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Retail - wholesale balance
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Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 20, 2012) Maybe I'm missing something but it seems like the game is skewed in favour of retail...When a store expansion pays for itself in a matter of a day or two through increased profits, is there any economic point to building and managing a chain of factories at all? I mean I'm doing it, and for that matter I have one of the more complex factory chains in the game; but I'm doing it for the challenge, not the profit per se. I have a nagging feeling that I'd do an order of magnitude better on the balance sheet if I sold them all and opened one enormous jewellery store. |
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Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 20, 2012) I believe you have a valid point, and as of today it's no longer a simple balance problem.Over the past month and half what I've done can be summarized as follows: Stores (Multi-Sale) Stock Market (Basic Functions) Stores (Charts) B2B (Import/Export) Stores (Interface) Stock Market (More Basic Functions) Warehouse (Mixing) AND Next Up: Stores (Supply/Demand Calculations) Advertising (Speed up STORE sales and influence gain) So while it's completely unintended, I have spent most of my time on the stores, and now they have became the core of this game. Factories and R&D's do deserve their share of attention, so when I add the worker experience bonus, I'll first add them to factories and R&D's. Also multi-production may be considered after v0.8 (Chicken -> Wings + Breast + Drumsticks) A temporary fix would be to increase the Import/Export price once again, at the expense of enraging the current store owners. |
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Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 A more drastic temporary fix would be to remove import/export altogether and force people to build some factories (-:
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Cory T RJ: Ether Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 5 Karma: 79 Joined: Mar 10, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 20, 2012) ***(This was written prior to Scott's reply, but I am going to post anyway)Very good point. I think possibly the thing that could be missing that would effect this balance of Retail -Wholesale is: -More competition over the Retail Market base. On the wholesale side (B2B market), there exists much competition amongst a limited amount of players, who dictate supply, demand and price, but there does not seem to exist any real form of competition on the retail (Store) side of "NPC customers", where players are almost guaranteed to make a profit off of an unlimited target market base, by simply selling products for slightly higher than what their cost are and being guaranteed to make a profit; then "expand" on that and you have the ability to generate enormous profits that seem to outweigh the benefits of having complex factory scenarios. The factories reduce costs, but if one were to simply invest everything merely into Store expansions, as Mister Death suggested, one could possibly make a faster killing in this game (over having factories). If running a real business were only that easy then all that would be required to be successful would be to simply buy low and then sell for more than your expenses. In the real world though we have to really compete for customers and sales. One idea to possibly help with this (although much more complicated than simply tweaking down Store Expansion) is to implement a system of marketing, so that players can actually compete over the retail market base. This could be done by way of advertising (service companies), brand recognition, "consumer guide rankings" of companies (not just the top 10) for each product and have these rankings not just be based on the volume or revenue, but also on value. This would help make it so that companies who purchase high dollar/quality Import goods and simply flip them in their stores may not rank nearly as well in the "value" or "volume" categories with other players who implement strategies for keeping their costs down to compete for business. These ranking could perhaps even tarnish a companies reputation for price gouging or challenge start up companies who sell cheap or possibly defective products. if a business wants to go against the big boys in a cut throat market place then they will need to get creative and start small and build their enterprise strategically. Whether a marketing system like this is even feasible to implement or not I have no idea, but I do think that it would open up a new dimension off competition and strategy, help with this balancing issue, and bring things on an even more realistic level. Just want to say to Scott and whoever else helped in the development of this game...Awesome job! I'm hooked. I think this game has so much potential. (This post was written earlier in the day and by the time I had a chance to proofread it more, Scott had already responded and addressed his plans for an advertisement system which I am delighted over. I wanted to still post this to support why I think Scott's advertisement and store supply demand calculations will work to offset this apparent balance issue, as well as to offer whatever other ideas I could.) |
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Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 I asked for it before and I'll ask for it again, because there is one simple mechanism that will help out wholesalers no end. Right now we have the "ask" half of a wholesale market, which naturally favours the retailer (on top of everything else). Please put merchandise bids as high up your priority list as it can reasonably go!
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Cory T RJ: Ether Post Rating: 35 + / - Total Posts: 5 Karma: 79 Joined: Mar 10, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 "A more drastic temporary fix would be to remove import/export altogether and force people to build some factories (-:"An even simpler temporary fix would be to just remove items from Import that can be sold in stores. This would keep the current import/export system in place so that players could still purchase parts and supplies that are not available on the player B2B. The Export system does not seem to create any balance issue, |
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Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 20, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 21, 2012) and I'm delighted to see so much forum activity on this topic!Frankly I'm bored with the current system, so naturally things will change... The game wouldn't be fun without giving you a chance to actually lose money right? |
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Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 21, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 21, 2012) The real crux of the problem is that store space is massively underpriced compared to factory space. Let's give you a concrete example.I opened a jewellery store on a lark, almost exactly 3 days ago. It's a small 20-square-metre boutique, stocked with whatever's on the B2B with the gaps filled in from the exort market. I priced everything at exactly twice my cost. Just going over the 3-day sales figures, I've grossed 5.59 million, and exactly half of that is profit. Works out to about $485 per tick per m^2. A square metre of jewellery shop space costs $20,000, which means it takes ... about 39 ticks to pay for itself, less than 10 hours. To err on the side of caution, we should probably also allow for overhead, since I have to maintain enough inventory to keep selling my jewels...let's make it six days' inventory to keep the math simple, since that would cost me exactly what I just made in three days. Adding the 5.59 million to the 400,000 I actually paid for the store, divide by the number of square metres, my real cost to buy the store is just a hair under 300,000 per square metre. Now it takes me 617 ticks to pay off, which is just under a week. Now let's do the same exercise with one of the products I'm planning to wholesale: Sugar. I picked it out of the hat because it's not too complex but not trivial either. In a 100m^2 food factory, I can make 1 unit of sugar per second, or 900 per tick. The factory costs $20,000 per m^2 for a cool 2 mil. There are also input costs for the sugar - for 900 units it costs me $90 plus 1350 electricity plus 270 sugarcane. At the moment I'm buying electricity on the B2B and it's generally going for 10 cents a unit. The sugarcane I make myself; to make 270 sugarcane in a tick takes 45 m^2 of fruit plantation, costing another $225,000. The sugarcane also consumes 27 more electricity and 810 water, and I'm using the high-quality water that goes for 15 cents on the B2B. So, my 900 units costs me $90 plus 1377 electricity ($137.70) plus 810 water ($121.50) for a total of $349.20, or 38.8 cents a unit; I then sell it on the B2B for 2x wholesale, because retail prices seem to be about 4x wholesale ... so I get $3 a unit less 5% less 38.8 cents, or $2.462 per unit, or $2215.80 per tick. But how much equity did I sink? Well, there's the $2.225 million for the factory, and just to be extremely fair let's say I can get away with 2 days' inventory of sugar cane. That's 51,840 units, which are on the books at $3 per unit (2x wholesale). This puts me a shade over $2.38 million. It'll take me about 1,074 ticks to pay that off, or 11 days, or more than 50% longer than the jewellery store. To make the jewellery store take 1,000 ticks to pay off, you'd need to sink $9.7 million in equity, or $4.11 million for the floor space. Jewellery stores should be going for closer to $200,000 per square metre than $20,000. |
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Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 21, 2012 Funny thing is when I started making the game, my plan is to make doubling period 2 weeks. Now the stores are wayyyy ahead, and somehow factories are ahead too.Your analysis sounds reasonable, problem is I wouldn't be able to increase store costs until after I increase newbie starting cash, so I'm hoping the raised import price + supply/demand would curb store activity a bit. |
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Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 21, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 21, 2012) In practice I think factories would be about two weeks to double, as I was underestimating the overhead somewhat severely I think; I completely ignored the inventory that sits on the market until somebody buys it, and I doubt I'd run my own factory on only two days' stock. I just wanted to make it obvious that even under the most generous assumptions, stores are a much much better deal.On a side note, I like Cory T's idea even better than mine! (-: |
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Cory T RJ: Ether Post Rating: 34 + / - Total Posts: 5 Karma: 79 Joined: Mar 10, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 21, 2012 Ya i agree. Perhaps there could be restrictions on inventory/warehouse space.I think it may also have to do with there being no real competition over the retail market base. Is there currently any system in place that regulates/dictates consumer demand and competition for retail business? If there is I am not seeing it. If there was a limited retail target market base with companies all competing for their business then it might be pointless to have fully expanded Stores stocked to the brim with inventory; because you would then be challenged with ways to sell it. If a player is not running warehouses and relying mainly on B2B and import then they should have to spend more on advertisement in order to compete. More challenge = more fun. |
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Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 33 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 21, 2012 Agreed.Now that all the meat products AND graphics are in place, I'm ready for more coding. Current TOP of the to-do list: 0. Chatbox 1. Supply/Demand 2. Advertisement System |
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zxektok megatron RJ: zxektok Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 140 Karma: 170 Joined: Mar 6, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 21, 2012 bump import prices dramaticallyimagine if importing only yielded 10-20% profit the farmers/creaters would actually get produce bought then (even low quality) |
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zxektok megatron RJ: zxektok Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 140 Karma: 170 Joined: Mar 6, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 22, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 23, 2012) maybe even taking a lot of perishable off the import listthings that would go bad/rotten etc fruits not in a tin alot of raw crops cream,milks (small shelf life) breads eggs also why has other countries got such awesome products? quality 50 stuff in real life the imports you get are the small/low quality produce most fruit is tiny that u get in the supermarkets compared to what it is in the original country. anyway - maybe dont change price of imports just make it average quality give us a chance to make better produce than imports without spending 500M maybe say Q15->Q25->q35 and keep prices the same that way the producers that specialise will be able to sell wares over the infinite supply of import stock. that idea that might be out the box but it would definitely make markets prefer b2b items over import items |
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Zack WenJian RJ: Zack CO: Zack Post Rating: 39 + / - Total Posts: 114 Karma: 503 Joined: Mar 31, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 4, 2012 In microeconomics, this is what we call monopolistic competition. there is a point where it comes to market equilibrium which is almost the cost of production. In theory for such monopolistic competitive environment, to achieve better sales is having product differentiation. In this game it is the quality of the product. by having better quality, u can afford to sell higher price then the import market. but the problem with import market is that the Quality is Q40+ to Q50+ !! my suggestion is to lower the import market Quality to Q0-Q5. So people will still go to B2B market to purchase higher priced goods if they want higher quality. |
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Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 4 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 5, 2012 Now why didn't I think of that? You're a genius, Zack. We (generally) import way more Baby Duck than champagne...
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