The mechanics behind COOs

[herrcaptain]

In the older Cap 2 I never bothered with COOs because I liked to micro-manage everything. In my current game, however, I got sick of manually adjusting retail prices at my dozen stores and decided to hire a COO to manage that for me. Initially I hadn't realized that you need to manually delegate firms under his/her control, so he basically sat around for about 2-years in game-time doing nothing. When I hired him my profit was in the $80 mil range and he was asking the princely sum of $58 mil/year. Naturally, I expected my profits to fall by about that much but figured that they would creep back up because he'd be fine-tuning the retail prices for me. Now the funny thing is that even in those few years when I had him doing essentially nothing, my profits didn't even seem to dip but started to rise considerably. Now it could be that this jump wasn't at all related (can't remember the economic cycle I was in, so that might have contributed), but it got me curious ... do COOs work any magic behind the scenes even when you don't delegate any firms to them? I made sure to hire one with good retail and manufacturing stats because those are my business' primary focus, so does that do anything for the company? The CMO I had hired a few years before has been working wonders for my company's brand (using corporate brand strategy), and being that the COO's salary is now almost 10 times higher than the CMOs I'd like to think he's actually pulling his weight. His salary is now up to 98/mil a year but my profits have skyrocketed so I'm not too concerned at the moment, just interested in understanding how this works.

[tingchung]

me 2

why other AI company dont hire COO ......?

[lt_wentoncha]

Wow, I never played Cap2 WITHOUT a COO (atleast, once I spanned the world and had a multibillion market cap). Ya'll are my corporate heroes

[Purifier]

What happens is that the expertise lvls of the COO's are transfered to the lvl of the unit of the firm you put him/her in.
So if he/she has a retail expertise of 40, all the units in the firm you put him/her in charge of are automaticly upgraded with 4 lvls (so 1/10th of the expertise lvl)

This also explains why other AI corps dont hire COO's... their CEO already has expertises thats transfers to their firms.

Think about hiring a COO (only if you dont want to much micromanaging) when your profits reach at least 3-400Mil (because of their steep wages).
And look carefully where you want to place them in control:

stores/shop = retailing
Farms = farming
factories = Manufactoring
mining/pumping/chopping = raw materials production

etc.

ps: take a look aswell to training expertise.
For sample: if you need/want a coo for your stores, and you have 2 choises: 1 with retailing expertise 40 and the other with 30 but training at 40... choose the last, the unit lvls in your stores the coo is in charge of will go up with 3 lvls instead of 4, but they train faster because of the training expertise bonus

Hope this info helps

[herrcaptain]

Thanks so much, Purifier. I've been busy lately and haven't had a chance to play the game or check the forums until today and your answer is a big help!

[robinh]

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or it is a bug. There's this COO option "Enable Internal Sale for all products". It's set to No by default. When I let him manage all my factories, he DISABLES Internal Sale on them. But then if I change it to Yes, I can't turn Internal Sale OFF when I want. The COO always enables it.

How can I have Internal Sale to ON by default but then not allow the COO to change it when I turn it OFF.

[robinh]

Does noone else notice this? I'm unable to sell anything to my competition. Either my COO forces Internal Sale on after I turn it off, or I change that option in the COO tab and he turns Internal Sale off in ALL my factories

[David]

This will be improved in the next version.

[jondonnis]

I appear to be having an issue of the COO being crap despite good stats. He seems incapable of turning round stores that make a lose, so I end up taking control and doing it myself.

[azxcvbnm321]

It depends on how much control/power you let your COO have. Did you give him the ability to change what is sold in the retail store? Did you give him the ability to purchase from competitors? How aggressive did you set the pricing behavior of your COO?

Your COO will be as effective as the computer AI for competitors. Sometimes they can't make a profit because retailing can be tough if everyone is selling the same thing by the same producer (seaport). And you'll always be more effective than the COO because you're much smarter than the AI. I only use COO to manage retail stores that I've already set up and give him no freedom to change products, only the ability to change prices (set at normal pricing) so that my product's overall rating is at or a little above the nearest competitor. This works decently.