Premium yogurt and embezzlement scheme

[eleaza]

I haven't played with the core game for a while, and want to test some of the features, but I somehow ended-up with a very bizarre situation, where I can inflated the operating profit from millions to billions, where my cash fluctuated wildly for hundreds of millions everyday. And I was able to setup an embezzle scheme where I paid my CEO with extremely high salary, not supported by my operating profit, but by issuing new stocks for about 200 million every few months.

embezzlement.zip

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I was puzzled how it was possible, so I looked up my firms and found my yogurt factory somehow being able to generate more than 10 billion revenue (and profit) a month, thus the rest of my firms can suffer immense losses regardless. When I analyzed my financial reports, they somehow didn't add up to my corporate financial reports. It's supposed to make a lose simply from my CEO's COO's and CMO's salaries alone (they added up to nearly 800 millions a year where my total revenue from retails and media added up to less than 600 millions a year), but my income statement showed I was making billions of operating profit a year.

[eleaza]

This is insane, I was able to get more than 35 billion profit with that can only be described as gilded 6093 dollars per scoop ice cream. Talk about guilty pleasure with that.

There's something really wrong here.

[David]

The game was treating the yogurt products that your stores purchased from your factory as inventory assets, based on the factory selling price you set, thus inflating the balance sheet.

We will address this exploit in the next patch.

[eleaza]

The game was treating the yogurt products that your stores purchased from your factory as inventory assets, based on the factory selling price you set, thus inflating the balance sheet.

We will address this exploit in the next patch.

The interesting thing is I don't actually get more cash doing this, this is indeed inflated assets price due to the unusual high price at the factory. And causing wrong operating profit been reported. I was puzzled though why would the cash level fluctuated so much? The warehouse magically get money to buy all the expensive product from the factory? But I was paying myself, shouldn't it be cancelled out? Or is it like in real life accounting with accounts payable and receivable, and there's a delay between two firms trading with each other? My check goes to a clearing house before it was paid back at the same corporate account.

I think I figure out how it happened, I purchased factories from AIs, since there's little land left near the town, and simply relink the input unit with new raw materials. I think I retool a motorcycle factory for my yogurt, and car factory for my ice cream, and it keeps the selling price of the old factories.

[David]

I think I retool a motorcycle factory for my yogurt, and car factory for my ice cream, and it keeps the selling price of the old factories.

How did you retool it? I just did a test by retooling a factory to produce a different product and the sale price is reset to the normal price of the new product. What steps did you take to keep the sale price of the old product for the new product?

[eleaza]

How did you retool it? I just did a test by retooling a factory to produce a different product and the sale price is reset to the normal price of the new product. What steps did you take to keep the sale price of the old product for the new product?

I don't know, just purchase a factory from the AI, link the proper raw materials, and it just sort of keep the original price (but a little lower I think, still way off the normal range).

[eleaza]

I think I retool a motorcycle factory for my yogurt, and car factory for my ice cream, and it keeps the selling price of the old factories.

How did you retool it? I just did a test by retooling a factory to produce a different product and the sale price is reset to the normal price of the new product. What steps did you take to keep the sale price of the old product for the new product?

I have a save file, just before I tried it. Purchasing the car factory on sale from Moon Harp in Beijing (right below my farms). Link the 3 raw materials for ice cream accordingly. Exit the factory screen, and leave it for a while, the car price of 7704 will become new ice cream price 6093.

[David]

I will forward your save game file to the programmer for bug fixing.

[David]

We have fixed this bug in the latest patch v3.5.08 which you may download from http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... f=7&t=3693

[eleaza]

Retooling purchased AI factory won't keep the old price is fixed, but the cash fluctuation issue remained.

Here is a save, that I finally get rid of the buggy super pricey ice cream and yogurt factories. And I have to change them in stages. Clearing each store's sales unit stockpile one at a time, since switching (or batch switching) to a new regular factory, or simply drop the price of the old bugged pricey factory wouldn't work, I'll just go bankrupt in an instant.

It took me a long time to figure out what went wrong. The problem is the cost and selling price of a product is calculated on each store instead of each unit, and the purchasing cost persist. Even if the purchasing unit already linked to a new source, or the source's price is changed, the price/cost showing in the product detail screen remain as the old cost, and it updates very slowly. The store seems to think they are still purchasing with the old price (or a mixture of the new and old price) instead of the new price immediately. It will take quite a long time for the cost to equalize. This issue results in leaking cash into nothing (the factory only gets income from the store with the new price, but the store pays the a mixture of old+new cost)

Supermarket 007 in Beijing, shows this issue. The price of every factory is normal, the price in new Beijing yogurt factory is very low. But this supermarket still thinks it's paying $5684 per yogurt, result in leaking hundreds of millions of cash a day. However, if I clear the stock of the sales unit that still has the old price for 3 times, the cash leaking problem stops immediately. (And the funny thing is, when I clear the stock, the cash temporary dropped several billions, and went back to the original number, I don't see why clearly stock has anything to do with cash fluctuation). Otherwise it will take like months for the store to equalize the purchasing cost back to normal (in the mean time losing billions of cash).

Only because the price difference is so huge I am able to notice this inconsistency. In a "normal game", this issue also exists, just less severe (hence hard to detect). I think the reverse issue is also true. If the factory price starts at very low, and suddenly increase to a very high amount, the retail store will still think the cost is a mixture of old+new price, and slowly equalizing after days. In the meantime, the factory "gains" higher income immediately (with the new price).