Better auto pricing or small UI change on retails to ease it

[RafaelF82]

The only annoying thing about capitalism is that you have to constantly waste time making the extremely tedious and boring pricing adjustments.

I tried to hire a COO to fix it but they don't do what I want so I have to manually suffer to the pricing, the last COO went nuts making my products reach OVERALL scores of 80 when there was NO competition on the product (locals were 5 or something).

My suggestion is simple, let us set an value for that OVERALL product score that we want to keep against the best competition (be it local or another corporation), it could even be a COO setting, I don't mind paying their massive salary if they would do this simple thing for me (although their salary for such a dumb job doesn't make sense, I'd rather have a new office for this auto pricing).
It should also be set to not sell below costs as an option just like the current COO allows.

For example,
I'm selling eggs, my eggs considering the quality, price and brand are 30 on overall.
Locals are 5.
No other corporation selling eggs.

1-I set my option to be +10 overall against best competition.
2-My eggs get priced accordingly to reach a 15 overall score.

Another example:
I'm selling eggs, my eggs considering the quality, price and brand are 20 on overall.
Locals are 25.
Another corporation selling eggs has it at 5.

1-I set my option to be +5 overall against best competition.
2-My eggs get priced accordingly to reach a 30 overall score.

It also should updates prices as quality and brand improves/decreases to keep the overall score correct.

The above thing is near what I manually do once every six game months, it's tedious and drives me away from the game.

The current COO just seem to throw random prices on products and totally destroys my profits.


IF this suggestion is not possible, a small change to the retail screen could save some of my time.

If you look at this picture that I stole from another thread :
http://i49.tinypic.com/aw5m35.png

Just above the red ellipse the author made, you can see that we have this "City average" and "city overall" values, I wish we could choose to instead of these values, we could see the values for the best competition, so in that same screen I could fix my prices accordingly and not have to go into the product detail page to make the proper choice, saves a few seconds/clicks of my life.

[Esoteric Rogue]

My suggestion is simple, let us set an value for that OVERALL product score that we want to keep against the best competition (be it local or another corporation), it could even be a COO setting, I don't mind paying their massive salary if they would do this simple thing for me (although their salary for such a dumb job doesn't make sense, I'd rather have a new office for this auto pricing).
It should also be set to not sell below costs as an option just like the current COO allows.

...

Just above the red ellipse the author made, you can see that we have this "City average" and "city overall" values, I wish we could choose to instead of these values, we could see the values for the best competition, so in that same screen I could fix my prices accordingly and not have to go into the product detail page to make the proper choice, saves a few seconds/clicks of my life.

Yes, being able to set the target overall relative to the competition is something I always wanted. But I appreciate how complex it gets.

Only being based on bets competition would be nasty when the AI is doing the same thing. For example, say the local average was 30, I set +15 for 45, the AI sets +15 for 60, and I still have +15 for 75, and he still has +15 for 90, etc.

Obviously we need more than one factor, or some sort of a cap. Many ways to implement that even just a mathematical limit based on distance from city overall (which is arbitrary but better than nothing.) That is, the further the ratings are from overall, the less price cutting you try. So, with city at 30, competitor at 40, okay we try a target value of 55, but when competitor is at 110, we only try a target value of 115. At some point there is a limit, which should vary between personality.

Anyway, I hope that many of us have made it clear to the devs that we want more effective COO's.

_____
I think the city average is a more useful aggregate metric than best competitor rating because if the best rating only has a tiny part of the market (because of limited supply) it's nearly irrelevant.

Personally, I use the Product Details window to set price. I just stay on this screen and use the arrow keys to move to the next product. This saves me time over the Firm Overview window because I can set the price of more than one firm at a time.

[RafaelF82]

Yes, being able to set the target overall relative to the competition is something I always wanted. But I appreciate how complex it gets.

Only being based on bets competition would be nasty when the AI is doing the same thing. For example, say the local average was 30, I set +15 for 45, the AI sets +15 for 60, and I still have +15 for 75, and he still has +15 for 90, etc.

Obviously we need more than one factor, or some sort of a cap. Many ways to implement that even just a mathematical limit based on distance from city overall (which is arbitrary but better than nothing.) That is, the further the ratings are from overall, the less price cutting you try. So, with city at 30, competitor at 40, okay we try a target value of 55, but when competitor is at 110, we only try a target value of 115. At some point there is a limit, which should vary between personality.

I actually don't want it to be a complicated system.
I believe the developers already have a similar code in place for the AI because it can adjust it's prices to match the player's overall score, so what I'm asking is the same thing for the players.
It's up to the player to decide if he wants to enter a price war against the AI or not, if you don't want a price war you go to the product detail page and set it to keep a +0 overall against the best competition.
I would only turn this option on when I already had a lot of products being sold and managing 70+ prices becomes boring, so a price war here or there is what I actually do to drive competition out of the market and the system would still be what I want.

As soon as I recover my game password I'll post a screenshot showing what I believe would be perfect.
_____

I think the city average is a more useful aggregate metric than best competitor rating because if the best rating only has a tiny part of the market (because of limited supply) it's nearly irrelevant.

I disagree, I believe the average is useless to compare my own performance against competition because oftentimes I'll be 50% of the average so I'd be comparing my score against myself too, that's not useful imo.

Personally, I use the Product Details window to set price. I just stay on this screen and use the arrow keys to move to the next product. This saves me time over the Firm Overview window because I can set the price of more than one firm at a time.

Yeah I do that too but it only scrolls through the products in the current city, and it still is a waste of time to do a mechanical thing, after a while doing this my eyes start to hurt and I have to stop playing, feels more like a real job than a fun game.

The mechanical is boring :

1-enter retail shop in town
2-double click product
3-see who's the best competition and their overall
4-keep adjusting my prices till my overall is +10 against theirs
5-press down key
6-repeat steps 3 to 5 until passed all products
7-quit screen
8-go to next city
9-repeat steps 1 to 8 until passed all cities

this is boring...

I must add I'm in no way a top player, I play at around 70% difficulty on my own enjoyable pace, I don't know how other players manage their prices, this is what I do and my suggestion is based on that.

[Esoteric Rogue]

1-enter retail shop in town
2-double click product
3-see who's the best competition and their overall
4-keep adjusting my prices till my overall is +10 against theirs
5-press down key
6-repeat steps 3 to 5 until passed all products
7-quit screen
8-go to next city
9-repeat steps 1 to 8 until passed all cities

I do fully support that interface navigation should be one of the priorities for any game involving micromanagement, and I love to nitpick on wasted keystrokes and mouse movements. I'd like to mention a couple useful features that might make it a little easier for you. Or, even if you know them, they might be of help to others.

steps 1, 8, and 9 can be combine: You can save a lot of time by using the minimap filters instead of locating on the main view. For the task at hand, select "my firms" and "retail" and "all cities". Hitting space will then open up your next retail firm.

regarding step 2, I'll just mention that 'r' is the shortcut key for Product Details. If I'm not using the firm over, which I usually don't for price setting, I just make sure I'm in the right city and hit 'r'.

There is a disconnect that using the minimap + space will cycle through all cities, where as in the Product Details there is no "all cities" nor a keyboard command to cycle the cities, so if we're using the down arrow to cycle products, we have to grab the mouse to select the next city before return to the down arrow on the keyboard. I have not gotten any response to my suggested fix: http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =10&t=1082

[RafaelF82]

@Esoteric Rogue, I'll try your suggestion later, see how does it work and if it saves some time.


Meanwhile, I finally got around to making what I think would be perfect.

This screenshot :



If we could have that option, so that we could select on the product detail page for each product, it would be AWESOME.
It should be just like the price is on this page which I believe it's on per product+per city setting so that would be perfect.

The setting is enabled/disabled for each product by the little checkbox and in the textbox you set any number you want.

Having to constantly monitor that little overall score thing and adjust prices REALLY drives me away from the game, if it could be automatic I'd enjoy capitalism a lot more. I always stop playing the game once I reach around 30 products cause it gets so annoying to have to fix prices myself even for products that have little to no competition where the overall keeps changing by 1 or 2 points monthly for any reason.

Must we make polls for suggestions ? Should I make a new thread with a poll ?



edit:Just to add some more reasoning behind this, not only it's extremely boring task to constantly change prices, it's also not the job of a CEO, at least I don't think it is and others who know better can correct me.
As CEO I expect to take strategical decisions, and not pick prices for a can of chicken soup on a specific store, I want to go look at the store, see that it only has local competition and tell the store manager to keep the prices on a specific ratio (the overall score) to either get more market (by setting a larger + overall score) or to make more profit, or if it has competition and I don't want to fight I can set it at +0. I believe this option is a lot more realistic than what currently exists in the game.

[greewoch]

that wouldnt work I think; AI isnt afraid of competition at all, I mean come on look at this pic; that price, that market share etc :/

[Esoteric Rogue]

Must we make polls for suggestions ? Should I make a new thread with a poll ?

Yes / no. I like to wait until David tells me to make a poll. He does a good job of monitoring every thread, the obvious stuff doesn't need a vote, and frankly the bad ideas don't deserve a poll

Back to your suggestion, I'm going to reiterate. Just doing +10 better than highest is not going to work. The COO and AI use the same code (though there are different personalities). If your COO and an AI are both using the +10 option, you're both going to set the price at $.01. The AI's at 50. Your COO sets 60. The AI sets 70. Your COO sets 80. And so on.

I like your idea, I'm just pointing out it needs to be slightly more complex to be feasible.

Since it's a COO option, it should probably be on the COO screen, but nice pic

[greewoch]

Having to constantly monitor that little overall score thing and adjust prices REALLY drives me away from the game, if it could be automatic I'd enjoy capitalism a lot more. I always stop playing the game once I reach around 30 products cause it gets so annoying to have to fix prices myself even for products that have little to no competition where the overall keeps changing by 1 or 2 points monthly for any reason.

I got a feeling that most of the people doesnt like to pay for COO salaries xD. Basicly, what you want is a COO. I will quote from myself, here;

Truth be told, I've only hired a COO once in CapLab, and thought his retail management ability was notably lacking

in fact, I find it quite the opposite
I always use internal sale and I sell my own products on 7 cities at same time, so I have lots of retail stores to manage. On capitalism 2, if I've had let COO to change "look for better supplies - from my own firms only" COO was more likely to buy from other cities, even if the factory is next to my retail store, but on caplab, COO algorithm is a lot better.

1- 9/10 of the time if there is a factory nearby and if product qualities are same, they dont buy from other cities, unless supply is too low. Sometimes they do; but it seems its factory supplies most of the time. (flour, frozen chicken etc)
2- They adjust price with brand-quality automaticly. which is the biggest plus for me.
3- They change natural resources as they exhaust. (especially timber; furniture store chains(1 single unit of bed requires 120 timber! + sofa+chair) in 7 cities requires like 5-6 logging camps which exhausts like every 10 years or so)
4- expertises; especially for farming; works like a charm. I remember demand/profit for frozen farm products werent this much in cap 2, especially on low quality.
--

http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/post ... =14&p=6070

[RafaelF82]

that wouldnt work I think; AI isnt afraid of competition at all, I mean come on look at this pic; that price, that market share etc :/

Back to your suggestion, I'm going to reiterate. Just doing +10 better than highest is not going to work. The COO and AI use the same code (though there are different personalities). If your COO and an AI are both using the +10 option, you're both going to set the price at $.01. The AI's at 50. Your COO sets 60. The AI sets 70. Your COO sets 80. And so on.

But doesn't that problem exists already ? Oftentimes I see my COO bringing prices as low as costs to either get more market share (destroying my profits) or to compete, I'm not trying to fix this, it would be just as it is now, except that you would actually have some control over it, it's up to the player to know which option he's gonna use, you can enable or disable for the product and if you set +0 then you will not compete with AI but just keep same ratio.

Since it's a COO option, it should probably be on the COO screen, but nice pic

But it has to be a per product+city option just like product price, I see no way to put it in the COO screen.
I made the pic in paint lol

I got a feeling that most of the people doesnt like to pay for COO salaries xD. Basicly, what you want is a COO. I will quote from myself, here;

The problem I have with the current COO is that it is paid to do things I don't want him doing.
There is no way to predict how he will work, in my last game I was making profits of 10M, with about 10 retail stores around the world, hired a COO and told him to manage my retails, next month I was getting losses of around 30M.

Many people believe the COO salary is good because he is playing the game for you, problem is I don't him playing the game for me.
I don't need a COO to find another natural resource when mine runs out, I don't need a COO to find who is the best supplier, I want to do these things myself, the only thing I don't want to do is having to scroll around 60 product detail pages adjusting prices here or there in cities where my brand got a little better or for products my farms got better at making and so on.
Paying 50 million for a person to do just price adjustments here or there makes no sense while I'm the one dictating that the prices should follow a certain trend.



I'm actually curious, how do you people monitor your products prices ? I posted the steps I do on a previous post and am really curious if anyone else isn't bothered by the tedium of doing it.

Also how do you calculate the perfect price ? I always use the Overall score, by setting it +X against competitors if I feel like competing otherwise I match my overall to theirs. By setting +5 for example, I bring all prices down, but them I beat them on brand and quality and usually make them quit.

I say again, I am a noob at this game so...

[Esoteric Rogue]

Truth be told, I've only hired a COO once in CapLab, and thought his retail management ability was notably lacking

I just want to amend that statement. I have used the COO in a few more games now, and everything was fine in the world of retail. Maybe not great, but no complaints either.

But it has to be a per product+city option just like product price, I see no way to put it in the COO screen

Ah. I see.