Anyone got an inside line on the SomethingAwful antics? I see companies on the stock exchange losing 2/3rds of their net worth inside a day, and I feel like I’m missing out on hilarious Eve-style anecdotes here.
I’ve heard the one about Jacko Bourne giving a goon CEO privileges and getting hosed so badly the developer summarily fired all CEOs the following day.
BTW, I’m Wilbur Nooseworthy, the wig baron.
Woohoo, I got confirmed! :-) Just wanted to pop up and say hi to all. Yeah, that SA event was pretty bad, we got flooded with newbies on that weekend and the player count went straight from 200 to 550, and jackos hired many newbies as CEO for all his companies with unrestricted access (well, that can’t be helped because the feature isn’t 100% complete), and things went downhill from there.
Pogo
23
I don’t know what you guys mean exactly, but that does seem like a great way to find weaknesses or exploits in the game.
Started playing this last night and got hooked immediately. I was expecting a throw-away Zynga style game focusing on mass-appeal. Instead it has surprising depth and variety of ways to play.
I’m still really early into it, but I can already see the hard choices I’m going to have to make down the line. How specialized should I be? Should I lower my overhead by building my own energy supply or should I use those spots to focus on product?
Looking forward to digging deeper into the beta and seeing how the game evolves.
Pogo
25
There is tons of cheap electricity and water on the market. Others have already cornered that, there’s no reason to spend money/space on making your own.
Since electricity always seems to be quality 0, there isn’t any benefit to making it with higher quality natural gas or coal, is there?
Pogo
27
OK so I made a couple Quality 7 Tennis Balls. I previously had Quality 3. I check my warehouse and now it lists all the Tennis Balls I had before as Quality 7. Is this a bug? I thought that I would get two listings for Tennis Balls in my Warehous, the 1,500 or so I had of Quality 3 and the 10 or so that I made of Quality 7.
I would guess not, though there may be other products which take gas/coal quality into account for final production quality, so it’s probably not a waste if that’s what you’ve been researching.
I don’t know the first thing about business, but this game is making me purr like a kitten. I spent all my startup money furiously, just to see what different things were like, and got myself into a bad spot, and now I have to work my way out of it. I kind of like that challenge.
I like sims in general – my favorite kind being a good NFL football sim, but alas, the last of those seems to have gone fallow. This is nothing like that, really, but just as fun.
So, I’m a few days in and just now figured out that I can hurry production on my buildings… sigh. Sitting there waiting hours for an expansion to complete when I could have just been clicking the “instant complete” button.
The joys of being a new player :)
Had to start from scratch this weekend. Took me a bit to get the hang of things, by which point I was so far in debt that I could barely keep up with the interest payments.
My first attempt through I focused on my “core” product. Built up way too much research and manufacturing (paper factory, paper research, beverage factory, snack factory). Also bought a supermarket, cafe, and farmers market. GOt to the point that I was only producing a handful of products but was paying a ton in salary and building maintenance.
My problem was that I didn’t think making 0-quality products was worth it, so just did oranges and orange products. This time through I’m much more diversified, selling all the fruits and veggies along with creating the next tier of items (sugar, smoothies, apple juice, etc…). Filling in the gaps by buying 2 - 5k of finished products on the B2B and selling them at my stores. Some areas there is so much competition that you can buy a $46 product for $15 on the B2B.
Still a lot to learn to move ahead more quickly, but at least I’m making a profit daily now
The stock market could use some work. Too prone to price spikes and drops based on a small number of buyers/sellers. I think some AI based buyers and selling could help with that.
Again, really great game for a beta.
Pogo
31
My revenue is pretty pathetic. Not sure what I’m doing wrong.
Mine isn’t great by any means, compared to some of the folks out there. Pulling in around 65k per 15 minutes.
I only have 2 stores at the moment, a 140 ft^2 farmers market and a 100 ft^2 cafe. My factories are 2 beverage factories (40 ft^2 and 30 ft^2), 3 fields (200, 40, 40) and 1 100 ft^2 plantation.
In the farmers market I’m selling most of the produce available. I buy a lot of produce on the B2B if it’s 15+ quality and costs < $1, I then relist it for whatever the going price is ($3 - $4.50, depending). The more expensive produce (mango, coconut, pineapple) I produce myself at quality 0 and sell it for 20% under the “average” price.
I tend to price watch at the B2B to buy cheap completed items (apple pie, bottled water, etc) that sells for a large profit at the cafe. For example, I bought 30,000 Q18 bottle water for $6 each and am reselling for $17.50 each.
Biggest profit, obviously, are the things I produce myself. I bought some Q23 bananas and Q19 strawberries and mass produced a bunch of smoothies. Cost ~$4 per smoothy and I’m selling them at $46 (well above average price. demand met is only 34% right now, so I can gouge). Pulling in around $2k/15 from just the smoothies.
Pogo
33
Hrm… maybe I should consider severely raising the prices of Pogo’s Balls branded Tennis Balls.
I’ve been having a blast with this game, growing my company and finding the right market to make a profit in. I’ve re-tooled my company several times, often selling several, if not all buildings to achieve the new design. At 90% value per building sale, it’s expensive, but does not completely devalue your company.
If anyone wants to add me in-game I’m Zenchess, and my company is Zen Corp. I’m considering starting an IPO within a few days. New public offerings can easily jump up in value very quickly so buy buy buy! :)
Lesson learned from yesterday: keep a large excess of goods in your stores if there is a chance you won’t be able to play for a day. I went out with some friends, got in late and went straight to bed. Didn’t have a chance to check on my biz at all yesterday. Logged in this morning and found that I was selling a grand total of 4 items because I had sold out of everything else.
Going to start making larger batches of products. Makes sense financially anyway. Due to the economy of scale, the more you make the lower your cost per unit is. Making 10,000 of an items looks to require 10% less per unit than making 1,000 of an item. Wondering where this caps at for max per-unit savings…
In case you guys are interested everyone over at OO who’s playing has been doing their IPOs and announcing when so everyone can get a ton of shares early and cheap. My net worth has gone from about 50 million to close to 200 million in a few days thanks to a few good investments (and in spite of a few bad ones :P).
The next IPO will be Toys R U (ticker TOYS) that should come out around 10 eastern time tomorrow.
I’ll probably IPO at some point and when I do I’ll post it here.
Bought 10m shares of TOYS this morning for $3 a share, and now they’re worth about $20 a share. :)
Capitalism Ho!
Well, now they are worth $14.64 and falling.
The worst part for me is I was in while it was at $8, but got out because I needed the cash. I made $2,350 on a 650,000 investment. Then THE VERY NEXT TICK the stock price shot to $24.
Me = lousy capitalist.
hehe To some extent it’s luck. You can be assured of a new IPO creating a temporary bubble and then it will balance out over a couple days.
It’s easy to lose money too though… I took a $4m bath because one of the companies I invested in hired a new CEO who promptly gutted the company, sold everything, then sold his shares and tanked the price. :|
Pogo
40
I’m almost broke. I’m pretty sure the socialist overlord of this game keeps giving me cash.
