Suggestion - Cooperation ideas

[Kristo]

Hi, it's me again.

I know we all have ideas for cooperating with competitors in Capitalism, so why not list them in one single topic?

Here are mine:

1/ Conglomerate type deal.

Simply as that: Let's say i got 10 farms in the city, and i sell my production to all of my 6-7 competitors' supermarkets. I dominate the farming sector and i got good money for that. But one of these corporations want to form an aliance with me about my farming industries. We make a deal - i'll sell my production only to them, they'll buy farm products only from me. Also - i won't be able t sell those products myself - i'll only be doing the farming part, they'll only be doing the retailing part (the game automaticly will set this). Of course - this can go for a limited time - 10yrs for example. They can offer me 5-10mil for exclusive rights to my production and i should have some limited control over the prices. Will be like internal selling, but with 2 corporations. This will be helpful if you own the two corporations. Or you want to use someone's corporation market share and clients, without actually buying this corporation.
Some options:
- time: 5-10-20 or more years.
- penalty if someone stop the deal before the deal's expired.
- the first corp (the one that only produce the goods - farm, factory, mine, lumber shop...) can ask for % of the profits of the second one (the one that only sells the goods)
- no control, limited control or no-limited control of the first corp over the prices of the goods. Limited will be - to change the prices in 10% up or down scale.
- private labelling on/off option - if it's on, after the deal expires, and your goods got super-loyallty, you may decide to sell them yourself.

2/ loans

It's just the ability to give/take loans from other corporations in their/your own terms. I made a post about loans some time before, so let's not repeat all the stuff i said.

3/ merger options

- When i got 75%, i should be able to see throgh the assets of this corporation so to make the decision to merge or not. Say - they got 100mil loan debt and most of their firms are losing money, if we merge this will be my debt and my losing money firms - sometimes this can be.... awful.
- Ability to choose which firms of the corp i wanna add, to be left behind - possibly to form a new corporation of their own, in which i won't have any shares. Everytime i merge 2 corp, the game create one new to take place of the corp i just... buy out... Why not use already existing firms and bussinesses i don't want? And also - the color, the hq, the ceo, etc.
- Ability to rename the new corporation, to change the color, to choose which hq i'll use... and so on...
- Ability to automaticly put every new firms i add in the merger - for sale, if they're losing money. You know - in the starting options.

4/ leasing firms

I'll try to explain this, but i'm open for suggestion and improvments, coz i'm not a leasing specialist (i study law in the university and that's it) -
My corporation got farms, factories, mine, stores... and one single apartment (let's assume - i got it after a merger) - which is profitable, but i don't really wanna manage it myself. So i can lease it? To some competitor to run it - and he'll give me % of the profits and some annual fee. He can have it for, say 5 years and then i must decide to either use it myself or sell it to him at really low cost - 20% of the real cost.
I don't know, i think there's something good in this idea, i hope you can help me with it.

5/ franchasing items

This is actually very common in real life - mostly in fast food chains, cafe's and so on. But the first franchasing deal is made by one very popular drink company.
It's this:
I produce beds. I got good level of development of beds, good quality, good loyalty, good brand. Every competitor is scare of competing with me in bed sector, becouse they'll have to work harder to even match my bussiness. Then why not franchise it?
They can offer me a deal:
- they'll give me 50% of their profits in the franchise, some annual sum of money - let's say half a million
- i'll give them the trade mark (Supa'Beds ), the r'n'd level, the brand... etc... for them to produce 'em in their own factory.
This can help if i make and sell beds in NY, and franchise this bussiness in Europe, Asia, Australia... So practicaly - they'll make the same beds as me, and sell em themselves.
And one option - they'll have to buy my material for the beds - my lumber. In case i got a lumber firm.

Well... that's for now. Hope i got more ideas later, and hope you help me too. See ya.

[City Builder]

I like the idea of leasing (that's what I'll focus on here as well as I can anyway).

But I have to wonder how much the gamer would use it. What I mean is, I could see a gamer using a lease option to try to get the AI to lease their losing firms on whatever calculations the AI uses towards thinking that it could make a profit from leasing the business, but me, as the player I would wonder how much I would actually take advantage of a lease offered by the AI.

What I mean is, in what circumstances would the AI want to lease out their business, surely not if it's making them a good profit, right? So why would the AI want to lease me their business, if the business is making a profit are they going to get more money by leasing me the business than they would make by running it themselves, and if so then why would I want to lease the business from them if I could just create a business myself to directly compete with them?

I could see something like this working if there were a cap on how many businesses could be placed on one map so that the only option to expand would be to lease a business from the AI, but that still leaves wondering what circumstances the AI would want to lease out a business that they already own.

Somehow, I just have to think that really there should be an option at each business screen that allows us to make really foolishly high offers to buy out businesses, something so high that the AI could not say no at it, and why would we do that? I suppose one reason would be that we are thinking in the long term like will this business that I pay 50,000,000 over it's value make me a profit 150 years from now, and if I plan on playing for 300 years then I suppose it would be okay, but then again... Why not just directly compete with them to gain the market share and wait until they put the business up for sale and then buy them out and close it to get rid of that competition or keep it running depending on where it is on the map compared to my own business.

I'd really like to see real estate get more loving from the developers and I think they've started to do so but it could use some more, I'm just not sure if leasing is the right option. Perhaps the more creative thinking could expand on it and make it a worthwhile addition to the game, as for me I am just having a tough time seeing why I'd want to lease a business instead of just directly competing with it with a new business in town.

I like the merger (3) ideas although I only worry that it might bog down the game too much into micro management when a merger is supposed to occur. I'm sure some people would love that, but I know that micro management seems to be a fairly hot debate on what is too much with CL.

I also like the idea of perhaps selling my products directly to a competitor and nobody else and they only buying them from me and my not being able to sell those products directly, I like the idea of alliances between player and AI so that I am not only concerned with how well my own businesses are doing but also with my alliance partners, just not sure if the devs could flesh it out enough to really make it worth the expense of doing so with what it might add to the game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be negative here, plenty of good ideas have been floated around on this forum, but not sure just how much resources the developer(s) have to use towards adding new stuff, it might be too much for them. I think the simplest of ideas is probably best for them, such as adding new products and resources into the game to keep people interested longer, but perhaps they plan that for DLC or the like. (though to let them know my opinion on DLC, I won't buy new products to add to the game, but I would buy DLC that added substantial new game play to the game).

[Kristo]

Well, i realise that most of these ideas, the "cooperation" stuff will be hard to code and included at once in the game. It's just an idea for the future, possibly for Capitalism 3?

As for the leasing... i don't really understand it completely, but i think some people here might do understand it.
In my opinion - leasing is de facto selling, but not taking the price at once, but over time. Imagine it like:
"Ok, i don't want to have this store anymore, so i'll put it for leasing"
- why not for SALE?
"Well, after 3 years i may regret this decision, so i want a second chance to say NO for selling"
- why?
"If the leasing is 5years, after 3 years, i'll get 60% of the price of this store, so i may decide to stop the deal and keep the store for me"
- but what does the competitor win?
"Huh, he had the store for 3 years - for only 60% of the price, in that time he made far more money than 100% of the price, so he wins... more than me actually"

Why should i give a firm for leasing?
a/ i don't think it will ever be profitable... at least more profitable that i expect
b/ i don't wanna have this bussiness in my corporation
c/ i expect this particular sector to have decreasing profits
d/ it's profitable, but i don't want to micromanage this one, i wanna concentrate on the big picture here.
e/ i established it for the mere reason of leasing it - for profit.

Why should i lease a firm?
a/ i think i can make it more profitable than now or than AI.
b/ i don't have money to buy it now, but i wanna have it.
c/ i can create a monopoly in this sector
d/ it's placed in the center of the city, i'll demolish it and build something else...
e/ there's limited amount of this type of building in the city
f/ i need experienced workers in a factory, i'll lease this one, and start to produce something else... like beds.

Of course, this can go on and on... I think we should just list some ideas for "cooperating" and try to improve the existing ones. I have to admit - i didn't think much about most of these. I just throw it out there, for other user to say what they think or what they'll suggest...

Thanks, anyway!