'Drugs' Product Class/Building Inconsistency

[Brutus]

There is some inconsistency in the way certain stores function and how product classes are offered across the various store types in the game.

> The most glaring inconsistency is the 'Drugs' product class for the Drug Store whose store is made useless by the fact that this class can be offered in both the Convenience Store as well as the Supermarket and easily receive the multiple store bonus as well as the specialty store bonus that a 'Drug Store' would receive. With the Supermarket it also benefits from the much larger medium sized store in terms of storage and sales capacity. Meaning you're actually better off selling Drugs in a Supermarket than if you were in the intended Specialty Store. Drug stores are then only useful for their aesthetic value and for the player to sort their products by store type. Functionally and gameplay wise however they are currently inferior in every way possible.

Solution: Remove 'Drugs' from Convenience and Supermarkets product line-up. This will make drug stores the only 'specialty' store that can sell drugs and functionally useful again in-game. They can still be sold in department stores and in discount megastores as these are not specialty stores. This change will make it similar and equal to all other specialty stores currently in-game again.

The Drug Store is the only example store with any real direct gameplay flaw thatneeds to be fixed to make it functionally useful and significantly improve gameplay balance for this store type. It's the odd one out that has no functional gameplay advantage for using it whereas all other store types have some sort of unique reason to be used.

[mrgarrettscott]

You need to add a poll to this so people can vote. These are some well-thought out suggestions! Perhaps, even better would be to break up your post into separate posts with polls. A lot of this is adjusting the numbers, i.e., cost of units, floors, and whatnot. Some are more in-depth, like adding even more floors for department and discount megastores, which is an incredible idea to leverage what they represent in real life.

[Brutus]

You need to add a poll to this so people can vote. These are some well-thought out suggestions! Perhaps, even better would be to break up your post into separate posts with polls. A lot of this is adjusting the numbers, i.e., cost of units, floors, and whatnot. Some are more in-depth, like adding even more floors for department and discount megastores, which is an incredible idea to leverage what they represent in real life.

Oops right I forgot about it, thanks for reminding me.

[David]

This suggestion will be implemented in the next version 6.9.00.

Drugs will be taken out of convenience stores’ product list to strengthen the positioning of drug stores.

[Brutus]

This suggestion will be implemented in the next version 6.9.00.

Drugs will be taken out of convenience stores’ product list to strengthen the positioning of drug stores.

What about supermarkets?

Drug stores still won't be unique unless they are the only 'specialty' store that can sell them. This is in line with every other product class that has a specialty store tied to it. Cosmetics Store uniquely receives the specialty store bonus for cosmetics for example. Same goes for Apparel, Footwear, Furniture, Sports, Jewelry, Toys all of them offer a unique reason to build these stores while these products can still be sold elsewhere in a generic store such as department or megastore. Supermarkets shouldn't be able to offer drugs as a unique product for this reason

I recommend we add 'Drugs' to the 'Department Store' instead so there is still plenty of opportunity for the AI and player to sell drugs through other methods but keep the drug store as the only 'specialty' building receiving the demand bonus modifier and this makes the drug store more memorable as a unique building. Supermarkets will otherwise just become the new meta for selling drugs. Rather than shifting the meta from two stores to one store (exacerbating the problem in some ways), we should just bring it in-line with all the other products classes that have unique stores tied to them.

[David]

I would like to add that supermarkets are actually not specialty stores. You can tell whether a store is a specialty store by checking whether there is a specialty store icon at the top-right of the firm interface.

[Brutus]

I would like to add that supermarkets are actually not specialty stores. You can tell whether a store is a specialty store by checking whether there is a specialty store icon at the top-right of the firm interface.

I did notice that it was indeed missing from the top right of the firm view. I was going from the what the build menu itself indicated.

SupermarketSpecialtyStoreBonus.png (235.67 KiB) Viewed 1165 times

What determines whether a store is a specialty store or not? What requirements are needed? I'm not that familiar with editing building stats and the likes.

[David]

I did notice that it was indeed missing from the top right of the firm view. I was going from the what the build menu itself indicated.

What determines whether a store is a specialty store or not? What requirements are needed? I'm not that familiar with editing building stats and the likes.

I asked the dev team and got the answer that the "special store demand bonus" you saw on the Build Firm menu is the one to look at for determining whether it is a specialty store or not. Sorry for confusing you in my previous post.

On the other hand, the retail demand bonus icon displayed at the top-right of the firm window shows the retail demand bonus, which can be contributed by any of the 3 factors, as shown in the help box (see the screenshot I posted previously). Being a specialty store is just one of the 3 factors that contribute to the retail demand bonus. Hope it is now clear.

[Brutus]

I did notice that it was indeed missing from the top right of the firm view. I was going from the what the build menu itself indicated.

What determines whether a store is a specialty store or not? What requirements are needed? I'm not that familiar with editing building stats and the likes.

I asked the dev team and got the answer that the "special store demand bonus" you saw on the Build Firm menu is the one to look at for determining whether it is a specialty store or not. Sorry for confusing you in my previous post.

On the other hand, the retail demand bonus icon displayed at the top-right of the firm window shows the retail demand bonus, which can be contributed by any of the 3 factors, as shown in the help box (see the screenshot I posted previously). Being a specialty store is just one of the 3 factors that contribute to the retail demand bonus. Hope it is now clear.

Hur hur hur ... so my point remains standing that you can sell drugs in a specialty store that is not an actual specialty store for drugs reducing the value and uniqueness of the drug store. A company that focuses on supermarkets can retail drugs more efficiently than a company that has a dedicated drug store chain because of this quirk. Why can supermarkets sell drugs anyway? They don't sell tobacco either and I don't know a single supermarket in my real life neighborhood that doesn't sell tobacco . I mean it doesn't bother me in-game that you can't because I know it's for balance and it provides a uniqueness to the convenience store that allows you to imagine it being a tobacco store. It keeps the convenience store unique in that regard as the only store that can sell tobacco as a specialty. Supermarkets have Household Products as their specialty that only they can sell in that form. The drug store? Will remain the virgin store compared to the Chad Supermarket if Chad Supermarket is allowed to keep Drugs. Save the Drug store. Drug stores deserve to be valued for their existence too.

Lastly ... I didn't quite get an answer as to what determines whether a store gets the specialty store bonus demand modifier or not? What are the qualifications for a store type to receive said bonus to begin with?

[David]

Lastly ... I didn't quite get an answer as to what determines whether a store gets the specialty store bonus demand modifier or not? What are the qualifications for a store type to receive said bonus to begin with?

I've got the info you needed from the dev team as follows:

Demand bonus = (<total number of product classes in the mod> X 10 / <number of product classes that the retail store can sell>) - 10

Then Demand bonus is capped at 100.

If Demand bonus is >= 30, then you will see the Specialty store demand bonus indicator on the Build Firm menu.

----

And the Specialty store demand bonus will contribute one star to the following:



This is the first factor, the other two factors are described in the help text.

-----

Regarding the supermarket, in the next version 6.9.00, it will no longer be a specialty store.

This change is made effective by modifying the following formula from:

If Demand bonus is >= 30, then you will see the Specialty store demand bonus indicator on the Build Firm menu.

to

If Demand bonus is >= 50, then you will see the Specialty store demand bonus indicator on the Build Firm menu.

In the current version, the demand bonus of supermarket is around 40. Thus it is considered a specialty store.

In the next version, 40 < 50 (the new threshold), so it will no longer be a specialty store.

Hope this is clear.