[TESTING]Factory running costs bugged

[Frankschtaldt]

I've noticed that in every game I've started since 1.14.7, whenever I upgrade my starting factory or build a new one that's any bigger than 1-2 clicks up from minimum I instantly start haemorrhaging money and always bankrupt within a year of opening the factory.
So, in the latest game I started I made a save before I upgraded my factory so I could compare the numbers.

So, the game started in 1930 in Iceland. I am building high end sports cars and turning a good profit. I decide I need to expand a bit so I begin upgrading my factory (same amount of increase in all three sliders, basically three clicks up) with the intention of introducing a fifth car to my lineup, I figure I'll need the extra capacity to meet demand!

So, to compare the before and after numbers.
My initial factory could produce 4413 vehicles with 1490 workers (quality slider far right) and came up in my reports as a "Factory expenses" of around $1.6M.
My new factory a year later can produce 5744 vehicles with 1553 workers and shows up in my reports as a "Factory expenses" of over $5.4M and that's only running at about 2/3 capacity!

So, I get a 30% increase in production capacity from less than 5% more staff. Great! But my factory now costs more than three times as much to run!

By economies of scale, the cost per vehicles really should be less the larger the factory gets. This isn't just opposite, this is several orders of magnitudes opposite!

Saves attaches so you can check out the stuff and stuff.

[-root]

I have had the same happen with a factory previously (crazy high costs). I thought it was because of some game mechanic I didn't know about.

[Frankschtaldt]

I was planning on playing around with only turning up one slider at a time to see if the run away expenses were tied to one inparticular.
I won't be able to do that till about this time tomorrow now though.

[Frankschtaldt]

I did some more work on this.
I started by fully retooling the factory I had and taking a screen of the running costs and production numbers then making 4 new saves. In one I increased all sliders on the factory by 1 click (on the arrow), in each of the other I increased only one slider by 2 clicks.

I made sure factories were 100% retooled before taking all of these pics.

Screens attached. You'll note that in all of these my running costs have increased by a ridiculous amount. From $64k up to $1.1M at best and as high as $3.8M!
Remember I'm still paying for workers and materials on top of that.

You'll also note that when I only increased Capacity or Optimization my production has actually gone down!

If you do some numbers on the tech one. My factory running costs are $3.8M now with a capacity of 6048 cars if I turn the quality slider to the far right. That means I need to clear $629.2 per car after wages, advertising, shipping, material costs etc etc. to draw even provided I could sell every car I made. Given the game is suggesting I sell the car for $1039 I'd call that impossible, I'm actually selling the cars for more than double that and I'm still not coming close to turning a profit.

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Also decided to have a go at building a brand new factory in New York to see how that went.

Sliders were all set to minimum so running cots were much lower than all the other examples. Having said that, running cost vs output was $191.84/car vs $13.83/car for my original factory so that's still a 1,287% increase!

It would seam that as it currently stands, the only way for a company to remain profitable is to leave their original factory untouched and to build new factories with minimum sliders when more production is required.

I personally think this needs a major re-balance!

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Here's all the saves.

[Eric.B]

I can't look at the save game right now, but what difficulty are you doing this on?

[Frankschtaldt]

Just normal.

[Savoyard]

This may be what killed my game in the 30's. I was selling most of my production but my factory expenses were about 25% greater than my revenues.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/4873...FD548F8A8/

[Eric.B]

I'll make some adjustments for 1.14.9

[Eric.B]

I got a chance to do some adjustments. They're still not perfect, but they're much more balanced now.

I think I may end up doing the suggestion of actually allowing the user to choose how many factory lines there are. As the current code is getting a bit overly complex for such a simple task... Might be a mid-minor suggestion I can work in for 1.16.

[Frankschtaldt]

This is still very much in 1.14.9. See attached pic. After a rebuild my production increased by a little under 10% but my cost to run the factory went up more than 40 fold. Factory expenses per vehicle capacity increased by 36,000%! Almost $2000 per vehicle if I run at max capacity before wages and distribution expenses in an era when most vehicles are selling for $1000 or less.

Really, you need to take at least one zero off the factory expense value you're calculating. I'd say it needs to be around 5% of the current number. Which is roughly where the starting factory is right now. Not sure why the starting factory uses a different equation but it definitely does.

Note that in this most recent game I have been the only company selling in New York for some time and I have little to no competition in London. I believe every other company is going bankrupt because of this excessive factory cost issue.

[Eric.B]

As mentioned before, the HQ factories are supposed to be cheaper.

I will adjust the monthly costs directly for 1.15

[Eric.B]

So what do we think of the costs/prices in 1.15?

[Frankschtaldt]

Haven't had a chance to properly check it out yet but my initial impression is it's better but still too high. Mostly because the production capacity of factories seems to have halved in this update giving you fewer cars to offset the cost against.

[Frankschtaldt]

Sorry but it's just as bad, if not worse.
See attached image (the is 1948 fyi). The cost of running the factory appears to be have been reduced a bit but production capacity has been reduced to less than half what it used to be so, using this factory as an example, my running cost per car is over $1500 which is way up on the $600ish I was complaining about earlier.


I'm going to try moding the save to give myself a buttload of money so I can make a factory with sliders turned up to see how muc more efficient it get as it gets larger.

[Frankschtaldt]

So, I'd say it's working as intended.
Just, the extra cost for the smaller factories might be a bit ott.
If you want to build a new factory you either need to have massive profit per vehicle or have both sliders up at least 1/4 or 1/3 or your guaranteed to loose money on it.

[Eric.B]

reduced the base formula from costs*0.055 to 0.035,

we'll see how that goes.

[Eric.B]

Forgot to ask, how are costs now in 1.15.1?

[Frankschtaldt]

To be honest I've been too busy to try it out yet.
Hoping to get a couple of hours Sunday arvo to give it a burl.

[Frankschtaldt]

Got a bit of a chance to have a play last night finally!
New factory code seems pretty well balanced now and costs seem right. You'll go bankrupt if you build a massive factory and don't do anything with it but it's possible to turn a good profit if you manage to keep it busy.