Visual Entertainment and Technologies Forum

I found what may be an bug in sales figures while i was testing for another thread i want to post.
Because of that, i happen to have saves for every single month.

I launched a new Sedan in early 1901 in February at a price of $600(for testing purposes), the sales were as follows:
(All of the sales figures are for one city, London)
February : 971 units
March : 0 units
April : 0 units

The drop seems large, hard to explain and is perhaps a bug.
There are a lot of possible explanations for this, but as i was already testing, ive managed to narrow it down a lot.

The vehicle had the sliders left where they were for everything, with the following choices:
- Sedan
- 2 gear "Generic" gearbo
- 2 Stroke gas
- Demographics - Male - Upper Middle
This gives it a quality level equal to most of its competitors. Though its fuel economy is amazing for some reason.

Other variables:
- Marketing was not changed in that period
- No changes to branch size(maximum in London) or retooling
- There was also no change in production, every month had a surplus of vehicles.

I checked competitor sales(see below), but they barley breached 100 in that period and there wasn't any increase that happened at the same time as the drop February to March

So there are reserve models?
Could you send me this saved game as well. And if it still exists the log.


The only reasons for a sales drop that large would be if you ran out of vehicles, branch blew up (which won't happen until WW2 ), strike, or you lost all your dealerships...

(01-14-2014, 11:51 AM)Eric.B Wrote: [ -> ]So there are reserve models?
Could you send me this saved game as well. And if it still exists the log.


The only reasons for a sales drop that large would be if you ran out of vehicles, or you branch blew up (which won't happen until WW2 ), strike, or you lost all your dealerships...

I had plenty of spare Units/Models in reserve. My production was over 1000 for that entire period.

I dont know if my log covers that period, as ive being saving and loading games since then, but ill upload it anyway
There should be three monthly saves and a log in this rar.

I may have just noticed what is probably the same thing again, but is less clear as there are a lot of competitors.
Again showing my terrible luck, i keep running into this bug while trying to test sales :S That's the nature of an Open Beta i suppose.

The game is running under the exact same controlled conditions as the first post detailed.

I don't see any clear explanation for the sales drop. I sell an average 800-900 units for half a year, then suddenly only sell an average 150-200 units, without any increase in AI sales and no change in my behavior.

Here is a summary of what happened, ill post exact sales figures and AI competitor activity below it.
Logfile and saves after each month are attached.

August
I sold a record 1503 sedans, but my average sales across the year were probably only 900.
The same number of AI were selling much the same vehicles they had been for 6 months.
(Ai sales total was 78 this month)
No AI was selling sedans.

September <---
I experienced a large drop in sales, only selling 201 Sedans. Even from my average sales of around 900, this is a drop of 60% or more.
The only change in AI activity was a number of new branchs on the competitor screen, though they had not sold vehicles yet. (i assume they had just designed these vehicles and had yet to produce them)
(AI sales total was 87 this month)
No AI was selling Sedans

October
My sales dropped slightly again to 134 sedans.
One of the AI companies who had been selling a compact model at the same price for 3 months saw their sales increase to 250 instead of their average 20-30
The AI who opened branches in the previous turn started selling their vehicles, only around 50-60 of them.
(AI sales total was 325 this month)
One AI was selling a sedan model, but sold no units.


For a Sedan at 600(my test price)

Ive only posted competitor activity for the months around the big drop in sales(July - November)

---

A final piece of information.

In both of the cases i reported, i have saves from the month before the sales drop happened.
So ive loaded these saves several times (3 times each) and passed a turn.

In every case, there was no sales drop of the magnitude i originally reported.
Most of the sales fit around 800-1200 mark, which i the sales numbers shows is about average.

Unfortunately that means that i have no idea how to replicate it at the moment.

I believe I have fixed, or at least alleviated this issue somewhat. The changes will be in 1.12

The end turn code was pulling the wrong branch wear values in the city. So if the AI had issues with a branch, there was a chance it could effect you. I fixed this issue.

I also adjusted the AI branch expansion rate. I noticed in these saved game that an AI had expanded to London but did not have the means to actually sell vehicles there. I've put in a check in the branch expansion code to make sure that the AI has open factory lines before expanding.