Banking Beta issues

[David]

These bonds in fact belong to me as a player, not as a company. They are not just bought back and closed.
By the way I suspect that it is the same for bonds that are bought back by the issuer. But I cannot prove it.

Caplab bond bug13.PNG

The programmer has fixed this bug. The fix will be in the next update v6.0.12.

[David]

Oh, by the way, money that a player receives as an interest from the bonds are not deducted from the company.
And the bond principal owned by player is not deducted. Basically it is all free money.

The same is for cities

The programmer has fixed this bug. The fix will be in the next update v6.0.12.

[piermario]

i got dbf structure invalid, attached my stocks dbf trial file
thank you

[David]

We will get the problem fixed in the next update v6.0.12.

[David]

That's it. I filled in all the useful information about factory in one screen. I even added three pictures from "analysis view". Just because I can and just because I had a lot of free space.
I only scrapped purchasing tile from classic 3x3 grid but I am pretty sure that it can be added easily. Just remove duplicate information and maybe re-align inputs vertically.

Mad skillz session complete. And I am not even late for a night out.
Fun fact, it took less than 1.5 hours.
Caplab Window005 Product in process 008.png

Could you please explain a little bit about the difference between your design and the original design so that I can convey the key points to the dev team?

My impression is that the original design has all the elements spread over a few different screens and you grouped them together onto a single screen. Is this the main difference? Did you mean that the current design is not useful mainly because it does not allow you to see all the key information on a single screen?

[megapolis]

That's it. I filled in all the useful information about factory in one screen. I even added three pictures from "analysis view". Just because I can and just because I had a lot of free space.
I only scrapped purchasing tile from classic 3x3 grid but I am pretty sure that it can be added easily. Just remove duplicate information and maybe re-align inputs vertically.

Mad skillz session complete. And I am not even late for a night out.
Fun fact, it took less than 1.5 hours.
Caplab Window005 Product in process 008.png

Could you please explain a little bit about the difference between your design and the original design so that I can convey the key points to the dev team?

My impression is that the original design has all the elements spread over a few different screens and you grouped them together onto a single screen. Is this the main difference? Did you mean that the current design is not useful mainly because it does not allow you to see all the key information on a single screen?

I'll try to explain my view differently.
First, I don't mind about different views and pages. They are fine as long as they are useful. For example Balance sheet for every company always was accessed through a button and that is totally fine.

I'll explain it on an abstract example. Let's, say, we have 200 parameters that influence my process. (firm, game, anything abstract). They are split equally between 10 pages or views.
Out of 200 parameters, only 10 are crucial. And coincidentally each of them is on a different page. So to have an overview I need to watch 10 pages with 10 different report to find out what's going on.
There are two solutions to this. Either fit all 200 parameters onto one page or create a dashboard with 10 of them. Or better 20 because we have space for 20 anyway. 10 of them are crucial ones and 10 are somehow important or most helpful.

I don't think that I said something new here. So our "analysis view" is a dashboard of some kind. With only 3 numbers and tons of free space.
and it is not even an analysis. It is raw data. 3 freaking numbers that should give me all information. But does it? Let's see.

For example I set up a new firm. I immediately receive a message "Production suspended due to missing inputs". And two completely empty panels. And by the way I don't even see if I don't have suppliers at all or they are unhealthy because there is no suppliers view before I actually start producing anything. (that way I once spent $10m rebuilding my firm over and over because it did not start producing anything)

Of. My firm now is working for many years and I am just checking its health. Let's move on to three numbers in right panel.
First number is Quality of input items. Does it help me somehow? Is it needed? No. It just states a fact that my suppliers overall quality is, say, 24/50. Ok. I get it. And it is not the number I need on a dashboard (I, actually, don't need this number at all). Because if I need to improve quality of inputs or reduce their costs or check suppliers health, I should go to a different view.

Second number is Production Technology. Ok. I get it. It's 50/50. Great. But what is it for? If my technology is only 35/50, I cannot change it anyway. It is done by research or buying of someone's technology. Actually I knew it anyway. It did not help me. It did not even give me a link to my R&D center or technology purchase dialogue.

Third number is Quality of finished product. In my case it is 92/100. Great. So what? Is it good? Is it bad? Will it help? No. Nyet. Nothing. Nada.

Oh! In the bottom right corner I found something interesting! Two gauges. Overall utilization and Stock in the factory! Great! Finally something useful. It is funny but in my case it is also not useful at all. First it says that utilization is 0%. That is wrong. My factory sells around 2500 items monthly with capacity of 16000. That is definitely more than 0%. Probably it just did not sell anything today. To be honest, I don't care. this number is completely wrong. And as a result - useless.

(by the way, I see a bug here. I don't see View Clients button if in grid view I left active one of 9 cells instead of the good itself)

But let's imagine these two gauges work properly. Ok. By themselves they don't mean anything. Only as a pair. Here are the possible options:
1. Utilization X%, Inventory Full. Factory is 80% utilized.
2. Utilization 100% Inventory Empty. Factory is 1XX% Utilized.
3. Utilization 70% Inventory Empty. Not enough Supplies.

In fact #1 and #2 can be combined if you can imagine utilization above 100%.
In current state it is nothing that can be called "analysis".
What can be called analysis? For example:

Utilization 52%
Utilization 128%
Utilization 79% Check suppliers.

But that is just a single number for a whole view! And it is called analysis! Damn, I cannot resist. Will do it in MS Paint now! Madskillz forever!

Caplab analysis madskillz.PNG (216.79 KiB) Viewed 2832 times

[David]

I understand that you didn't find the main view of Analysis mode useful. How about combining with the inputs screen (the screenshot below)? Would that be useful?

In the 3x3 grid mode, the player has to check out individual purchasing, manufacturing and sales units (a maximum of 9 different screens), whereas in the analysis mode, the player only has to switch between the main screen and the inputs screen (2 screens). Wouldn't you call this a consolidation of information?

And the reason why there are 2 screens instead of just combining them into a single one is the concern of making the screen way too crowded with data, which new users will find intimidating.

In your mock-up screen, I saw that you combined most of the elements from the Analysis mode main screen and the Input screen, plus a few pieces of information from the 3x3 mode.

I got the impression that the main difference between your proposed UI and the current UI is these pieces of information from the 3x3 mode that are missing in the Analysis mode, right? At a brief glance, they include Internal Sale button, Clear button for the sale unit. If you could send me the full list of such additional elements that you think must be included in the Analysis mode, I will explain to the dev team that it will improve the usefulness of the Analysis mode by including those elements.

[David]

(by the way, I see a bug here. I don't see View Clients button if in grid view I left active one of 9 cells instead of the good itself)

The bugs with the View Clients button and the utilization display have been fixed. You may download the latest version 6.0.12 from https://www.enlight.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=6904

[megapolis]

I understand that you didn't find the main view of Analysis mode useful. How about combining with the inputs screen (the screenshot below)? Would that be useful?

In the 3x3 grid mode, the player has to check out individual purchasing, manufacturing and sales units (a maximum of 9 different screens), whereas in the analysis mode, the player only has to switch between the main screen and the inputs screen (2 screens). Wouldn't you call this a consolidation of information?

And the reason why there are 2 screens instead of just combining them into a single one is the concern of making the screen way too crowded with data, which new users will find intimidating.

In your mock-up screen, I saw that you combined most of the elements from the Analysis mode main screen and the Input screen, plus a few pieces of information from the 3x3 mode.

I got the impression that the main difference between your proposed UI and the current UI is these pieces of information from the 3x3 mode that are missing in the Analysis mode, right? At a brief glance, they include Internal Sale button, Clear button for the sale unit. If you could send me the full list of such additional elements that you think must be included in the Analysis mode, I will explain to the dev team that it will improve the usefulness of the Analysis mode by including those elements.

I actually like the inputs view. But it is useless without the main screen.
My mock-up screen was created to show that much more information could fit into one screen. In my opinion proper screen is the left part as is and the right part with Utilization and suppliers info. Product quality info is already included on the left part of the screen.

[megapolis]

6.0.12. Start with 80% bond is useless now.
I think that on a screenshot below everything is perfect.
1. Credit rating of initial bond is D. That's why the only viable strategy on day1 is to take loan and repay all that bond back. There is no place in game where I can invest money @20.30%p/a on day1. This one is definitely a bug, not a feature.
1.1 By the way I am still able to buy back my initial bond @75 cents per dollar. It is much better than 21 cent for dollar that was there in previous version but it is still $5M of free money.
2. I was able to issue a bond @8% the next day after I issued another one @10.75. Well, to be honest, that is not a bug. But I can't say that it is a feature as well. It happened because I issued first of these two to refinance another bond that was due on that day. There probably should be an interface to refinance my bonds in a way that I will never see the money on my bank account but I am not sure of that.

Caplab bond bug15.PNG (146.42 KiB) Viewed 2778 times