What does OUTSPEED do? And more Questions.

[Brutus]

I was wondering what exactly OUTSPEED variable does in the Product_Types.dbf file. It's not clearly described in the modding guide either.

Is it the percentage of demand that drops each year (hence speed going out)? Is it the amount of years before the product is phased out (Time till Out)?

I had cameras which have an outspeed of 15 lose almost 85% of their demand after just 36 months through digital cameras. It did take about 15 years for the entire demand to dry up but it only sold like a few hundred cameras for 10+ years and only a handful in the last 5 years ... absolutely zero reason to build a single tiny factory much less setup store space to supply for that absolute pitiful demand. (really it's the store space wasted if sold that makes it completely unreasonable to sell these things 3 years after they get phased out)

I'd be curious if someone knew the exact answer to this question.


On a second modders note:

Why do products require the invention of their inputs if you make the product that is made out of them require to be invented?

Confused?

Well lets say for example that I set ''Car'' to require invention. And I also set ''Engine'' to require invention. I did NOT set "Car" to require "Engine" as a parent. Therefore ''Car'' you would think, does not necessarily need "Engine" to be invented but they actually DO need it.

I wanted to set it up so that a company could produce products that they don't necessarily have the input technology for. A car manufacturer might not need the tech for ''Engine'' because they buy or import them from another party and only build the cars themselves. The same goes for ''Wheel & Tire'' and ''Car Body'' for example.

This way you could have a company start out as car manufacturer by using the imports from a seaport and it would only need to research ''car'' and not the other parts but noooo it demands you to research all the other techs required for the input of a car to even research a car to begin with. This is a bit saddening because that means you cannot have businesses that focus entirely on fulfilling a certain niche in the production chain. You must vertically have researched all the techs in a production chain before you can build something in the end of that product chain.

This is more annoying when you want to try and restrict electronics to be more niche orientated. I don't think my to be mobile phone manufacturer needs to know exactly how silicon is made for them to assemble and produce mobile phones when electronic components are readily available on the market already.

It would be nice if this wasn't a thing but it might be necessary for the AI currently or otherwise it would try to make stuff for which there is no way to produce it or something. If someone knows a work-around that'd be great too lol

[David]

I've updated the web page explaining Outspeed at https://www.capitalismlab.com/mod/advan ... -products/

Please see if the explanation is now clear enough.

[Brutus]

Honestly that doesn't really change my opinion on the description

In the game’s original product database, the Outspeed value assigned to Smart Phones is 20, and the one assigned to Tablets is 5. It means that Smart Phones will phase out Camera Phones 4 times as fast as Tablets will phase out Notebook computers.

This is about the only useful part of that description as it tells me that bigger number is bigger speed which is at least something. But what is the actual formula? We got a really good explanation of how phasing out works in regards to demand https://www.capitalismlab.com/mod/advan ... -products/

but I still have no clue what outspeed actually does. Just bigger number is bigger impact. How do I calculate the phasing out speed? What is 5? What is 20? I want to know what number to input if I want a product to lose X amount of demand by year X. This is especially important for retro mods which want to add products pre-90s which get phased out over time such as early automobiles, walkmans and other electronics for example.

So when you assign a Outspeed value to a product in your mod, you could assign a value between 5 to 20, if you think the speed of its phasing out an older product falls into the range of Tablets between Smart Phones.

On the other hand, if you think its phasing out speed is higher than Smart Phone phasing out Camera Phone, then you may assign a value higher than 20. Conversely, if you think its phasing out speed is lower than Tablets phasing out Notebook computers, then you should assign a value lower than 5.

These two paragraphs tell me nothing more than the first as they add no valuable information. Not to harp on you but it's not useful information. I'd much rather have the actual formula like you gave us with the phasing out link for demand calculations. That gives modders the exact knowledge they need to input the right variables. (prefer you update that link if you put the information anywhere)

Also the link at OUTBY section has an incorrect link in it ''https://www.capitalismlab.com/enhanced- ... ation.html'' gives a page not found error. The actual correct link is ''https://www.capitalismlab.com/new-conte ... imulation/'' the ''/new-content/'' part was forgotten or the original site has changed. There's quite a few links on the main page that are missing actually, this is just one of them

Thank you for your swift response though, I do really love the developer interaction, it's very appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Brutus

[David]

but I still have no clue what outspeed actually does. Just bigger number is bigger impact. How do I calculate the phasing out speed? What is 5? What is 20? I want to know what number to input if I want a product to lose X amount of demand by year X.

I have just gotten more info from the programmer and have added it to the documentation at https://www.capitalismlab.com/mod/advan ... -products/

The added info is as follows:

OUTSPEED is a variable applied to the formula for determining how fast an old product will be phased out by a new product.

The essence of the formula looks like this:

<speed at which the consumer demand of the old product is transferred to the new product> = <the difference between the Overall Rating of the new product and that of the old one> x <OUTSPEED> x <a constant>

The higher the value of OUTSPEED, the faster the phase-out process takes place. To get a feel of the actual speed and fine-tune it to sound gameplay balance, the best way to do it would be to play the game and observe the changes in consumer demand and sales caused by the phase-out process and make adjustments accordingly. 

This is especially important for retro mods which want to add products pre-90s which get phased out over time such as early automobiles, walkmans and other electronics for example.

Just curious, are you working on a mod of your own or just tweaking the parameters of the Modern World mod?

Also the link at OUTBY section has an incorrect link in it ''https://www.capitalismlab.com/enhanced- ... ation.html'' gives a page not found error. The actual correct link is ''https://www.capitalismlab.com/new-conte ... imulation/'' the ''/new-content/'' part was forgotten or the original site has changed. There's quite a few links on the main page that are missing actually, this is just one of them

I've fixed the link.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to let me know.

[Brutus]

Thank yo so much David!

It's interesting to find out that the overall quality of the new product actually has an impact, I find that very cool to discover! That's exactly the kind of stuff that makes sense and is good to know Guess I'll have to do some testing to get some ballparks going though to really get a good feel for the speed at which products can get replaced and report it back to the community so we all have something convenient to work with.

Knowing how quickly products are phased out is especially important for certain product classes such as electronics where Boomboxes get replaced by Walkmans for example which in turn get replaced by Discman's again. Knowing how quickly they get phased out will help with keeping the number of products viable for retail to a reasonable amount.

Just curious, are you working on a mod of your own or just tweaking the parameters of the Modern World mod?

I am considering making my own mod. Just testing the waters to see what is and what isn't possible. I probably love modding more than I love playing games

That's why I'm asking around a lot to see what is and what isn't possible and how things work.

my ideal mod is entirely different than what is currently offered. I like to think of it as an enhanced Vanilla experience or Advanced Play with a touch of fantasy. Other mods seem to want to expand the scope way to far in terms of product choice for example, I want to keep it streamlined and simple, lots of abstraction but not too much that it feels like things are missing. I'm building my mod from the ground up, I am using the information used by other modders as much as possible of course and would like to even use some images/stuff/data from their mod but not steal or get on their work if that makes sense. Just prefer to keep it somewhat familiar to the player and as close to the original experience as possible. Trying to make it look more like a focused DLC than the massive content dump that most mods feel like to me.

Guess we'll see how far I get.

[David]

my ideal mod is entirely different than what is currently offered. I like to think of it as an enhanced Vanilla experience or Advanced Play with a touch of fantasy. Other mods seem to want to expand the scope way to far in terms of product choice for example, I want to keep it streamlined and simple, lots of abstraction but not too much that it feels like things are missing. I'm building my mod from the ground up, I am using the information used by other modders as much as possible of course and would like to even use some images/stuff/data from their mod but not steal or get on their work if that makes sense. Just prefer to keep it somewhat familiar to the player and as close to the original experience as possible. Trying to make it look more like a focused DLC than the massive content dump that most mods feel like to me.

Sounds like a good design direction to me. Are there any specific aspects of the game you intend to emphasize in your mod? For instance, I recall reading a post a while ago from a user who was particularly fond of farming and stated the intent to create a mod focused on farming.

On a separate note, another user was very into the idea of combining key elements of CapLab and Tropico and started a lengthy discussion on it: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=7670 While this departs from the current game system too much and cannot be accomplished by modding alone, the ideas seem interesting enough to warrant more discussions. What are your thoughts of them?

[Brutus]

Sounds like a good design direction to me. Are there any specific aspects of the game you intend to emphasize in your mod? For instance, I recall reading a post a while ago from a user who was particularly fond of farming and stated the intent to create a mod focused on farming.

There are three major shortcomings in the product set in my opinion of the current CapLab build that makes the user (me) feel the game is somewhat lacking in scope:

The Petrochemical Industry is almost completely lacking in the current build. It's one of the biggest if not the biggest industry in the world. Modern World is far ahead in this aspect already and has some interesting concepts going around but lacks Real World's Gasoline for example. I want to streamline it, combine these two elements while greatly simplifying it to make it much more accessible. Currently there's no real chemical industry to speak off in-game and it is actually hard to make money from oil early-on Where my black gold at yo?

The Pharmaceutical Industry is another major asset missing in the current build in my opinion. Pharmaceutical industry should be highly tech intensive but provide great potential for profit. Thanks to the new Tech feature introduced with digital age we can set up some nice technology mechanics to make highly tech-intensive products. It is also not part of a product mega class so this will be a unique class on itself with this change that provides a slightly more unique gameplay experience.

Currently Semi-Products is a strange in-between doesn't know what it wants to be type of class . I intend to split it up by type of material and expand it a little by fleshing it out more and giving it some interesting semi-products classes. Currently it has flour, plastic, electronic components and engine in the same class for example and the same talents being competed over for their development. That makes no sense. What does a Flour scientist know about Engines or CPU's for example? So these are better suited as Organic (materials), Chemical (materials, Electronic (materials) and Auto-parts (semi) as new classes just as a proposed example that will contain their respective semi-components.

These 3 major changes are intended to expand the scope like a content pack but not make the list blow up with small variations of every possible product in existence for them.

Some of my design goals are to keep the product range small but increase depth, so I intend to never let there be more than 6 active products per class (that is part a mega class, if it is not and it is a stand-alone class then the max range is 9-12 depending on class and real life product diversity/marketsize, but always maintain that less is better) to keep things simple for the player and those are the numbers that retail stores and the UI seems to favor as well.

I intend to expand and diversify the semi-product class and make it to feel like there's a bigger and deeper manufacturing component which emphasizes the development and production of sub-components but nothing to crazy. Just a little depth so CPU's aren't magically printed from silicon for example or how Electronic Components are a substitute for almost anything mechanical/electric ... Introduce some more tech related research as well for the more tech intensive products so that the development of Smart Phones doesn't cost the same as developing the next generation Canned Corn

I want to use the regular Product (Tech) mechanic to represent the outward style and consumer preference factor in products by consumers. Canned Corn should lose tech points each year for example because peoples taste preference change and Product (Tech) therefore represents the investment into the understanding of consumer experience and preferences whereas the new Tech feature introduced by Digital Age will emphasize the actual real research of actual technologies that are incorporated into the product, if that makes sense. This is an idea I'm floating with but am not sure if I will fully implement yet. It's interesting at least

Some small additions and changes to some product classes to flesh them out and not feel lacking like sports equipment currently does to me with only 3 products and not being part of a bigger mega-class really hurts it from a gamers perspective. So I'm going to combine it with Toys in its own Mega-Class and add some coolness to the product sets so to speak

I feel that with the bigger mods there's way too much product variety and it really hurts the early game where you can infinitely expand into new products before you even face a competitor. The mid to late game the cities are also overcrowded with buildings of every possible imagination and I feel it's way too much. The goal is therefore to keep everything as simplified as possible through abstractions but just flesh out what is missing and add a little depth.

On a separate note, another user was very into the idea of combining key elements of CapLab and Tropico and started a lengthy discussion on it: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=7670 While this departs from the current game system too much and cannot be accomplished by modding alone, the ideas seem interesting enough to warrant more discussions. What are your thoughts of them?

Such an idea sadly needs an entirely new engine to support. I do think Tropico is a very interesting game and could provide an interesting economic simulation experience if it was properly expanded upon. The idea of having citizens act as independent agents combined with economic theories and simulations could provide really interesting interactons and economic models. Sadly most normal PC's won't be able to really handle the taxing processes that are required to flesh out such a beautiful concept and it would require a really deep and long development cycle to create something workable. You're no longer abstracting concepts at that point but trying to create individual actors which will act and turn to reality the abstracted concepts in a behavioral way. That's a huge task and goal to achieve. It's something I've thought about a looong time as well and had wished for it to exist but I understand that it is incredibly niche and hard to develop.

If there's anything that I think CapLab really still needs as added content before it is a complete game in scope it's the petrochemical industry, transport & packaging and Utilities and Realistic Resources.

Petrochemical Industry is relatively self-explanatory I hope and should be relatively simple to add as well with current mechanics.

Transport & Packaging, is badly lacking at the moment but would complete the whole vertical integration when you allow a product to be produced, packaged and shipped by your own company. It would make the user feel like he's got real dominance when he has achieved that goal. It just feels wholesome in a way. Transport could be greatly abstracted yet kept interesting if you kept it relatively simple, I'm thinking of Trucks, Trains and Ships servicing lines between cities and the actual city itself. The current inter and intra-city transport mechanic actually somewhat supports this with individual calculations going from Firm to Seaport (Truck), Seaport to Seaport (Ship), and Seaport to Firm (Truck) again. Trains could be used if two cities were on the same continent and you could use a separate Rail-station building that acts as its own Seaport on land so to speak that even allows landlocked cities to have import/exports and add to that needed city variety that isn't always sea/riverside. Add in some interesting packaging mechanic (ask if you want more info) that also has an effect on branding and you can produce and ship your product from the mine all the way to the consumer.

Public Utilities and Realistic Resources, would go a long way in making each city unique and memorable when resources are more restricted and are actively explored for. Currently every city has EVERY resource and multiples of each resources available for exploitation which actually currently discourages having lots of cities for this aspect to shine in-game. Farming could also be much more unique when it is restricted depending on climate and then again circumvented interestingly enough through bio-factory farms that artificially grow crops at an increased cost with more electricity/water spending.

These three aspects tie in with each other and would go a long way in making the Import/Export and scope of the game much more interesting and provide needed variety from the classic game experience and flow.


But the absolute biggest missed opportunity both gameplay wise and business wise in CapLab so far is ... (in my opinion)

Multiplayer and a Master/Educator Suite support for Educational Purposes.

What do I mean with a Master/Educator suite? Far reaching user tools such as a Map/City Editor and in-game mechanics that allow a game master to actively alter in a multiplayer game the environment to create interesting ways for the simulation to play out and act as a Judge/observer. Manipulating things such as Economic Boom Bust Cycles, actively choosing game events to happen to players to simulate troublesome times, alter seaport goods, Set inflation and interest rates, change the settings mid-game at will and influence thus in a deep and meaningful way how the simulation plays out.

When combined with extensive multiplayer support where large teams of players can work together in a single corporation you could have lots of teams competing against each other in a really big economic simulation with real business concepts at play. This would be really useful in schools and universities where the educator can take on the role of judge/observer and setup the game in the way he wants the simulation to run with teams of students competing as corporations against each other in real-time competitive play. When properly fleshed out, you would have teams of students playing out the different corporate roles such as:

Chief Executive Officer, in charge of the overall team strategy (Team Leader)
Chief Operational Officer, in charge of primarily making sure the firms operate smoothly and stay profitable (Secretary)
Chief Technical Officer, in charge of R&D and Transport (& Packaging possibly)
Chief Marketing Officer, in charge of Marketing (Possibly also Packaging if that became an element of Brand)

I remember playing a reaaaally shitty version of an economic simulation game at my business school about 7-8 years ago where we competed in teams of 5 in a web-based business simulator. Its base set of features was so poorly lacking I wish I was playing base Capitalism 2 instead at the time and it did remind me to actually re-install it back then . That web-based simulation was also almost completely arbitrary because you had no clue on how the mechanics worked and there were so many exploits it was stupid to even play that game. One exploit was to literally sell back all your inventory to the supplier in the last game round to maximize your ''cash score'' ... which makes no fucking sense from a business perspective having a store completely empty on the last turn of a simulation to boost your score (because inventory was somehow not counted). Our team ended 2nd after we decided NOT to do the exploit gimmick by majority vote, the other team which actually performed worse overall won the game at the last turn by '"Cash score'' and they got a $100 prize ($20 a person) after they exploited the score mechanics... ah well at least we had our dignity and didn't sell out which each of us thought was more important than $20.

In any case, that web-based simulator was shit and couldn't hold a candle to Capitalism 2 let alone CapLab, but it was multiplayer (sortof) and marketed as ''educational'' so to speak so our school spend a couple of G's on it each year and forced us to play a worse version of Capitalism in order for us to experience ... real business in a simulated environment.

I think CapLab actually has HUGE potential if it properly fleshed this part out of the simulation and marketed it properly as a business simulation for educational purposes. Adding support and tools for teachers to alter situations in-game and have student teams perform and compete against each other would be so much fun at schools as a business sport. Trying to find strategies to outwit your opposing teams and exploit the game's business environment would become a crucial tool and memorable to the players. The educator could set up interesting scenarios and traps such as maps with cheap labor cities that can produce goods for the cheap but because they are in ''dangerous and unreliable'' environments in the world, teach students that suddenly ... yep your products are now suffering from import/export tarrifs or worse are even blocked entirely due to trade laws or international incidents such as a sporadic virus outbreak . Maybe you thought you were smart to setup a mine in a cheap African mining city ... or played it save and set up a slightly more expensive one in a safer location but did you take the precaution to build a proper warehouse to bridge the temporary disruption in trade or are you left starving without resources now for a while because of your shortsightedness? Those are all interesting scenarios that an Educator would be interested in playing out with their students in order to teach them some sound business principals. I think that has potentially a massive market in the educational/governmental sector if done properly.

In any case I've written enough for today

Hope this piqued your interest.

Signed,


Brutus

[David]

There are three major shortcomings in the product set in my opinion of the current CapLab build that makes the user (me) feel the game is somewhat lacking in scope:

The Petrochemical Industry is almost completely lacking in the current build. It's one of the biggest if not the biggest industry in the world. Modern World is far ahead in this aspect already and has some interesting concepts going around but lacks Real World's Gasoline for example. I want to streamline it, combine these two elements while greatly simplifying it to make it much more accessible. Currently there's no real chemical industry to speak off in-game and it is actually hard to make money from oil early-on Where my black gold at yo?

The Pharmaceutical Industry is another major asset missing in the current build in my opinion. Pharmaceutical industry should be highly tech intensive but provide great potential for profit. Thanks to the new Tech feature introduced with digital age we can set up some nice technology mechanics to make highly tech-intensive products. It is also not part of a product mega class so this will be a unique class on itself with this change that provides a slightly more unique gameplay experience.

Currently Semi-Products is a strange in-between doesn't know what it wants to be type of class . I intend to split it up by type of material and expand it a little by fleshing it out more and giving it some interesting semi-products classes. Currently it has flour, plastic, electronic components and engine in the same class for example and the same talents being competed over for their development. That makes no sense. What does a Flour scientist know about Engines or CPU's for example? So these are better suited as Organic (materials), Chemical (materials, Electronic (materials) and Auto-parts (semi) as new classes just as a proposed example that will contain their respective semi-components.

These 3 major changes are intended to expand the scope like a content pack but not make the list blow up with small variations of every possible product in existence for them.

Some of my design goals are to keep the product range small but increase depth, so I intend to never let there be more than 6 active products per class (that is part a mega class, if it is not and it is a stand-alone class then the max range is 9-12 depending on class and real life product diversity/marketsize, but always maintain that less is better) to keep things simple for the player and those are the numbers that retail stores and the UI seems to favor as well.

I intend to expand and diversify the semi-product class and make it to feel like there's a bigger and deeper manufacturing component which emphasizes the development and production of sub-components but nothing to crazy. Just a little depth so CPU's aren't magically printed from silicon for example or how Electronic Components are a substitute for almost anything mechanical/electric ... Introduce some more tech related research as well for the more tech intensive products so that the development of Smart Phones doesn't cost the same as developing the next generation Canned Corn

I want to use the regular Product (Tech) mechanic to represent the outward style and consumer preference factor in products by consumers. Canned Corn should lose tech points each year for example because peoples taste preference change and Product (Tech) therefore represents the investment into the understanding of consumer experience and preferences whereas the new Tech feature introduced by Digital Age will emphasize the actual real research of actual technologies that are incorporated into the product, if that makes sense. This is an idea I'm floating with but am not sure if I will fully implement yet. It's interesting at least

Some small additions and changes to some product classes to flesh them out and not feel lacking like sports equipment currently does to me with only 3 products and not being part of a bigger mega-class really hurts it from a gamers perspective. So I'm going to combine it with Toys in its own Mega-Class and add some coolness to the product sets so to speak

I feel that with the bigger mods there's way too much product variety and it really hurts the early game where you can infinitely expand into new products before you even face a competitor. The mid to late game the cities are also overcrowded with buildings of every possible imagination and I feel it's way too much. The goal is therefore to keep everything as simplified as possible through abstractions but just flesh out what is missing and add a little depth.

All these are excellent ideas! It will nicely fill a gap between the vanilla game and the existing mods with huge scopes of products. I know that there are players who prefer a narrower set of products that is just refreshingly different from the vanilla to give a different favor, they will feel right at home with your mod.

You may consider release it in phases as betas and get user feedback as soon as possible, as opposite to spending months on completing the mod without any user feedback over the course.

Please keep me updated about your progress. If you have any questions about modding, please feel free to ask too.

[David]

Transport & Packaging, is badly lacking at the moment but would complete the whole vertical integration when you allow a product to be produced, packaged and shipped by your own company. It would make the user feel like he's got real dominance when he has achieved that goal. It just feels wholesome in a way. Transport could be greatly abstracted yet kept interesting if you kept it relatively simple, I'm thinking of Trucks, Trains and Ships servicing lines between cities and the actual city itself. The current inter and intra-city transport mechanic actually somewhat supports this with individual calculations going from Firm to Seaport (Truck), Seaport to Seaport (Ship), and Seaport to Firm (Truck) again. Trains could be used if two cities were on the same continent and you could use a separate Rail-station building that acts as its own Seaport on land so to speak that even allows landlocked cities to have import/exports and add to that needed city variety that isn't always sea/riverside. Add in some interesting packaging mechanic (ask if you want more info) that also has an effect on branding and you can produce and ship your product from the mine all the way to the consumer.

I am aware that the dev team has recently made a revised design on the Transportation DLC. I will post it on the forum to share it with you later.

Public Utilities and Realistic Resources, would go a long way in making each city unique and memorable when resources are more restricted and are actively explored for. Currently every city has EVERY resource and multiples of each resources available for exploitation which actually currently discourages having lots of cities for this aspect to shine in-game. Farming could also be much more unique when it is restricted depending on climate and then again circumvented interestingly enough through bio-factory farms that artificially grow crops at an increased cost with more electricity/water spending.

These three aspects tie in with each other and would go a long way in making the Import/Export and scope of the game much more interesting and provide needed variety from the classic game experience and flow.

Please take a look at this post: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=7825

Is it similar to what you suggested above?

[David]

Multiplayer and a Master/Educator Suite support for Educational Purposes.

What do I mean with a Master/Educator suite? Far reaching user tools such as a Map/City Editor and in-game mechanics that allow a game master to actively alter in a multiplayer game the environment to create interesting ways for the simulation to play out and act as a Judge/observer. Manipulating things such as Economic Boom Bust Cycles, actively choosing game events to happen to players to simulate troublesome times, alter seaport goods, Set inflation and interest rates, change the settings mid-game at will and influence thus in a deep and meaningful way how the simulation plays out.

When combined with extensive multiplayer support where large teams of players can work together in a single corporation you could have lots of teams competing against each other in a really big economic simulation with real business concepts at play. This would be really useful in schools and universities where the educator can take on the role of judge/observer and setup the game in the way he wants the simulation to run with teams of students competing as corporations against each other in real-time competitive play. When properly fleshed out, you would have teams of students playing out the different corporate roles such as:

Chief Executive Officer, in charge of the overall team strategy (Team Leader)
Chief Operational Officer, in charge of primarily making sure the firms operate smoothly and stay profitable (Secretary)
Chief Technical Officer, in charge of R&D and Transport (& Packaging possibly)
Chief Marketing Officer, in charge of Marketing (Possibly also Packaging if that became an element of Brand)

I remember playing a reaaaally shitty version of an economic simulation game at my business school about 7-8 years ago where we competed in teams of 5 in a web-based business simulator. Its base set of features was so poorly lacking I wish I was playing base Capitalism 2 instead at the time and it did remind me to actually re-install it back then . That web-based simulation was also almost completely arbitrary because you had no clue on how the mechanics worked and there were so many exploits it was stupid to even play that game. One exploit was to literally sell back all your inventory to the supplier in the last game round to maximize your ''cash score'' ... which makes no fucking sense from a business perspective having a store completely empty on the last turn of a simulation to boost your score (because inventory was somehow not counted). Our team ended 2nd after we decided NOT to do the exploit gimmick by majority vote, the other team which actually performed worse overall won the game at the last turn by '"Cash score'' and they got a $100 prize ($20 a person) after they exploited the score mechanics... ah well at least we had our dignity and didn't sell out which each of us thought was more important than $20.

In any case, that web-based simulator was shit and couldn't hold a candle to Capitalism 2 let alone CapLab, but it was multiplayer (sortof) and marketed as ''educational'' so to speak so our school spend a couple of G's on it each year and forced us to play a worse version of Capitalism in order for us to experience ... real business in a simulated environment.

I think CapLab actually has HUGE potential if it properly fleshed this part out of the simulation and marketed it properly as a business simulation for educational purposes. Adding support and tools for teachers to alter situations in-game and have student teams perform and compete against each other would be so much fun at schools as a business sport. Trying to find strategies to outwit your opposing teams and exploit the game's business environment would become a crucial tool and memorable to the players. The educator could set up interesting scenarios and traps such as maps with cheap labor cities that can produce goods for the cheap but because they are in ''dangerous and unreliable'' environments in the world, teach students that suddenly ... yep your products are now suffering from import/export tarrifs or worse are even blocked entirely due to trade laws or international incidents such as a sporadic virus outbreak . Maybe you thought you were smart to setup a mine in a cheap African mining city ... or played it save and set up a slightly more expensive one in a safer location but did you take the precaution to build a proper warehouse to bridge the temporary disruption in trade or are you left starving without resources now for a while because of your shortsightedness? Those are all interesting scenarios that an Educator would be interested in playing out with their students in order to teach them some sound business principals. I think that has potentially a massive market in the educational/governmental sector if done properly.

Thanks for posting this interesting story.

If you search for "Business Simulation Game" on Google, you will get a long list of companies offering business simulation training catering to universities. The market and the competition has grown substantially in the past few years. The skill sets and the requirement of human resources for serving the educational market is quite different from that of running a game company -- when you check out these companies' web sites, you will know what I mean.