Beiträge von dktc

hmm... depreciation was discussed in chat if I remember correctly. However, it was deemed inappropriate due to the fact that the buildings are relatively cheap comparing to the goods. Selling 100 icecream can fund a building already. The cheap building costs would make the effect of depreciation a lot less than that in real world. Upgrade costs are the same as building costs. They are relatively insignificant if deicided into 12. The depreciation expanse would not be able to reduce the peak that much. The taxable profit would still be --^----.

As for research, it is a conceptual thing I guess. QL research cannot be depreciate because it is already divided up into monthly payments. So essentailly, only the RL part of patent could be depreciated. It could work but then it may confuse the new players (who claim they are already confused ), especially those teens that don't have any concept in depreciation. It is not a bad idea but I am concerned about explaning to some players.

hmmm...

There was sort of a bug in the harbor in which when you enter the quatity number and mistakenly enter also a numerical (like "300\"), money would be deducted but you would not get anything . I believe that that problem has been fixed by the admins several weeks ago so that probably isn't it

hmm...

When buing from harbor, make sure you select the right product (the green dot). Then enter the quatity and click the buy icon. After that you have to reconfirm your order. Then, the goods should be sent to your raw goods warehouse. Always double check after you bought something (from anywhere). If it is not there, notify an admin (Maikelcoke, Stdok, or John Walker).

I don't know what you mean by "appropriate number of tea bushes". If you mean the number the production log says you need (8?), that is only for 1 wu. In that case, tea would be produced for 1 wu and sold in the same wu in shop. If that is the case, when you go check again a few hours later, there would be no tea and no sales recorded in cafe (because only the most recent wu is shown).

Hope this helps ~~

Ok... first you have 3 warehouses (raw goods, products, and export). Because you said "either", I wonder whether if you have checked all three.

The second point is that the storage column merely indicates in how many wu would your warehouse be full if you have overproduction (or in how many wu you stored goods would run out if you have underproduction). So 62 means you warehouse would be full in 62 wu, which translates into 8 unit of overproduction (assuming you have default capacity).

I think that what happened was that either the wu has not passed or you don't have the raw materials for your tea factory. I can't be sure but it looks that way, assuming your shop really didn't sell any... check the selling(income) column to make sure. Please also note that factories take raw material from raw goods warehouse and shops take roducts from products warehouse. If the goods were in the wrong warehouse, nothing would be sold or produced.

If that was not the case, Q16 in the newbies' faq should help you tackle this problem.

P.S. You should think before start looking... refer to how many you produce and why would there be 62 in storage (if that is even possible ~~)... don't just rely on the data from the production log. You need to process them to turn them into useful information!!

I would like to thank our admin too. The nice and friendly support team (except maikel when he wants to hide something :P) here has helped me a lot in various occasions, esp. dok and firma. I am amazed at how much time they put into this game.

I am still in the dark about what happened yesterday... I was too out of it to notice anything abnormal . However, hiccups are all part of a game (both on and offline) so I agree with Dirk that this should not be the cause of quiting.

copying from forum.itycoon.net... (apparently the admins have not transfer the posts there back here)

Some players like to have more than one shop of the same type because they could have more flexibilty. Others don't because of the effect the market could have on them if they have only one industry (esp. industries that depend on one or two kind of raw materials only). We can't really answer the "Shall I" part of your question. It is your personal decision whether to branch out or to specialize.

However, you should consider the following factors before you make the decision:
availability of raw material / products (self-supply -> map vs. buying from others -> market)
SuDe (supply vs. demand for the shop... and the resulting drop of price)
personal goals (gain experience in various industries vs. staying safe)
strategy (research? expansion? profit vs. highscore, or both?)

It is your choice and there is no "right" or "wrong" as long as you can justify it with reasons.

btw... "Shall I" is different than "Could I", which both firma and wwf answered to

After some work, I have turned the manual into a word file and it is uploaded to google documents.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhd293vt_2cjcbzw

I know that the support team is working on hosting the manual on portal directly but, meanwhile, this may help

Please also note that although this is the most updated version of the manual, it is not really that up-to-date.

Oh... this is only for those of you who have problems downloading the manual; all others, please download you own copy from portal

If a product is oversold, you can still adjust the price through trial and error. You can also make use of the information in SuDe (avg selling price and avg ql) for reference. If you calculate the price wrong, you could loose profit. It is your job as the manager of your operation to make sure you have the right price (quote from my accting prof :P). It is also more profitable in the long run if you could find out the max price that the over-sold good would sell, even if you loose profit during the process.

As for grapes... it depends on the market situation (same for other products). You have to keep track of the market price and compare it to your estimation of the selling price in shop, and then make your decision based on them. Keep in mind you need to pay transport/commission for goods sent to market or other players. I would not comment on particular situations.

I just want to point out when a company goes bankrupt, it is gone. Nothing would exist anymore so that should be the same in IT.

As for speed round, I agree there should be a limit for the negative capital as well.

Yup, it could be a pain to create your own database. (Although I think the pain is mostly opening the database and looking the numbers up :P). But hey, the lazier we could be, the better... so good idea

As always, my view is that the rankings would make the game stressful

On one hand, I like this idea... it could be helpful occasionally if I have to seperate ql goods (like for semi-finished goods). On the other hand, I agree with firma. If you add another page for selection, it would take forever to buy enough stuff. If you have 2 buttons on market, you would make mistakes and click the wrong one. (Considering players mistakenly upgrade / knock down buildings while wanting to visit them, this is quite possible ) I think most of the times, it doesn't matter where the goods are initially put. All you need is get into the warehouse and move them (except for ql seperation, which takes a bit more planning). And as firma has said, watching your warehouse is more useful than watching your financial statements in IT

Where else have you tried
You know, when you log into the game, a chat box open in the bottom 1/3 of your screen. There is our chat channel where you could ask questions. There are usually players who speak english good enough to answer your question (I am virtually online 12 hours a day, on and off) and the admins would also be there. You really should try it as you could get instant answers (with close to, but not exactly, 100% chance they would be right :P).

As for the color code of the products, the prices on market are coded on a spectrum from red to green. Red means expensive, yellow neutral, green cheap (in relation to the current norm prices). Because the colour code is based on the norm price, it may or may not reflect the situation accurately in regard of prices in shops. The colour code helps you made decision but by no means does it make the decision for you.

LOL... same here... never successfully download the manual in PDF format.

I downloaded the PDF in ZIP one and saved the zip. I basically have to open the zip and extract the file every time I need it. Be careful not to close the zip folder when the file is being extracted. The link is here . Saying that, I still have not been successful in opening the product tree but the product page in portal is good enough for me

Yes, when you upgrade a building, it could and would produce more. For each upgrades for production buildings (mine, farms, factories...), their capacity increase by 10% of their capacity on lvl 0. For shops, their sales capacity (max sales units or "supplies") increase 5% of the previous level. For research facilities, their lvl correspond to the RL lvl of goods you could research QL for.

As for researching... I take it you mean RL research (for QL see Q22 /for difference between RL and QL see Q21 ). It should not be a huge problem to start RL research. I don't know what buildings you have and what settings they are on, so I can't pinpoint a reason why you don't have enough money. (If you really want to know, message me or query DDD in chat with detailed information.) Generally, when a player has one or maybe two shop(s) set up, it would be the time to start researching RL. You should have adequate cash in-flow and profit by then and it wouldn't take long for you to save up the amount needed. I would say that if you can't come up the money for RL 1 within the first week, then you may have a cash/profit problem (this is just a personnal opinion). There are also players who start early on because they aim at producing RL 1 products. However, this is not recommended for new players.

Hi aqua,

I have asked similar questions when I started playing IT. I can't say that I agree with JW totally (although he is an admin :P). I would think that the answer depends on what kind of control you mean.

Technically, you could control a part of the market (or a certain product). It is not that hard if you have enough money. It is especially easy to push the price of a certain product down low if you are willing to loss profit (provided other parts of your operation are profitable enough). Granted, the maximum number of offers for the same product at one time is ten. But if you could stay online for long enough and push the price down to a level where players would be losing money selling it, you could control it (at an ultra-cheap price). All you need is profit from another part of your operation and enough quantity of that particular product to keep the market supplied at the low price.

On the other hand, if you want to maintain a high price, you would need a lot of cash in addition to profits from elsewhere in your operation. It is because, unlike the low price situation, other players would try to underprice you. You would need the cash to buy those goods thrown on market by other players. This is not easily done in the normal round but it has happened in the speed round which has a lot less players. (In fact, at the time this post is written, I perceive that a player is trying to raise the price of iron ore in speed round, and has been quite successful in doing so.)

The 10% bit... I guess if you have a lot of QL, then it could be arhcieved. But it is not easy for players without QL. Return rate also varies with industries. And we also have to take into consideration that some players use the loan for RL/FL reesearch. So it is not only the return on a building in a month. The overall ROE is a more suitable guideline for this I think.

As I have said in a post responding to the change of interest rate, having 21% monthly interest is infeasible.
System of bank was changed

Instead, I would like to propose a flexible credit system based on the profitibility of a business. That being said, it is not like you can't take a loan if you don't have profit. Instead, you have a higher interest rate without a profit and a lower interest rate with profit. This would be just like in real life.
> more profit less interest
> less profit -> high risk -> high interest
So, a penalty interest according to the profit (or the lack of profit) should be how it works.

Some of you may argue that the big player will have the lowest interest. That is not necessarily true in IT. For those of you who are familiar with ways to lower tax rate, you would understand this quite easily. For big businesses, when they start researching, especially QL research, it put a dent in their profit. Big businesses also have to / tend to buy stuffs from market which is written off as expenses. So, small (or maybe I should say mid-size) players could achieve roughly the same profit as some of the bigger businesses if they don't build/research anything for 12 months. Another point is that the smaller players would loan less (because they do not have as high building values / they cannot afford to pay a large amount of loan). So, the increasing interest rate corresponding to the increasing loan amount already account for a part of the advantage.
Furthermore, we could adjust for the potential advantage by setting wider range for profit brackets. In my opinion, the bearable interest rate would be about 2~3% a month (which is already higher than the original), and I would take this as an example.

Less say 2% a month is the middle range we want, we could set the interest rate as follow:

profit = 1 dollar ~ 24 million -> 2% a month / 24% per annum
profit = 24 million ~ 48 million -> 1.75% a month / 21% per annum
profit > 48 million -> 1.5% a month / 18% per annum
profit = 0 ~ -20 million -> 2.5% a month / 30% per annum
profit < -20 million -> 3% a month / 36% per annum

The rate could be adjusted but more importantly is the concept. With this concept, players without profit would be able to loan and the interest would be more bearable.

If you still think that this concept would give preferred treatment to big businesses, that is how the real world works. Big businesses with higher profit get better credit ratings. But as I have pointed out above, this advantage is not really that big here in IT and would not make too much of a difference (that is given they already have all those money and QL).

Please voice your opinion on this, as it will affect our game play!

From a financial point of view, a monthly interest this high is impossible. To cover the interest costs and just break even on the loan, you need to have a return rate the same as the interest rate. With an interest as high as 21%, it is just not feasible at all. One would be paying back like 2.5 times the loan amount by the end of one year. The interest is now like a penalty on players and the loan would not be worth it under any circumstances.

With the 21% monthly interest, it means you have to come up with more than the amount you have loaned within 5 months to pay the capitla payment and the interest. If one could come up with that kind of money, why would one take a loan???? This is ridiculous!!!!!!

Excuse my language (that is I use english :P)

I just want to point out there is no way a 21% monthly interest can be worth it. From a financial point of view, to break even for the loan, you need to have a same percentage of return on investment as the interest rate. Having a 21% ROE is simply not feasible. With a 21% monthly interest, you are paying 2.5 times the loan amount just on interest for a year. Who can have a return of 2.5 time on thier investment?? And by having that, it is only breaking even (that is you would be performing the same at the end of the loan period as if you did not take the loan).

The original 21% per year, making in 1.75% a month would be a achievable ROE goal. It would allow the players to make profit out of a loan if used appropriately and the company is managed well. The 21% monthly interest is like a penalty on players that take loans. It is financially infeasible / impossible. 10% would be a bit high either because I don't think many (if any) players have ROE of 10% or higher.

Hey, Morgenstern, don't let out all the secret !!

But yes, virtually no raw material will make you much profit at the beginning of a round, including and not limited to the above listed. And if you are thinking of iron ore, forget it. (Well, I may buy them from you if they are cheaper than producing on my own :P, which is usually the case ... but then you would not make any $$ ) As for end products, one is usually not enough to keep a shop.

Okay... all secrets are out in the open

Oh... and "tomorrow", means tmr in germany. Refer to server time (CET) instead of whatever time zone you are in. For me, it is day after tmr the next round begins .