(02-13-2014, 06:52 PM)Frankschtaldt Wrote: Thinking more about the automated factory discussed in this thread I thought rather than continuing to hijack that thread I'd start a new one to discuss it.
My new thinking regarding this is to have a factory manager as a position you can hire and you can hire one at each factory rather than having it as a single checkbox that takes control of all of your factories.
How this would work is by adjusting production for the factories where the managers are hired according to how many units are sold vs how many were made the previous turn. The player would still need too set the initial production level as the manager would only increase or decrease production of vehicles that were already being made.
So, for an example, the player has a factory in London and Berlin and has just released a new sedan. To try to make sure they have enough for the first months rush they set 5 lines at each factory to make the new Sedan. London being the black hole that it is swallows up all of its production and a little bit if Berlin's however the lower demand for vehicles elsewhere means that only half of the vehicles made in Berlin sell this month. Now, both factories have managers so as the last thing done that turn the London factory detects that it has sold everything it's made and decides to increase its production by adding another line to make the new Sedan, Berlin on the other hand only sold half what it made so it halves it's production rounding up to 3 lines.
Next month London still used it's entire production but because it made more it's self it took less off Berlin which means Berlin only sold half if it's newly reduced run. As such, London adds another line to keep up with demand and Berlin halves it's output (rounding up) to 2.
This would create a fairly realistic and dynamic automated system with a real cost to the player for taking the easy path (having to pay a factory manager).
The only real issue I can see with this is the player have to restart production of vehicles the manager shut down (if the player had more stock than what was sold in a month thus nothing the factory made sold that month). Perhaps some kind of "allow production" checkbox could be added that would allow the factory manager to start making something if the players other factories couldn't keep up with demand?
Note: the reason I said the adjustment to production should be the last thing for a turn rather than the first thing based of the previous turn is so the player has the chance to over rule the factory managers decisions and not just have them automatically changed back as soon as the hit the clock.
Nicely said.
I can say that personally, i would really love to see Factory managers, as at the moment, i spend perhaps 30-50% of my time adjusting factory production numbers. (mostly from adjusting the production of several models over several factories every turn)
I wouldn't mind if i was taking important decisions every turn, such as attempting to stockpile cars for future production or something like that. Unfortunately, most of the time there is just a mild or extreme shift in sales numbers, which i am forced to manually compensate for or either lose out on sales or go bankrupt by producing too many.
As i did in that other thread, i should declare my bias towards these kinds of systems straight away
The idea of giving the AI control of things is rarely popular, but i love two games that really do it and do it well, which are Distant Worlds(a space 4x game) and the Command ops(a heavy duty detailed wargame) series. Both of these games are highly detailed, but give you the option to automate large parts of the game and let you focus on the most important decisions.Of the ideas you proposed, i especially like the mechanic that would dynamically adjust the number of vehicles produced across a small/medium sized area (Europe) based on where the vehicles are actually being sold.
I would still be happy with something less complex, that takes into account your average monthly sales numbers and tries to produce to keep a 1 month extra stockpile of vehicles (one month sales average over a year. Youve gone into some quality detail on this in this post as well as the other post in the other thread.
One thought i had was that we may not need to propose any new mechanics or type of mechanics at all, if the production AI from the AI companies can be brought into this.
I think a tickbox on each factory like you said sounds fine.
Clicking the tickbox would add that factory to the Factory Manager system, which would take decisions based on local and regional sales.
Of course you can always override it, if you dont agree with the way the AI has set it.
I dont think you necessarily have to punish the player for using it, as i think having a production manager fits well within the idea of Roleplaying a CEO and its also not going to be a huge ingame balance advantage.(The player is always going to be better than the ai at managing it anyway)