New Capitalism-style browser game

[EzeKieL]

oooookaaaay, I just noticed.

I need to pay off my loan first .

[Matrix]

You certainly should take out a loan, since its only 1% per day, which is even less then it was last week, when it was 2%. Which is still very little. I was sitting on full loans for first 3 days, since it allowed me to boost my expansion big time.

1% a day is true and it's a great deal. But it was 0.2% last week and it changed overnight on Friday night. Just saying - watch for despotic moves on Friday night.

Was it 0.2? i am pretty sure it was 2% (at least when i looked at my loan payment amounts thats what i recalling), unless i am confusing something he actually lowered the loan amount since mostly new player were likely to take it out.


PS: a bit of insider news, i am coming back as CEO of RJM shortly.

[Silky]

Over the weekend I took a huge gamble and split my company into a third direction. I spent a boatload (for me) of money and got my water research up to lvl 35 and can now produce decent quantities of lvl 31 water; about 10 million a day. If demand requires it I can easily increase the amount. My next big move is going to try and get water research to 43. I suspect it will take about 30 million dollars which I do not have now to get to that level so I will try to save for a few days. That is pretty hard for me cause I can always find a use for spare money laying around. Once I get all of this straight I will probably do my IPO.

[GreenGoo]

Direct. If you have space of 100 and you increase it to 200, your sales will double. You certainly should take out a loan, since its only 1% per day, which is even less then it was last week, when it was 2%. Which is still very little. I was sitting on full loans for first 3 days, since it allowed me to boost my expansion big time.

Ok, this is exactly the information I was looking for. Thanks!

Edit: And I don't qualify for any more loans. Heh.

[noxiousdog]

I should have grown my market before growing my inventory. My market 200m2 to give you and trying to sell at rate of 10 per tick by items purchased in b2b or the import is a barely break even proposition.

Does anyone know the relationship between floor size and sales? My shops are extremely small right now and if I knew how badly it was holding me back I'd take out another loan to finance some expansions.

Double the size of your store, and you'll double the rate of sales.

[GreenGoo]

Double the size of your store, and you'll double the rate of sales.

Ok, all my available funds will go into store expansion. Wish I knew that ahead of time. Spent way too much trying to make quality products and not enough on salesmanship.

I would definitely do things differently if I were just starting the game today. Oh well, let's see if I can turn this money pit around.

For the record I day traded LM's company for about 100k profit which is all I could afford at the time. Price is down from my selling point so it's one of the only decisions I've made that was correct. Thanks to everyone else for pushing it up.

edit: I noticed supply was down and demand was up this morning. I assume this is a regular day cycle due to people sleeping and demand will decrease over the day as more production comes online. I don't really want to adjust my prices multiple times a day but I might be willing to do it right now since I'm poor and the number of products I sell is not daunting. Yet.

[stessier]

edit: I noticed supply was down and demand was up this morning. I assume this is a regular day cycle due to people sleeping and demand will decrease over the day as more production comes online. I don't really want to adjust my prices multiple times a day but I might be willing to do it right now since I'm poor and the number of products I sell is not daunting. Yet.

I rebalance 3x/day (my factories work 8 hour shifts). That way I am relatively sure I won't run out of goods before there is something on the shelf to replace it - or at least the outage will be minimal (shooting for less than 1 hour at worst). Don't know if that's the right way to do it, but it's working okay for me so far (about 10% day over day growth in Net Worth).

[Matrix]

I noticed that to GG, it seems a lot of my stock gets bought out at night, while day its in bits and a peaces. Not sure why. Could be that people in Europe playing, since it certainly not US time.

[noxiousdog]

RIP, you planning on doing anything with JOIPLA? They haven't had any sales for days.

[Semaj]

hrm
10 is base...
so growth potential based on each double being a... well double... lol
10 m - base
20 m - 2
40 m - 3
80 m - 4
160 m - 5
320 m - 6
640 m - 7
1280 m - 8
2560 m - 9

stores get much larger than 2k?

Personally, I cant figure out how you people break that threshold of how much a store can possibly sell at a reasonable price. Only so much advertising you can do... and only so much market share. Which brings me to my current worry...

As the player populace grows, the demand doesnt, so we will all be fighting over 100%+ demands on most items shortly. As proved by how quickly the meat market has gone from early 20's half a week ago to 60% today. When everything is full your just facing a complete lack of growth potential. Unless new markets open up in which case I surmise as quickly as they grow they will be capped.... I assume there is a lot more in store... I am just trying to big picture it.

[stessier]

I don't know - I still routinely get 500%+ markups on fruit and that is all over 100% demand. Increasing your quality as well as your factory size helps demand higher prices while continuing to lower your cost. Sure, you might not be making 2500% profit, but it is still growth.

[LordMortis]

I don't know - I still routinely get 500%+ markups on fruit and that is all over 100% demand. Increasing your quality as well as your factory size helps demand higher prices while continuing to lower your cost. Sure, you might not be making 2500% profit, but it is still growth.

As long as I'm willing to keep my turn around slow, that's pretty much it. So I keep my turn around slow.

[GreenGoo]

Personally, I cant figure out how you people break that threshold of how much a store can possibly sell at a reasonable price. Only so much advertising you can do... and only so much market share. Which brings me to my current worry...

As the player populace grows, the demand doesnt

I can't either but my store is small and my inventory is huge, which is the exact opposite problem and I'm trying to fix that.

As for the demand, why wouldn't it grow? Obviously the B2B market will grow in both demand and supply as more players means more buyers and sellers. As for the stores, that number (demand) is simply generated by the game based on some algorithm only the designer/programmer knows. There is no reason that she/he shouldn't increase the demand based on player base. Whatever algorithm she is using could easily be independent and unaffected by the number of players in the game, although it's more likely to be a function of wholesale price as compare to whatever the market is selling adjusted by quality, plus the amount available in stores compared to sales in the last rolling 3 day average or something like that.

The point is it could be done a million different ways and none of them necessarily worry about how many players there are. So I'm not stressing about that. More players means a lot more competition on the B2B though, and margins will start getting razor thin eventually. Even selling at a loss will occur if for no other reason than to recoup some of the production costs. As with a store going out of business and liquidating its stock, you'll have producers selling at a loss because they made too much of something and it just won't sell for a profit. Hell, I have WAY too many lemons and limes right now, but things are not dire enough for me to sell at a loss. Yet.

For some of my overstock I have been undercutting the market significantly just to offload inventory. I understand this will have a negative impact on future prices on that product but hopefully I won't get myself so buried in worthless (not exactly, but not high demand stock) stock that I will care overly much about what happens in that market in the short term.

[LordMortis]

Personally, I cant figure out how you people break that threshold of how much a store can possibly sell at a reasonable price. Only so much advertising you can do... and only so much market share. Which brings me to my current worry...

That's why I went low volume diverse product. I'd rather sell one of something a tick at 500% markup then 2000 of something a tick at 5% markup. And the reason is that 1) the market seems to be more stable at smaller volumes (meaning higher markups) and 2) you can provide a diversity of product when you carry low volumes and easily restock them. You just have to make sure you store is large enough to make the sales at a good markup.

Essentially, once you have product to sell that you can restock your next priority is to make a killing selling at your stores by making them bigger... Now restocking 50 different fruits and vegetables takes days, so I try to sell them (for instance) at a rate of about 100 per tick (With my plantations being around 300m2 apiece). If I'm selling too much more than that I increase the price. That's part of the chaos I'm dealing with now. I'm selling 3-500 fruit per tick at current prices and I can't find my equilibrium. I'm going to run out of stock too quickly and I don't want to have to baby sit the game.

[GreenGoo]

I need to decide on a new industry. This agriculture based company is for suckers, although I'm starting to make headway. Just not enough.

I have no liquidity right now so I'd have to burn down my infrastructure. I could probably survive in the short term as a reseller but I don't think I'd have enough cash to make enough inroads for a more demanding industry/product. Cash is a problem for me right now.

[stessier]

GG, what is the name of your company? Is it "madjay and co"? Cheap lemons make me happy.

[GreenGoo]

GG, what is the name of your company? Is it "madjay and co"? Cheap lemons make me happy.

Heh, no.

I'm Guy McMoney, shameful owner of the family business, McLemon.

I'll be giving it a facelift at some point, assuming I make headway.

How cheap, btw? Never mind, I see, $0.75/unit.

Edit: Some of my overstock is starting to move, so I'm inching up in 1k here, 5k there. Not enough for a full blown upgrade to my stores, but at least I'm starting to generate revenue.

[Semaj]

Personally, I cant figure out how you people break that threshold of how much a store can possibly sell at a reasonable price. Only so much advertising you can do... and only so much market share. Which brings me to my current worry...

That's why I went low volume diverse product. I'd rather sell one of something a tick at 500% markup then 2000 of something a tick at 5% markup. And the reason is that 1) the market seems to be more stable at smaller volumes (meaning higher markups) and 2) you can provide a diversity of product when you carry low volumes and easily restock them. You just have to make sure you store is large enough to make the sales at a good markup.

That works at a 200% demand met?

[GreenGoo]

Just saw coconut sorbet with a quality of 999. Looks like the first exploit has been found.

Anybody want a single unit of coconut sorbet? Only 49 million.

Edit: Somebody bought 60k of my limes and are reselling. I'm VERY happy to be rid of those limes. And if he makes a profit (a small one, as it turns out) more power to him.

[stessier]

There was a bonus gift handed out to everyone a few days back. It was a 999 level item. Most were stolen if left on the B2B for a high amount, but I still have my 999 level Silk.

[Kraken]

Over the weekend I took a huge gamble and split my company into a third direction. I spent a boatload (for me) of money and got my water research up to lvl 35 and can now produce decent quantities of lvl 31 water; about 10 million a day. If demand requires it I can easily increase the amount. My next big move is going to try and get water research to 43. I suspect it will take about 30 million dollars which I do not have now to get to that level so I will try to save for a few days. That is pretty hard for me cause I can always find a use for spare money laying around. Once I get all of this straight I will probably do my IPO.

Where do you improve the quality of your pumped water? I've put a few points into water in the Beverages research building (I think) but it doesn't affect my extraction.

[stessier]

Over the weekend I took a huge gamble and split my company into a third direction. I spent a boatload (for me) of money and got my water research up to lvl 35 and can now produce decent quantities of lvl 31 water; about 10 million a day. If demand requires it I can easily increase the amount. My next big move is going to try and get water research to 43. I suspect it will take about 30 million dollars which I do not have now to get to that level so I will try to save for a few days. That is pretty hard for me cause I can always find a use for spare money laying around. Once I get all of this straight I will probably do my IPO.

Where do you improve the quality of your pumped water? I've put a few points into water in the Beverages research building (I think) but it doesn't affect my extraction.

Yep, it doesn't. In the Beverages Factory, you have to reprocess the Water. It is 30% Water based and 70% Research based - so Level 10 research will not let you process to Level 10 in one pass (starting with Level 0). It's iterative to get the highest level.

[noxiousdog]

Edit: Somebody bought 60k of my limes and are reselling. I'm VERY happy to be rid of those limes. And if he makes a profit (a small one, as it turns out) more power to him.

You can rip through limes in a hurry. I'm selling 2400 per hour at $2.20. My market is 326 m^2.

[Matrix]

Over the weekend I took a huge gamble and split my company into a third direction. I spent a boatload (for me) of money and got my water research up to lvl 35 and can now produce decent quantities of lvl 31 water; about 10 million a day. If demand requires it I can easily increase the amount. My next big move is going to try and get water research to 43. I suspect it will take about 30 million dollars which I do not have now to get to that level so I will try to save for a few days. That is pretty hard for me cause I can always find a use for spare money laying around. Once I get all of this straight I will probably do my IPO.

Where do you improve the quality of your pumped water? I've put a few points into water in the Beverages research building (I think) but it doesn't affect my extraction.

I wouldn't improve it more then 30 for now especially if its as expensive as it sounds, better to improve you manufacturing capacity, since joi water at quality 30 is few and far in between, you can make a very hefty profit. I often buy water if its higher quality even if its double the cost of normal water. In millions. In fact, the biggest problem with water sold right now quality is really low. I stockpiled on about 20,000mil of quality water a day or two ago when i had a chance, but i feel my reserves already pretty low.

If you sell fruits (GG and others as well) tell me your company names, i buy massive quantities of fruits on regular basis. I keep running out of lemons and limes all the time.

[GreenGoo]

There was a bonus gift handed out to everyone a few days back. It was a 999 level item. Most were stolen if left on the B2B for a high amount, but I still have my 999 level Silk.

Ah, ok. I feel better about it now.

[GreenGoo]

I'm buying Q0 water and processing it at my beverage plant to help with my other products. Works ok so far, although I don't have the capacity to do it in bulk yet. I picked up a million units of Q0 at 0.03 a unit yesterday, so that's helped keep my costs down while making higher Q water. I should have bought more, in hindsight. It's 0.09 today.

[GreenGoo]

If you sell fruits (GG and others as well) tell me your company names, i buy massive quantities of fruits on regular basis. I keep running out of lemons and limes all the time.

I'm McLemon. You bought a chunk of something earlier. I think it was lemons.

I've actually started to put a dent in my inventory. I'm still not very liquid though. I guess my infrastructure was more expensive than I thought.

[stessier]

I've actually started to put a dent in my inventory. I'm still not very liquid though. I guess my infrastructure was more expensive than I thought.

They don't call it Economies of Scale for nothing.

Longer runs make things cheaper. Bigger complexes let you make more in the same time, which should be cheaper - but with the overhead (maintenance and salaries) now it is hard to get my hands around.

I started in Oranges and have 200m2 Orchards. I can produce them for less than $0.20/unit over an 8 hour run. I can't wait to get even bigger and watch that drop even more.

[Matrix]

If you sell fruits (GG and others as well) tell me your company names, i buy massive quantities of fruits on regular basis. I keep running out of lemons and limes all the time.

I'm McLemon. You bought a chunk of something earlier. I think it was lemons.

I've actually started to put a dent in my inventory. I'm still not very liquid though. I guess my infrastructure was more expensive than I thought.

what inventory ?

[GreenGoo]

I've actually started to put a dent in my inventory. I'm still not very liquid though. I guess my infrastructure was more expensive than I thought.

They don't call it Economies of Scale for nothing.

Of course, but as a startup, I have to be able to whittle away at profit until I can move into mass production. My margins are still incredibly high. It's just what's a lot for me (60k limes) is peanuts.

Matrix just bought up everything I had on the B2B I think. So thanks for that. Feels like cheating because I know I wasn't the best deal for a few of those items, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

Thanks Matrix.

Edit: heh. Just saw your comment above, Matrix.

[GreenGoo]

Couple of observations.

The game is incredibly clicky. While I don't have any immediate observations, I'm sure the UI can be improved, information could be made clearer, and extremely importantly, MORE STATS need to be added.

Real time stats would be great, but summaries every hour, reports by individual store, product, market, costs, what have you. If I want to know what my maintenance costs are, I should be able to click on a report and get that information at any time. There is no excuse (other than being busy with more core functionality) to not have this information at your finger tips.

I can fiddle with things all day. That's good for those who have time. Not great for me because I need time to do other stuff. THat's not a criticism, just an observation.

The game is going to have MAJOR bandwidth and i/o issues as it grows. It's already having some minor response time issues that wouldn't be nearly the big deal it's starting to become if the game wasn't so clicky. I am constantly going back and forth between pages as I need to see numbers from one page to make decisions on another. GIven that my memory isn't great, I do this WAY too much. Sometimes having to repeat the process more than once to confirm a sell or buy price before committing. That is a major problem for me and for the game.

Edit: An example of this is tracking my stock portfolio. I need to look at my transaction summary to see what I've paid for a stock. Then I need to look at my portfolio to see what the going price is for those stocks. To tell whether I'm up or down I need to look at two different screens. Since I can't memorize the buyin price for all of my stocks together, I have to flip back and forth between transaction summary and portfolio. I do 1 flip for each stock I own. A complete pain in the ass and completely unnecessary. And on the Stock information. One of my stocks did a reverse split, but I can't tell if that information is conveyed view my portfolio summary, transaction summary, or what? I'm I up, or am I way down because my buyin price is actually twice what is was when I bought the stock? Ugh.

I'm not a webapp designer by trade, but it feels like some lessons learned over the last decade aren't being incorporated. When it is responsive it's not a bad design, although I'm not a huge fan of the reliance on mouseovers for so much necessary information, but I fully expect the responsiveness to suffer as it grows, and that will make minor annoyances now into game destroying issues (for me) in the future. I hope the designer has taken success into account, because it would suck if success is the very thing that makes it fail.

The game does not work correctly on my tablet. The reliance on mouseovers is a problem when you don't have a pointer, but I can deal with that. All the popup screens that are overlaying the base browser page are not drawing properly, but more importantly, the hotspots are not actually under the graphics for the buttons and text. It's a pain and basically unmanageable. Given today's market, the nature of the game (constant observation/fiddling) the game screams for a mobile version. It could take the shape of an app or just a mobile version of the webpage. It's perfectly fitted to be a mobile game, but so far it has been a mess on my tablet. Not sure if it works on the iPad or not. Could someone test it real quick? I'm curious.

Just some random things I've noticed, or opinions I've formed.

[noxiousdog]

I use a lot of tabbed browsing and extra windows for managing stuff.

For example, managing a store requires the store page and the corresponding b2b and sometimes warehouse.

Don't hesitate to open extra windows.

[Kraken]

I'm buying Q0 water and processing it at my beverage plant to help with my other products. Works ok so far, although I don't have the capacity to do it in bulk yet. I picked up a million units of Q0 at 0.03 a unit yesterday, so that's helped keep my costs down while making higher Q water. I should have bought more, in hindsight. It's 0.09 today.

Ah, I see. You can't pump higher quality water, you have to process it.

[Silky]

Over the weekend I took a huge gamble and split my company into a third direction. I spent a boatload (for me) of money and got my water research up to lvl 35 and can now produce decent quantities of lvl 31 water; about 10 million a day. If demand requires it I can easily increase the amount. My next big move is going to try and get water research to 43. I suspect it will take about 30 million dollars which I do not have now to get to that level so I will try to save for a few days. That is pretty hard for me cause I can always find a use for spare money laying around. Once I get all of this straight I will probably do my IPO.

Where do you improve the quality of your pumped water? I've put a few points into water in the Beverages research building (I think) but it doesn't affect my extraction.

I wouldn't improve it more then 30 for now especially if its as expensive as it sounds, better to improve you manufacturing capacity, since joi water at quality 30 is few and far in between, you can make a very hefty profit. I often buy water if its higher quality even if its double the cost of normal water. In millions. In fact, the biggest problem with water sold right now quality is really low. I stockpiled on about 20,000mil of quality water a day or two ago when i had a chance, but i feel my reserves already pretty low.

It certainly isn't viable in the short or maybe even mid term. The issue is how many passes through the beverage factory is needed for the purification. At lvl 35 you can get water to qual 31 with 2 passes. At 43 you can get it to 30 in one pass. Leaving aside the time difference the cost difference is pretty significant in the long term. Pumping lvl 0 water for 24 hours leaves me a cost of 2 cents. Running it through the beverage factory once makes my cost go up to 4 cents (q24). Running it through again to make lvl 31 water leaves me at a cost of 7 cents. It would be huge to get (and sell) decent quality water in one pass. Worth the research money? That I am not sure about.

[Silky]

My big interface gripe (unless I am missing something) is in manufacturing. I have 5 different quality of silks laying around in my warehouse. I want to pick one for a dress not automatically use the worst quality. Combining it into the lower tier isn't something I wish to do either.

[noxiousdog]

My big interface gripe (unless I am missing something) is in manufacturing. I have 5 different quality of silks laying around in my warehouse. I want to pick one for a dress not automatically use the worst quality. Combining it into the lower tier isn't something I wish to do either.

You can sell the lower tier stuff on the B2B, and pull it back if you decide you don't want to sell it.

[stessier]

My big interface gripe (unless I am missing something) is in manufacturing. I have 5 different quality of silks laying around in my warehouse. I want to pick one for a dress not automatically use the worst quality. Combining it into the lower tier isn't something I wish to do either.

You can sell the lower tier stuff on the B2B, and pull it back if you decide you don't want to sell it.

You can also just click on the Silk image on the Build screen and choose the version you want to use. Works for all the manufacturing stuff.

[GreenGoo]

I use a lot of tabbed browsing and extra windows for managing stuff.

For example, managing a store requires the store page and the corresponding b2b and sometimes warehouse.

Don't hesitate to open extra windows.

I did hesitate. I'm not sure why. Weird, because I've got about 10 tabs open for the DoomRL game I'm playing, just for game info. Heh.

Thanks for the reminder. That will help immensely. Not ideal but a major leap forward in usability.

[Silky]

Learn something new and all that. I tried clicking on the quality but nothing. Clicking on the portrait itself isn't something I have done. That would make my life a lot easier because I am constantly putting stuff on the b2b that I have no intention of selling and pricing it that way just to make a batch of something.

[GreenGoo]

My big interface gripe (unless I am missing something) is in manufacturing. I have 5 different quality of silks laying around in my warehouse. I want to pick one for a dress not automatically use the worst quality. Combining it into the lower tier isn't something I wish to do either.

You can sell the lower tier stuff on the B2B, and pull it back if you decide you don't want to sell it.

You can also just click on the Silk image on the Build screen and choose the version you want to use. Works for all the manufacturing stuff.

This.

This is how I pick from my multiple qualities of water to get the best quality product at the least cost. Using my Q4 water doesn't always improve the Q of the product I'm making above what I'd get if I used Q0 water, so why use the more expensive water?

As stessier says, just click the graphic for the raw material in question and another popup comes up allowing you to pick from the various qualities of that material that you have in stock. Works pretty good, although I need to do it several times in order to figure out the optimal quality to use. I *could* check the quality calculation myself and then do the calc myself at the pick screen, but I'm on a computer. That's what computers do. Calculate stuff. I don't wanna have to pay attention to that. The game has more an enough factors for me to track in my head or think about, I should have to do the menial calculations too. So I flip back and forth until I've picked the best for the least. Not a huge deal, just one more thing that makes the game clicky overall.