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Supply/Demand System
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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 24, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 18, 2012) IntroductionNow, first of all, I got bored with the selling part of the game after seeing that same old graph for days. So naturally I'd have to make the game more interesting. How do I make it more interesting? Make it competitive and add a possibility to lose money of course! Two Major Proposed Changes Building Maintenance Cost Each day you'll have to pay maintenance costs and employee salaries for every m^2 of your buildings. It won't be much, but it'll be significant. We won't discuss this one here, as it should be pretty obvious. EDIT: See other thread Economies of Scale on this one. Supply/Demand in Stores In a real world, if a person needs a new laptop every 3 years, you can always make him switch every year if the price is very low, or every 10 years if the laptops are too expensive. Nobody will buy 100 laptops a year unless you're basically giving them away. This is Supply and Demand. Currently the sales equation DO NOT have supply and demand built in, meaning you can sell as much as you produce. No matter which company you are or how big you are, you can just assign a price and quality to any product, and they will sell at a certain # of units per m^2 store space. Expand the stores, more units sold, no brainer. So then, what do we need Chairmen and CEO for? The answer is you need them to propose and revise the company strategy. What do you do when a market is saturated? Will you move into another sector? Downsize your business? Or acquire some smaller companies in a related field? How the Demand Variable Works The total demand is generated each tick (15 minutes) based on the total factory + store + R&D size in m^2. Then it is compared with all units sold for each product in a 12-hour period to determine a variable called demand_met. At demand_met = 1.0, everything sells normally. At demand_met < 1.0, things will sell faster. At demand_met > 1.0, things will sell slower. At demand_met > 10, things will stop selling until the variable falls back down. So if everyone in the game is running a supermarket and selling fruits, the demand_met will naturally be close to 10, and sales will be slow for everyone. Now if some people move into the toy industry with a demand_met near 0, they will be selling many more toys than what they'd normally sell - until others follow their lead. As of now the highest oversupplied markets are aircrafts and jewelry - which turned out to be occupied by the biggest store owners in the game, so negative feedback is expected. However please understand in order to make the game more challenging and interesting this mechanism is absolutely necessary. This is not a feature specifically targeting you to give an "unfair advantage" to new players. If you feel you're being targeted unfairly... Well, I'm sorry and I hope things will work out for you sooner or later. And if you don't like the challenge and only want to grow bigger and bigger without effort... go play Farmville or something like that, because everyone here wanted a challenging game that doesn't insult their intelligence. Methods to Circumvent the Supply/Demand System Since the demand variable operates mainly on # sold, not total $ sold, AND there is no anti-trust laws in Econosia yet. Just bump up the price if you're a monopoly - or form an oligarchy and agree on a minimum mark-up if you're not. I will be fixing the pedia now to make the variables transparent. |
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Roald Adriaansen RJ: Wuvil CO: Wuvil Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 146 Karma: 281 Joined: Feb 4, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 25, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 25, 2012) Just as I manage to get myself into producing aircraft... haha. oh well. Is demand a static number or does it increase depending on some factor other than price (and I assume quality?)? As in what happens as more and more people join, does everyone just sell less and less? |
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Chad the Launderer RJ: Synreal CO: Synreal Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 148 Karma: 71 Joined: Feb 11, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 25, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 25, 2012) For any of you that rely on my B2B jewelry, you might want to consider selling your stores because I am not going to spend hours producing it if a diamond necklace sells for the same price as an apple.edit: I may continue selling jewelry in stores but not on the B2B as every piece I sell for 2x on B2B will be resold for 4x lowering my store profits. |
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Cory T RJ: Ether Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 5 Karma: 79 Joined: Mar 10, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 25, 2012 Awesome changes! Makes things more realistic and challenging.
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Chad the Launderer RJ: Synreal CO: Synreal Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 148 Karma: 71 Joined: Feb 11, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 25, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 25, 2012) I propose that you put a feature in to convert a building to a different type. A jewelry store could be retrofitted to become a toy store fairly easily. Otherwise we will spend another month building our stores up and then lose our progress once something changes. I have 15k or something store size that is going to be useless after the change. I will lose my edge. Mega corps like Walmart have an edge in real life over mom and pop stores. In this game the less product you move the better.edit: Or better yet, we can build a special building called, say, "Outlet Mall." The outlet mall would be more expensive but could be retrofitted to sell anything. |
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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 25, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 25, 2012) The demand is generally proportional to the total store size + factory size, and slightly affected by the average product quality and price.And no, this does not mean jewelry will be sold at apple's price - it only means if someone else is selling jewelry at apple's price, then your jewelry just won't sell. Conversely, if everyone is selling jewelry at airplane prices, and the demand_met is constantly near 0, then you'd be selling more jewelry (at airplane prices) than you would be before the change, but still much less than if you're selling them at normal jewelry prices just due to the price factor alone. As for building conversion, I don't think I'll release such a function, but I will take customized orders to change any building for you, applicable to any building size > 500 m^2 |
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Chad the Launderer RJ: Synreal CO: Synreal Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 148 Karma: 71 Joined: Feb 11, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 25, 2012 I am just belly aching. I will see how it turns out. Thanks Scott.
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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 25, 2012 (Last edited on Mar 25, 2012) Don't worry, I understand how you feel. I was amazed/irritated when I saw jewelry ranked #2 on the oversold list, but then I got over it in seconds because I know it'll make the game better - and I can cheat legally :-)But yeah, I'll make a separate post after updating the pedia and start taking customized building switch orders there. |
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Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012 |
Posted on Mar 26, 2012 Hooray for challenge! is all I have to say. As long as the game is fair and balanced, the tougher the better. Bring it on!
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Svaha Woodhouse RJ: Svaha CO: Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 27 Karma: 50 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 17, 2012 The total demand is generated each tick (15 minutes) based on the total factory + store size in m^2.Does R&D be counted also? I think even a mad scientist needs to go shopping.... |
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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 Apr 18, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 18, 2012) Right, my bad. I made that change on the 2nd or 3rd day after the system is out, but forgot to change the top post. It is now updated.
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