Product Ranges

[1mak]

I dont know, if it was discussed already.

I would suggest a new feature, where you can produce different ranged of products.

--> high-end / middle-class / lower-end products for each product segment (eg. small cars, middle class cars, luxury cars).

the high-end products should need more resources and should have higher production costs. but you should be able to sell them for higher prices.

+ the marketing actions should affect the higher class products much more and it should be harder to get a good marketing-value.

[Kristo]

I think this already exists in the game:

If you wanna produce low-end car, for example, you open 3-4 factories, use cheap and low-quality materials and set a relatively low prices.

If you wanna produce luxury cars, you open just 1 factory, use own good-quality materials, spend money on r'n'd, implement new technology level, advertise, create a powerful brand car - and there it is. High-end car for rich people.

And you can produce both these cars in a single game. There'll be differences between the two cars - poor people will buy the cheap one, rich people will buy the luxury one. And city economy will help too.

Also, see this topic:
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =14&t=1150 for brand name.

Possibly both ideas can work together - if somebody wanna produce 3 types of car, he'll just create 3 brands of cars, not just 1. Their names won't be random "low-end car" or "high-end car", but chosen by the player instead. This can help corner a specific market. Imagine - 5 corporations - each have 3 types of cars - this will lead to a lot of thinking what car will be the best for given city. And will implement the "product ranges" idea perfectly.

[WilliamMGary]

Possibly both ideas can work together - if somebody wanna produce 3 types of car, he'll just create 3 brands of cars, not just 1. Their names won't be random "low-end car" or "high-end car", but chosen by the player instead. This can help corner a specific market. Imagine - 5 corporations - each have 3 types of cars - this will lead to a lot of thinking what car will be the best for given city. And will implement the "product ranges" idea perfectly.

+1

[Esoteric Rogue]

I am generally against it based on the following rationale:

By targeting a subset of the market, you are essentially splitting a single market into separate markets. Thus, adding a new product line is essentially the same as adding a new product line since we're just adding another market. I just cannot imagine any great difference in gameplay, other than making things more cluttered by adding another dimension to current space.

Adding a new product is relatively easy. Adding product lines would be complex; every user interface that displays a product would have to be redesigned (expanded) to view sub-products.

At this point of development, I think adding new products would add more value to the game than adding product lines. There are still plenty of industries missing, and I also would enjoy more depth within existing industries.

In conclusion, since new product lines are effectively the same as new products, and since I would find new products to be more engaging and they are easier to implement, I do not support more product lines at this time.

[Kristo]

At this point of development, I think adding new products would add more value to the game than adding product lines. There are still plenty of industries missing, and I also would enjoy more depth within existing industries.

I agree with you - there're a lot of products that i wanna see in the game. And i mean - new farm items, new natural resurses, new semi-products, new final products, based on those. The chemical, food and raw material industries can be easily expanded.

The "Types of cars" example is already discused before in topic about new products http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... 3586#p3586- the "pickup truck", "minivan" and so on...

I hope the developers will find easy and fast way to "give" new products without changing the game and working too much. Or it will be something between "new lines of old item" and "a lot of new items". For example - when you manufactoring car, they'll give you a option to choose between "family car", "luxury car", "minivan" - and without much effort we got 3 different new items, the resurses and mechanism stays the same. Idk.

[WilliamMGary]

Every 3 month the introduction of new products (at least 10-15) via a patch would be a great. Might help with the DRM folks lol