eCommerce outlet & sales not showing up

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Brutus
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eCommerce outlet & sales not showing up

Post by Brutus »

So for giggles I decided to run an Amazon type of store. Just a warehouse you fill up with goods from any company's products that you think will sell well through your eCommerce platform.

Now ... it functions mechanically as it generates a profit, sales go through fine and the pie chart is properly updated. The only thing that it doesn't do is register the warehouse as an actual retail outlet when you look at the product details tab in the information center as shown below. Neither in the ''Retail'' section nor in the ''E-commerce'' section will the outlet be listed. I think this is because it's solely doing E-Commerce (thus should be subject to the mentioned tab) however the E-commerce tab only lists ''Producer'' type of outlets and doesn't take into account possible other type of ''retailers'' such as warehouses e-com reselling.
Arrow Corp is the company I am buying and reselling products from in this case. Hyper Cube is actual company name of the player in this case
Arrow Corp is the company I am buying and reselling products from in this case. Hyper Cube is actual company name of the player in this case
eCommerce.png (694.74 KiB) Viewed 2135 times

Also if I may offer one UI improvement here. I often struggle to find out what type of retail store or factory the AI is using to make its products and sales. I want to know how they are producing and in what type of outlet they are selling. Whether that be convenience stores, supermarkets, megastores, etc or whether the manufacturer is just a small, medium or large factory. These are all important details that I can only access by clicking each individual box and visiting each individual firm. I'd prefer it if above the ''producer'' or ''retailer'' it listed what type of firm its taking place from. It would be even better if I'd know exactly what type of firm and how many sales units or manufacturing units were involved but I'm happy with just knowing what type of firm it is too :lol:

Not sure if this was a bug but thought it important enough to bring up as it seems somewhat inconsistent. (I do think it's awesome that you can run this type of store though :D )

Much thanks in advance.
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David
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Re: eCommerce outlet & sales not showing up

Post by David »

Not sure if this was a bug but thought it important enough to bring up as it seems somewhat inconsistent.
Could you please provide the save game?
Also if I may offer one UI improvement here. I often struggle to find out what type of retail store or factory the AI is using to make its products and sales. I want to know how they are producing and in what type of outlet they are selling. Whether that be convenience stores, supermarkets, megastores, etc or whether the manufacturer is just a small, medium or large factory. These are all important details that I can only access by clicking each individual box and visiting each individual firm. I'd prefer it if above the ''producer'' or ''retailer'' it listed what type of firm its taking place from. It would be even better if I'd know exactly what type of firm and how many sales units or manufacturing units were involved but I'm happy with just knowing what type of firm it is too :lol:
Where would you suggest displaying the retail store type for each retailer? It seems that there isn't space available for the extra info.
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Brutus
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Re: eCommerce outlet & sales not showing up

Post by Brutus »

David wrote: Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:28 am Could you please provide the save game?
Of course:
ADAM_007.zip
version 6.8.07
(2.62 MiB) Downloaded 76 times
When booting up the save-game, there's the Medium Warehouse right in front of you that I used to do the Amazon trick with. Shouldn't be hard to find.
David wrote:Where would you suggest displaying the retail store type for each retailer? It seems that there isn't space available for the extra info.
Ideally I'd just make the regular product box taller just like is done when you inspect software products since it has to account for the Operating System as part of the product type. (see previously posted image where you can see Arrow Corp offering 3D moddeling software, it has larger than ordinary box. If you shift the name to the top right of that box and put the type of firm to the top left, you should be able to fit it there for both 'producer' and 'retailer'. Ah whatever i'll just make a mockup. (yes its god aweful quality I know :mrgreen: )

FirmType.png
FirmType.png (756.77 KiB) Viewed 2104 times

It's quite rare that your list will be filled up to the bottom so scrolling in general won't be too big of an issue if you enlarge these boxes unless you're running on the lowest screen setting (I tested it) in which case ... scrolling is ALWAYS going to be an issue regardless of whether you increase this box's size or not :lol: (I finally got a QuadHD monitor a while ago and ... after having a 768p screen for 12 years I can finally say ... yes ... yes indeed ... I can see more than the information center and 3 bars when scrolling now 8-) (I'm still running at 1600x900 rather than 2560x1440 because I can just see more with lower res )

Another thing I noticed while being in this part of the information center for extended times is that ... the AI is absolutely flip flopping on prices the whole time. I'm not talking about tiny price swings or small adjustments. No we're talking absolutely crazy and batshit insane price hikes and price drops. It's just flip flopping with the prices all the time. The AI is quite stable when its the sole producer/retailer. It's also somewhat competent when it has one other competitor to deal with but it absolutely breaks down when there are more then 2 different competitors all producing and retailing at the same time. Just check out this screenshot to see what I mean.
PriceVolatility.png
PriceVolatility.png (459.27 KiB) Viewed 2104 times

You see those massive up and down swings at the graph? That's because this AI (Vita Nexus) can't decide whether to charge $1000 for a Desktop Computer or $550. It keeps cycling between these two prices every few weeks. They're all going crazy or something trying to adjust to some goal they have set, then re-adjusting back ... then flip flopping again. It's crazy. This isn't unique to this savegame either, I've tested it with well over a dozen games with different settings for ''Price Aggressiveness'' for the AI and they all seem to do this to some degree. I think there might be some things conflicting with each other causing the AI to keep switching between prices this badly.
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David
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Re: eCommerce outlet & sales not showing up

Post by David »

Ideally I'd just make the regular product box taller just like is done when you inspect software products since it has to account for the Operating System as part of the product type. (see previously posted image where you can see Arrow Corp offering 3D moddeling software, it has larger than ordinary box. If you shift the name to the top right of that box and put the type of firm to the top left, you should be able to fit it there for both 'producer' and 'retailer'. Ah whatever i'll just make a mockup. (yes its god aweful quality I know :mrgreen: )
I've forwarded your suggestion to the dev team. I was told that they will attempt to do something on this in the upcoming version 6.9.00.
Another thing I noticed while being in this part of the information center for extended times is that ... the AI is absolutely flip flopping on prices the whole time. I'm not talking about tiny price swings or small adjustments. No we're talking absolutely crazy and batshit insane price hikes and price drops. It's just flip flopping with the prices all the time. The AI is quite stable when its the sole producer/retailer. It's also somewhat competent when it has one other competitor to deal with but it absolutely breaks down when there are more then 2 different competitors all producing and retailing at the same time. Just check out this screenshot to see what I mean.
Could you please send me your save-game with this issue? In the previous save-game you sent me, I couldn't AI exhibiting such a behavior.
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