Capitalism Lab post-release beta v2.5.07 patch

[counting]

After my company which is using unique brand strategy and has many products merged with a company using the same brand strategy, all my brand rating other than those of the merged company will be reset to zero. For example, after my mobile phone company merged with a desktop computer company, the brand rating of desktop remain at certain level, however, the brand rating of the mobile phone disappeared. I tried to merge another two companies which are using corporate and range brand strategy respectively, but the results were different: all brand rating remained. By the way, it happened with patch 2.5.03. I am not sure whether it is a bug or not.

I remember that there was a bug when the new child company brand retaining first introduced. Have you tried a newer version and see if the brand retaining is still bugged? (Or the newer patch mess up the child-parent brand condition again?)

[counting]

I did a test game in 2.5.04. And the child brand retaining after merger is indeed bugged (again ). I have a multi-product billion parent companies with unique brand strategy, and merger a child company of just 3 products (all different than the parent) unique brand. Only the 3 child brand rating retained.

It seems like the condition is in reverse, what shouldn't be retained (the child's zero brand) is actually retained.

[counting]

I think this condition in 2.5.03 is in reverse, when checking if child's brand will be retained.

Condition #1
The parent's brand loyalty > child's brand loyalty
AND
The parent's brand rating > child's brand rating (brand rating is the sum of brand awareness and brand loyalty)

it should be

Condition #1
The child's brand loyalty > parent's brand loyalty
AND
The child's brand rating > parent's brand rating (brand rating is the sum of brand awareness and brand loyalty)

[mxchen]

I've tried after the game had patched to v.2.5.04, and this situation did not change.

I think this condition in 2.5.03 is in reverse, when checking if child's brand will be retained.

Condition #1
The parent's brand loyalty > child's brand loyalty
AND
The parent's brand rating > child's brand rating (brand rating is the sum of brand awareness and brand loyalty)

it should be

Condition #1
The child's brand loyalty > parent's brand loyalty
AND
The child's brand rating > parent's brand rating (brand rating is the sum of brand awareness and brand loyalty)

[counting]

I've tried after the game had patched to v.2.5.04, and this situation did not change.

I think we'll have to wait for another patch to fix it

[David]

We have fixed it. Please download the latest v2.5.05 from: http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =10&t=1897

[counting]

I've tested the new 2.5.05 patch with merger, and the brand merger condition still seems off.

Generally it does fix the reverse logic during merger, but it still doesn't fit with the description in web page. Unless it's a fixed version from this patch's change log.

Here is a set of before and after merger saves (adapt from au8633's save). The parent company's toilet cleaner has 25 brand awareness + 0 brand loyalty = 25 brand rating, and the child company's has 32 brand awareness + "-1" brand loyalty = 31 brand rating. If the description on the web page is correct, the condition #2 [The child's brand loyalty >=0 OR The child's brand loyalty is at least 10 points greater than the parent's brand loyalty] should be false, hence the child's brand shouldn't retain since BOTH conditions #1 [The child's brand rating > the parent's brand rating] and #2 should be true. But after merger, it did retain.

Also, I notice that during merger, if you choose paying cash, you pay the current AI share holders AND "white stock" holders full price. But if you choose issuing your stock to AI, the white stocks disappear into thin air. In this case, the gap is big enough, so I essentially saved more than 95% to merger this company (and bought him out afterward using personal wealth) since its CEO held only few percentage of the original shares.

[David]

We have fixed both of these bugs you mentioned and released a new patch v2.5.05B which you may download from: http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =10&t=1897

[counting]

I've used truth table to test 8 possible combination of the parent/child brand condition for merger, so far so good. Only 2 of them are difficult to test, all related to a particular combo of condition #2 where child's loyalty needs to be negative and also 10 points greater than the parent's (which means parent's loyalty need to be less than -11, quite difficult to do).

Since condition#2 is "OR", so condition #1 should be the deciding factor, and decide whether child's brand will be preserve or not. I'll try to recreate the most difficult one, condition #1 is true combined with this situation and child's brand should be preserved.

And thanks for the quick fix of merger white stock, it has been bugged for quite a while, maybe now there's a reason to pay cash than always issuing stock

[counting]

I was able to create all 8 possible truth table scenarios, and glad to report that they checked out.

But there are something interesting I discovered. Like in condition #1, indeed it requires child's brand rating at least 1 point greater than parent's, if they are equal, parent's brand loyalty, awareness, and rating are retained. Also the second criteria in condition #2 ["The child's brand loyalty is at least 10 points greater than the parent's brand loyalty"] is in fact [child's brand loyalty > parent's brand loyalty + 10], that means if child's brand loyalty is "-1", for this criteria to be true, the parent's brand loyalty has to be "-12" or less. When parent's brand loyalty is "-11" this criteria is still false. (So the sentience to describe this criteria should be more accurate as ["The child's brand loyalty is more than 10 points greater than the parent's brand loyalty"])