limits on, and costs for, warehousing goods

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limits on, and costs for, warehousing goods

John Galt RJ: John Galt CO: John Galt Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 23 Karma: 97 Joined: Apr 6, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 I'll preface this by saying I am slightly wary of anything that adds fees to the game. I nevertheless want to suggest the possibility of putting limits (and/or costs) on warehousing goods. As it currently stands, players with large corporations can stockpile effectively an infinite amount of goods, at no more cost than a lowly fruit vending newbie who is storing 10,000 limes. It really feels like this is something that should change. My proposition: 1. Assign all goods in the game a "storage size" (e.g. 1 of this good takes up N units of warehouse space) 2. All companies start with a warehouse that holds X units. This warehouse does not incur any sort of holding cost. (X should be large enough that small- to mid-sized companies aren't likely to hit it). 3. On a daily basis, assess how many units of space a company's goods are taking up. (Call this 'A') 3a. If A <= X, everything works as it currently works. 3b. If A > X, the company has to rent out another warehouse for Z dollars a day, which costs some non-trivial amount. For every warehouse-full of units that A exceeds X, increase this linearly. (So, if A = 3X, you've got to pay 2Z dollars for extra warehouse space). You can basically think of the number of extra warehouses in use as (1 - (A % X)). And, you could also decide that extra warehouses aren't as big as the original (allowing you to set Z to a relatively low number, so that people aren't paying a huge amount just to store 1 extra pallet of stuff). You could also just have a per-unit-of-space price after you outgrow your initial warehouse. And heck, if you wanted, you could also charge even for the initial warehouse (though I think that may be too harsh on new players). So, there are options, but that's the general idea. I think this would help smooth out some of the current issues of stockpiling goods or trying to corner markets by buying all of a good. I'm not saying those types of strategies should be impossible; I'm just saying, those strategies shouldn't have no added cost beyond the cost of the goods.
Roald Adriaansen RJ: Wuvil CO: Wuvil Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 146 Karma: 281 Joined: Feb 4, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 I always assumed the warehouse is part of factories which you now pay maintenance for...
John Galt RJ: John Galt CO: John Galt Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 23 Karma: 97 Joined: Apr 6, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 11, 2012) I think that's a fair assumption to a point, but not to infinity. A factory is certainly going to have the ability to store some level of product, so that it has someplace to put it while it is producing it. But, no matter how large the factory, it's not likely that it's going to be able to store months or years of its own production on-site. Either it needs to sell the produced goods, or it needs to pay to warehouse it somewhere. And that doesn't even get into cases where the goods weren't produced by the company, but were imported or bought B2B. So, you could do a lot of complicated work, trying to determine how much storage space a factory has per square meter of size, etc, but that seems like far too much effort. A simple abstraction, as I've proposed, will get the same effect without a ton of bookkeeping. (I also intentionally did not propose having to buy and manage the warehouses, because that would add a whole other level of problems of having to determine where to put what, shipping items between your warehouses, etc, and I think the game would be better served by keeping it as an abstraction). In my proposition, you could view the beginner warehouse as sort of that built-in storage space (albeit it's not aligned to your actual factory sizes), while the extra warehouses cover what goes above and beyond that.
Jayle Trigger RJ: Berry Punch CO: Applejack Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 93 Karma: 85 Joined: Apr 9, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 Stores could also stock some of the goods it is actually selling. Unrelated... kinda... but this thought came up... Perishable Foods. It would cause so much havoc to the newbie and food markets.... I want to see it implemented.
Josh Millard RJ: Tex Corman CO: J. Quaff Arabica Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 167 Karma: 231 Joined: Apr 3, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 Warehouse space as a low-cost but necessary element seems like a good element to add, yeah. The notion of allowing overflow but at a premium is a good one; makes it bad business but not catastrophic to fail to mind your inventory footprint, and rewards players for doing some savvy planning for their space needs based on their business model and growth over time. Perishable Foods My personal thought on that front would be a to have a sort of Quality halflife on inventory; don't have the stuff disappear, but have it slowly decay in terms of relative worth over time. The rate of decay could be based on which of a few classes the item is in, everything from highly perishable goods (bread and fruit products) with a like daily decrement of Q on up to highly durable goods (airplanes, microprocessors) that have a Q that is nearly steady, maybe one downward tick a week.
eric scott RJ: Erik Scott CO: Sappo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 130 Karma: 29 Joined: Apr 5, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 Ya having actual warehouse space in game would be good to see... Would add another level to the management I dont see it causing any concern for the megs corps either, they just drop a few million for storage space , and not worry. Starting out though you would need to bslance cost of storage versus amount of good
Roald Adriaansen RJ: Wuvil CO: Wuvil Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 146 Karma: 281 Joined: Feb 4, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 11, 2012) I would think mine and certain other large companies would need to drop BILLIONS into storage space... that's how much stuff we move daily. All it would do is make more unnecessary clicking due to not being able to stock stuff for acceptable time periods.
John Galt RJ: John Galt CO: John Galt Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 23 Karma: 97 Joined: Apr 6, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 Why would you think that you'd need to drop billions on storage fees? Why would you think it would result in unnecessary clicking? I don't think anyone has given a specific rate that should be charged. All I've said was there should be some expense to long-term storage of billions and billions of units of product, and it shouldn't be completely ignorable. I also did say that this should probably be calculated daily (similar to building costs) -- I can believe that within a given day, sure, your factories should be able to be shuffling around the stuff they're creating and selling. But, if you're holding onto it for more than a day (which I believe has been said is equivalent to a week in game time), why should it be free to do so for an infinite capacity of goods? If you are going to scale your business up to the level you're saying you're at, there are going to be some costs to doing business. It doesn't mean that it has to be so onerous that you cannot ever grow that large, but it seems silly to argue that if you're 1,000 times the size of another company, and stockpiling 1,000 times as many goods, it should cost you not a single dollar more.
Roald Adriaansen RJ: Wuvil CO: Wuvil Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 146 Karma: 281 Joined: Feb 4, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 11, 2012) But it does cost me more... Have you seen my maintenance and wages costs? And what if I want to keep stuff past server reset as I usually have to (different timezones!!), much of my stuff are also based around several day long productions to stop me getting carpal tunnel syndrome from all the clicking, and this is still small amounts from my point of view, both of you are still really new players proposing changes that will have significant changes to gameplay and playstyles you still have not reached turning it more into a log in every hour to do the same clicks over again because you can't store enough instead of a long term strategic game, and to top it off you want costs to increase exponentially... maintenance and wages already increase exponentially, but at least they don't hinder strategic play. Maintenance and wages are fair, they scale with your buisness, storage fees arn't as they only punish particular playstyles/timezones/etc. Basically I'm strongly against this, storage is part of the existing buildings and upkeep costs (which is how it is usally in RL) from my point of view. Storage cost should not be it's own cost, it should be included with the infrastructure you build.
eric scott RJ: Erik Scott CO: Sappo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 130 Karma: 29 Joined: Apr 5, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 I dunno, I'm kind of on the fence here. On one hand I feel that if you are committed enough to grow into a 'super corp' then you should be prepared to spend the time required. It is kind of expected I feel that everyone should just grow grow grow... and keep growing, in the real world eventually a company has to stop and just do their thing. So I guess I'm trying to say, that if you wanna keep growing, then there should be more things thrown at you, adding more challenges. Otherwise what challenges do you have remaining, deciding if you want to produce QL 999 Gold Watches, or Diamond earrings? (read: this is not picking on you big fellas, its just easy to use you as whipping posts since you stick out the most)
Roald Adriaansen RJ: Wuvil CO: Wuvil Post Rating: 34 + / - Total Posts: 146 Karma: 281 Joined: Feb 4, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 Costs and time already increase exponentially! Additionally the only ones with very high research (50+) atm are those who got it before the R&D change. Try calculate just how long 999 research or even money that would take... :P Once you hit Q50-60 etc it gets rapidly less and less worth it, or lets do high end stuff, just Q35+ and your looking at months/years to pay itself back! Requiring someone to play more and more and more the ''better'' they become would be bad game design, challenge is not equal to time spent, if I'm smarter than most and thus more successful I shouldn't be punished for it.
Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012	Posted on Apr 11, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 11, 2012) Wuvil: challenge is not equal to time spent Well said, one of the biggest challenges we'll have to overcome for this game. Will warehouse costs be added eventually? Yes, but only if it doesn't force you to spend more time than you already are spending.
Jayle Trigger RJ: Berry Punch CO: Applejack Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 93 Karma: 85 Joined: Apr 9, 2012	Posted on Apr 12, 2012 Considering it, adding an abstract super size warehouse shouldn't really require more clicks? For example: Players start with 1 Billion storage space. Stores/Factories add +1 Million storage place per size 1m. When they go over the storage limit, they start accruing storage costs every tic or just at the end of the day. We can say it adds .01 cents every 1,000 goods over the storage limit. Now warehouses, they can be build in the factory, store or R&D section, at the discretion of the player. Each size 1m warehouse adds +1 Billion storage space. Maintenance/Salary cost would in some way or form amount to .01 cent every 1 million goods or something.

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