Questions about Capacity, Placement and Efficiency

[azxcvbnm321]

Is there an optimal setting for training? Should I train all firms, even factories with new technology being developed every 3 years? I never train R&D units as it seems to take forever and training costs a lot of money.

I also notice that I will experience a shortage of some input periodically. For example, my electronic components factories will show a shortage of steel every so often (demand bar higher than supply) even without me adding new sources of demand for steel or changing output in any way (no training). Is there a reason for this?

[counting]

Is there an optimal setting for training? Should I train all firms, even factories with new technology being developed every 3 years? I never train R&D units as it seems to take forever and training costs a lot of money.

I also notice that I will experience a shortage of some input periodically. For example, my electronic components factories will show a shortage of steel every so often (demand bar higher than supply) even without me adding new sources of demand for steel or changing output in any way (no training). Is there a reason for this?

Training is something depend on your budgets. Some players prefer using human resource unit in headquarters, some players prefer set training level depend on utilization level (high utilization high budget, vise versa). Some players just left them for COO to decide (when you have thousands of firms).

Personally I leave factory training level to none at the beginning, and later only set training budget to highest when demand exceeded supply and they are able to pay for it. After level 5 or 6 drop to half. As for R&D, if I really need high level research, I'll just hire a high research expertise CTO. Otherwise, I'll keep minimum R&D centers and highest training budgets for core products. When needing extra research, buy techs or R&D centers from AIs (usually much cheaper when there are many AIs). And I always train retail stores to maximum, it's most important. Essentially you are trading current profit, for better long run average cost (LAC).

For the steel problem, what's your steel source? Harbor or AI? Or you have your own iron/coal mine and steel factory? What's your electronic component factory floor layout?

[Esoteric Rogue]

Is there an optimal setting for training?

It's important to realize that the efficiency of training is greatly affected by the utilization rate. A unit with 100% utilization will level up much faster than a unit with only 50% utilization, despite costing the same monthly training expense.

[Hans_Lemurson]

Is there an optimal setting for training?

It's important to realize that the efficiency of training is greatly affected by the utilization rate. A unit with 100% utilization will level up much faster than a unit with only 50% utilization, despite costing the same monthly training expense.

Oh my, that's quite important to know! Given that training triples your labor costs, you could waste a lot of money doing applying training incorrectly.

It also suggests that the HQ's 70% efficient mass-training program is not such a bad deal after all.

Units that are at eternal 100% utilization (like livestock, crop, or research) I assume get trained at the full rate at all times, correct?

Does anybody have any figures on how much improvement in Throughput each level of training gives? I'm not sure that it's the same as the Cap2 manual.

My observation so far has been that the Storage Capacity of a Manufacturing Unit is equal to 10 day's production.

[counting]

Oh my, that's quite important to know! Given that training triples your labor costs, you could waste a lot of money doing applying training incorrectly.

It also suggests that the HQ's 70% efficient mass-training program is not such a bad deal after all.

Units that are at eternal 100% utilization (like livestock, crop, or research) I assume get trained at the full rate at all times, correct?

Ya, farm unit stay at 100% utilization even if it's off-season, so it's always good to max out training budget from the start, and they can be fully trained in 6 years or so. The same as R&D. So the core techs should always trained from the start, not just for techs, but for future effective R&D centers, or you can't compete with late game rich AIs.

The HQ training program is most effective with retail units IMO. Since their utilization varied wildly, and it should be done early in the game for cost effectiveness, or very late in the game when you are so rich that you don't care about effectiveness anymore

Does anybody have any figures on how much improvement in Throughput each level of training gives? I'm not sure that it's the same as the Cap2 manual.

My observation so far has been that the Storage Capacity of a Manufacturing Unit is equal to 10 day's production.

I've done some digging and testing to check whether the old data from Cap2 still valid in Cap lab. The original efficiency data is carried out since the Capitalism Plus manual some 20 years ago, so products that are farming related and simple manufacturing steps mostly stay the same. Those complex production products from Cap2, have somewhat varied data and different throughput, usually less than the original. And there is a third kind of products newly introduced or changed since CapLab, have another set of efficiency data. Honestly I think it will be hell of a task to re-exam all these data.

As for capacity issue, usually there is a production cycle, every day about 1/10 of the max capacity is added into production progress bar, and transfer to next units when they reach the capacity and it takes an extra day. But there is a somewhat longer "reset" cycle (triggered unknown but usually happened once a month), which instantly transfers current production queue to the next, and clean out odd production quantity (due to not enough source materials or downstream capacity). The overall process of production is quite complex and a lot messier than theoretical data.

[Hans_Lemurson]

Nonetheless, it should be possible to answer some basic questions along the lines of "How many Jeans can I produce in a month" and "How much cotton will I need to grow to maintain my factories?"

Being able to decide with real and proper data on things like (for example) "whether it will be profitable to grow your own cotton instead of importing it" will be a very useful tool.

[counting]

I believe jean is the original product with base number of 800 since Cap 2, (Lv 1 large factory daily progress), and consume 800 lb of textile (and 800 lb textile require about 1000 lb of cotton). But this ofc is under the assumption that you can harvest enough cotton to keep supply during off-season and without any production bottleneck.

As to the problem of growing your own crop, generally you can't rely on pure calculation, since you have to consider growth season and growth unit can not be divided, force you to produce excessive crops, and usually you have to discard old low quality crops after your farm leveled up. However, it's generally better to buy from AI crops (if there is any) at the beginning, due to they like to keep them at relative high rating and low price with much better quality (ofc seaport is also good if you choose high quality import option in game setting). Later if you are certain to expand and make long turn production, then you need to consider growing your own, but it will be expensive, and require a lot for training, which may take years, and millions of upkeep. Farms rarely make profit unless they are at high utilization and high level.

[Hans_Lemurson]

I must admit that I am a little bit disturbed by your continued implication that CapLab is somehow beyond mathematical analysis.

If you can figure out how many Jeans you can make, then you know how much cotton you need to grow. The amount of cotton grown by a single crop unit in a single season should be fairly easy to come by and is likely in the same ballpark as the Crop Unit's internal storage capacity.

A Large Jeans Factory with 4 L1 manufacturing units at 100% utilization for 365 days a year will consume (800jeans/(day)*4units*365days*2textile/jean) = 2.33 million units of Textiles per year. 1 cotton = 1 textile, so that's 2.33 million cotton annually. If memory serves me, that's slightly over the storage capacity of a single crop unit, so 2 units (medium farm) are probably in order.

A Medium farm consisting solely of 2 cotton units and 1 sales unit will have 40 employees (2*16 + 8), and the overhead cost of the farm itself is equal to 50 employees for a total operating cost of 90 Labor Units. Assuming a "Real Wage Factor" of 75.00, each Labor Unit costs $1,500 per month, or $18,000 annually.
86 Labor * $18,000 = $1.62 million annual operating cost ($3.06m at 100% training).

If that farm is providing the 2.33 million Cotton needed by the jeans factory, then it can do so at a cost of $0.70 per unit. If the only other cotton available to you costs $0.92 a pound, you will save $0.22 per pound on this venture, or about $0.51m per year. At this rate a $8 million dollar farm would take about 16 years to pay for itself, giving the Cotton Farm a 6.3% annual return on investment.

If cotton is cheaper than that, or your utilization is lower, then you might not even break even. Even if you do just barely brake even, a investment with a 1% annual return is still NOT a particularly good place to stick your money if you're short on cash.

All in all, THAT is the sort of analysis I would like to do, and it is only possible with access to raw production numbers. It appears though that the only way to access these numbers will be through some solid science (Build a factory for every single product). ...Unless of course somebody has already compiled such a list, in which case I would be grateful to have it!

[counting]

I must admit that I am a little bit disturbed by your continued implication that CapLab is somehow beyond mathematical analysis.

...Unless of course somebody has already compiled such a list, in which case I would be grateful to have it!

First of all, very impressive analysis , and I'm sorry if I give you the wrong impression that CapLab is beyond math. I was just trying to emphasis the simulation complexity in current beta/release version. As I wrote in a previously reply, when it comes to actual running, there are numerous unexpected factors can make these extrapolation numbers way off the mark.

I don't doubt it can be helpful, as your calculation suggested of a ratio like 2 medium cotton farm units to 4 large factory level 1 Jeans manufacturing units, especially for growing crops that need time to be planted ahead. However, such figures as 0.70 per lb compare to 0.92 lb from others, or some 6.3% annual return rate, they lack many factors. For instance training cost. Training will give you higher yield gradually over the years, and training of factory as well. It's not a linear process. Other factors like bottlenecks in sales, or in Cap Lab price from seaport changes constantly (at least monthly), etc, etc. Just too many variables. We might required calculus for equations with all these constant changing factors. Even if you get a good projection, simple event like an AI competitor who suicides profit for market share can blow up the entire calculation in no time.

We have a saying in Chinese "Plans can never keep up with changes". Just like in real business, almost no business goes the way with their original business plan. It's more practical to analysis and observe financial reports constantly and adapt accordingly. With growing complexity kept added in beta, mods and expansion packs etc in the future, I felt it takes too much time for just a rough approximation that may be out of date very quickly, or need hours of recalculation when things change. It's just not very practical IMO. With a glimpse of income statement, balance sheet, and other financial reports, it's very easy to tell if it's profitable or not, a good business or not. I don't consider Capitalism series min-max games needed to memorize all the details, since it only gives you massive headache and no fun (and to be honest, most product have unrealistic good profit margin, fine tuning isn't really necessary)

All that being said, I do like math though, as you might tell from my nickname. And I really enjoy experimenting to get better estimations. I might even do more experiments and help updating data if I have more time. From my limited experiments I did yesterday, like the number with Jeans, which I've tested both on Cap 2 and Cap Lab, luckily it matches the old data. But another product I tested, Sweaters, isn't. Since wool production has changed due to farm update. It's base production rate in original data is 400(396) in Cap2, but in Cap Lab it's 570. Hence I am not that confident with the old data to be all that useful in Cap Lab (besides there are a lot more new products and change of production raw materials). But if you like to test them, I can help translating them and post them below.

[counting]

Daily production quantity base number of manufacture unit in level 1 large factory for Capitalism 2 ver 1.00

leather jacket 266
jeans 800
sweater 400

car 2
motorcycle 4

bath lotion 10000
shampoo 10000
soap 13333

bottled milk 20000
cola 40000
grape juice 20000
wine 2000

detergent 10000
toothpaste 13333
toilet cleaner 6667

desktop computer 32
notebook computer 26
palm computer 50
printer 100

eye shadow 1333
hair color 1333
lipstick 1333
perfume 1000

cakes 20000
ice cream 40000
yogurt 26666

cold tablets 4000
cough syrup 4000
headache pills 4000

air conditioner 100
hi-fi 133
microwave 200
television 100
dvd player 100
mobile phone 160
video camera 50
video recorder 133

bread 26666
canned corn 13333
canned soup 13333
corn flakes 40000

sandals 2666
shoes 500
socks 4000
sport shoes 500

bed 114
chair 266
sofa 100

silver necklace 266
gold ring 80

leather bag 133
leather belt 200
leather briefcase 100
leather wallet 200

camera 266
camera film 2000

chocolate 26666
cookies 10000
fruit snacks 40000
chewing gum 40000

back pack 1000
golf clubs 200
in-line skates 400

cigarettes 10000
cigars 200

hand-held game device 400
toy racing car 800
toy doll 1333
video game console 133

elegant watch 400
sports watch 570

citric acid 40000
car body 8
coconut oil 40000
corn syrup 40000
CPU 200
dyestuff 40000
electronic components 4000
engine 12
flour 80000
glass 40000
linen 40000
paper 40000
plastic 40000
polyester 40000
silicon 40000
steel 40000
textiles 4000
wheat germ oil 40000
wheel & tire 40

all plants 40000, except grape 20000, tobacco 28570
all meat 13333,
egg 20000
leather 4000
milk 40000
wool 2000

chemical minerals 20000
coal 200000
gold 133
iron 133333
aluminum 30768
oil 2000
silica 200000
silver 40000
timber 200000

usually final product and source materials have 1:1 consumption ratio, unless it's related to semi-product which might drop to 0.5 to 0.8