Suggestions from players

[ajpiper2k]

I think the idea of the corporate office needs to be expanded. I've already stated that I'm not a big fan of paying for bunch of high priced executives that just want more and more money for mediocre results. But I like the idea of centralizing certain administrative functions for a company. Advertising, payroll, IT services, customer service center, technical support are all different types of services a company has to provide.

I think this is an opportunity for regional administrative buildings. The larger your staff, the more payroll squares you will require. Each product should have an overall advertising budget. But, I don't think you need an advertising square in each store. This would typically be done in a central office for all the stores. Now, the more products you sell, the larger the amount of advertising you would require. Similarly, some products (like computers) require more technical support. The lower the quality of the product, the more technical support calls you have. In turn, the better trained your technical support staff is, the better your customer satisfaction with the product.

All I ask is please don't make me hire an executive to manage these departments.

Andy

[ajpiper2k]

I'm sure by now, you are getting tired of hearing about my ideas, but there was one more issue/question I wanted to put on the table.

Thus far, I have found it far more cost effective to dedicate one store to a single product. For example, I would build one store to sell socks, then another store to sell shoes. The reason I do this is because the engine gives me greater demand for my product and I can push a lot more volume. Now, if I build a store up so that all the 3x3 squares are at a training level of 9, I can still have enough demand to justify opening another store. When I build a store (right next door) with the same product and the same price, the overall sales dramatically decreases to the point where I can shut down one of my factories.

This model has a lot of advantages for me. First, all of my sales for a single product within a city are in one place. I can put like stores together (i.e. Shoes/socks) to make them easy to find. And I have a simple supply chain where three large factories can provide enough product for 4 sales units within the store. There is enough profit in this model where I can make $3-4 billion / year in profit.

Does the game account for synergy of products within stores. For example, people are more likely to go to a drug store for cold medicine and cough syrup instaed of having to go to two or three different stores.

It may make the game more challenging if store with similar products benefitted from having multiple products on the shelves. But, then the demand has to remain more steady for a product when you open up additional stores to meet demand. In addition, some of my reporting suggestions above would help a player manage a model with multiple stores easier.

Thanks for reading all these posts. Let me know if you think I'm being too much of a pain.

Andy

[Alan Doyle]

Distribution centre = I like

[ajpiper2k]

I'm not sure if everyone's read this, but someone started a discussion in the general thread regarding adding R&D to develop technologies for renewable resources. This would allow us to make oil based products in the absense of an oil well. I thought the idea could be easy to implement within the games existing framework.

You can find the thread here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=48

[ajpiper2k]

Can you make the maps bigger? I think one of the challenges I have that there isn't enough space to put all the farms I want to build. Maybe this was done intentionally. If so, you may wish to reconsider. In reality, I would be albe to buy land in the next town if I required it. I would have to pay extra for shipping charges, but I'm really ok with that.

Thanks.

Andy

[ajpiper2k]

One more request. When you select a supplier, in Cap II, you get a list that only displays 3 suppliers before you have to scroll. Would it be possible to condense the display and double the number of suppliers that I can see before I scroll? That would save me a ton of time. After all, all I really need to see is the picture, cost and supply/demand graph. All the extra information isn't very useful to me.

Thanks.

Andy

[alb33]

It would be pretty nice if you had more control over the COO:
1. Option to choose weather he buys goods from own production only.
2. To set a (general) minimum overall rating for his pricing strategy (it happens quite often to me that the COO pulls the prices up until the overall rating goes down to 20).

And a more general thing:
1. Option to choose if the auto link selects own production sites only.

[moneytheory]

When you sell all your shares and you are taken over the game ends. How ever you should have the option of resigning from your company and starting another one instead of the game ending. After all you have your money from the shares you sold.

[edsupp]

how about adding seasons and demand changes as the seasons go? like increased ice cream sales during summer or increased sweater sales during winter?

it would need graphical changes though

[Teppo]

The add-on should emphasize
1. Changes towards more Realism
2. Even better AI
3. Even more things to do in the game

It's pretty obvious when reading this post that english is not my native language. Now that I read this stuff below, I've noticed that there is a need to form sentences in a very specific way to get the exact point through which I'm trying to make. I haven't been very succesful in this and see no reason to better the sentences further. Too much work for entertainment purpose because I'd need to work on my english skill on this area at the same time. I've been adding stuff here from time to time, it's a fine pastime and easy enough. When I think how much the original game designer probably had to write stuff and work on the specifics ---ugh. It's not easy nor simple to make a game.

Some specific ideas:
1. It's a bit too easy to get rich by starting the game with trading stocks only. For many times I've owned over half of the total stock value of all players with only trading stocks and buying out advertising firms etc. It works more often than not. Something in the game engine makes computer corp stocks too volatile. A 50-year old succesful AI company still does those rock-bottoms and highs at least once in a decade, like from $200 to $4000 stock price variation back and forth, and a rich player can make lots of profit on that. Somewhat unrealistic but not impossible in reality, perhaps not as repetitious and predictable. I don't remember having seen any corp in the game without that volatility.
2. Could add taxes to the add-on. A simple taxation system.
3. Whatever other 'exploits' (too easy ways to be succesful) players have found, should be made more difficult, for realism.
4. So far there is only goods to produce, except advertising companies. Could add some more services to sell but I don't know how to categorize them. There should perhaps be a comprehensive list of services like there is of goods or then just some 'general' things similar to the advertising companies, with similar simple settings like how much money to put into developing the service etc.
5. Perhaps an option to donate to different charities to help the world.. rainforests, areas in famine, things like that. Just a few options of which players could choose and it could work as PR stuff for the company. It also gives a sense of morality which doesn't hurt if the game is used as an educational tool as well. There could be a possibility to view statistics about how much players have donated to different charities. Computer players could also make donations. Nowadays we all have to take into account common good, why not in business sims.
6. An option to let computer players start a certain amount of months/years before the player. It's easy to make, just fast forward the game at the beginning with a loading screen for example.
7. When I begin many 10-year R&D's with max training funds, the stock price drops. The game could take into account the ongoing projects, otherwise it's one too easy(exploit) way to buy my own stock. There could be other similar ways found to lower stock price in the game, those should be changed. R&D projects results should be subject to random chance, like 50% variation in the tech rate raise for each project.
8. 'Local' competitors could buy tech too, so that it's easier to get tech sold if a player wants to concentrate on R&D for example. Computer players can be quite hesitant on making those offers.
9. Just how many billions and decades you can spend into developing grape juice or bread production technology? Those have been somewhat same for a long time in real world. Perhaps a limit on some techs, remove it completely or change it so that tech affects production amount not quality.
10. Computer doesn't seem to buy firms when I click 'sell this firm' on many retail stores etc. and wait for decades. Government always sells off advertising firms and never buys them back if player puts them on sale, it's unrealistic that they are on sale in every game. Computer players don't buy ad firms currently, I think. They could in the add-on.
11. COO doesn't do anything (I tested for a few months) to advertising pricing and new content development budget even if they're set all to hell.
12. When trading stocks, the price and percentage adjusting function is too fast, can't use it accurately.
13. I have to pay 70 millions per year for my COO to get my prices adjusted automatically in a couple of retail stores. There should be a free automatic price changing function.
14. COO does not make full use of the ad firms that I own when there is a delegated retail store with advertising units. And when he does, he should always put the amount to max when there are owned ad firms to use.
15. When the game has been going on for decades and some computer players go bankrupt, the newcomer corps never seem to be succesful. Perhaps the game should grant them a couple of free techs equivalent to highest current tech, or some other advantage.
16. In retail stores, the product images sometimes disappear for some products which have active sales units in the firm. I could have sales units selling 4-5 products and two images visible. So I can't change prices from there etc. The image should stay as long as there is one purchasing unit with a supplier linked to it or sales unit which has stock left.
17. Why can't I supply retail stores straight from farms. Shops sell strawberries and other veggies in real world too.
18. Computer players don't make use of natural resource sites. Many times there is a huge demand for them whenever I build any kind of mine/oil well/etc.. It's not about cost-effectiveness at least, and computers usually have large cash reserves which they still don't use for this so it's not about them not having enough money for the sites. It's currently way too easy to make money by buying out the resource sites, there should be much more competition for them and perhaps a possibility to always make an offer to a computer player to buy out their resource site (and other firms?) even if they are not on sale, and they should always have some upper limit on the buyout offer which they always accept, a very high one though.
19. Selling price for resource sites could be determined by the game like this: All resource sites could be owned by the city or government at the beginning of the game, also those newly discovered sites, and government always builds a mine to it, uses an effective layout and sells at rate 20 for example, and the site is always for sale after one year of operation in which time the selling price is determined by the basic site value and the last year average demand for that industrial good. If the selling price can be determined effectively without all this crap, all the better. The bottom line is that many sites go much too cheap. Players could also place bids for a few months after the first bid for a site is made, to bring up the price even more.
20. Buy and sell orders for stock trading could be added so that players don't need to be watching the stock prices all the time. They could work when trading with both public and private shareholders. Just to set an amount and price to buy or sell.
21. When I own over 75%(even 100%) of some other corp's stock, the CEO of that corp (computer player) can still sell the stock of other corps that his corp owns and issue new shares. It's a pain in the ass if I want to use the cash of that corp to buy some other corp's stock (computer just sells them away). Sometimes I owned 100% and then it's back to 15% - computer CEO went trigger happy with the 'issue new shares' button without my agreement. The game could ask an agreement for it first. In reality, I believe, that the majority (75% or so) vote of stockholder(s) decide of all stock-related things, not CEO. I could solve the problem with a merger but I don't want to because the computer does all the management for free, and it makes the corp profitable/easy to handle.
22. About the 'headquarters' functions: The personnel training that is conducted from there has currently immediate results, I would change it so that headquarters have similar training funds slider as in firms but it affects all firms. There could also be an option to target it in specific firms (retail only, factories only, R&D only etc.) This could be added to the already ongoing training in firms (the training slider).
CEO's pay has it's limit set too low in general. When a COO takes 80 millions per year, CEO gets 10 millions max. Doesn't a CEO generally have the highest salary in corporations - that's a higher position. The maximum salary of CEO, COO, CTO and CMO could be tied to the same principle - company's current net profit for example - And CEO always has the highest salary. Also, the game resets my CEO salary to 100 000$ always when the max salary goes down, and there it stays. There should be an option to keep the salary at maximum allowed sum so that it increases automatically when it's allowed.
23. When player's main corp buys back shares from the player himself it does not affect stock price, and the other shareholders don't resist it when a player who owns like 45% of the stock sells all his shares to the corp at a peak price if it happens to be. This way a large portion of the corp's cash reserves are transferred to the player. I'm not sure if it's realistic. Only exception is when one of the stockholders declares himself CEO which doesn't always happen even if player owns 0%. One simple(and simplified) way to fix this is to make the AI stockholder always declare himself CEO when he has more stock than any other stockholder. In case that stockholder is a corp it can merge with the other corp always. I suppose there are better solutions - and maybe the whole thing doesn't even need fixing.
24. When a natural resource site is depleted, the layout of the extraction facility should be emptied automatically and any running costs halted because it is not running anymore and never will be.
25. When the training level of any unit reaches level 9, it still continues training but does not affect anything I think. There are those red guys turning to blue guys at level 9 too but the game considers only the level, according to manual. When all units reach level 9 the training costs should be halted even if the training slider is at max.
26. Computer players make offers to buy my tech too often for same tech. There could be a limit, one offer per tech per three years for example. No offers should be made on same tech from 'several' AI players on the same year, only the highest offer. Another good idea is an option to block those offers completely. Sometimes I'm clicking 'forget it' -button 20 times per game year while I have no intention to sell anything. As I've said before in this post somewhere, I don't mean that it's always easy to get tech sold. I've sometimes concentrated on R&D and tried to live off that, and then AI players(10 of them) don't seem to make enough of those offers and I go bankrupt often. So I would decrease only the too often repeating offers for same techs, not decrease them in any other way.
27. When I delegate an oil well to COO, she put selling price to 3$ when it sells at max demand for 30$ as well. Same probably applies to other natural resource extraction facilities. Shouldn't the COO optimize the price so that demand is not wasted.
28. When I turn internal sale off and AI's start buying, it sometimes has no effect when I turn it on again - they still keep buying.