Suggestion

[Arcnor]

But what if we start looking into factory and farm upgrades? Surely a second floor would not be an option then.

Why not? Factories have multiple floors and perhaps for the farms they're not called floors but fields. The whole concept is to expand what an individual firm can do to limit the amount of firms needed to operate.

[cantdownloadit]

with farms surely its just a matter of having "more fields" you wouldn't open a new farm each time you wanted to increase production.

personally I would like the see the factory size affect the floor area. small is 3 x 3, medium is 2 floors of 3 x 3, and large is 3 x 3 x 3... however for this to be truly efficient you would need some form of being able to move goods between floors...

[Parkerrush92]

Well as long as we can all agree that the concept is solid, then I'm in.

[pkoko]

I like the floors idea. But The player should pay for it. Have each new floor cost the 75-100% as the building cost. The player only saves the land cost. So in expensive cities, you will have multi store stores. I would like everything to be floor based UI wise. And I think limit of 3-4 is fine by most of us.

The only other thing that I would change... is add a list of current products (sorted alphabetically) for sale at store that is visible in the firm management screen.

[bundyaxl]

I like the floor idea. Probably the best way to increase capacity without major changes to the UI.

The way I would use this for factories is just to increase the output of one product.
I prefer to deal with large volumes so I always do 1 factory 1 product.
Way I see it is an increase of 3 times the production. With my script I generally have 2 cities with factories, depending on product i have 3-4 factories supplying a warehouse which between the 2 cities each supplies about half my market share and that cover most of the total market share for most products.
Now I just need 1 manufacturing center per product.

As far as how to use this in game I vote for expansion method. Maybe make the large discount store start with 2 floors.
Expansions to current structures is fairly common in manufacturing, stores I think in most cases move locations unless they buy out the next spot in a mall.

Speaking of which, it would be nice to make a mall, make it a 5x5 or 6x6 building and make it equivalent to like 8 small specialty stores, maybe rent out spots to other companies or just make it all your own stores. Would need some extra UI.

[Arcnor]

I like the thought of expansion, but would be concerned it would be a stretch on development resources considering there is currently no expansion ability in place for anything else. Adding a floor though should be simple enough and a concept that could be tested. The element of expansion could be added at another time.

[Parkerrush92]

To summarize what I'm hearing is this; Players agree that factories, retail stores, and farms should have the option to increase output rather than having to build many factories etc. to supply the market. It is agreed that these upgrades should be at an increased player expense.

If UI changes are not in the works, it seems that the floor model is appropriate and would be sufficient.

Parker

[Arcnor]

I will ask the dev team regarding the technical feasibility of implementing such a multiple floor system.

In the meantime, I would like to know more about what you guys think about:

-how many floors do you think are sufficient?
e.g. 2 floors x 4 products = 8 products max per store.
e.g. 3 floors x 4 products = 12 products max per store.

-do you prefer a game mechanism where the player has to pay for upgrades to add more floors after building a retail store?

-do you prefer the horizontal product list to show only products from the currently selected floor (i.e. 4 products max) or to show all products from all floors (e.g. 12 products max if there are 3 floors)? The first option will require less scrolling and the player just clicks on the floor selector at the bottom of firm detail window to switch the currently selected floor.

Any word from the development team on the feasibility?

[David]

Yes, the dev team has evaluated the technical and gameplay feasibility. It seems feasible to implement it for retail stores with a maximum of 3 floors. But it is limited to retail stores only.

You may also want to know that it has been scheduled for implementation and the actual work is expected to start soon.

[shiwui]

Hi David, I suggest to add in 2x2 small farm. The small farm will add more fun with large product MOD.