Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

Sorry this took so long, I have no free time currently. Also, this is far more rough than I would ordinarily present it. I haven't even considered the free-form implementations, yet, so this is much less of a proposal than I had originally intended. I haven't even spellchecked it, out of time.

For most of the services, I'm currently considering having a generic market pool. As the services are used, the market increases, and it decreases over time (and/or as it pays out). Each service provider (including locals) gets a share of the market based on this cumulative pool. This is what I'm calling "unlinked" (to suppliers/clients).

All opinions are welcome. I want to be clear that my goal is community benefit, not my own.

This first post will be updated at whim.

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A lot of arbitrariness arises from attempt to stay close to the current unit layout process, as opposed to something freeform like Media Firms or even completely different.

It may be easiest for the reader to ignore the terms “input”, “processing”, and “output”. My methodology assume every firm has a processing Unit. Thus, using a crops farm for an example, the Crop Growing Unit is considered a processing unit rather than an Input Unit. Similarly, the retail firm has the Sales unit as the processing unit. It's completely arbitrary.

Assign a processing unit.
Consider the Input and Output units.
Consider Other units.
Consider Linking for all units.
Define the market implementation: How is revenue is generated?
Expenses are not detailed, but are detailed for those already in the game.
Assets are not detailed, but they are not included for
How does one firm make itself more marketable than competitors? A.k.a competitiveness.

Farm Firm (Crops): Once a year, crop units will be sown, followed by harvesting a few months later.
Input Units: none
Processing Units: Crop Unit
Output Units: Sales Unit – Linked
Other Units: Inventory Unit
Revenue is generated by a supply/demand link from the Sales units to the Client.

Farm Firm (Livestock): …
Input Units: Livestock Raising Unit
Processing Units: Processing Unit
Output Units: Sales Unit linked via supply/demand to the client
Other Units: none
Revenue is generated by a supply/demand link from the Sales units to the Client.

Resource Gathering Firm : Can only be placed on discovered resource.
Input Units: none
Processing Units: Mining Unit
Output Units: Sales Unit linked via supply/demand to the client
Other Units: none
Revenue is generated by a supply/demand link from the Sales units to the Client.

Factory Firm : Quality is determined by goods input and tech level
Input Units: Purchasing Unit linked via supply/demand to supplier.
Processing Units: Manufacturing Unit.
Output Units: Sales Unit linked via supply/demand to the client
Other Units: Inventory Unit
Revenue is generated by supply/demand link from the Sales units to the Client.

Retail Firm :
Input Units: Purchasing Unit linked via supply/demand to supplier.
Processing Units: Sales unit (unlinked)
Output Units: none
Other Units:
Relabelling Unit
Advertising Unit: Link to advertising firm increases brand at expense.
Revenue is generated by the sales unit to the market whose size is based on population and product necessity. Product rating compared to local competitors determines sales within that market, further limited by the stock of available product of course.

Research and Development Firm :
Input Units:
Processing Units: R&D Unit
Output Units:
Other Units:

Food Service Firm :
Input Units: Purchasing Unit linked via supply/demand to supplier. Any food, beverage, dessert, snake, or most livestock product (all but leather), plus certain crops (Cocoa, Grapes, Stawberries, Lemons, Corn,) and some semi-products(Flour)
Processing Units: Service Unit. explicitly included to make this different than retail firm.
Output Units: Sales Unit (unlinked)
Other Units: Advertising Unit
Revenue is generated by the market based on population.

Construction Service Firm: Each corporation can link to a specific construction firm per city? Not clearly how to implement, maybe be uncessary. Each corp will use his own shipping firm if available. Until clear how to select per city, can use local shipping.
Input Units: (unlinked)
Processing Units: Service Unit
Output Units:
Other Units: Advertising unit
Revenue is based on a market based on recent construction products. Construction requests in game proceed as is, but the “construction market” then grows. All construction firms take a share of this market, based on constructing rating (marketing, capacity, training, etc.).

Shipping Service Firm: (Land, Sea, or Air)
Input Units: (unlinked)
Processing Units: Service Unit
Output Units:
Other Units: Advertising Unit
Revenue is based on a market based on recent shipping products. Shipping in game proceeds as is, but the “freight markets” then grow. All shipping firms take a share of this market, based on shipping rating. (marketing, capacity, training etc.)

Fishery Firm: ties with Food Service. Using the resource gather template can be more versatile than the livestock raising farm template, because could place firm directly on water which is currently unusable space.
Input Units:
Processing Units:
Output Units:
Other Units:

Media Firm: I might be in favor of generic advertising pool such as per construction and freight recommendations.
Input Units:
Sales unit linked via advertising from client firm.
Reporting unit to generate news (Increase firm rating)
Programming unit to generate entertainment (Increase firm rating)
Processing Units: Service Unit
Output Units:
Other Units: Advertising Unit
Revenue is based on the advertising link from client firms.

Recycling Firm : This is inspired by the fact that getting rid of waste should be expensive, where as it is free and easy in the current implementation.
Input Units: (Generic market pool)
Processing Units: Service Unit
Output Units:
Other Units: Advertising
Revenue based on generic market pool which increases whenever stock is cleared or building destroyed. market share based on firm rating.

Electricity Firm :
Input Units: (Generic market pool)
Processing Units: Service Unit
Output Units:
Other Units: Advertising
Revenue based on generic market pool which is directly tied to number of corporate firms + govt building + private homes on map

Good work...

I'd like to see hotels and restaurants with the 9-square layout with the following options:

Goods Input (purchasing units for goods used in that industry)
Customer Service (linkable like R&D)
Advertising (Can be linked to either Goods or Customer Service to advertise that amenity)

With regard to the Goods, each service would have different options to purchase. Hotels could purchase furniture, television, air conditioning, video games, snacks and beverages. Restaurants could purchase refrigerator, food and beverages.

Cozar wrote:Goods Input (purchasing units for goods used in that industry)
...
With regard to the Goods, each service would have different options to purchase. Hotels could purchase furniture, television, air conditioning, video games, snacks and beverages. Restaurants could purchase refrigerator, food and beverages.

One point up front. For a hotel the furniture is equipment, not consumable supplies. Adding explicit equipiment and depreciation to game is something that could be added regardless of services, so I'll try to keep the discussion separate.

However, I am generally confused on whether or how to explictly include goods for those that do consume them as supplies.

Right now, you cannot have a functioning factory unless you have all the stated goods. There are no options. Lets consider a diner. If there's no grape juice availalbe, you want to say what about soda?
Well, I run the farm too, I have eggs, so I have chickens, why can't I use Eggs, and Frozen Chicken rather than Pork?

But, we can say this same stuff for the current factories. Desktop probably should be using aluminum rather than steel, but why can't they use either.

For this part I'm just saying that I don't want to add a new mechanism. Whether or not optional components should be added is a different subject. But it does add to my confusion. [Maybe optional components should be added to factories so that we can work that out before we try it with services. We got milk + glass = Bottled Milk, grape + citric acid + glass = Grape Juice, aluminum + corn syrup = soda, grape + glass = wine. That's all straight forward. But adding the matrix of all option components would probably take at least a years of development to somewhat balance for all industries, it's just not how the game was designed.]

Another aspect I'm keeping in mind is that I would hope it's possible for a diner to be the first Corporate Firm constructed. I don't want to wait for someone else to be running a farm and grape juice factory. Getting the grapes takes months anyway. A diner is a common startup business tho, should be some of the first things. There are locally produced goods already that could be used implicitly.

Now, another part is that requiring the products makes it more difficult to add new products. Right now I think adding a new product is easy enough. But after adding 50 services, then we'll be adding new products that have no use in services. That's just something I'm keeping in mind.

Right now it's piece of cake to add oranges and orange juice and be able to retail it. But after services are added being based on the current products, it will not be as easy to add a new product that has a use in a service.

So, I just don't like the idea of service being based on dedicated products (supplies). But don't get me wrong, I know it would probably enhance the game when done right. I'm just trying a holistic approach. Trying to solve the problems before we create them.

So, the thing is... why does Frozen Poker get to be the one that's added as a service and get the extra demand bonus compared to other livestock products? Even if we add enough restaurant types to make use of all the foods (which I am not in favor of... I hate having different sized factories as it is), we'll have the same problem if any new products were added in the future the new products will not be used much at because there would be innately less demand by not being competative in both the retail and service market, when most foods are.

Well, that's that about explictly requiring specific goods for services. I hope the community can help relieve my concerns.

How about a note of some post market services, like what services we can fit into existing industies. Just brain storming: I don't like it because I know so many thinks that don't fall in these niches, but still maybe it could be the best starting point

Fashion (mega class) -- Dry Cleaning
Apparel
Footwear
Leather Goods

Food and Beverage (mega class) -- Diner, Restaurant, Concessions.
Beverage
Food
Livestock Products
Snacks

Healthcare and Beauty (mega class) -- Spa, Salon, Clinic
Body Care Products
Cosmetics
Drugs

Electronics and Appliances (mega class) -- Tech Support, Repair (? strong tenancy towards disposable)
Communication Devices
Computer
Electronic Products
Home Appliances
Photography Products

Automobile -- service station, body shop, (biker bar, )
Furniture -- hotel
Household Product -- housecleaning, plumber
Jewelry -- safety deposit
Sports Equipment -- golf club, skate park, gym
Tobacco -- smokers club
Toy -- day care
Watch -- Repair

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The Spa, Salon, Clinic, Diner, Restaurant, Concession: existing goods are expended as supplies
Drying cleaning, Tech Support, Repair: the goods remain existing

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Hmm, looks like that would give us enough to work with tho. Tell me what I forgot; I have the imagination of a wet sponge.

I'm trying to imagine how the mechanics here would be fun. I can sort of understand how a food service firm could compete with other food service firms by offering lower prices and better quality food and better marketing. This essentially a food service firm into just another product. I mean, it has certain inputs, with certain quality levels, that can be advertised to gain brand advantages, and competitive cost advantages can be had through an efficient supply line (as with any other product).

So far, that doesn't quite seem interesting.

Some comparable examples to these suggestions are the residential and commercial buildings that already exist in the game. The residential building at least has a bit of an interesting component to it, in that it affects population growth. It also contributes to the desirability of commercial buildings by being nearby them.

But commercial buildings don't really offer anything of value that I'm aware of. There doesn't seem to be a penalty for not having enough of them to meet demand. So they are just a building that can earn rental income. They need some special use that makes them interesting. I think the same is needed for the ideas you suggest here. They need to be fundamentally different from everything else in some fun and useful way.

I think there's another general limitation in the game that affects these suggestions as well. I mean, correcting me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be no consideration in the game for locations of retail stores in the city. I think you can place many of the same stores selling the same items in the same place and manage to sell to everyone in the city without a problem. There's no need to spread stores around so your products are accessible to people on the other side of the city. People have no problem grocery shopping on the other side of the city as long as there's a few other shops next to the grocery store.

So these proposed services seem like they would also serve everyone in the city no matter where they are, as long as they offer the best overall quality (however that is determined). I don't have any good suggestions to offer for the services idea at this point.

Timofmars wrote:I think there's another general limitation in the game that affects these suggestions as well. I mean, correcting me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be no consideration in the game for locations of retail stores in the city. I think you can place many of the same stores selling the same items in the same place and manage to sell to everyone in the city without a problem. There's no need to spread stores around so your products are accessible to people on the other side of the city. People have no problem grocery shopping on the other side of the city as long as there's a few other shops next to the grocery store.

Well, that's yes and no, so I'll offer a correction here perhaps half the time. There's the Customer Traffic Index -- I'd doesn't matter where in general you place a business, but it matters that it specifically has a high Traffic Index ... even if your leather stores are right across the street from one another.

I've generally been try to incorporate new services in a format compatible with the existing media firms, because they need to be improved.

I have some thoughts on this subject, but I'll wait to share them until after I have a bit more exposure to this forum and make sure that I really know what the subject is before I chime in.

In the meantime, I think that some of your issues are dealt with, (to some degree anyway), in Restaurant Empire. If you check that game out, you might see some ways to solve your difficulties that you are envisioning. At the very least, it provides an interesting insight as to how Trevor dealt with the diner, restaurant, etc. dilemma. Pay attention to his use of the concept of a "recipe", in particular, which seems to have a "technology upgrade" parallel to Capitalism. Any ideas that you appropriate from his own game would have a correspondingly greater chance of being implemented or incorporated into this one...mainly, because the code is already written, heheheh!

TraderRaider