Questions about Capacity, Placement and Efficiency
Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2014 6:47 am
There are a number of pieces of information in CapLab which would be very useful in figuring out how to get the most "Bang for your Buck", but which I did not find readily apparent, nor could I find out any information searching online.
Advertisement Allocation: Do you get better results splitting your advertising budget between two different media centers or applying it all to the #1 in coverage (or perhaps the one with the best per-unit cost?) If a Radio Station has good coverage and price, should you spend all of your marketing dollars there, or does it help to diversify your media presence by spending in the Newspaper and TV station as well even if their prices are high and coverage lower? My tendency has been to have 3 advertising units in a city and spread my efforts among each media type for maximum coverage, but is that actually cost effective?
Store placement: Do you need to space out your stores? If you place two stores next to each other in a high traffic downtown district, will they interfere with each other? All else being equal, will your stores see better demand if they are farther apart, or is distance not a factor? If distance is a factor, then is there a set distace beyond which they will not interfere or is it more of a gradual dropoff?
Store product focus: Will you sell more goods with 4 stores each selling the same 4 goods or dividing it up so that each store sell just one product (assuming no change in the store layouts).
Store layout, max utilization: Can a single Purchasing Unit actually serve more than one Sales Unit? The "utilization" bar seems to suggest that they can (at least at level 1), but I don't feel that the utilization bars are totally accurate given the delays between transferring goods from an almost-full Purchasing unit to an empty Sales Unit. I have experimented a bit with channeling the goods through a central inventory unit in single-product stores which seems to smooth things along, but I haven't run the numbers.
Manufacturing Capacity: What is it?
Is there any way to predict how many goods per month a Factory will be able to produce? Any way to predict the volume of their resource demands? Some products require a lot of raw materials per unit (Blazers eat 15lbs of linen), some products yield a multiplied output (Plastic, Dyestuff) and yet others seem to just be inherently slow to manufacture (Cars). I am assuming each product has a different "Manufacturing Time" per unit (or per recipe) to produce. Is there a known list of these Times or of the Quantity/Month for each item that can be produced? It would be nice to know in advance how much stuff your factory can actually produce.
Sales Unit Capacity: Similar Question
Does each product also have a "weight factor" that determines the amount that a sales unit at full capacity can sell? Is this the same weight factor as the manufacturing cost? Is this the same weight factor used for determining how much can be stored in an inventory unit?
Advertisement Allocation: Do you get better results splitting your advertising budget between two different media centers or applying it all to the #1 in coverage (or perhaps the one with the best per-unit cost?) If a Radio Station has good coverage and price, should you spend all of your marketing dollars there, or does it help to diversify your media presence by spending in the Newspaper and TV station as well even if their prices are high and coverage lower? My tendency has been to have 3 advertising units in a city and spread my efforts among each media type for maximum coverage, but is that actually cost effective?
Store placement: Do you need to space out your stores? If you place two stores next to each other in a high traffic downtown district, will they interfere with each other? All else being equal, will your stores see better demand if they are farther apart, or is distance not a factor? If distance is a factor, then is there a set distace beyond which they will not interfere or is it more of a gradual dropoff?
Store product focus: Will you sell more goods with 4 stores each selling the same 4 goods or dividing it up so that each store sell just one product (assuming no change in the store layouts).
Store layout, max utilization: Can a single Purchasing Unit actually serve more than one Sales Unit? The "utilization" bar seems to suggest that they can (at least at level 1), but I don't feel that the utilization bars are totally accurate given the delays between transferring goods from an almost-full Purchasing unit to an empty Sales Unit. I have experimented a bit with channeling the goods through a central inventory unit in single-product stores which seems to smooth things along, but I haven't run the numbers.
Manufacturing Capacity: What is it?
Is there any way to predict how many goods per month a Factory will be able to produce? Any way to predict the volume of their resource demands? Some products require a lot of raw materials per unit (Blazers eat 15lbs of linen), some products yield a multiplied output (Plastic, Dyestuff) and yet others seem to just be inherently slow to manufacture (Cars). I am assuming each product has a different "Manufacturing Time" per unit (or per recipe) to produce. Is there a known list of these Times or of the Quantity/Month for each item that can be produced? It would be nice to know in advance how much stuff your factory can actually produce.
Sales Unit Capacity: Similar Question
Does each product also have a "weight factor" that determines the amount that a sales unit at full capacity can sell? Is this the same weight factor as the manufacturing cost? Is this the same weight factor used for determining how much can be stored in an inventory unit?