New business sectors?

Suggestions for new DLC projects.

Which one or more sectors you wanna see in the game?

Construction/Building business
106
16%
Transportation business
118
18%
New financial types (Banking, bonds-selling, insurance etc.)
116
18%
Show business
35
5%
Energy Development
135
20%
Tourism industry
54
8%
Utility sector
81
12%
Other (post it in the comments)
12
2%
Non of the above
3
0%
 
Total votes: 660

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David
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by David »

Thanks for your feedback. Interesting ideas.

It will probably take a few emails to respond to all of your suggestions, and I would like to start with the following one regarding 1) Telephone Company (or Wireline Phone Company):
- Existing Phone Companies should have their network partially built out. Similar to real estate purchases (eg. buying squares of land), phone companies should use the same architecture as they figure out where they want to build their network. More dense locations (ie. more buildings/people) can have higher build cost, but ultimately should have higher ROI
The dev team has been working on the City Sim Expansion Pack which will introduce a new interface for viewing the geographic coverage of the community buildings' services.

Please take a look at this post at the City Sim Expansion Pack forum that contains a work-in-progress screenshot of the new interface: http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =16&t=2264

Do you think it makes sense to use a similar interface for the Telephone Company's network coverage? In this case, it could be a "data transmission station" (or other names that you may suggest) which the player can strategically place throughout the city to build up the network. The green areas shown on the mini map on the screenshots will indicate the telephone network coverage.

Does this make sense to you?
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David
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by David »

counting wrote:By the way if it's a service, that means there should be new units in normal retail store or factories that "purchase" these new types of services, just like ads units, right?

Or would it be like a general services go through "citizens" and affect the overall overhead of all type of buildings that required these services? like a security firms would be universally needed. And part of the overhead paid in normal buildings should theoretically goes to the service providers. Perhaps we should have a general service required level where player owned service competing with local service providers. But again how do we represent these "local providers"? Should they be invisible to players as abstract background calculation?
We haven't a definite conclusion on this yet and that's why we would like to invite ideas from users here.

It may help by bringing up an example of the industry that you want to create in CapLab and then we will see kind of gameplay structure and interface will best fit it and see whether the said gameplay structure and interface are similar to any existing ones in the game. Perhaps this way, it will help us gain insights on the questions you posed above.
Arcnor
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by Arcnor »

David I think the player strategically placing stations would be an excellent idea and would work well with the new interface currently underdevelopment. The same game interface could be used to build a TV cable area of service as well as a power grid for future electric power plants.

My suggestion for "purchasing" services by stores/factories/etc would be to have the purchasing function be at the HQ level or perhaps create a Regional HQ building. A Regional HQ could be built in any city the player's company does business, excluding the city where the HQ is located. At this Regional HQ the player can make decisions on purchasing services (power, phone, cable, ads).

An alternative would be to have purchasing just at HQ and build an interface that allows the player to select the service provider by city, since not all cities will have the same service providers.
Mogul
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by Mogul »

David, thanks for your reply. I think that strategy would work very well for a Wireless Company but less so for a wireline company. The setup for wireless is more realistic and relates to how you could think of a telecom tower (placed in one area and having the best service closer to the tower and declining the further away you get, requiring more towers to build network).

For a wireline operator, similar to a cable provider, these networks are physical wires in the ground, so not sure if the same interface described above works. For instance, in a real city, one apartment building could be wired by a certain provider but the neighboring building may not be wired. This is why I would make those network builds a bitter granular and subjective to the company's discretion, vs casting a huge net from on data interconnection station.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks.
Mogul
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by Mogul »

Also, agree w Arcnor that this similar concept could be useful for utilities/power plants. Given the regulated nature of utilities and the service requirements, you could use the same type of wireless / influence area concept. The "towers" would be akin to power transformer stations covering a region.
counting
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by counting »

Mogul wrote:David, thanks for your reply. I think that strategy would work very well for a Wireless Company but less so for a wireline company. The setup for wireless is more realistic and relates to how you could think of a telecom tower (placed in one area and having the best service closer to the tower and declining the further away you get, requiring more towers to build network).

For a wireline operator, similar to a cable provider, these networks are physical wires in the ground, so not sure if the same interface described above works. For instance, in a real city, one apartment building could be wired by a certain provider but the neighboring building may not be wired. This is why I would make those network builds a bitter granular and subjective to the company's discretion, vs casting a huge net from on data interconnection station.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks.
For telecom company even fixed line, they need to build repeaters like hubs to boost signal strength for an area to gain access. And buildings connect to the telecom service or not within the same coverage area is not supposed to be 100% anyway, just like any cellphone users under the same cellar tower coverage can still subscribe to other cellar service providers. The coverage area is just setting a "potential market share" upper limit, not actually ensure every citizen within the area is immediately a customer. It should be like normal product to compete in price, service quality, brand for over all rating to decide the "real service market share".
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by counting »

Mogul wrote:Also, agree w Arcnor that this similar concept could be useful for utilities/power plants. Given the regulated nature of utilities and the service requirements, you could use the same type of wireless / influence area concept. The "towers" would be akin to power transformer stations covering a region.
Although a lot of other types of service are irrelevant to physical locations, like accounting service, law firms, even the current media services for the most part are irrelevant where their "service stations" are located. So we either need a new type of mechanism, using the "production->service outlets" models for service industries similar to manufacturing process with stages, or we should have a MOD option to determine the service area effect should be turn on or off, where its off its just like current media model, if it's on the coverage range can be used as a location-based limit for service market share.
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Mogul
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by Mogul »

counting wrote:For telecom company even fixed line, they need to build repeaters like hubs to boost signal strength for an area to gain access. And buildings connect to the telecom service or not within the same coverage area is not supposed to be 100% anyway, just like any cellphone users under the same cellar tower coverage can still subscribe to other cellar service providers. The coverage area is just setting a "potential market share" upper limit, not actually ensure every citizen within the area is immediately a customer. It should be like normal product to compete in price, service quality, brand for over all rating to decide the "real service market share".
Yes -- that is reflected in my "penetration rate" metric (eg. based on your network footprint, how many customers do you have as a percentage of your potential customer base). For cable and fixed phone, dealing with the intricacies of adding head-ends or repeaters to amplify signals is overkill and is in the realm of diminishing returns, but it's perfectly logical for a wireless company since no tower = no service.

I've covered service quality by thinking about a sliding bar for maintenance capital expenditures. Please see my original post. There should be a minimum maintenance capex based on size of footprint. As you build more, you have to pay more to maintain the network.

For brand, that should be similar to how brand is currently done in the game.

For pricing, it's a reflection of the items above for fixed line phone, with a larger network able to command higher prices for services, assuming you invest in maintaining your network.

An additional point to make is that all these telecom companies should have overlapping networks on certain parts of the map, so that will simulate competition. Throw into the mix the fact that fixed phone can compete with wireless phones (on residential side mainly vs. commercial side) and that residential consumers may not want a fixed phone service anyway, penetration probably should never get to 100%.

I wasn't able to really follow your second post where you had quoted me.
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by counting »

Mogul wrote: I wasn't able to really follow your second post where you had quoted me.
It's about service businesses in general. Not limited to telecom type company. There is no "cellar tower" for service like accounting firms. If service industries can be made into MOD, we need to consider all types of services, not just telecom. For power company service, they don't actually need a local "distribution tower", its unnecessarily complexity. It would function well even if it has almost the same mechanism as current media firms.
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by Mogul »

counting wrote:
Mogul wrote: I wasn't able to really follow your second post where you had quoted me.
It's about service businesses in general. Not limited to telecom type company. There is no "cellar tower" for service like accounting firms. If service industries can be made into MOD, we need to consider all types of services, not just telecom. For power company service, they don't actually need a local "distribution tower", its unnecessarily complexity. It would function well even if it has almost the same mechanism as current media firms.
Got it. My post is not applicable to a professional services company.
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