several issues
Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2015 2:56 pm
i am 25 years into a game now and used spreadsheets to record all kind of stuff including A.I.'s performance for every company ingame
issues i did step across:
1. CTD's mainly happen on linking products (go into a shop, select purchase button, click the <link> and once you double click on the product ya wanna sell) you get once in a while a CTD with just a windows message that caplab had to be closed due to unexpected error which is very annoying when ya roll out a product worldwide which are way over 1000 clicks hence 50 dozen times to save to make sure you not doing it over n over again and never get the product rolled out due to crashs. same happens with canceling the building menu (open building menue, select i.e. apparel shop .. check locations for customer index and the right click to leave the building menu) sometimes i get it twice in a row very annoying especially when ya forgot to save 2 or 3 month ingame time. any other CTD's havent happened anymore since 3.0.21
also when CTD's happening due to linking products in purchase units, the saved game appears to be totally altered... like a few times i know i did set up 10 factories linked them to warehouses renamed stuff and so on ... in this example all done by december 2020 and a ctd in februray 2021 and suddenly in the savegame from january 2021 6 of those factories arent there and everything else i done from in roughly 6 month appears to be gone. happened a few times allready. thats about 2 billion in assets thats totally missing. game over ... restart another game to get bored again over n over .. thats all i keep doing never managed to finish a game due to this ctd's and stuff gone and after a while i just cba to redo it all over again and renew all spreadsheets for a few hours before i can build anything.
2.once ya use custimazation (even if its just a mistake as the button is right next to the button to select what product to make) its better to rip down the whole factory or atleast all manufacturing slots and rebuild to get 1 product back esle its just a mess, rather pay 20 million write offs then perma trash the 2nd product that suddenly appears in the sales, blocking the other manufacture slots from selling and no shop gonna pull this 2nd product from that factory as its not linked.
3.Is it only me, or is research totally obsolute with the custimization? Invention and thats it, q7 to q19 products and in every town medium factory allready level 6 (5 manufacture units) + 4 shops each on level 7 sales units and i can not keep up with supply whilest the A.I. Is selling brand 100, q85 with tech 1500+ an overall product rating of 100+ , loacal competitors have overall ratings of 80+ and i am market leader due to the shear amount am selling at a product rating around 40-50 or even less. as the A.I. is too stupid to produce more you probably sell q1 items at good profit, didnt came to test this as i was running the 20 R&D's and started the research higher techs as 1 A.I. company got quite big.
4.Market Dominance fullfilled once you got dominance on the invented products (i.e. Nothing invented at all = game over on 1st day as you got total dominace in everything) in capitalism plus, market dominance in a given class was only achieved, if you did invent all possible products in this class and dominate every single one of them.
5. again A.I.'s Brainstorms! this time i did run spreadsheet for every company n its annual profit and watched what they re doing n where the issue might be.
yes A.I. companies are capable of running a good company... but ... only until the point that they have 1 to 4 factories and a dozen shops to it. even got 1 company pulling twice the profit i did and did raise to about 2 billion in assets (including TV station) but thats gonna be over the moment they get a supply issue.
instead of checking where the issue comes from, they put up more stores, that can not be supplied by the crazy overstretched seaports / factories (rawmaterials from seaport totally overstretched aswell and rarely a mine is put up to cover the huge demand) they end up by 10-20 stores per factory (not counting the retailers stores) and the sales still dropping. next clever action: oh i loose market share i must ADVERTISE!!! 500k budget per sale slot on every single shop/item if this doesnt kill the company, well we got more ideas how to destroy cash. now they pull heavy profits with factories, and spend more on advertisement then the whole revenue of all shops - super strategy (and they not turning off the advertisement even when they are at over 100 brand overall rating (capped at 100 i noticed).
now they keep running this until cash 0, turn down the advertisement? nooo way we need more sales hence full advertisement, lets rip down our R&D's ... the monent they got back to 3 million cahs, set up R&D = out of cash, rip down R&D instantly and a few shops to get back to 1 $v in the pocket. this continues until the company has only 5-10 shops, then they rip down factories if they arent bancrupt yet, which will result in more A.I.'s getting this brainstorms as there sales gonna drop with ripped down factories.
Now, the company wither go bust or a stronger company gonna make friendly merger, this company was running mostly 8 years profit, now they seem to get the brainstorm virus as well and do exact the same thing the othjer A.I. did to kill his company, profit times over now we pull 200 million loss a year. that goes on endless. in the end it makes the whole A.I.s just a nice edition to say "hey you got competition" but its not competition at all just run your q7 products at huge profits and if a company gets too powerful, just wait 5 years and they gonna go bust.
i can add provide spreadsheet, where all anual profits/mergers/brancruptcies are accounted for over 25 years and you can see a continuity in this ... in my opinion the A.I.s have a problem with Supply/Demand as all of them act the same stupid way once their sales drop because more and more companies putting up too many shops for too less factories thats how it always starts.
if there would be a way to tweak this problem the A.I.s would be much more competent else its even better to start with your corporation and 0 A.I./s to not have to bother with them littering the city with there buildings, thats the only effect they have at present.
6. last but not least, ressources ... lets say i get a Gold mine, paying down for the land $355 per oz thats by 88.000 oz more then $31million straight out of the pocket, now when harvesting the gold i am paying another $355 per oz thats $710 per oz and another $100 per oz minimum to cover the monthly operating cost by roughlt 6.000oz harvested a month. seaport even sells at $300 its a bit harsh, i guess it was ment to reflect the land purchase cost in the harvest expanses, in capi plus the reduction in natural ressources went of the passiva, therefore it didnt effect the activa like in cap lab which makes ya pay twice for the ressource as the reduction in land value (natural ressources) will still take place in the passiva the write off the upfront cash paid down for the land.
what seems fine now:
1. was running also 20 R&D centers with roughly 50 R&D jobs and in 25 years not a single incorrect research finished message - exellent!!!
2. stock market runs fine, tested and couldnt fined any bugs - great job
issues i did step across:
1. CTD's mainly happen on linking products (go into a shop, select purchase button, click the <link> and once you double click on the product ya wanna sell) you get once in a while a CTD with just a windows message that caplab had to be closed due to unexpected error which is very annoying when ya roll out a product worldwide which are way over 1000 clicks hence 50 dozen times to save to make sure you not doing it over n over again and never get the product rolled out due to crashs. same happens with canceling the building menu (open building menue, select i.e. apparel shop .. check locations for customer index and the right click to leave the building menu) sometimes i get it twice in a row very annoying especially when ya forgot to save 2 or 3 month ingame time. any other CTD's havent happened anymore since 3.0.21
also when CTD's happening due to linking products in purchase units, the saved game appears to be totally altered... like a few times i know i did set up 10 factories linked them to warehouses renamed stuff and so on ... in this example all done by december 2020 and a ctd in februray 2021 and suddenly in the savegame from january 2021 6 of those factories arent there and everything else i done from in roughly 6 month appears to be gone. happened a few times allready. thats about 2 billion in assets thats totally missing. game over ... restart another game to get bored again over n over .. thats all i keep doing never managed to finish a game due to this ctd's and stuff gone and after a while i just cba to redo it all over again and renew all spreadsheets for a few hours before i can build anything.
2.once ya use custimazation (even if its just a mistake as the button is right next to the button to select what product to make) its better to rip down the whole factory or atleast all manufacturing slots and rebuild to get 1 product back esle its just a mess, rather pay 20 million write offs then perma trash the 2nd product that suddenly appears in the sales, blocking the other manufacture slots from selling and no shop gonna pull this 2nd product from that factory as its not linked.
3.Is it only me, or is research totally obsolute with the custimization? Invention and thats it, q7 to q19 products and in every town medium factory allready level 6 (5 manufacture units) + 4 shops each on level 7 sales units and i can not keep up with supply whilest the A.I. Is selling brand 100, q85 with tech 1500+ an overall product rating of 100+ , loacal competitors have overall ratings of 80+ and i am market leader due to the shear amount am selling at a product rating around 40-50 or even less. as the A.I. is too stupid to produce more you probably sell q1 items at good profit, didnt came to test this as i was running the 20 R&D's and started the research higher techs as 1 A.I. company got quite big.
4.Market Dominance fullfilled once you got dominance on the invented products (i.e. Nothing invented at all = game over on 1st day as you got total dominace in everything) in capitalism plus, market dominance in a given class was only achieved, if you did invent all possible products in this class and dominate every single one of them.
5. again A.I.'s Brainstorms! this time i did run spreadsheet for every company n its annual profit and watched what they re doing n where the issue might be.
yes A.I. companies are capable of running a good company... but ... only until the point that they have 1 to 4 factories and a dozen shops to it. even got 1 company pulling twice the profit i did and did raise to about 2 billion in assets (including TV station) but thats gonna be over the moment they get a supply issue.
instead of checking where the issue comes from, they put up more stores, that can not be supplied by the crazy overstretched seaports / factories (rawmaterials from seaport totally overstretched aswell and rarely a mine is put up to cover the huge demand) they end up by 10-20 stores per factory (not counting the retailers stores) and the sales still dropping. next clever action: oh i loose market share i must ADVERTISE!!! 500k budget per sale slot on every single shop/item if this doesnt kill the company, well we got more ideas how to destroy cash. now they pull heavy profits with factories, and spend more on advertisement then the whole revenue of all shops - super strategy (and they not turning off the advertisement even when they are at over 100 brand overall rating (capped at 100 i noticed).
now they keep running this until cash 0, turn down the advertisement? nooo way we need more sales hence full advertisement, lets rip down our R&D's ... the monent they got back to 3 million cahs, set up R&D = out of cash, rip down R&D instantly and a few shops to get back to 1 $v in the pocket. this continues until the company has only 5-10 shops, then they rip down factories if they arent bancrupt yet, which will result in more A.I.'s getting this brainstorms as there sales gonna drop with ripped down factories.
Now, the company wither go bust or a stronger company gonna make friendly merger, this company was running mostly 8 years profit, now they seem to get the brainstorm virus as well and do exact the same thing the othjer A.I. did to kill his company, profit times over now we pull 200 million loss a year. that goes on endless. in the end it makes the whole A.I.s just a nice edition to say "hey you got competition" but its not competition at all just run your q7 products at huge profits and if a company gets too powerful, just wait 5 years and they gonna go bust.
i can add provide spreadsheet, where all anual profits/mergers/brancruptcies are accounted for over 25 years and you can see a continuity in this ... in my opinion the A.I.s have a problem with Supply/Demand as all of them act the same stupid way once their sales drop because more and more companies putting up too many shops for too less factories thats how it always starts.
if there would be a way to tweak this problem the A.I.s would be much more competent else its even better to start with your corporation and 0 A.I./s to not have to bother with them littering the city with there buildings, thats the only effect they have at present.
6. last but not least, ressources ... lets say i get a Gold mine, paying down for the land $355 per oz thats by 88.000 oz more then $31million straight out of the pocket, now when harvesting the gold i am paying another $355 per oz thats $710 per oz and another $100 per oz minimum to cover the monthly operating cost by roughlt 6.000oz harvested a month. seaport even sells at $300 its a bit harsh, i guess it was ment to reflect the land purchase cost in the harvest expanses, in capi plus the reduction in natural ressources went of the passiva, therefore it didnt effect the activa like in cap lab which makes ya pay twice for the ressource as the reduction in land value (natural ressources) will still take place in the passiva the write off the upfront cash paid down for the land.
what seems fine now:
1. was running also 20 R&D centers with roughly 50 R&D jobs and in 25 years not a single incorrect research finished message - exellent!!!
2. stock market runs fine, tested and couldnt fined any bugs - great job