Problems with the COO

[douglasrac]

I have so many stores that is hard to keep up with everything. So I delegate to the COO.
He is sabotaging my management. I have a factory of Gold Rings and Jewelries. At the Jewelries he just stop buying new gold rings from my factory. He do not replace it with any new product, just stop purchasing it. My gold rings are the best on the market. If the store sells it I dominate the entire market (good price, good brand, good quality). But then I start to have losses and the market is dominated by locals, so I go to see the store and he is not purchasing. The factory is producing enough rings, so supply is fully available. I don't understand what is going on. Must be sabotage. Is that possible?

Also I choose at the beginning of the game the Corporate Brand strategy. Now I look at it and it's Unique Brand strategy. Is it possible that the Chief of Marketing change it? Computers shouldn't be able to change that!!!

This game is nice but it's too many details to look at, which is nice, but when the company is big should be a smart way to automatize it.

[douglasrac]

Really? No one?
No one ever putted the Chief Operations Officer to manage a store and he did crazy things?

[Webby64286]

The COO's are worthless. I make and sell all 76 end products in 20 stores in all 4 cities. I control everything from mine to semi-product to factory to store and have no problem managing it all. Here's how I do it: Each end product has what I call a retail ceiling which is the maximum a store can sell of a given product. I have posted these ceiling numbers at the neoseeker forum here
http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/2236/t1 ... our-sales/

It helps to know these numbers so I can work backwards from them. For instance, a store can sell a maximum of 16,000 Air Conditioners per month. Once I know all the retail ceiling numbers I can manage all of my PRODUCTS from the product detail report screen. I don't manage my stores or factories (except for a little, I'll explain in a bit) I look at this report at least once a quarter. I can adjust pricing right from this screen and see its effect on the overall number. If I am not hitting the retail ceiling and price, quality and brand are good, I can highlight my product click 'go'' and work my way back through the supply chain to see where the problem is. The only time I'm in the store after it is up and running is to set up advertising (I use unique brand strategy. Once I have enough money I'll buy a media firm and advertise for free forever, I do no branding at all until I can afford this and rely on price and quality to move products. I can usually hit these ceilings just not at their most profitable point.) and then to stop training once everything is at level 9. The way I handle the factory is, once I build a factory and the product is ready, I click on the picture of the product and then click the 'i' button on the bottom. This will take me to product detail report (provided that was the last place I was in the information center. If it wasn't, I get to the product detail report, then exit, go back to factory do it again and now every time I do this the product detail report will show up. You have to do this once for each city) before I sell the product to myself in the store I will set the price in the factory to 1/2 of the local price point and never touch the factory price again. If you set the price point at 1/2 and your price is less than the cost to produce it then you have to adjust pricing at the farm or semi factory (mines are never the problem). All further price adjustments are done at the retail level through the product detail report screen. Once the ceiling is hit I stop all training at the factory (unless I still have R&D manufacturing setbacks coming) It sounds like a lot but it's really just a matter of repetition. The beauty of starting backwards from the retail ceiling is you'll be able to figure out optimal factory sizes and layouts as well as farm layouts as well as pricing throughout the chain.

[xflexmanx]

After I have a steady profit of 25-50mil I open my HQ and employ everything that is to employ , then I appoint a COO for all my factories, retails...and so on...everything is run by the AI, except general stuff ...I'm always attendive at each potential COO's score in order to choose the best one. A bad COO can bankrupt you quite fast :p

[xflexmanx]

PS I only use corporate brand

[douglasrac]

The COO's are worthless. I make and sell all 76 end products in 20 stores in all 4 cities. I control everything from mine to semi-product to factory to store and have no problem managing it all. Here's how I do it: Each end product has what I call a retail ceiling which is the maximum a store can sell of a given product. I have posted these ceiling numbers at the neoseeker forum here
http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/2236/t1 ... our-sales/

It helps to know these numbers so I can work backwards from them. For instance, a store can sell a maximum of 16,000 Air Conditioners per month. Once I know all the retail ceiling numbers I can manage all of my PRODUCTS from the product detail report screen. I don't manage my stores or factories (except for a little, I'll explain in a bit) I look at this report at least once a quarter. I can adjust pricing right from this screen and see its effect on the overall number. If I am not hitting the retail ceiling and price, quality and brand are good, I can highlight my product click 'go'' and work my way back through the supply chain to see where the problem is. The only time I'm in the store after it is up and running is to set up advertising (I use unique brand strategy. Once I have enough money I'll buy a media firm and advertise for free forever, I do no branding at all until I can afford this and rely on price and quality to move products. I can usually hit these ceilings just not at their most profitable point.) and then to stop training once everything is at level 9. The way I handle the factory is, once I build a factory and the product is ready, I click on the picture of the product and then click the 'i' button on the bottom. This will take me to product detail report (provided that was the last place I was in the information center. If it wasn't, I get to the product detail report, then exit, go back to factory do it again and now every time I do this the product detail report will show up. You have to do this once for each city) before I sell the product to myself in the store I will set the price in the factory to 1/2 of the local price point and never touch the factory price again. If you set the price point at 1/2 and your price is less than the cost to produce it then you have to adjust pricing at the farm or semi factory (mines are never the problem). All further price adjustments are done at the retail level through the product detail report screen. Once the ceiling is hit I stop all training at the factory (unless I still have R&D manufacturing setbacks coming) It sounds like a lot but it's really just a matter of repetition. The beauty of starting backwards from the retail ceiling is you'll be able to figure out optimal factory sizes and layouts as well as farm layouts as well as pricing throughout the chain.

Very interesting! Thank you so much for the information. I will try.

I hope it's not too repetitive, because then it's boring. I can't manage that many products. I focus on eletronics, cars, motorcycles, furniture and leather products, so I can dominate the market and put the competitor out. I like to do like you, maximize profitability as the biggest challenge in the game, but when it's all about doing repetitive things I don't like it.

Also the competitor seems to go bankruptcy without any help. As usual, in those "tycoon" games, AI seems to fuck everything up with time. Railroad Tycoon II is the same. They are better than you at the beginning and eventually on time start to go bankruptcy, and the cause is not you. So the only challenge is maximize profitability.

But still not clear for me who changed the Brand Strategy. Chief of Marketing?

And xflexmanx, your COO works very well? I also look for the points, but there is no explanation for stop purchasing products to sell and don't even replace for another one. They do that because they have low points? Or because the game AI is stupid?

[douglasrac]

Actually I did not understand the way you play it.

The number you put for Air Conditioner is 16,000 but you said you can sell 24,000 in one city. How am I suppose to know that? How can I know how many stores I should build?

I try to reach this amount but makes no sense. The supply and demand changes all the time. And I put Complex Economy off.
My brand is strangely low all the time. I make advertisement on TV and my brand is like 3 and doesn't change.
The training I also put maximum and everytime I upgrade the product technology it goes back to 1. Also the Mining, for Gold, for example, has to rebuild in a different location all the time, which makes Level 9 impossible to reach.

It's very hard to manage 1 product in 1 city, I don't know how can you do it for 76 in 4 cities.
The local competitor is all the time changing the price and quality, so you have to change your price and quality all the time as well.

This game sucks.

[xflexmanx]

That reply was quite some time ago. I changed my playing strategy from that time. I cannot go without a good COO.
My strategy is like this:
Let's consider for example that I have:
1 farm (leather and cotton)
1 small factory(textiles)
4 factories opened(1. leather wallet, 2.leather briefcase, 3. leather bag, 4. leather belt)
For each town I have 1 leather store with all 4 leather goods sold
Advertising for all of them 50k would suffice/store/all products(unique-BEST on the long run)

I max out the values of leather and cotton from my farm and from textiles.
I look for the best COO on retail and choose him, afterwards marketing and of course me(I deserve an interesting salary don't I? )
I put the COO in charge of all the retails and the factories where I make the products(I do not give him power over the farm or the factory where the textiles are being made). You should see a steady flow of profit from there. You have to be verycarefull at the begining because if you hire a COO too soon he will bankrupt you( when you have more than 70mil cash and at least 3 of the products mentioned above you should be ok. The COO will "play" with the prices to fit the market and it's all $$$ from there

I ALWAYS use products made by me and one factory at a time/product in order to avoid the AI to do what it tends to do worst . Internal sale at it's highest(never forget). If you have any questions regarding the COO please do not hesitate to ask because I have a feeling that i did not reach all the answers that you needed.