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

[greewoch]

about this;

Oftentimes I see my COO bringing prices as low as costs to either get more market share (destroying my profits) or to compete

if you pick "normal prices" for your COO, he doesn't compete for market share; but a COO always sets factory prices as high as possible, so retail stores make tiny profits at best.

this SS is from my current game;


as you can see, I cant even earn 100k $ from my retail stores, because of advertising expenses + coo's maximized factory prices, meanwhile I make over 1,4 billion from my factories. (I use internal sale on everyhing) This didnt bother me much playing with inverse inflation (factory prices are still high but at least advertise expenses doesnt increase with time)

Maybe this might need a bit tweak from developers; Because of high factory prices, other companies prefers to buy let's say; 30 quality, 0 brand products from other companies over mine ~100 quality, ~100 brand products,


I have 2 suggestions;

1< Simlply, I'm not sure if COO just adjust the factory prices depending on the most expensive market or on a mixed calcucation but simply lower the factory prices by %15 %20 on whatever price algorithm COO uses atm.

2<Different prices for different factories in different cities wouldnt work, because ai would just like to buy from cheaper country, but maybe something like this; "internal sale to other countries!" I don't really know how does exporting works in real world but I guess a company have to pass a lot of diffuculties to take permission to start exporting, just think like; deactivating internal sale would mean to take this permission for other country markets and make a different button for letting to buy other companies but only in same country, because you dont have the permission to sell overseas. this way COO can just fix the factory prices differently in each city, with no problem.


most of the time, COO just forces retail stores to sell at a loss.


you see;
in 3 different city, I make over 70k $ from frozen lambs in my farms, but in my retail stores I make negative profits from frozen lambs; ( demand is high/ farms and retail stores are in same cities.
This happens especially if you have a low price concerned city and producing same stuff in other cities too; since COO adjusts same factory/farm prices in all cities

[RafaelF82]

Interesting, I did try both normal and aggressive settings using a savegame prior to hiring the COO and in both the COO did the same thing, tried to maximize market share setting low prices. I'm not sure what happened.

I did not set the COO to control the factories, they were internal sale only and I did set low prices on them cause I like to see all firms profiting. The COO maybe got lost because I had low prices on factories ? Things like $0.50 on frozen products from farms and export costs...


Back on topic I really don't want the AI managing my stores, I just want the prices to be adjusted properly without me having to go one by one.

[RafaelF82]

Have to double post because I totally discovered what I was doing wrong with COOs.

I was setting them to "sell factory internal sale products at cost", because I thought that it was an option for the FACTORIES and not for the STORES !!

I thought that option would change the selling price of products in my factories to be the same as cost, so that my retails would have the largest profit, but instead what it does is sell the products at my retails for the price of cost... DUH

I'm an idiot lol

COO is working perfectly now and I'm loving him !

[Esoteric Rogue]

COO is working perfectly now and I'm loving him !

Great! That will help shore up my own confidence in the COO's. Also, it's always good to learn how such a simple mistake can ruin your day so that we can learn to recognize the symptoms.

[WilliamMGary]

A few observations I want to make:

1. Rather your retails stores make 1 billion a year and your factory makes 94 million when it comes to the balance sheet it doesn't matter.

2. I like managing the factories myself (currently not using a COO) and I set the price so that it makes enough money to show a profit while also offering a good wholesale price to my retail stores who are more exposed to economic cycles and competition, so it's important that they have room to adjust prices as needed.

3. Advertising is a major expense for retail, most people who play follows the AI lead and advertise within the individual stores. In Cap2 I always setup stories just for advertising for all markets in CapLab once I switch branding I will be using warehouses to do the advertising. This will help me see how my retails are doing financial better and with me selling all my products (eventually) from warehouses it will help me determine if the wholesale price is too low or too high at a glance.

4. The COO pricing does need improvement but there's been constant discussion of this. I would like a see more intelligent COO AI when he's delegated by a human player. There's many factors that I think the COO doesn't take into account that he should to help him determine pricing in retail stores.