plaform sharing?

[asaphx]

I'm a bit at a loss as to what exactly should happen here. I go into the plaform sharing menu and it's just like the licensing menu, except i can use any component of any company, even those I don't have stocks in, and I don't have to pay anything. The next month, I am selling this vehicle for a profit and nothing shows up under 'outsourced units' in the report... Am I missing something?

[Eric.B]

You should only be able to see company's you own 50% or more in, or they own 50% or more of you in. If you are seeing every company, then it is a bug, please email me the save game.

As for outsourced units, you have to wait a few months before it shows up. If you have already played 1 or 2 years into the game world, then it sounds like Steam screwed up your update. You might have to verify the game or reinstall, but send me the save games first, so I can confirm.

http://wiki.gearcity.info/doku.php?id=troubleshooting:steam_installfolder#sending_a_save_game

[asaphx]

Thanks. I did have a quasi-corruption of my save game, where some tables where lost and not functional, but with remarkable recovery, with all tables regained after a few months, and even past data i thought was lost (like yearly profit graph) were restored. Splendid robustness on this game.

On a side note, I'm curious to know what you will think of my evolving company and game so far. I'm playing ultra mega nightmare with 100 AI. I thought I had recovered from addiction to this game already and moved on, but something made me come back a week or two ago, and I haven't been able to stop playing since. Instead of boring and familiar, it just becomes more and more interesting as I learn and understand more about the game and dive deeper into using its mechanics properly. 20/10 for depth and endless playability
(I will edit my review now to include this)

[Eric.B]

Sorry for the late reply.

I got a chance to look at the save game file. Seems like a bug in the ownership amount in later game years. I have it ticketed for v1.23 SP1.

Two tickets for this:
https://bitbucket.org/EricBJones/gearcity/issues/279/platform-sharing-listing-too-many
https://bitbucket.org/EricBJones/gearcity/issues/278/dynamic-ai-stock-holdings-missing-text

As for your save game, it looks like you're doing rather well. What year did you start in? Also did you end up buying out a lot of companies? Or did they naturally fold up? Seems like attrition finally got to many of your competitors, you started taking a good amount of market share in the 80s. Anything in particular do you think made the game easier to get to this point?

Also, one other thing to make your life easier. Next time you have to upload a large save file, if you zip it, it will shrink a lot! :) Just a basic zip of your save game file is about 30mb. That being said, I am quite impressed with how much data is in there for 100AI. :)

[asaphx]

Thanks for the tip! I will do that :)
It's been a pretty virginal experience for me, so I've actually made quite a bit of mistakes to learn from - for instance, the great rush of the late 60's and early 70's threw me into building huge factories in Australia and Japan, the Australian especially is very hard to fill to capacity, so I think there might still be some lowering of demand there? Also, in my memory i thought the stocks fell in 1986, so in 1987 I thought maybe you didn't program in that crash, and bought a huge amount of stock one month before it :)

In general it's really a great challenge to get the rate and size of factory building right, I think I will do better next game.

In earlier builds of 1.23 I did not have much luck with buying up competitors and making a subsidiary of them, but I was quite pleased with having the option of just owning more than 50% and determining the dividend, that was a good fall back for me. So in this game I have two such semi-owned companies in China, which have done very well for me in their value and performance and recently also dividends. The other competitors are bitter opponents indeed, there were a few years when I thought I had beat them, but they got right back up and sent me back to the drawing board. Great experience.

As you might see in my profit graph, I never really enjoyed the steady high-volume stream of profit as some of my competitors, but I never really lacked for cash either, nor had to sell any stocks after the first few years (but I did play in the market here and there with good success, much owing to my ability to "foresee" major economic and political events.

I should note also that in the past few decades, game performance has been degrading. Changing turns takes several minutes now, which doesn't bother me so much, since I can alt+tab and do other things during this time, and it also encourages me to take a break. What is more troubling is some slowness in the mega controller, specifically in the distribution/production views, which I believe is due to the number of items displayed (it is not slow if I filter the items to small amount).

[Eric.B]

Disabling City Sales, Vehicle Sales, and District Sales Report should speed up the turn times somewhat for your save game.

You have so many vehicles models, that's what is taking so much time to process. are these all active models? 160+ player models is really pushing the limit of the game. It can barely handle it.

[asaphx]

And counting!

Well, not all of them are active, though most of them are. With so many models, it's very hard to keep track of which model needs to say bye-bye and when, especially if one also needs to know the inventory status before ending sales of the model. However, since I started using auto production again, this will make the job a bit easier, but still not so simple.

I also wonder if all those models are really necessary. I am still somewhat suspicious that adding a new similar, or even identical trim for that matter, to an otherwise quenched market, increases the customer cake more than it should, instead of eating up existing portions of the cake, e.g. taking half the sales of the existing similar trim and/or other cars in the market, and assuming other conditions are isolated. But I can't say I have any proof of this, nor can I say that there is no such effect at all - indeed I can see the sales of all existing models slump when a new car is introducted. But is it well balanced at this point?

Of course, even if it is well balance, there is still sense in making many different engines and gear on each chassis (=generation), isn't there? To increase market reach?

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by asaphx:

I also wonder if all those models are really necessary. I am still somewhat suspicious that adding a new similar, or even identical trim for that matter, to an otherwise quenched market, increases the customer cake more than it should, instead of eating up existing portions of the cake, e.g. taking half the sales of the existing similar trim and/or other cars in the market, and assuming other conditions are isolated. But I can't say I have any proof of this, nor can I say that there is no such effect at all - indeed I can see the sales of all existing models slump when a new car is introducted. But is it well balanced at this point?

Eventually there is diminishing returns by releasing so many models. Both in terms of managing your company, turn times, and sales. Even with greater AI output, I would probably only do 2 or 3 trims per type max. Do you really need to min-max everything in game? :) That'd give you a stable of 60ish cars. Roughly a third of what you're managing now. Yet able to cover the same amount of ground in the market. (High, Medium, Low of each type.) Yes, it might result in fewer sales over all. But each model will be selling more.

Of course, even if it is well balance, there is still sense in making many different engines and gear on each chassis (=generation), isn't there? To increase market reach?

It's up to you how to play it. GM used the same 5 engines on practically all their line up for a good 20-25 years. Ford did a similar thing.

Originally posted by asaphx:

Well, not all of them are active, though most of them are. With so many models, it's very hard to keep track of which model needs to say bye-bye and when, especially if one also needs to know the inventory status before ending sales of the model. However, since I started using auto production again, this will make the job a bit easier, but still not so simple.

I would start with the oldest, end production and scrap inventories. You have several cars from the 70s. Anything older than 1983 is already suffering an age penalty. Anything from the early 70s is really getting hit hard, as they'll have the age penalty plus a components age penalty.

[asaphx]

Well the thing is, after 400 hours now, I can still call this my first round on the game, i.e. the first time I got this far on the hardest mode. So this is also why I make so many models, to try them out and see what works and how, etc... So yeah, this still a learning experience for me, but in the next round I will probably play more elegantly and benefit from better performance as a result.
In any case even in the current state, any performance degradation is certainly bearable and not a game-breaker of any sort. Besides, I like going big, and this has been accomplished from my perspective.

Originally posted by Eric.B:

I would start with the oldest, end production and scrap inventories. You have several cars from the 70s. Anything older than 1983 is already suffering an age penalty. Anything from the early 70s is really getting hit hard, as they'll have the age penalty plus a components age penalty.

Of course, it's hard for me to determine what that age penalty is exactly and what effects it has. If the car is still selling and making money (as indeed my 1970 hatchback still is), it's hard for me to counter that with my intuititive wish to rejuvinate my operations, especially without evidence of tangible counter-effects (Damage to my image perhaps? Higher warranty costs?).

So it is quite challenging to determine the threshold. So far I took to removing cars when their overall/type rating fell below 20, but I will try to be less tolerant from here on and more time-based. I will also need to determine whether the age penalty applies the same to all car bodies, market targets, era, etc, or rather is differential and requires further intuition/research on my part. (+++Challenge)

[EvilFinchen]

Originally posted by Eric.B:

I would start with the oldest, end production and scrap inventories. You have several cars from the 70s. Anything older than 1983 is already suffering an age penalty. Anything from the early 70s is really getting hit hard, as they'll have the age penalty plus a components age penalty.

Without the intend to hijack this thread (and "Sorry" if i did) but in my current playthrough i started monitoring competitors performance and share prices from the "Company Overview" in the reports and the broker (Sales, Profits, Debt, etc.) and recognized that some companies are doing quite well - sales and profit go up every year or are very consistent at least and they have very little to no debt - yet one or two of them are not designing new cars (still using 1900 cars in 1907) while others do.

They won't be able to hold this up forever - and while the share prices of those who do design new cars and have good fundamental health rise and rise the share prices of other companies who don't design new cars yet have good fundamental health and very good sales stagnate at a certain level and even fall.

Is this behaviour intended? Like someone who does not replace its assets fast enough and might have some serious problems in creating future revenues?

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by EvilFinchen:

yet one or two of them are not designing new cars (still using 1900 cars in 1907) while others do.
..

Is this behaviour intended? Like someone who does not replace its assets fast enough and might have some serious problems in creating future revenues?

The AI works off a series of behavior variables. Including a behavior variable for how often it will design a new vehicle. See: http://wiki.gearcity.info/doku.php?id=modtools:aieditor#agression for more details.

7 Years is right at the cutoff before the game will force the AI to end production of the vehicle. With no vehicle models for sale, the game will force the company to design a new product.

Watch them the next 3 years and see what they do. Let me know how it goes.

[Eric.B]

OP issue has been fixed. Was accidentally using the wrong denominator. I also fixed a bug that allowed duplicate entries into the list.

[matt hale]

i am playing a start in 1980 and if i have shares in a company the platform sharing becomes available

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by matt hale:

i am playing a start in 1980 and if i have shares in a company the platform sharing becomes available

Yes, this issue has already been fixed. The fix will be included in the next patch you receive.

[clovisgr]

Can I choose what I want to put in plataform sharing or all my stuff are automaticly put in there?

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by clovisgr:

Can I choose what I want to put in plataform sharing or all my stuff are automaticly put in there?

All of your stuff is available to anyone who owns a majority of your company or any company you own a majority of.