A Thank You Note, And a Couple of Questions and Suggestions

[radovan]

Greetings everyone!

First of all, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to the whole Enlight team. Firstly, thank you for great Capitalism series, especially Capitalism 2. I have absolutely enjoyed all of them. Secondly, thank you for fulfilling my wish of making a sequel to Capitalism 2. I have longed for it since the early 2000s. Finally, thank you for making my university studies of economics much easier and far more straightforward. Whenever I encountered a new abstract concept in economy I was always able to visualize it through the world of Capitalism 2. You have really made a tremendous simplified model of how the economics of enterprise work in real life. Every aspiring manager should try at least one of the games in the series.

I also wanted to congratulate you on great job you have done with this sequel, Capitalism Lab. You have revived the series in the best possible way. I am so grateful to you for that. I would have been a real shame if this series just died.

Furthermore, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions regarding Capitalism Lab. I see that you are preparing a new feature for Capitalism Lab, which includes editing game with script files. It is such a great idea, I was just about to suggest it when I have seen that it was already scheduled for implementation. I was wondering if it is possible that you add the option for us to choose our product class expertise when setting new game with custom cities, along with this new feature? One of the very rare things I dislike is that many things when starting a new game are random. You will fix most of those with this new feature, but I hope you can also add the ability to choose product expertise for human player.

Another thing I wanted to ask is – is it possible to sell residential and commercial buildings in Capitalism Lab? I see that there is an option for that, but I tested it thousands of times, and even after 100 years in game, I cannot sell not a single residential or commercial building. Has anyone else encountered such a bug. New features regarding real estate are exceptional addition to gameplay, but if I am not able to sell some of my real estate to finance new developments, then I cannot normally run a real estate company.
I would like to make a couple of more suggestions:

• We should be able to continue the game as long as we have personal funds available. For example we should be able to sell our company when it reaches its peak and then acquire another perspective company and be able to manage it.

• You should add taxes to the game. I guess it would be relatively simple (just deduct about 35% from our profits). It would make the game more realistic.

• Brand should be treated as an asset, it should be calculated in balance sheet. Now, massive marketing campaigns make my company’s stock prices to plummet, while in reality the drop would not be so drastic. I am talking about same kind of improvement you did with technology.

• There should be a certain waiting period when constructing a new building (its not very realistic to build a store, or a building or, a factory in a single day)

• There should be an option to play with only one industry (for example make a new game allowing only foods industry, or only drug industry, sort of like option we had in Capitalism Plus I think). This would make a game really challenging.

Do you plan to implement any of these features in near future? In my opinion, these features would make this game completely perfect. Without any work on graphics whatsoever. In fact I would be glad to pay for these features as if they were a completely new game.

Keep up the good work Enlight! You are really one of a kind company. And your contact with users in amazing. Great job David! I am especially looking forward to your response to this post.

[David]

First of all, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to the whole Enlight team. Firstly, thank you for great Capitalism series, especially Capitalism 2. I have absolutely enjoyed all of them. Secondly, thank you for fulfilling my wish of making a sequel to Capitalism 2. I have longed for it since the early 2000s. Finally, thank you for making my university studies of economics much easier and far more straightforward. Whenever I encountered a new abstract concept in economy I was always able to visualize it through the world of Capitalism 2. You have really made a tremendous simplified model of how the economics of enterprise work in real life. Every aspiring manager should try at least one of the games in the series.

I also wanted to congratulate you on great job you have done with this sequel, Capitalism Lab. You have revived the series in the best possible way. I am so grateful to you for that. I would have been a real shame if this series just died.

I will forward your message to the dev team. They would be very happy to know that Cap was helpful to you in your study of economics.

Furthermore, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions regarding Capitalism Lab. I see that you are preparing a new feature for Capitalism Lab, which includes editing game with script files. It is such a great idea, I was just about to suggest it when I have seen that it was already scheduled for implementation. I was wondering if it is possible that you add the option for us to choose our product class expertise when setting new game with custom cities, along with this new feature? One of the very rare things I dislike is that many things when starting a new game are random. You will fix most of those with this new feature, but I hope you can also add the ability to choose product expertise for human player.

Yes, this will be included in the script system. We will announce the details about this soon.

Another thing I wanted to ask is – is it possible to sell residential and commercial buildings in Capitalism Lab? I see that there is an option for that, but I tested it thousands of times, and even after 100 years in game, I cannot sell not a single residential or commercial building. Has anyone else encountered such a bug.

Perhaps you could create a new poll on the forum and see if other players were able to sell apartments and commercial buildings to AI companies successfully. I will ask the dev team to look into it if all/most people experienced the same.

New features regarding real estate are exceptional addition to gameplay, but if I am not able to sell some of my real estate to finance new developments, then I cannot normally run a real estate company.
I would like to make a couple of more suggestions:

• We should be able to continue the game as long as we have personal funds available. For example we should be able to sell our company when it reaches its peak and then acquire another perspective company and be able to manage it.

You may vote for the new feature on this thread:
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... f=14&t=848
"Support private companies and the ability to stage a turnaround after the player's company is taken over by AI. "

• You should add taxes to the game. I guess it would be relatively simple (just deduct about 35% from our profits). It would make the game more realistic.

There is a discussion about this on http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =16&t=1205

• Brand should be treated as an asset, it should be calculated in balance sheet. Now, massive marketing campaigns make my company’s stock prices to plummet, while in reality the drop would not be so drastic. I am talking about same kind of improvement you did with technology.

• There should be a certain waiting period when constructing a new building (its not very realistic to build a store, or a building or, a factory in a single day)

• There should be an option to play with only one industry (for example make a new game allowing only foods industry, or only drug industry, sort of like option we had in Capitalism Plus I think). This would make a game really challenging.

You may post these ideas on the Suggestion forum.

[radovan]

Thank you for your response, David. I am sorry I could not reply sooner, but I have been very busy lately.

I am very pleased that you are already planning to implement the ability to choose the class of expertise, along with all the other additions of user-defined scripts. Any news on how long it will be before you release this new feature? I am really looking forward to it.

[David]

The script system is being worked on. In the meantime, we will release version 2.1.02 this week with the following new features:

http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =10&t=1239

http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =10&t=1238

[aarondmsu]

Will we have the ability to choose our own player's product class expertise soon? If that has already been implemented, I can't find where the option is located. Thanks.