Diche_Bach Suggestions

[Diche_Bach]

I'll post any suggestions I have here, and restrain myself from too much "pie-in-sky" ambitious stuff.

1. Give us a "Confirm" button on the grid setup screens (retails, R&Ds, farms, factories, etc.)

it is pretty easy to screw up and as far as I can tell, everytime you click to fix a mistake you are losing cash. A "Confirm" button or "Apply Changes" or whatever to which the function that iterates the cost of the changes is conditional would be pretty easy to code and would be nice. Granted it would be one more thing to clutter up the UI, but it seems pretty spacious as it is.

Not sure if this suggestion is moot as of 4.3 as a result of changes . . . have spent all evening updating and scenario-making and posting! Gotta get a few hours in before bedtime . . .

. . . Cannot think of any others at the moment, but I know there were a couple other fairly minor things that occurred to me as I played last time so I reckon I'll be posting in here again soon.

If anyone else wants to join in and agree/disagree/suggest related (or not so related, but perhaps at least tangential) stuff: please do! If the thread were to get big or something, I'm sure the list of suggestions could be synthesized in the first or second post.

[Diche_Bach]

Okay, played a bit last night and this morning so several on my mind:

2. The hirelings dynamic (employees you hire for the executive positions) needs to be rebalanced somehow (note this is with Cap Lab 4.306, but none of the DLC, I note that one or two of those seem to change this dynamic a good deal?). They are just simply TOO EXPENSIVE!

Example: Year 6 of my "Writing the Big History" scenario (fairly harsh start, 7 cities all big, goal [with some sub-goals along the way]: get to $82 billion personal wealth in 50 years, 1975 start date). I do my standard of convenience stores selling cigs, wine and corny flakes . . . after 6 years, I've got 3 retails in my 'starting city' (though no HQ as starting was at "Very Low") and one in about 3 or 4 others. I'm gonna setup my HQ in Mumbai, the lowest wage city in the mix (London, NYC, LA, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Moscow, London I believe is the set . . . wanted them to be all the biggies I could fit into "7" and spaced out reasonably around the globe).

Making about 8 million annual profit, credit limit is ~60m, cash on hand is ~7 or so. I sell some stock, and take out a loan and go to setup my HQ. Whoo hoo! CEO office, all the departments, now Marketing. Ah there is a good candidate: Body Care expertise and 80 at Marketing. I enter negotiations. She wants $5+ million per annum.

SERIOUSLY! She wants $5+ million per annum when my company is only netting ~$8m operating profit!?

I dunno . . . someone will probably tell me to look for a scrub candidate with a 20 marketing or something, or even ZERO. . . yeah, yeah. That would be a great suggestion: IF there was anything resembling a real _pool_ of candidates. Not to mention the UI making it relatively EASY to screen candidates.

There are lots of "solutions" to this but the most obvious that occur to me (which admittedly are fairly involved but are bound to make users happy I'd say):

A. multiply the pool of candidates by a factor of 10x to 50x. We got hundreds of millions of bytes here. Com'n just add a few more arrays to the arrays eh!? Up those indices!

Now granted, you might need to tweak your algorithms that generate candidates so they are appropriately diverse but hey, its a living eh!?

some optional
B. Model the recruiting and hiring process in more detail. If we have an HR department, allow us to "Recruit" -> specify some parameters that define the job role. Let it cook for awhile --> BINGO! pool of candidates!

C. More filtering and sorting options in the "candidates" window(s). Really this suggestion should be applied across the board. Why can I not filter products in any given list or sort products by any given field in a table?

If you guys are too overworked to get to this stuff then "hire" me: I'll give you six months of free labor, I'm an apprentice you know

Okay, more on my mind, but I need to get to work . . .

[David]

You may load a pre-defined script that reduce the salaries of the executives.

Please see: http://www.capitalismlab.com/script---p ... ripts.html

[Diche_Bach]

Thanks David. [s]Yeah I had noticed those script options in one game I was setting up, but it doesn't seem to always be an option. I guess scenarios don't allow a script to be applied?[/s]

Cool. So what I'm gathering is: any properly formatted script file that is placed in:

L:\Users\User\Documents\My Games\Capitalism Lab\SCRIPT

will run whenever the application runs. Which is pretty cool as it allows scripts and mods to overlap.

[Diche_Bach]

3. A way to 'scroll' from one firm to "next."

Unless I've missed it the game currently lacks anything to allow this.

Example: I've got 8 convenience stores in Tokyo. All of them are selling grape juice from the same seaport. It goes out of supply so I need to visit each and assign a new product. Once I have filled out one store, it is not possible to click one button and go to the pane for "next" store, and "next" etc.

[eleaza]

3. A way to 'scroll' from one firm to "next."

Unless I've missed it the game currently lacks anything to allow this.

Example: I've got 8 convenience stores in Tokyo. All of them are selling grape juice from the same seaport. It goes out of supply so I need to visit each and assign a new product. Once I have filled out one store, it is not possible to click one button and go to the pane for "next" store, and "next" etc.

Just use the up and down arrow key.

But you need to first use the filter conditions under the minimap. Like you can filter Firm to Retail Store, press the filter button My Firms (or use Corp. to your corporate name), filter switch to This City, even filter which Product. Once you filter those firms you choose, the number of filtered firms will be counted and you can use up and down arrow key to switch between.

I kinda get why so many players suggested better tutorial systems. A lot of what I consider "basic" stuff seems to escape a lot of people.

[David]

Hi eleaza,

It seems that it will be a good idea to display tips like the one discussed above on the new game initialization screen and the load game screen.

On a related note, perhaps we should use the same mechanism for displaying the smart tips that you have come up with at http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... 716#p17716

Implementing a triggering condition for each smart tip is quite labor intensive. In addition, some users may not like to see the smart tips as they may be already well aware of them and do not want the display to get in way of the actions they originally intend to perform with the interface.

Do you think it is possible to convert the smart tips into a format that just get displayed on the load game screen in a random fashion?

[eleaza]

Hi eleaza,

It seems that it will be a good idea to display tips like the one discussed above on the new game initialization screen and the load game screen.

I never realize there's a load game screen, it's always super fast for me, like only seconds. I do like the trending upward line animation though. I wonder how many tips can be shown in such limited space and time. And I suppose the game interface should really be inside the first tutorials, since describing them is no where near as effective as showing them and highlighting them in their actual position.

On a related note, perhaps we should use the same mechanism for displaying the smart tips that you have come up with at http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... 716#p17716

Implementing a triggering condition for each smart tip is quite labor intensive. In addition, some users may not like to see the smart tips as they may be already well aware of them and do not want the display to get in way of the actions they originally intend to perform with the interface.

Do you think it is possible to convert the smart tips into a format that just get displayed on the load game screen in a random fashion?

William first come up with the idea of integrating smart tip into CapLab, I only put out the format (seems over complicated maybe, but most fields are optionals), I suppose they are kinda labour intensive, and honestly they are good final touch, but not necessarily good tutorial or teaching interface. And games with such system would have game options to turn them off all at once, or check boxes associated with certain game mechanics or each tip screen to manually turn each one off.

A lot of time, the actions and spacial relationship makes memorizing the UI or mechanics easier (at least they are for me), and put them into words might be confusing than helping in some cases. However, for basic business tips not UI related, they can be converted into loading screen tips I suppose (like, "You can press 'R' to Product Details screen, and discover more useful information and functions", or " You can press 'D' to Corporate Details, and survey your competitors before taking thoughtful business decisions", etc. But the UI related tips might still escape some players, like the Apply All price button to change price all at once. I painfully saw so many players just flip through all the stores for hours just to set all the price firm by firm.)

[Diche_Bach]

3. A way to 'scroll' from one firm to "next."

Unless I've missed it the game currently lacks anything to allow this.

Example: I've got 8 convenience stores in Tokyo. All of them are selling grape juice from the same seaport. It goes out of supply so I need to visit each and assign a new product. Once I have filled out one store, it is not possible to click one button and go to the pane for "next" store, and "next" etc.

Just use the up and down arrow key.

But you need to first use the filter conditions under the minimap. Like you can filter Firm to Retail Store, press the filter button My Firms (or use Corp. to your corporate name), filter switch to This City, even filter which Product. Once you filter those firms you choose, the number of filtered firms will be counted and you can use up and down arrow key to switch between.

I kinda get why so many players suggested better tutorial systems. A lot of what I consider "basic" stuff seems to escape a lot of people.

cool. I figured the functionality was already there but I was overlooking it

Tutorials. Argh.

The ones in this game are among the better out there. I made it through a couple of them. But we're all busy people and 'studying' tutorials is not what most of us want to do for fun

One solution, that probably is labor intensive, is a "tool tips" functionality. Flick it on/off in options and when it is on it basically responds to certain user mouseovers by offering up closable panes. The content could be drawn more or less directly from the tutorial files. Once one or two of the sets of code for the tool tips was setup, it might mostly be a matter of cut-and-paste? Of course it might not; depends on how the code is organized I suppose.

ADDIT: Hey Eleaza, are you sure it works the way you were describing with the arrows (this is 4.306 with no DLC)?

I may well still not be doing it right, but I'm not having any luck with the "filters" doing what I want . . . assuming I am doing it wrong, would probably need to post a series of marked up screen caps with captions to get feedback sufficient to get it right. I'm not inclined to do that right now (just want to play the game!) but let me know if you're sure and I'll (a) examine it a bit more closely and/or (b) post screen caps to show you what I'm doing. I'm basically a power-user, but only a score of hours experience with the game (roughly) so I might be a decent indicator of how clear the UI is . . .

Or I might just be "being dense" in this instance!

[Diche_Bach]

4. Button to assign a price point for sales of a product that is a proportion of the purchase price.

This could be as simple as, either (a) an option which the user toggles on/off that activates/deactivates; (b) a button in each firm /product summary pane labeled "Target Margin": the rest of that UI element could be identical to the one for price setting (a number and a +/- toggle).

Or it could be as complex as: (c) a new character box (left hand side seems fairly open) for a "firm manager." Once you hire someone to fill this role, then you get the functionality above.

The idea here is: instead of having to calculate with my calculator (which I enjoy, but it does take up a bit of time) the target margin for a particular purchase price, I just tell the app what that margin is and it assigns the sales price for me!