Opening an international branch

[irsmert]

Hi I'm fairly new to this game and while it seems to have tremendous depth I feel as though i've just scratched the surface. Started my first company (after playing a few years with the demo then realizing it was well worth the sale price on steam.) in Portland and have successfully expanded to Seattle and San Francisco.

Here's the problem - I want to open a branch in Vancouver (which I've done) and despite it having a reasonably good per capita and some marketing expenses I am getting no sales. What gives? is there some restriction on international distribution up to a certain year or something? From what I can tell there is no visible sign of a restriction, I'm just not getting any sales in Canada. Is there some extra step I have to go through or what? This is in version 1.19.

Thanks in advance and thanks to Eric for making such an amazing game!

[Eric.B]

Good morning, Sorry for the late reply I am currently out of the office.

Here's the problem - I want to open a branch in Vancouver (which I've done) and despite it having a reasonably good per capita and some marketing expenses I am getting no sales. What gives?

I would need a little information, such as what years are you playing and what is the sales prices of the vehicles you are trying to sell.

Working off the asumption that you are playing in early 1900s, there are two reasons that your sales would be low.

A major reason would be per capita income. Candaians make $219 at the start of the game where as Americans are making more. The game works on a wealth distribution system that mimics real life. The higher you price a vehicle retaliative to an area's income, the less sales you will get. At around 5x per capita you are limiting your self to less than one percent of the number of people buying vehicles.

Which leads me into the next big thing, population. In 1900, Vancouver had a population of 26000. This is not very many people. If a family (4 people) buy a car every 10 years then you're looking at 26000/4/10/12turns = 54 maximum customers for that turn in that city. But not all customers are looking for the same thing. For instance someone looking for a pickup truck would not be interested in a compact car. So say demand for sedans is 10% of the market. You're now looking at a max of 5 customers. Now spread it out on wealth distribution, and you'll find that all the customers are making less than roughly $600 per year. Meaning unless you are selling a vehicle for less than that, you will probably not get any sales. (Even then you may not, because there are so few customers.)


My advice is to stick to cities above 250k populations until you get a hang of the game. In early game years, anything under 50k is extremely difficult (later game years are not so bad.)

Thanks in advance and thanks to Eric for making such an amazing game!

Quite welcome, thank you for playing it!

[irsmert]

I did the 1900 start and waited until about 1906-07 when I noticed the per-capita increasing to above the 300 mark. The sales price has been set at about 1200-1500 depending on the model (pickup truck and phaeton). What puzzles me about it was that there was zero sales, not one or two, ect. but zero which suggested to me that I was missing something. After six months I decided to just close the branch and post here; have been playing since, just avoiding expansion into Canada . It may be that it's just a matter of low population; I noticed something similar with my latest expansion into Las Vegas (1911) where the branch has had no sales after several months. Again probably just a matter of low population and my emphasis on fairly expensive cars.

Is there any plan to introduce some sort of import/export restrictions/tariffs/ect.?

[Eric.B]

I did the 1900 start and waited until about 1906-07 when I noticed the per-capita increasing to above the 300 mark. The sales price has been set at about 1200-1500 depending on the model (pickup truck and phaeton). What puzzles me about it was that there was zero sales, not one or two, ect. but zero which suggested to me that I was missing something. After six months I decided to just close the branch and post here; have been playing since, just avoiding expansion into Canada . It may be that it's just a matter of low population; I noticed something similar with my latest expansion into Las Vegas (1911) where the branch has had no sales after several months. Again probably just a matter of low population and my emphasis on fairly expensive cars.

Well to put it into a more modern perspective. If your car is 5x per capita. Then that is the same as a $250,000 car sold today. How many $250,000 cars have you seen in towns of 20,000 people? This is why you sold zero.

Is there any plan to introduce some sort of import/export restrictions/tariffs/ect.?

Tariffs are a possibility. But I'm not sure if we'll be implementing it, if we do, it'll be an optional option and will work off an inverse of corporate taxes.

Trade restrictions will not be implemented, as it is too much historical data to process and set up.

[Eric.B]

My guess (for the current version of the game at least) for such a problem is that the shipping distance was too far from the factory and needed to be increased.

Depending on which version of the game you're playing (there are several "current" versions) the amount of units you ship greatly effects shipping costs.

If you are on v1.22, shipping 1 vehicle across the world would be significantly more expensive per unit than shipping 100 units that same distance. (On a per unit basis.)

v1.22.2 (I believe) and on have changed this to a flat rate for shipping, so it does not matter how many units you ship. It also gives you a min and a max for all factories in your range. This was done to simplify the shipping formulas for easier display of information with our limited GUI system.

Which leads me to what I feel is important feedback on this matter - it took me quite long to figure out that 'shipping distance' means the shipment from the factory to the branch, not from the brach to the customer (even though this is stated in one of the question marks, I think). It's a bit misleading -

The help button on the shipping distance slider is a bit ambiguous, but it does not state anything about shipping to "customers" (in this case Dealerships).

In fact it specifically says:
"This slider will allow you to adjust the maximum distance in which the selected branch or branches will ship vehicles from. The further a branch has to go out to find vehicles from factories, the more expensive transportation costs will be."

The wording might need to be cleaned up a bit. But it still points out "will ship from" and "find vehicles from factories". So I'm not sure where you got the "customer" connection from. (FYI, dealerships generally pass on transportation costs from the branches to the dealership to customers of the dealership. This is why there is a "Delivery Fee" when you buy a new vehicle.)

and I still don't know how to really get a sense of costs incurred from shipping cars between continents.

The shipping costs are listed on the right hand side of the Branch Distribution Window (where you enter price of vehicles.) I believe it's labeled as "Min/Max Transport Costs Per Vehicle."

Also, this led me to hardly open any branches - because I mistook to think that a branch with high shipping distance will reach customers in all its continent, world, etc. 

The shipping distance slider, as you found out, is how far a branch will pull vehicles from factories, thus incurring your transport costs. Dealerships (your customers) pay for their own shipping from your Branch Distribution points to their lots. They in turn pass it to their customers, the consumer who buy vehicles.

Generally, I think just a little more clarificatiton is needed in-game for the path a sold vehicle makes from the factory to the end consumer, the machanisms and the costs involved in it.

There is not much more I can do other than explain the mechanisms as I do in the Help buttons. This is because the game can not know exactly how many vehicles you're going to ship before you actually sell the vehicles, and where you sell them.

The Min/Max Transportation Help Button (at least as of v1.22.2) specifically states:
"A number of factor(typo) effect where shipping vehicles are shipped from. Where the vehicles are made, the city ratings, and how many vehicles need to be shipped to other cities all have an impact on which vehicles get shipped to this location. The game will automatically chose the cheapest options possible depending on shipping priorities."

The game prioritizes the vehicles with the highest margins. It then pulls vehicles from the cheapest place possible. And goes down the list if more vehicles are needed.

So e.g. I could tell that the L.A factory took 50 sedans from the detroit factory

I assume you mean LA branch.

it needed more cars so it took 25 from the stockholm factory, and shipping costs for LA were 50*x+25*y, etc.

Yes, LA branch needed 75 vehicles. It took as many as it could from the cheapest location possible until they were out. It then took the remaining it needed from the second cheapest place.

As for giving the player the exact amount it costs. How do I figure out how many vehicles are you going to sell before you sell them? How do I figure out how many sales you will get in other cities? How do I figure out what moves you might make later in the turn that would adjust this price figure? Impossible things to answer.

The solution I have is to give you a range, thus why you are displayed a minimum and a max transportation costs. Adjust your shipping distances, shipping districts, and custom districts so that you do not occur large shipping costs and can easily price in your shipping costs by restricting where the vehicles can be sourced from.


As for giving you this data after the fact. It could be done, but it would be very costly to turn times as this exact data is not recorded, and would have to be, then turned into an html report. Even then, it wouldn't be that helpful, because at least in large companies the shipping is rarely ever the same turn to turn based on fluctuation in sales and production.


Final thing I would like to point out. v1.22 is the default build, but it generally very far behind the most recent version of the game. There were several changes made to the shipping distance system that you may want to try out.

Any suggestions on how to reword these help buttons would be greatly appreciated.