Company divisions & Real Estate

[Alan Doyle]

Company divisions

Set up divisions within the main company (such as agricultural, mining, sales) that have their own accounts and would enable selling of that division (had enough of sales and want to concentrate on farming? then sell off your sales division).

Can we enhance the real estate aspect?

Expanding on both divisions and real estate, allow player to develop construction division/interest to utilise industrial goods (sand, cement, concrete, steel), reduce building costs, and win contracts to build city infrastructure (City wants to build new office block, player invited to tender for job. Player can set price of bid, factoring in raw material costs, staff costs and build time.

[David]

Can we enhance the real estate aspect?

Expanding on both divisions and real estate, allow player to develop construction division/interest to utilise industrial goods (sand, cement, concrete, steel), reduce building costs, and win contracts to build city infrastructure (City wants to build new office block, player invited to tender for job. Player can set price of bid, factoring in raw material costs, staff costs and build time.

We have been pondering what the best design approach for this would be. Should we allow the player to set up warehouses to store the construction materials (cement, concrete, steel) ?

As you know, currently buildings are built instantly with no construction time. Shall we make constructions take time? But personally, I like the gratification of seeing a retail store or factory built instantly so that I can start to set up the layout with no waiting.

What are your thoughts?

[JML0328]

Maybe you can still set up the layout instantaneously, but you have to wait x number of days for the layout to go into effect due to construction.

It seems like the game has something similar in place right now with the wait time for goods to arrive.

So, you can set the building up, set the layout, but still have to wait for the building to be built.

I guess the price can be affected by the price of the cement, etc set by the producers.

A very cool concept indeed.

[David]

Maybe you can still set up the layout instantaneously, but you have to wait x number of days for the layout to go into effect due to construction.

It seems like the game has something similar in place right now with the wait time for goods to arrive.

So, you can set the building up, set the layout, but still have to wait for the building to be built.

I guess the price can be affected by the price of the cement, etc set by the producers.

A very cool concept indeed.

Your idea is a good one. Just added it to the poll of another message on this forum.

[Alan Doyle]

The instant build option always slightly annoyed me because, as JML0328 points out, goods do not immediately arrive.

There should be a construction or utilisation delay to force the player to think ahead by several game months.

[ajpiper2k]

Company divisions

Set up divisions within the main company (such as agricultural, mining, sales) that have their own accounts and would enable selling of that division (had enough of sales and want to concentrate on farming? then sell off your sales division).

Can we enhance the real estate aspect?

Expanding on both divisions and real estate, allow player to develop construction division/interest to utilise industrial goods (sand, cement, concrete, steel), reduce building costs, and win contracts to build city infrastructure (City wants to build new office block, player invited to tender for job. Player can set price of bid, factoring in raw material costs, staff costs and build time.

I like the real estate aspect of this idea. I find it kind of cool. And I did place my vote accordingly.

I can see several advantages to the division idea. There is an opportunity for more ganular reporting. The idea of selling off or buying a division is also apealling.

As a player, however, I do not like the features of hiring managers and managing people in this game. My experience has been that they do not do as good of a job as I can, my business is generally less efficient and I can do a better job myself. While it wouldn't work that way in the real world, I can be more successful in this game without the hired help. For that reason, I would not want to be required to hire managers or highly paid executives for each division.

Andy

[Alan Doyle]

As a player, however, I do not like the features of hiring managers and managing people in this game. My experience has been that they do not do as good of a job as I can, my business is generally less efficient and I can do a better job myself. While it wouldn't work that way in the real world, I can be more successful in this game without the hired help. For that reason, I would not want to be required to hire managers or highly paid executives for each division.

Andy

That's a very good point. I always prefer to look after things myself in game because the managers are not good enough. However, I do not think it is a good enough reason to force the player to micro manage divisions: the choice should be left with the player to either run the division or assign AI to do so.

[ajpiper2k]

As a player, however, I do not like the features of hiring managers and managing people in this game. My experience has been that they do not do as good of a job as I can, my business is generally less efficient and I can do a better job myself. While it wouldn't work that way in the real world, I can be more successful in this game without the hired help. For that reason, I would not want to be required to hire managers or highly paid executives for each division.

Andy

That's a very good point. I always prefer to look after things myself in game because the managers are not good enough. However, I do not think it is a good enough reason to force the player to micro manage divisions: the choice should be left with the player to either run the division or assign AI to do so.

I have no objections to giving the player the option. But, in all the chat rooms that I've read, no one seems that happy with hiring managers. Most recommend against it. So, if I had a choice between spending development time on teaching the AI to manage departments or getting a feature that lets me more easily manage a huge company, I'd prefer the development time spent on something else.

If you want to look at this feature in an all or nothing light (meaning, if I create divisions, then I have to extend the AI to allow the player to hire managers. Then, I think there are bigger gains in some of the other features. Managing divisions looks cool, but at the end of the day, it won't help me make another $2 billion/year.

I can see the arguement that buying a division of another company can be a good challenge. But, the AI does not build companies that run as efficiently as I can. So, I'm going to spend a lot of effort turning around a broken division. I'd rather build a division from scratch and drive the competition into the ground.
If I want to clean up a mess like that, I can take over another company and get the same challenge.

Am I missing something?

[Alan Doyle]

My division idea was based on creating specialised sections within your (the player's) corporation and to provide some order to what can often become a sprawling mixture of retail and manufactoring concerns. It would also allow an easier method of selling off areas of the corporation that no longer matter (financially, strategically or gameplay wise). I thought it would also offer a chance to buy AI divisions that already have established retail links, or control valuable resources, without having to buy the entire rival corporation.

I did not factor in AI control of their own divisions, and any that you assign within your own corporation, as we all know that AI control of your own interests is not the best first choice. But be honest, if divisions were introduced you'd control them yourself anyway, wouldn't you?

[JML0328]

Company divisions

Set up divisions within the main company (such as agricultural, mining, sales) that have their own accounts and would enable selling of that division (had enough of sales and want to concentrate on farming? then sell off your sales division).

What about setting up divisions by the choice of the user?

For example, I can start a division and throw whatever "firms" in there that I want? All firms that are unassigned to stay in a group called "Corporate" and the user can name their custom divisions whatever they want?

The reason that I suggest this is because some users may want to organize their divisions by firm type, others may want to sort by product type, and others may want to include the supply chain (like putting farms and supermarkets together for "food").