Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Digital Age DLC for Capitalism Lab
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Arcnor
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Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by Arcnor »

I have a few thoughts that would make my game experience better.

Officers

I often will create new subsidiaries where my hope would be that I could hire my current company's COO, CTO, or CMO. The issue is that the game doesn't allow me to do that. I have to fire them first and that just creates bad blood between myself and them when all I really want to do is promote them. I'd suggest we allow the ability to select from those who are part of "My Staff Only" to allow me to promote someone to be a CEO or to move my CEO's around. Of course, as long as I have 75% control.

I've also noticed that in Digital DLC that executives never seem to ask for raises anymore. I can't think of one time while testing this DLC that anyone has asked me for a raise. Also where I take over a company or create a new subsidiary, the CEOs never ask for a raise. In my current game, I've been controlling a company for roughly 18 years of its 21-year existence. At the time of my company taking it over their CEOs salary was $0. In the 18 years that I've been controlling it, the CEO hasn't asked for a raise once. I can't even give the CEO a raise if I wanted to.

The opposite is also true. I've taken over a company where the CEO's salary was $2 billion a year. A bit much from my perspective, but I can't-do anything to cut their pay.

Stock Market

During the game, the AI will regularly do buybacks of stock. However, the player can't-do anything of the sort with subsidiaries. I get that its to prevent stock price manipulation, but if the player company own's 75% of the company then the intent isn't to push up the stock price as much as move funds around. I think we should allow that to happen or prevent the buyback process altogether in the game. I will often purchase a 35% stack in a company and within 5 to 10 years end up with 52% of the company because the AI kept doing buybacks of their stock.

I also think stock splits should be added to the game. I have stock prices in the neighborhood of $14k. It'd be nice if there was a way to bring this down.

On IPOs, I believe we need to allow the player to set the stock price. I issue stock at a fixed price of $10 for my IPO and end up having to issue 23 billion shares to go public. Then because there are so many shares outstanding I can't issue more stock anytime soon unless I do buybacks. The whole reason to issue stock is to be able to raise funds. I think the game should allow for a range of prices between $10 and $50.

It would also be nice to be able to transfer stock ownership. Since you can't use a company you control to buy stock in a company you own stock, it's impossible to transfer ownership. To transfer ownership I basically have to sell every share and then repurchase them with the other company.


Inflation

The Central Bank in my opinion totally sucks at their job. I will set the game settings as reduced inflation and no matter what happens by year 20 in the game the CPI is like at 516 with inflation of 9%. The bank never raises rates above 15%. I just think they should move more aggressively and create larger downturns to correct extended periods of crazy growth. I've experienced 9.85% GDP growth almost my whole 20 years in the game with only minor drops. That just doesn't happen and it would make the game harder if the player had to deal with more declines in the business cycle even to the point GDP went negative.
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David
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Re: Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by David »

I often will create new subsidiaries where my hope would be that I could hire my current company's COO, CTO, or CMO. The issue is that the game doesn't allow me to do that. I have to fire them first and that just creates bad blood between myself and them when all I really want to do is promote them. I'd suggest we allow the ability to select from those who are part of "My Staff Only" to allow me to promote someone to be a CEO or to move my CEO's around. Of course, as long as I have 75% control.
I've forwarded your suggestion to the dev team.
I've also noticed that in Digital DLC that executives never seem to ask for raises anymore. I can't think of one time while testing this DLC that anyone has asked me for a raise. Also where I take over a company or create a new subsidiary, the CEOs never ask for a raise. In my current game, I've been controlling a company for roughly 18 years of its 21-year existence. At the time of my company taking it over their CEOs salary was $0. In the 18 years that I've been controlling it, the CEO hasn't asked for a raise once. I can't even give the CEO a raise if I wanted to.
In my testing, the COO did ask for a salary raise. The game has Digital Age DLC enabled. Please see the attached screenshot.

Perhaps you could send me your save game if all the games you played have this problem.
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Re: Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by David »

Inflation

The Central Bank in my opinion totally sucks at their job. I will set the game settings as reduced inflation and no matter what happens by year 20 in the game the CPI is like at 516 with inflation of 9%. The bank never raises rates above 15%. I just think they should move more aggressively and create larger downturns to correct extended periods of crazy growth. I've experienced 9.85% GDP growth almost my whole 20 years in the game with only minor drops. That just doesn't happen and it would make the game harder if the player had to deal with more declines in the business cycle even to the point GDP went negative.
I've created 3 new games from scratch and tested them by running each of them for an extended period of time. The inflation from all these 3 games seem reasonable with logical inflation cycles. I am posting the screenshots from these 3 games below for your reference.
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David
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Re: Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by David »

I also think stock splits should be added to the game. I have stock prices in the neighborhood of $14k. It'd be nice if there was a way to bring this down.
I think there should be some conditions that must be met in order to do a stock split, so that the player cannot do it without any constraints. Under what circumstances do you think the player should be allowed to do a stock split?
Arcnor
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Re: Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by Arcnor »

David wrote:
Inflation

The Central Bank in my opinion totally sucks at their job. I will set the game settings as reduced inflation and no matter what happens by year 20 in the game the CPI is like at 516 with inflation of 9%. The bank never raises rates above 15%. I just think they should move more aggressively and create larger downturns to correct extended periods of crazy growth. I've experienced 9.85% GDP growth almost my whole 20 years in the game with only minor drops. That just doesn't happen and it would make the game harder if the player had to deal with more declines in the business cycle even to the point GDP went negative.
I've created 3 new games from scratch and tested them by running each of them for an extended period of time. The inflation from all these 3 games seem reasonable with logical inflation cycles. I am posting the screenshots from these 3 games below for your reference.
I'll do the same and post what my results are. I could definitely be wrong, but it just always seems there aren't any inflation cycles.
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Re: Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by Arcnor »

So here is what I have in my game after 15 years.

Basically only once during that stretch did we have any sort of contraction. GDP and Inflation then proceed to shoot up and stay pretty consistent resulting in the CPI to shoot up. The central bank slowly increased the interest rate, but its effect on inflation during that period was basically mute.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I just wouldn't expect an economy to consistently have 10% GDP growth over basically a 7 year period. I also think the recovery time from the one downturn was a little fast.
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Arcnor
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Re: Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by Arcnor »

David wrote:
I also think stock splits should be added to the game. I have stock prices in the neighborhood of $14k. It'd be nice if there was a way to bring this down.
I think there should be some conditions that must be met in order to do a stock split so that the player cannot do it without any constraints. Under what circumstances do you think the player should be allowed to do a stock split?
Currently, I believe the game will automatically do a stock split if the value per share drops below $1. (Could have my facts wrong slightly).

I think once the per share value reaches $1500 then the game should give both the player and AI the option to do a stock split. Allow the Company then to decide between a 10-to-1 (bringing the price to 150), 5-to-1 (price to $300), or 2-to-1 (price to $750).

Doing this will allow for better stock price management and keep prices from skyrocketing too high. An additional benefit of allowing this is you make the stocks of existing companies more accessible to the AI when you have new companies join mid game.

I still also think we need the following for the Stock Market:

- Set initial IPO price within a range to avoid IPOs with billions of shares issuing.
- Allow the transfer of stock ownership between subsidiaries (with no market effect).

If we can't increase the fixed IPO price of $10 per share, then allow for reverse splits when either the price falls below $1 as it does now or when the number of outstanding shares exceeds 500 million.
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Re: Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by Njeroe »

+1 for the Officer suggestion, I think that would be a great addition.
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Re: Company Officers & Other Suggestions

Post by David »

Arcnor wrote: Currently, I believe the game will automatically do a stock split if the value per share drops below $1. (Could have my facts wrong slightly).

I think once the per share value reaches $1500 then the game should give both the player and AI the option to do a stock split. Allow the Company then to decide between a 10-to-1 (bringing the price to 150), 5-to-1 (price to $300), or 2-to-1 (price to $750).

Doing this will allow for better stock price management and keep prices from skyrocketing too high. An additional benefit of allowing this is you make the stocks of existing companies more accessible to the AI when you have new companies join mid game.

I still also think we need the following for the Stock Market:

- Set initial IPO price within a range to avoid IPOs with billions of shares issuing.
- Allow the transfer of stock ownership between subsidiaries (with no market effect).

If we can't increase the fixed IPO price of $10 per share, then allow for reverse splits when either the price falls below $1 as it does now or when the number of outstanding shares exceeds 500 million.
I have forwarded your suggestions to the dev team for their consideration.
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