When I'm in the market screen and I select a company with an apostrophe in its name I get a view of all their products. Good. But then I buy a product and when I hit the "back" button I get a bunch of \\\\\\\ in the name and no products listed.
I see this in speed now. I don't know if it's in slow or not.
Using firefox
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-Dave
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Nice suggestion Walter.
-Dave
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I'm looking to buy plastic and rubber and I'm willing to pay 10,000. Please, when you put product in the market only put it in there for max price. The price needs to rise to ensure a good supply. And there are plenty of players who will pay these prices. That is anybody making cars, electronics, or household equipment would make more money if they buy this stuff from the market for 10,000 rather than make it themselves.
BTW, if you wish to send me offers of rubber or plastic I'll surely accept them. But please put some product on the market for max price even if you do send some to me. The price really does have to go up and the only way to get it to rise is put higher priced goods on the market.
-Dave
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I still go for the delay. There are many many times where I want to purchase 20 lines at a time. A two second delay (with a fun timer to watch) is much preferable and faster. I'd venture to say that you can't buy 4 orders of the cheapest steel in 2 seconds. I think the delay is faster in almost all situations and vastly faster in most.
-Dave
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I agree that there should be a way to buy multiple items at one time. I prefer the method where you can select several items at one time and then hit the "buy all selected" button. You could combine this with a "select all" button for two-click shopping.
I suggested something like this last year(see link at bottom) and Kahla of Bold Enterprises mentioned that this can cause problems for people with slow internet connections. After much thought I think this problem could be solved with a built-in delay. So you could click twice to buy all, then you would have to wait a couple seconds while the timer gave others an opportunity to buy it out from under you. That way you have the convenience of buying dozens of items quickly, and people who are desperate to buy can do that quickly with the method we've always had.
After the purchase is made, a screen should be displayed to show how much was actually purchased. You could have tried to buy 2,000 items but only bought 1,500 because some selected items were bought between the time the screen was originally displayed and the time when the order went through.
-Dave
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Article from last year:
4 easy steps to speed up trading
Sounds good to me 
At this point in the round you can make the most money by being a supplier. When you start the next round you need to start with shops. The raw materials market doesn't heat up until a few hundred turns have passed.
BTW, you can also make good money supplying finished goods to the mkt. Usually people will over supply the items that make the most money (ice box, telephone, shoes, leather jacket..) You can still make good money in an over supplied market though. BTW, shoes are not oversupplied right now so that would be a good item to produce. And if you do produce them, you can send them straight to me 
.
-Dave
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Yeah, I showed more than one product entry. Sometimes people are want to pay more if higher quality is available. This is sometimes true for raw materials or semi-finished goods. This is almost always true for finished goods. So, I think the ability to request more than one criteria per item is a useful feature.
-Dave
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OK, I really like IT but there is one aspect that is getting tedious. Shopping for products to put in my store. I want to try for high score, and to do that I need to resell lots of stuff. But looking at all those market offers can get a bit old after a while. The addition of the "product available in market" icons helps things a lot (thanks dok) but the process is still tedious.
My suggestion is to make a page that records your market demands. This could be located in your options screen. Then there would be a second page that would show you all the market offers that meet your criteria. This second page could be one of the options on the market page (see all offers, see finished goods, see semi-finished goods, see raw goods, see own offers, see pre-selected offers).
I'd suggest you set up the product selection page as follows:
Purchase Product Max Price Min ql
[ knitting needles ] [ 5,500 ] [ 0 ]
[ steel ] [ 10,000 ] [ 0 ]
[ steel ] [ 15,000 ] [ 50 ]
[enter next product ] [ ent. price ] [ enter ql ]
[sort by .... (shop type, alphabetical..)]
[show... (finished goods, semi-finshed goods, raw goods)]
[Shop type.. (book shop, cafe, ...)]
[enter new product]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~end page~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So, when you first show up to the page, there is only the header, one line for entry, and the filters at the bottom of the page. When the user enters a new product, the screen is refreshed and shows that product and a new product entry line. This way the user can have as many entries as they wish, and the screen only shows the products they're interested in.
So, that's my idea: one screen to record market preferences, and another to display any offers that meet those preferences.
-Dave
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Yes, I'm looking for a lot of tires for 40K. At that price you'll make more money per square than you will making Motor-car.
I'm trying for high-score so I need to make fewer tires. So I'll sell engines and car bodies for 30K but I'll spend far more for tires. Why? Because making tires without selling them in my shop depresses vendor score. Not so with engines and car bodies. So I'll pay a premium for the tires to keep my vendor score up, and that's key for making high score. Keeping vendor score up is even more important than making lots of money, so I'm willing to make less in exchange for more score.
So if you're more interested in money than score, I have a deal for you!
I will buy about 160 tires per wu (3,800 per day). Just put them in the market or send them straight to me.
-Dave
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PS. I can make up my vendor score with tires, motor-car, or motorcycle. So I'll buy motor-car and motorcycle too. I'll pay about what you can sell them for in the store. You ask why you should sell me cars for the same price you could sell them for in a store? Because you make more money per square.
If all your buildings are level 10, it takes about 3 squares to make a car (assuming you buy steel, etc on the mkt) but it takes 2 shop squares to sell them. You can make 66% more per square selling them on the market.
It's hard to predict what will be more profitable. Aluminum is usually more profitable than the other semi-finished goods so that's a good bet. I think the other materials (plastic, rubber, steel, copper wire) all tend to settle in at a price of 10,000. So, why not make all of them?
-Dave
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Plastic and rubber are now under-produced. I'll pay max price for them up to 10,000. As more people make cars and fridge, the demand for plastic and rubber will rise. You'll be able to make huge quantities of the stuff and sell it all at max price.
It's a great way to make a lot of money without climbing the RL ladder.
Just send it to "One-Stroke" for max price and I'll buy it.
-Dave
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Cat,
I do like your calculations, but I think some more number crunching will yield more clarity. You calculated avg pps for the shops producing all products, but not including the square that the shop takes up. Let's look at household store at RL 8 with level 0 buildings because it is widely seen as the gold standard for making money at that RL. It has 3 products: glass, cutlery, and icebox. You only need to produce one of these items to keep the store happy.
let's say you have 1 stores, lvl 0, sw=150 so you can sell 5 icebox. Requires 1 HI, 1 Steelmill, 1 ore mine.
Income = 109,820, expenses = 46,775, net = 63,045
if you include the shop you get a pps = 15,761
if you make cutlery too, you sell 14, requres 2 HI, 2 steel mills, 2 precious metals (10 spaces total)
income = 261,790, expenses = 116,025, net = 145,765
pps = 14,577
I'll compare that to cafe at RL 0 where you only make icecream and cacao. need 3 FI, 3 cattle ranches (7 spc)
income = 159,750, expenses = 42,865, net = 116,885
pps = 16,697
That is why I like cafe. Now, these numbers only go so far. Nobody keeps their buildings at lvl 0, as soon as you apply ql you can get different results, and cafe doesn't make good score. But, early in the game if you want to make good money, cafe does well.
Best Wishes,
Dave
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Jik,
I've been avoiding icebox to get from low RL to RL 26. I just set up a nice textile store and toy store and leave it at that. At low ql levels I spent too much time below RL 26 and the price of icebox crashes. Tricycles, and shoes make good money and don't crash like ice box.
That said, I think I will do icebox next round. I'll have icebox, steel, and iron ore up to ql 100 so I think I'll be able to get through it fast enough.
Catcorp,
I'd suggest that average pps for a shop is a good place to start your calculations but not a good place to finish them. You don't have to produce everything in a store. In fact I think you'll find that you get your best return if you don't. That's why I like furniture, cafe, toys, and textiles.
You'll also find that people do counterintuitive things in the persuit of high score. While tricycles don't make the best money they do make good score. Wooden furniture on the other hand makes very good money (w/o picture frames) but it just trashes your vendor score, and hence your high score.
-Dave
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Dok, it's doing it again. Here's the procedure in speed:
1. Start in the production log page.
2. Click on "copper ore" to go to the product overview page
3. Click on the truck button to send copper ore to market, but get redirected back to the production log page.
4. Repeat as often as I wish with the same results.
-Dave
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No-Knots (speed)
It's happened twice today, once in speed and once in slow. I went to the product overview page and clicked on the little truck with the arrow and I get redirected to the the production-log page. I went back to try it again - same result. Eventually I got my products to market going to the warehouse and clicking on the truck with the arrow there.
In slow it happened with steel, and in slow it happened with plastic. The browser I'm using is Firefox version 2.0.0.16
-Dave
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No-Knots (speed)
PS. Now I've been misdirected from the green-arrow button on the product overview page. Sometimes if I want to move some product from one warehouse to another, I can't do it through the product overview page. I have to go to the warehouse again.
Telephone normal price = 13,847
If we raise the normal price of cordless phone by a factor of 1.8 or 2 it should fit in nicely with the other products. Making less money than TV-Set, but more than clock radio.
So: Cordless phone normal price = 24,925 - 27,694
Push-button phone normal price = 25378
That price put it's profitability between Hi-Fi and Jukebox. If we pick a new price of 40,000 for mobile phone, it will have about the same profitability. Of course that still means it won't be produced often.
If we doubled the price (50,756) that would make it quite profitable, but still less profitable than LCD TV. This price keeps with the traditions of having Color TV as the most profitable electronics item. And it keeps with the tradition of having most of the electronics items making good, but not fantastic profits.
If we raised the price by a factor of 2.2 (55,832) then mobile phones would be the most profitable electronics item. This option would give people an incentive to get all the way to RL 50 without upsetting the balance of income where motor-cars still make the best high-score. And Jewlery, and cars still make more money.
So, mobile phone normal price = 40,000 - 55,832
That's my opinion.
-Dave
In the following thread Stdok wrote:
Product name changes?
ZitatAlles anzeigenElectronics
TV-set (b/w) -> TV-set (1 x Lumber -> 1 x Plastic)
Colour-TV -> LCD television (1 x Glasses -> 1 x Precious Metals)
Crank telephone -> Telephone (1 x Lumber -> 1 x Plastic)
Telephone -> cordless phone (1 x Copper wire -> 1 x Electronic components)
Push-button phone -> mobile phone (1 x Electronic components -> 2 x Electronic components)
Radio -> clock radio (1 x Lumber -> 1 x Plastic)
I just checked to see if any of the normal prices had changed and the Sude indicates that they haven't. This is not a big deal for some of the products. The difference in cost to make lumber is not significantly different from the cost to make plastic.
This does not hold true for the cordless phone and the mobile phone. The amount of real estate required and the production costs for these items has increased greatly. The telephone has been a reasonable item to produce, but now reconfigured as a cordless phone it is no longer reasonable to produce it.
Nobody ever produced the Push-button phone when it required 1 electronic component, but now that it requires 2 of them.... well I suppose it isn't any different. Nobody will produce it still.
I suppose I'm just a little saddened to the mechanics of the electronics store altered so much. It seems a bit unfair to take reasonable product and ruin it, or take a poorly performing product and make it worse.
Is there any chance of setting the normal price of these products higher, or changing the required materials back to what they once were?
-Dave
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yes it will
-Dave
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OK, I can't reproduce it either. Maybe I had reset the price myself earlier and just hadn't noticed.
-Dave
Here's the story. I wanted to know how to price my motorcars at ql 28 so I went into the product overview page and set prices in my various stores. I set the lowest price to 110,000 and the highest to 130,000. At the end of the wu, I went back to see how things went. Boy, was I surprised. All the prices in my shops had been reset to 110,000. The motor-cars did sell for what I had originally priced them for, but now the prices were all changed.
I took a screenshot (attached). [font='"']It shows clearly the various sales prices for the cars, and the uniform selling price.
-Dave
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[/font]
