dimond wrote:Of all the derivatives : futures, forwards, swaps, options, etc. Probably commodities futures more closely link to current manufacturing mechanism simulation = Nice OK I understand . In the next Patch Will you add? I think that interest
so i read your intro it look like complex
Ok I get understand Warehouse Thank you very much . I understand like this
Warehouse
we can storage in warehouse example you make farm. in one farm we can do more 1 product and get storage to warehouse = save money Wage workers
so warehouse can storage relate product for Reduce costs
warehouse can private label from other product for own product
all of this so I understand correctly?
A while back Arcnor and I had discussed about how commodity market could look like and how to implement it, similar to what we are talking about here. Only I list more conceptual analysis here. http://capitalismlab.com/forum/viewtopi ... =35&t=1862
Warehouse has many uses, relabeling, share storage, are some of the uses. All related to optimize logistic (except, cooking the book ) to let production-end and retail-end both work at higher efficiency. They don't reduce cost directly (actually increase cost, since warehouses have overhead and salary expenses themselves), but with increased efficiency you end up require less farms/factories. Factories/farms have huge monthly overhead and salary expenses over extra warehouses. So as long as you can reduce one factory or one farm by adding a warehouse, it's a gain in profit. Even if not, by increase sales, usually it's still more than enough to cover the cost of warehouse maintenance.
About other derivatives, swaps, options, even forwards, they are related to parties involved in exchange, and how financial system might be in the future Capitalism. Currently, you might notice the whole financial sector in the game is just an empty shell. Banks don't actually function as mediums between money lenders and borrowers, they are neither savings banks nor investment banks, or any other banks, just an automatic ATM with interests function. Not to mentioned there's no bonds, corporate or government, No funds, No securities, nothing even exchange centers for secondary financial market. It's very difficult to imagine any mechanism can function properly without key players and components.
Of course, it's still possible to add things like put/call options purely against things like stock market indexes as gameplay elements. But that would feel like slot-machine mini-game without any financial structure behind it. It's nearly impossible to use mathematical equations to simulate options exchange behaviors, since it's a game theory situation, where traders are playing against each other, and we all know how dumb AIs can be. If we just play options with AIs. it will be giving players a loophole to rob AIs. I my opinion, It could be added, only if we can figure out a way to let it serve a real purpose, like commodities futures market, and help with existing issues in game.
Theoretically, most hedge mechanisms have the purpose of reduce risk to the overall financial system, like insurance policies and absorb shock. However, like I mentioned, we barely has a financial system for risk to begin with. And no need for more tools to reduce "risk" on stock market, it's already easy enough to make a profit playing with stocks. Actually I often use stock market to greatly increase my starting capital level without even directly manipulate stock prices, nearly like cheating. If options mechanism end up like this, I'll deliberately avoid using it as to not make the game too easy. Can you think of any other actual function these derivatives might have served if they are introduced?
Last edited by counting on Sun Aug 03, 2014 3:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
1, of course, you can use farm->warehouse combo. In an actual gameplay what really happened is you end up having multiple farms and need to link them all into resource pools in warehouses for multiple factories. For example if you want to go into snack business from the beginning, and you don't have all the cash to setup many dedicated farms, however you need wheat, strawberries, cocoa, sugars, corn, lemon, robber and milk to produce all the products. What you can do is squeeze all of them into just 2 farms, each crop with only 1 grow-1 output (except milk). Obviously this won't be enough later when you try to scale up the production. This is when you can use some warehouses to link these old farms with new farms' crops (like linking farm #1's strawberries with new 8 grow units farm strawberries into a "2 inputs-1 storage-1 output" warehouse). After that, all your snack factories just need to link to these new warehouses instead of farms. Any time you wish to expand the production yield of crop, all you need to do is adding new farms and new input unit (sometime you need to add more output units as well) in warehouses and joining the new crops into existing resource pool. (but remember, most of the time, at early stage when demand is low, usually you don't need warehouse yet, the reason will be explain below)
2. Large farm have twice the annual production yield and throughput than medium farm, but its monthly overhead and setup cost is less than twice the amount. Hence when scale up, large farms will have less average cost per crop. However if the demand is less than what medium farm can already provide, building large farms are just wasting money (Like if 1 cup of drink is $2, and 2 cups for $3. If you are thirsty enough to drink 2 cups, spend $3 is wise. But if you can't even finish 1 drink, spend $3 instead of $2 is just wasting money)
3. There are 3 level of factories in fact, small, medium, and large. Like farms, they double at each level. 2 small for 1 medium, 2 medium for 1 large. Their expenses also scale up like I mentioned in farms, the bigger they are the more economic they become. But if the demand can't meet the supply, opt for large is bad, especially in early game. For products that you are not sure how they would sell on the market, medium is usually enough, however for killer products you wish to dominate their market, obviously larger is better. If it's semi-product, the demand is usually small, sometime a small factory's semi-product output can supply several factories. (like citric acid, usually their demand is so small, a small factory can supply 4 cities' demand)
Finally, for factory products, warehouse can be used like farms, but between semi-product and finished product factories (treated semi-product factories like farms). Or between finished product factories and retail stores. Like the example in above farms. You can have multiple retails stores across multiple cities, and you require multiple factories to supply all their demand. Without warehouses to join multiple factories' output, you often need to juggle between different factories when you are linking retail store sources. Most of the time you end up with some factories that can not meet the demand, some factories just idle, but collectively they produce enough products for every retail stores. This is when warehouses are useful. Instead of linking directly from retail to factories, you link them to warehouses. and warehouses to factories. In one hand you won't have fluctuations and have stockpile in warehouse, on the other hand, your can optimize the number of factories you need. But remember you need to pay freight cost and overhead using warehouses. Sometimes you need to weight on where to put the warehouses, or even if you need warehouses at all (like my drink example, if all your retail stores can't generate enough demand to exert one factory's output, there's no point building 2 factories, let along using warehouses. This is also true for any source->warehouse->target, like farm->warehouse->factories. When demand is low, one source is enough, warehouse serves little purpose but storage capacity)
Last edited by counting on Sun Aug 03, 2014 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If crop in barn not enough you must add crop space? or change to large factory To be used crop less that depend on demand/supply
So warehouse can transport product other city cheaper than direct retail to factory or farm? If you want expand retail to other city (that is second city)
It just build warehouse second city or first city ? and link warehouse from second city to first city factory right?it will cheap for transportation
As I mentioned You need to weight on where to put warehouses. Freight cost differs from goods to goods.
For example products like Cola, has very cheap base price like below $0.5, and usually you can't sell them to customers for more than $2, even just $1. And it also has a quite high freight cost per unit, even to right next door warehouse it has $0.0x, with cross city up to $0.2, $0.3. In this situation, when you move Cola from your factory to warehouses, and your retail store in another city buy from that warehouse, you essentially need to pay twice freight cost. Hence it's better you put a warehouse very close to your factories that produce Cola. Sometimes it's even not worth it to transport Cola across cities, and you have to build factories on every city you plan to sold Cola, because the efficiency gained via warehouses doesn't cover the extra freight you paid. On the other hand, product like smart phones, it has a very high base price, like $200+, and can sell even higher up to $600 $700, even $1000, and it's freight cost is just a couple of $. In that case, you can pretty much place warehouse wherever you like, since the efficiency gain is definitely out weight the freight cost.
As for the matter about centralize or distributed warehouse complex, it's also depend on how you plan to sell the products and where are the factories. If you have a centralized factories where you place all your raw resources and semi-products in one city, it's best to place your group of warehouses right in the center of your factories area, and let retail stores to buy from the central warehouse groups, this way your extra freight cost associated from warehouses will be minimum. However, if you have a distributed manufacturing system, where you place some class of goods in one city, and some classes in another, obviously it's not a good idea to transport all of them into one city, and then distributed them back to different cities' retail stores again. It's better to place warehouse associated with that near the retail stores you plan to sell them. And it also associated with how widespread your retail stores might be, sometimes when there are a lot of AIs, you are forced to open stores in remote and spread out location, it will be difficult to find a central location for your local warehouses, hence it's better to use a centralized warehouse planning, than distributed.
The general rules is the lower the margin, the higher the freight, try to place warehouses locally, or not using them at all. The higher the raw material freight cost, you need to place warehouses near factories. If margin is high, freight is low, it doesn't matter where you put them, centralized or distributed. A lot of time it also depend on how many goods you plan to squeeze in one warehouse, You can put 3 sets of 2-input-1-out plan in a warehouses, and if they are all product you plan to sell to many cities, then it probably better to be placed distributed and locally. However if you specialized warehouse like 5-input-1-storage-3-out, and only serve one product, then it probably won't get exerted, and should be used alongside centralized factories and warehouse system.
get other product to Private label how benefit? Is It same buy tech?
Ok i understand that you mean if product low price like cola it will not worth for transport other country please suggest this if my product low price we should be new factory in there
* No you don't get opponents tech level, just the product. Similar to the original form of OEM in real life. There are many ways of using private labeling.
One is to gain opponents quality with your own brand strength, and you don't have to pay for factories and upstream sources overhead (if the purchasing price is more economic than building your own facilities). Like I shared in my strategies post, the "Troll Stamp" tactic needs to be quick to unclaimed market, since the opponent likely will start selling and advertising its own stuff on the new market. Still with your own brand instead of opponents, you won't be forced to "price agreement".
Other usages, like joining semi-product, or source materials from opponents into collective resource pool. If you don't, when they are joined, the original brand will be kept, and you will end up with more than one stream of resources. A likely setup is opponent-source->relabel->storage unit and join branches with your-source input->storage unit, hence treated them like your own. This is helpful when using tactics like "Hijacker Guild" or on "Supply Raid".
* It's not just low price, but "low price, low margin and high freight" stuff, like bread is better with local factories. Some products can be "low price, high margin and low freight" like drugs, and you don't need to worry about warehouse placement. Some even have "low price, high margin, but high freight", like cola, cake, and you will be careful with using warehouses, and usually best with local factories, or storage near retailers. Some products are even "High price, high margin, and high freight", like cars, motorcycles. In this situation, there's no standard answer as to where to put warehouses, but since automobile involve many manufacturing steps. Centralized plan with factories and warehouses is easier to manage. It's all depend on the average cost of goods sold (COGS), pick the one that is lower, by trimming down as many factories as possible, using as few warehouses as possible, but still maintain the same over-all output. (or more commonly try to maintain existing facilities, and squeeze more efficiency and output when product market share hasn't be saturated thus able to sell more)
I am curious, have you try the basic strategies or product combo I mentioned in my headcount post? I am afraid that what I consider to be "basic" might be too difficult, or too abstract to follow. (Obviously some don't like retail, but some like mining cartel might). Do I have to make post with detail steps, like with the middleman challenge? or make videos to show them?
) to let production-end and retail-end both work at higher efficiency. They don't reduce cost directly (actually increase cost, since warehouses have overhead and salary expenses themselves), but with increased efficiency you end up require less farms/factories. Factories/farms have huge monthly overhead and salary expenses over extra warehouses. So as long as you can reduce one factory or one farm by adding a warehouse, it's a gain in profit. Even if not, by increase sales, usually it's still more than enough to cover the cost of warehouse maintenance.