A Few Ideas

[Darcon]

First, thanks for picking this game up and not only updating it but continually providing fresh new features and bug fixes. I've been playing Capitalism II for a very long time now and was excited when you all initially announced you were going to be updating the game. I've been extremely happy with the work you've already done. The beta releases only have one drawback, I don't have any saves that I've been playing for months/years like I did with Cap II since I'm constantly updating to play the latest release lol.

I really like the addition of being able to assign the CCO to only manage specific groups of firms. I would like to see this carried over to the CEO as it is still either manage this firm or manage all firms.

I would like to be able to buy/sell more than 5% of a stock per transaction. Large purchases are tedious when doing 5% at a time.

Being able to hide apartments/commercial buildings is awesome. Having this option for other types of buildings would be nice as squares of open real estate can still be obstructed in densely populated cities.

I'm not sure if this is something that could be easily fixed but the spacing of roads in cities seems to lend itself to making it hard to utilize all the space. More often than not when placing buildings you end up with a square or two extra. Sure there are building that fit in a 2x2 space but that doesn't always fit with the plan for the city I have going. It would be nice if I could place several blocks worth of factories for example w/o a row of 1x1's or 2x2's of unusable space.

Why not let the CMO manage media firms where their expertise could influence rating points/effectiveness of using that firm? Also, CCO's in the more recent updates to beta versions seem to not be auto linking media outlets like they used to. Maybe I missed it where that was intended but I've had to go through and manually link media firms.

When hiring people to your firm, CCO, CTO etc. it would be nice to offer them shares of the company in conjunction with their salary or issuing them as bonuses at my discretion. These bonuses could influence their opinion of the CEO. I like my C level exec's to get a piece of the prosperity.

I know the use of the one cheat code this game has is not always embraced on this forum but thank you for making to where you could just hold the button down and not have to spam press it. There are times where I play CapLab more like a city builder than a company sim and I like to boost my cash up to build out the residential, commercial and retail areas before the company really gets going. The cheat code allows this type of play which after playing this long is nice; I know I can start a company and push it to profitable w/o the cheat. Recently this cheat stopped affecting player cash. This is nice as it makes the salary a bit more important to building player wealth. It would be nice though to have the option, through a cheat, to boost player cash.

I'm sure I could think of more but this post is already quite long. Thanks again for all the work to keep this game going.

[therealevan]

Hello Darcon and welcome to the CapII/CapLab forum. It's great to see your ideas, continue to voice your ideas and thoughts!

Cheers

[Darcon]

Hello Darcon and welcome to the CapII/CapLab forum. It's great to see your ideas, continue to voice your ideas and thoughts!

Cheers

Thanks, I've been around for a while but don't post much. Couldn't remember what my forum login was so had to create a new account. Always happy to toss ideas out there when developers show they actually listen which has been the case here since they've picked the game up and given us CapLab.

[Darcon]

* We have the option to sort suppliers by warehouse only which is awesome, would like to see the same option for factories only.

* Sometimes I build a lot of retail stores at once. It is somewhat of a pain after placing one to have to go back through the menu to select the next one. This really applies to any building such as factories and/or warehouses. Doing something similar to other games where, for example, if I'm placing factories I can place several w/o having to go back through the menu. In the case of retail stores just having the menu stay open after placing a store would make it far easier to select the next one in a multiple type store scenario.

* Since Apartments/Commercial buildings are handled differently than the other buildings (I'm just guessing on this) I'm not sure how hard this would be to add. I love being able to set training/advertising across all my firms from my HQ. Would love to see an option to set rent across all of the ones I own with the same option as current to set it as a % of market rate.

[Darcon]

* There needs to be a way to remove AI firms from purchasing from farms/factories/warehouses when you change the firm to internal sale. As it is now, if they they were purchasing from the firm before you changed it they will continue to purchase from that firm. This makes fully utilizing warehouses a little tough since you can't force the AI to only buy from your warehouses if they were previously buying direct from the source.

* When your C level execs ask for a raise it would be really nice if it worked liked the dialog when purchasing firms. Instead of rejecting your offer and just quitting, let it be more like a negotiation where you can offer them higher amounts until they accept. Could even work in my previous suggestion of allowing stock options to factor into their salary, they ask for a raise and you give them X amount of money in addition to Y amount of shares.

[Econ]

Hello, Darcon!

It's cool that you share your suggestions for improving the game, and I see that some of your ideas have been in my mind as well.

* There needs to be a way to remove AI firms from purchasing from farms/factories/warehouses when you change the firm to internal sale. As it is now, if they they were purchasing from the firm before you changed it they will continue to purchase from that firm. This makes fully utilizing warehouses a little tough since you can't force the AI to only buy from your warehouses if they were previously buying direct from the source.

That sounds strange. So the Al can still buy your raw materials / semi-products after you've toggled ON internal sale. At least in Capitalism II, the Al could not purchase anymore from you immediately after you've toggled on internal sale. Well, if the Al still can, then I'd say it's a quite important fix to make.

* Since Apartments/Commercial buildings are handled differently than the other buildings (I'm just guessing on this) I'm not sure how hard this would be to add. I love being able to set training/advertising across all my firms from my HQ. Would love to see an option to set rent across all of the ones I own with the same option as current to set it as a % of market rate.

That sounds like a good idea. I usually just keep the rent at a constant level with the "M" (% of market rate), but I guess a way to change all of them with one click saves you a lot of clicking! I like the training bar from the HQ as well, but it would be even better, in my opinion, if there was a separate bar for factories, farms, warehouses, and retail stores! I tend to use the same training level for the factories, warehouses (I haven't used these much yet though), and retail stores, but for farms I always set the training level higher, because it's crucial to level them up faster.

Keep the suggestions coming, Darcon!

[counting]

* There needs to be a way to remove AI firms from purchasing from farms/factories/warehouses when you change the firm to internal sale. As it is now, if they they were purchasing from the firm before you changed it they will continue to purchase from that firm. This makes fully utilizing warehouses a little tough since you can't force the AI to only buy from your warehouses if they were previously buying direct from the source.

That sounds strange. So the Al can still buy your raw materials / semi-products after you've toggled ON internal sale. At least in Capitalism II, the Al could not purchase anymore from you immediately after you've toggled on internal sale. Well, if the Al still can, then I'd say it's a quite important fix to make.

Toggle internal sale works in Cap lab. It's more of a display issue and related to AI decision timing. When you enable internal sale of a factory when AI already purchasing from it, and immediately go to AI's purchasing firm/store to click the supplier link (if you allow spying on AI of course), it will still show the source from you. The reason is simply because any purchasing unit has storage space, and need time to consume merchandises. Usually AI's decision to re-link take place when it runs out. If you wait a while after it runs out, AI WILL find a better source (but not necessarily from yours, unless you provide better or equal over-all rating and price+freight than the original). I sometimes find AI simply changes the manufacturing plan all together, and stop purchasing that merchandise.

A trick to force a check immediately (with some write-off cost), is to setup your new warehouse and let its output establish, delete the original source factory's output unit, then replace and re-link your internal supply chain (remember to set internal sale as default ON). Remember this only forces AI to check a new deal, not necessarily means AI will still choose you.

I think current system can still be improved, like using contract sales (I think there's already similar suggestion), so AI tolerates a range of product rating and price within contract, using a mechanism to re-direct output from one firm to another. However, this might need some work to change current AI decision algorithm for it to be feasible.

[Darcon]

Slow reply, summer months keep me busy and not playing as much.

* Since Apartments/Commercial buildings are handled differently than the other buildings (I'm just guessing on this) I'm not sure how hard this would be to add. I love being able to set training/advertising across all my firms from my HQ. Would love to see an option to set rent across all of the ones I own with the same option as current to set it as a % of market rate.

That sounds like a good idea. I usually just keep the rent at a constant level with the "M" (% of market rate), but I guess a way to change all of them with one click saves you a lot of clicking! I like the training bar from the HQ as well, but it would be even better, in my opinion, if there was a separate bar for factories, farms, warehouses, and retail stores! I tend to use the same training level for the factories, warehouses (I haven't used these much yet though), and retail stores, but for farms I always set the training level higher, because it's crucial to level them up faster.

I use % of market rate after occupancy is above 85%. Early on I like to set my rent well below market rate to entice people to move there. Would be great if I could do this at my HQ across all firms. I agree with you that setting the training on a firm specific level would be far better but it is nice to finally get it centralized and not have to cycle through every firm to set it at the desired point.

Quote:
* There needs to be a way to remove AI firms from purchasing from farms/factories/warehouses when you change the firm to internal sale. As it is now, if they they were purchasing from the firm before you changed it they will continue to purchase from that firm. This makes fully utilizing warehouses a little tough since you can't force the AI to only buy from your warehouses if they were previously buying direct from the source.

That sounds strange. So the Al can still buy your raw materials / semi-products after you've toggled ON internal sale. At least in Capitalism II, the Al could not purchase anymore from you immediately after you've toggled on internal sale. Well, if the Al still can, then I'd say it's a quite important fix to make.

This is only something I've noticed happening in the more recent beta versions. In past versions and in Cap II it has always worked where when you toggled internal sale they stopped purchasing from that firm. It would be nice if you could set your factories to only sale to your warehouses at a company level instead of a per firm level. This is an area that internal sale falls short, factories will still purchase from a farm that you own instead of using the warehouse unless you go manually switch the supplier. I love the addition of warehouses, they make so much sense and really help manage supply/demand fluctuations as well as the growing seasons of farms that impact supply. Just need a little more on the management side to bring out their full potential.

Toggle internal sale works in Cap lab. It's more of a display issue and related to AI decision timing. When you enable internal sale of a factory when AI already purchasing from it, and immediately go to AI's purchasing firm/store to click the supplier link (if you allow spying on AI of course), it will still show the source from you. The reason is simply because any purchasing unit has storage space, and need time to consume merchandises. Usually AI's decision to re-link take place when it runs out. If you wait a while after it runs out, AI WILL find a better source (but not necessarily from yours, unless you provide better or equal over-all rating and price+freight than the original). I sometimes find AI simply changes the manufacturing plan all together, and stop purchasing that merchandise.

A trick to force a check immediately (with some write-off cost), is to setup your new warehouse and let its output establish, delete the original source factory's output unit, then replace and re-link your internal supply chain (remember to set internal sale as default ON). Remember this only forces AI to check a new deal, not necessarily means AI will still choose you.

What I've noticed is that after a significant period of time (years) they're still purchasing from the factory that is supposed to be internal only. Again I've only noticed this happening in the more recent versions of the beta (currently I'm playing 2.5.01b) They could easily get the same product from my warehouse like the other AI firms that bought the product after I had toggled internal on at the factory. The trick you mentioned is actually how I've been getting around the issue, just tedious when you're running a rather large company with an expansive production infrastructure.

I put a great deal of time in setting up my current save game so I've not updated to the latest patches to avoid having to start all over. I get a chance to test the newer versions I'll see if it still happens.

As for additional features, someone else already mentioned it in another thread but I think its worth repeating. Buying real estate is awesome. More options on what to do with that real estate would be nice. Rent it, sale it other companies, maybe an auction component could be worked up so AI companies could compete on the same real estate. This could also include mansions the player owns.

[counting]

Regarding the rent level, I notice that it's also relevant to the supply/demand of apartment/office buildings. When building too fast and let supply exceed demand too much, the effective rent level/percentage can drop significantly. Due to this effect is a city-wide effect, so if centralized real estate management ever been implemented, IMO it should be set more than just at company level or firm level, but also at city level.

[Darcon]

Regarding the rent level, I notice that it's also relevant to the supply/demand of apartment/office buildings. When building too fast and let supply exceed demand too much, the effective rent level/percentage can drop significantly. Due to this effect is a city-wide effect, so if centralized real estate management ever been implemented, IMO it should be set more than just at company level or firm level, but also at city level.

Agree completely. Apartments have been one of the areas I've always felt needed better management options. It almost felt like, in Cap 2, they were added as a "last minute" feature that they didn't put a lot of time into designing.