues, probably second only to the airline industry, the automotive industry is pretty demanding on the specification of many of its parts. Because of these requirements, you have a few companies that dominate critical subsystems, namely Delphi Automotive PLC out of the UK. But apart from a few 800 pound gorillas, you have thousands of other parts makers. A good many of these parts makers deal with multiple car companies, making sure their parts will interoperate (think windshield wipers).

But I doubt the car companies have been good using standards to make everything interoperable. I used to work with the computer industry standards bodies, and they were many years ahead of the car companies. The retail segment of the car industry does have the STAR standard, but that has nothing to do with bills of materials, just how dealers, financiers, and manufacturers pass messages back and forth to each other.

Replacement parts have at least three distribution channels. Auto dealerships manage a service department that stocks and can special order parts for that specific manufacturer. Consumers can purchase or order generic and specialty parts through specialty retail shops, such as Auto Zone in the USA. Then there are some wholesale distributors that mechanics use to order parts. Some parts are specialized enough that you have to refer to the make and model of the car when ordering the part, although the after market may still have more than one supplier that sells these parts through the distribution channels.

If you are thinking of sub-assemblies and Bills of Materials, mmm, not sure how complex it gets compared to say the computer industry. The automotive industry is much more Do It Yourself (DIY) in consumer repairs and maintenance than is the computer industry. I am guessing that the more complex sub-assemblies belong to Delphi.

Hope that helps.

[counting]

Well since Capitalism is mostly not a distributor/wholesaler simulation game, I think I'll just consider the auto parts replacement sales volume too small to be considered and the they are just part of the sales deal toward manufacturers. Car dealers have warranty toward their customers after all, it's not like auto parts income directly comes from customers, but paid by car dealers from their expenses of keeping warranty.

Anyway, my question is more or less about how many parts a car can "disassemble" and what's their added value or cost to purchase, thus I won't create a semi-auto part that is too expense to be realistic, or too cheap to be consider an independent product. (Like I grouped various function ICs, passive components, etc into a general chipset product). I do find an interesting auto parts guide-map though, with its raw material type listed, maybe I'll using these 21 parts as the starting point and later add more to other type of automobiles, and their higher level grouping of intermediate-stage semi-parts.