Taking CapLab to a new Level

[player_rxb]

Dear CapLab team,

FIrst of all a great thank you for all the wonderful work being put into the game and also the great response times on bugs. I have been a very silent participant in this forum for many years, but been with the capitalism series ever since the beginning with the original Capitalism. The world map is still my favorite feature thats being absent. I can tell the code is still out there somewhere being unused for the farms which you can see in the farm entry in the mod data. To give a little perspective, I run companies for a living (investing, buying / selling, bonds and loans etc) so what I enjoy doing may be influenced by that.

The one thing that I feel I am missing in CapLab right now, is spending time on some serious deliberation (planning) when setting up businesses. What is odd about that is, that the game actually gives me the option of doing it and rewards it, but what actually keeps me from doing it is, that I dont want or can spend the time on it. The time I spend on the game is limited and I want to use the time to build, to conquer new markets and so in the end, I find myself picking some of the larger revenue industries and keep cloning factories. I end up setting up 15 gasoline plants, 15 diesel plants, 15 bio fuel plants, setting up warehouses, connecting them all so that I dont need to order from the individual factories, making sure i didnt miss a plant, then connecting the retail stores. In the end I spend a lot of my time effectively just setting up 1 production center for a certain good, but had to put down dozens of firms and do connections to achieve that.

I feel in order to move the experience to a whole new level we need some tools / mechanics to do some serious deliberation / planning

1) Let us adjust the capacity of individual firms right in the game
2) show me the production (throughput) capacity of a square in the firm layout
3) have a script entry to adjust global demand up or down

Let me explain:

1) Adjusting the capacity of individual firms

Benefits:
- I would set up one (or few) firm(s) per product either for the whole game or per city
- I would spend time focusing on strategy- do I want to optimize transport cost and set one firm up per city, or just 1 firm and optimize the city competitiveness bonus and export to everywhere else
- finally no more time spend just cloning and setting up the same type of supply connection over and over again
- I would be encouraged to revisit my old plants to optimze my supply lines (just like in real life), real thought into how can I get enough supply of X,Y,Z to feed my 1 mega factory? - do I need more small ones (real life decisions)
- [possibly] this could reduce lag as there would be less firms to handle
- [future options] so many exciting mechanisms can be connected to the firm- electricity needs, construction materials needs, logistics needs. If the amount of firms is reduced, I would actually feel excited and able to put time into this

How I would implement it
- add an info box / area to the right of the firm view and give us a simple "plus" and "minus" button to change capacity for the firm. Each step changes capacity by 10% or 100%, shift+click gives bigger steps
- cities need to receive land sales income (or similar), because the capacity increase effectively replaces putting up a new firm and having to buy land
- you incur construction costs for every move up as it replaces setting up extra firms
- the AI would have a check how capacity compares to demand and would regularly adjust up capacity. Their goal would be driven by their focus on market share. If the slider is on 100% market share- they would plan to provide 100% capacity compared to demand - this would be a great place to let modders tinker with the AI behavior
- there should be costs associated with decreasing (just like real life)
- the limits of the max capacity should be quite high to allow mega firms that can handle demands like in realworld mod.


2) Show me production throughput / capacity of the squares in the firm layout

Benefits
- Finally I could do real planning!! I could adjust the size of my firm directly to the output capacity I need for manufacturing / sales etc in order to satisfy the demand of the city or nation

How I would implement it
- in the additional box to the right of the firm layout it should show the city and nation demand of the item produced in the square of the firm - this would be super easy for end products as the number is available in the product screen and a bit more challenging for semi products. I could totally live with the fact if is not right away available for semi-products. For semi products however, I would love to see demand seperated for a) my firm b) my firm + subsidiaries and c) other firms
- their should be a number showing me the total throughput capacity of all the same unit types in a firm- ie: how much production capacity have all my manufacturing units in total for the good that I selected. How much inout can my 2 input units draw for coal in my steel plant if I click on the coal input. It would be even better to seperate the individual unit capacity and give me a total beneath of all the same type of units in the firm. It should be up to me to take into account that the firms capacity will increase with training- dont make it too easy!


3) Global demand modifier in script

Benefits
- this would easily let us adjust demand up and down without having to temper with the products file. It would make for great scenarios and would make testing the capacity modifiers much easier

How I would implement it
- we already have internet and software. Just add an extra line for regular products
- the software and internet demand sliders should have a higher upper bound. They are too small compared to regular products. We all know how big software and internet industry is


Additional Benefits of these implementations:

I really see a great added value in teaching business students. Many aspects in my studies certainly came easier because I had seen some of the concepts in Capitalism. Strategic planning and capacity planning is a major area in business studies. With the right tools and visualizations, CapLab could deliver a lot more benefit to students in that area. One of my assistants told me the other day how she and her class have to play a game as part of their degree to learn how to adjust capacity to demand and evaluate costs and so on in the process. I see CapLab to be able to deliver this very effectively, BUT ONLY if you have an easy way of doing it in the game. Letting you go in and adjust individual firms allows you to make those kind of adjustments in minutes and see the effects immediately when you go check the data supplied in the new info box as described above. This would be super easy intuitive.

[David]

Thanks for your suggestions.

I would recommend that you create a poll for your suggestion to gauge the community's interest in it. There would be a higher chance that the dev team will implement it if the interest level is high.

You could see some examples of the polls in the Suggestions forum at viewforum.php?f=14

For your suggestion 1) and 2), it seems to me that they are only needed when the player using a MOD. The vanilla product set is not as expansive and the standard firm capacity without any modifications should be sufficient. What is your opinion on this?

For suggestion 3), we are currently seeking input of ideas for customizable gameplay logic which you can see the details in this post: viewtopic.php?f=49&t=7712
Part of the plan is to experiment with different ideas for customizable gameplay logic and make private access prototypes accessible to participating members. This would be a faster route than going through the standard suggestion process, which needs to undergo a more rigorous evaluation process, as any changes made to the game through this route is supposed to apply to the release version of game eventually, whereas for the customizable gameplay logic initiative, the changes are experimental and privately accessible and can be discarded easily if they turn out to be faulty.

FYI, upon the public release of the customizable gameplay logic features, there will be a disclaimer stating that gameplay imbalance may result from using the customizable gameplay logic and the dev team will not be held accountable for resulting gameplay imbalance nor be responsible for providing solutions to address the gameplay imbalance. Users will be advised to use customizable gameplay logic with caution and at their own risks.