COO always prefers to buy from factories.

[David]

I loaded your save game.

Please be informed that the most likely reason why AI didn't choose the warehouse is because the warehouse's capacity is already full, its demand exceeds its supply, as you can see from the supply and demand bars of the warehouse below .

[thiarcher]

I loaded your save game.

Please be informed that the most likely reason why AI didn't choose the warehouse is because the warehouse's capacity is already full, its demand exceeds its supply, as you can see from the supply and demand bars of the warehouse below .

Sorry for the delay in responding, I only just saw that your response was on a second page.

But that's the issue, there is a factory (if I'm not mistaken, factory 11) that is configured to send products to the warehouse but is not sending them and the retailer is buying directly from that factory.

The real question is: Why isn't the factory sending to the warehouse?

[sanya108]

Please be informed that the most likely reason why AI didn't choose the warehouse is because the warehouse's capacity is already full, its demand exceeds its supply, as you can see from the supply and demand bars of the warehouse below .

Logically, all retail demand puts a cumulative “pressure” on warehouses, which will always be relatively higher than the “pressure” of warehouse demand on factories. For this reason, when choosing a purchasing point, the COO will always choose the latter (i.e. the factory!), breaking the logistics carefully built by the player. Logically, preferring deliveries from warehouses rather than from factories should easily cope with this task, but this option does not work! Historically, the capacity of only one sales department (and there are 2) in my factory is twice as high as the capacity of one sales department (and there are 4) in my warehouse. One such warehouse serves 4 of my factories. At the same time, the warehouse efficiency is 43% and the total efficiency of my 4 factories is about 40%. When opening a retail outlet, my COO also gives preference to supplies from these factories, despite the fact that his options are exactly the opposite!

[sanya108]

The COO prefers to buy from your warehouse if the overall ratings of the products are the similar. So if your factories offer better ratings, the COO will still buy from your factory.

I suggest that you do a test like this: try decreasing the prices at your warehouse substantially (like cutting it by half) and see if the COO will order from your warehouse.

In my case, as soon as I cut the price of an item in the warehouse by half, my COO returned to supplying from the warehouse. Until this moment, there was zero demand both in the warehouse and in the factories. The warehouse is located closer to the retail area than the factories. However, my COO managed to make purchases at the factory! Let me make a reservation right away that I’m playing the very first mission in the main game scenario without DLC. Difficulty 120%. Does this mean that the difficulty level affects the dullness of the intelligence of the top management of the player's company?

[David]

I’ve asked the dev team for more info on how the AI makes decisions on this, and here are the details:

When the "prefer warehouse" setting is activated, the AI will add 10 points to the "comparison ratings" of all products from warehouses when comparing products and making purchase decisions.

The "comparison rating" is based on the following factors:
- The product's overall rating
- The ratio of freight cost to product cost.
- The supply and demand for the product, along with the firm AI manager's tolerance for low supply, which varies from person to person.

The difficulty setting does not affect it.

[sanya108]

The "comparison rating" is based on the following factors:
- The product's overall rating
- The ratio of freight cost to product cost.
- The supply and demand for the product, along with the firm AI manager's tolerance for low supply, which varies from person to person.

I understand how to regulate the first two factors. I also understand how to adjust tolerance to low supply. Now we need to deal with supply and demand. Above I have already expressed my assumption, the confirmation of which I have not verified:

Logically, all retail demand puts a cumulative “pressure” on warehouses, which will always be relatively higher than the “pressure” of warehouse demand on factories. For this reason, when choosing a purchasing point, the COO will always choose the latter (i.e. the factory!), breaking the logistics carefully built by the player.

I need to know how the AI ​​manager determines the amount of supply and demand for a product so that I understand exactly WHAT I need TO DO in order for my COO to take goods from the damn warehouse, and not from factories! I have the opinion that except for reducing the price in the warehouse by two or three times, there are no other options, and this is sad, and as mentioned above:

Having to look at each factory is very micromanaging and discourages you from playing the game.

Add warehouse micromanagement here (manual price management) and I forget what the hell I'm doing in this game! And this is only the first mission!