Questions on Strategy

norm price is just a price with a name. For goods sellable in shop, it is a fixed price. For others (raw goods), it is average of min max. It doesn't matter what the QL is.

As for the selling price in shop, I heard that it had happened that the same product with higher QL could sell for less than that of QL 0. So, buying QL goods from market isn't always gonna give you more profit.

I can commiserate, John. That's exactly how I got burned with high QL wooden furniture. A couple times. I would have thought that very high QL would mean more price stability, simply because far fewer people would be selling at that QL. Definitely an incorrect assumption - that's not how things work. I tried to experiment a bit with that furniture shop, but the price was too volatile. I couldn't find a dependable modifier because the price didn't remain steady for long enough to get results from different QLs for comparison. I can't say I was all that reluctant to bulldoze that shop when things became too crowded.

On a side note, I'm not sure how high I'll research my RL this time. My focus is still mainly going to be on developing QL, so it's a matter of how high that RL needs to be in order to fund my research buildings. The higher the RL, the more prohibitive the cost to raise it, but at the same time, I surmise that I may have to "keep up with the Joneses" on that regard in order to maintain high enough profits. One of the unknown factors is how high most players raise their RL. We know the very low RL products will continue to be flooded, but there may be a point at which certain high-profit item prices will remain relatively steady. I doubt that the majority continue all the way up to RL 50. But then again, I may be wrong. I'm doing comfortably with four cafes at the moment, but that isn't going to raise enough cash to maintain multiple research buildings, especially since I'll want to upgrade one to level 2 at some point. Still, becoming familiar with a variety of higher RL products will be to my advantage in the long run as well.

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Originally posted by John Smythe
That's not very encouraging...

...

*imagines dktc shaking his head sadly*

Let's say the demand for ql 0 goods is stronger than that of ql 100, and that should be very encouraging.

Nah... sorry, I am too busy to have time to shake my head

I am buying part of my raw material from the market too. However, I do maintain a double figure inventory (that is, I have more than 10 wu worth of stock when I logout, usually more than 15~20 wu). I did not bother to do that when I am online for like 10 hours every day, on and off. But now, I am working that 10 hours without computer access.

I don't think cafe is really doing that good right now. Granted, it is doing better than furniture, but that is only because furniture is really really really bad! For a wu, I had less than 200k revenue from cafe, but that of my furniture is consistently under 200k

I am actually considering vacation mode. But then, everytime I log on, I would have to bother stdok to activate it again, and I don't think I could stay away for long.

Playing style is certainly different when we're stuck with long periods offline. I hate it during upgrade stages - I like to barrel through them as quickly as I can, and I stagger things so that I generally need to be here at least every 1-3 updates to keep things moving.

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Kahla, yes, I too abandoned the furniture shop. Frankly, the cafes do very well still, though I'm by no means unhappy with my toyshops. I've furry pets and dolls going too, now. Have 10 level-3 cotton farms feeding 1 level 4 textile plant, and I buy the occasional very tiny amount of cotton at market.

I'm on a new round of upgrades, and I wouldn't even have the space for dealing with cotton at the moment. I'm still avoiding it like the plague. Maybe next round I won't still be so sick of it.

Every time I look over the alternatives, I decide to put off venturing into other types of shops. I might just end up waiting until I have high enough RL to try anything new. I tried a bookstore last round, which did alright, but I ditched it when I discovered my cafes were more profitable. Textiles made more than the cafes, but but then, having all those plots eaten up by so much cotton is prohibitive.

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I've got tricycles going too still, though I supply the shops more thinly than before, and rely somewhat on cheap imported steel. Rely on that for the coffee cans too, else the markup isn't so hot.[*]

I ended up in a bad spot at one point when I was buying all my iron ore. There was a short-lived stretch when there was literally NONE on the market at all. I ended up going for two updates with no ore, which really upset my coffee and white coffee lines. I might have waited a bit longer to see whether it would be temporary, but I really needed to get some sleep. So I ended up having to quickly build mines to prevent having to go without it overnight. Wouldn't you know it - there was plenty on the market when I woke next morning.

Now, during upgrade periods for my steel mills, I'm stuck with huge amounts of ore that I end up having to sell below what it cost me to manufacture them. I'd be better off if I was still buying from the market instead. But now that my mines are upgraded so high, it would be too much of a waste to destroy them.

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Nearly went bankrupt today. Last night I left my purchasing "for later" and there was no "later" till noon today! Ran out of iron, steel, pulp wood and all harbor products while still paying for the two research labs, one of which did nothing for 10 hours.

Ouch! I'm glad you were able to get back in before the worst happened. That's one thing I dread, especially since I'm relying so heavily on harbor products right now. Since I'm on dialup and live in a rural area, that's a real concern. In summers past, we've sometimes had connection problems during holidays or rainy periods. That sort of thing could easily bankrupt me, since it's been known to keep me off for anywhere from several hours to a few days in previous years. They've been working on improving the phone service out here, so I'm hoping that will be a thing of the past. But even so, there would still be the possibility of power outages.

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Originally posted by KahlaIn summers past, we've sometimes had connection problems during holidays or rainy periods. That sort of thing could easily bankrupt me, since it's been known to keep me off for anywhere from several hours to a few days in previous years.

Who knows what would happen tomorrow? Last winter, I had problems getting online due to an earthquake in Taiwan A reason why I don't depend solely on cafe

Dktc can't leave, there are questions to ask that we haven't even thought of yet!

Look at it this way, John, you've already accomplished some of the research you set out to do, even though you ended up destroying the building. You'll just put the rest off for later.

Personally, I've put further RL aside for the time being. I decided to concentrate on upgrading my current product lines as far as possible instead. That way, I'm freeing up space for whatever new venture my RL leads me into. If I step into another fiasco like my previous furniture store, then I'll still have the cafe income to bolster things. I suppose it's somewhat like the QL strategy you described earlier, John - it makes more sense to me to be prepared to use the RL before I spend the money on it. In the meantime, I'm leaving most of the excess buildings in production - I can sell that on the market for a bit of extra income. And some of them may come in handy when I decide on my next venture.

Speaking of the FAQ, I'm finding that the manual is coming clearer, bit by bit. As someone else posted, I certainly can't fault the writing - it's well organized, concise, and covers a great deal of what a player needs to know. It's very difficult to explain such a huge amount of info thoroughly while still keeping it as short as possible. But that's what people tend to want - short and sweet. And then some things are difficult to comprehend until a person has played a bit. So I'll continue to re-read it now and then to see what else pops out as information that I wasn't able to absorb before.

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Originally posted by John Smythe
Dktc, I do hope you will stay around, even as an "emeritus" guide to newcomers.

I will be around... but my summer job is soooooo tiring. I just feel like going to bed right after work

I haven't upgraded any shops to date. Can anyone tell me whether it's worth the cost and the downtime?

Shops sell 5% more of the previous level. Some say that lvl 1~3 are worth it.

To me, whether it is worth it depends on the drop of prices for the goods sold in the shop. If you can't sell, then why bother?

Hmm. At this stage in the game for me, upgrading a couple of cafes might be worth it, then. Nothing else is profitable enough yet to warrant that. My household store is making roughly half what my cafes do, and I don't plan on keeping that one longer than necessary. Once I get into the big leagues, I imagine that upgrading the shops a bit will be more worthwhile.

Well, this is definitely a glitch in my strategy. I'm up to 100 buildings again, and suddenly there hasn't been any iron ore on the market since this afternoon. This is not good. Last time this happened, there was plenty by the next morning. I'm hoping that's the case again. Otherwise, I'm going to have to do some mad scrambling!

I managed to do some quick upgrading so that I now supply all my own iron ore needs. I had expected for the prices to go up, but seeing NONE on the market so much of the time blindsided me.

I'm up to 100 buildings again, mainly because every time I streamline, I end up deciding to add something more in order to put that freed space to profitable use. While that's a good thing in itself, it also complicates matters somewhat when I find I need to switch production or start a new line. But so far, so good.

I went ahead and upgraded a couple of cafes. Upgrading to lvl 3 increased the sales from each by $86775 per WU except during the winter months. Definitely worth it in my opinion, since I'm likely to at least keep a couple of cafes going for awhile yet.

Now that I'm finished with all the upgrading, I'm getting back to increasing my RL. I'm sure I'm a good bit behind most people - I just hit RL 19 today.

Household shop is doing fairly well. I'm producing all products except for ice boxes, which aren't always easy to find at prices that allow any profit at all. The sales from it isn't nearly equal to a cafe, but at least it's been more of a success than my furniture store fiasco. It seems easier to find reasonable prices on a lot of products at night or early morning (at least in EST).

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Originally posted by John Smythe
As usual, only Dktc is likely to know.

Nah... a lot of players know. Where do you think I learnt all these? The problem is getting them to post in the english forum

I don't know about the iron ore problem. So far I am able to stock up relatively easy (and I am talking about stocking up for 24 hours+). The price is up a little bit but is still more than reasonable. It will go up further when people starts producing motor-cars.

Kahla, your RL is a good bit ahead of a lot of people You are doing quite well.

Aw, thank you, Dktc. That makes me feel a bit less newbish.

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Originally posted by John Smythe
How is everyone else doing?

- Making cars, which is a huge disappointment at the finance department.
- Trying to research the method of melting cans down and turning precious metals to iron
- Trying to save up for ql research
- Trying to stop Kahla from surpassing me

To conclude... not doing well enough