Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

I just started. I don't understand the bars in my factory modules or in my retail shops.

If a bar on a sales module says there is high supply but low demand, whose supply is it and whose demand is it? Is it the thing immediately supplying it and the thing immediatley consuming it? Which bars are which? Is so, then I should be able to up the demand on sales in a factory by making a retail store that sells it, right?

But then how do I increase demand from the retail store? If it goes down, I''d expect the thing to get backed up and stop buying from the factory, right? Then I should see the factory's demand go down?

What does the inventory block do?
Which bars are which?
How can I tell if I need two or more retail stores to sell product from a single factory?

Fleshbits wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2020 6:04 am I just started. I don't understand the bars in my factory modules or in my retail shops.

If a bar on a sales module says there is high supply but low demand, whose supply is it and whose demand is it?

The supply bar indicates the supply of products from your factories or retail stores.

For the demand bar, if it is a retail store, it indicates the demand of products from consumers. If it is a factory, it indicates the demand of products from its clients which can be retail stores (retail stores buying from factories).

I had the same problem. I am also a new player. Bought Cap 2 from steam and upgraded to Labs because it is way better. Take what I have to say with that in mind. Here is what I have figured out so far.



If you look at my furniture store, I have placed some arrows to explain. The dark blue arrow under the bars of the sofa show supply (yellow) and demand (orange). The higher the bars, the higher the supply and demand respectively. A Low or nonexistent orange bar means no demand and that equals no sales. A low yellow bar means there is a kink somewhere in your production chain as you have no products to sell to meet the demand. These bars are mirrored on the bottom left at the light blue arrow. And again in the sales unit of the sofa (dark blue arrow)

In this sofa sales unit you can see two more bars. The blue dotted one on top, meaning units of sofa in stock. This is a percentage of storage of the unit that is full, with sofas in this case. The bottom purple bar represents the percentage of utilisation of the unit. If it is full the unit is working (in this case selling) at maximum or 100% capacity. The attached sofa purchasing unit below is not working at full capacity and has plenty of suppy availible (full yellow bar) so I know the bottleneck is in the sales unit of sofas. Sollution: More sofa sales units (I do not want this as I would lose my advertising unit) or level up the sales unit so they can store and move more product (I ordered training, see red training bar in the bottom middle).

You can see that my sales units for beds are not meeting demand (orange arrows) My purchasing unit and sales units are working at max capacity. The purchasing unit has plenty of supply, but it can only move so many beds. Leveling up would help meet demand, by greater sales in the sale units and greater supply for them from a higher level purchasing unit.

The only units that are under used are the chair units (green and red arrows). Both the sale and purchasing units are working under capacity, as shown by the purple bars. This is a result of lower demand than supply. There is plenty of supply from my factory shown in the purchasing unit, so that is not a problem. By lowering the price, waiting for a higher brand rating or tech invention on chairs, I can raise demand for my product over time. Alternitavely I could switch the left most sales unit of chairs over to the higher-in-demand sofa's and kill two birds with one stone so to speak.

It is getting late, but I could post a similar thing on my chair factory if you wish. I hope this helps.

Toblakai

good stuff. thanks!

Here is an image of the corresponding factory for sofas.



The demand bars, utilization and stock bars are all the same colour, but note that the demand of the sales unit is equal to the demand of all stores, warehouses etc. that have this factory as their supplier. It has in no way a relation to the city wide demand for this product. Since these sofas are on internal sale, only my store puts a demand on it, and very little as you can see in the sales unit. As soon as demand caps supply, the sales unit will show a max demand bar and supply will drop, even though the factory may be running at max capacity. You will need another factory or a bigger factory at that point. The main view to the right shows how much of the max capacity is being used by displaying (18% in this case) over the factory, when hovering over it with the mouse.

The green bars in the manufacturing units represent the 3 components needed to make sofas. In this case: leather, cotton and timber. If you produce an item with fewer base components you will see only two or even one bar. Which bar corresponds to which resource I don't know. You could find out I suppose, but it does not really matter. As soon as you see one green bar drop to 0, spot the purchasing unit that is maxed out in utilisation, has plenty of raw material supply but has no stock (blue bars on top). Fix that by training or fitting in another purchasing unit of this type. It could also be that the purchasing unit has no access to enough supply (no or low yellow bar in p-unit). Then you need to search further down the chain for the bottleneck.

The bars of utilisation turn an empty red bracket in mft units to attract your attention to the fact that they do no work, as seen in the left to mft units.

Hope this helps,

Toblakai