Advanced Modding – about Phasing Out Products

Here are two examples for defining a product to be phased out by another product using the product MOD.

Example 1 

  • The demand of Smart Phone is 10 (We use integers in this example for illustration purposes only. The actual figures are usually in decimal places)
  • The demand of Camera Phone is 6 (which will be phased out )
  • Then the initial demand of Smart Phone will be set to (10-6)=4, and it will slowly absorb the demand of Camera Phone until it has reached its full demand of 10.


Example 2 

  • The demand of Tablet Computer is 10
  • The demand of Notebook Computer is 6 (which will be phased out)
  • And Notebook Computer has a OUTREMAIN index of 60% (It indicates the remaining consumer demand for the current product after the phasing out process has completely occurred. See the MOD Products table from the previous web page for more details.)
  • Then the initial demand of Tablet Computer will be set to (10 – 6*(100%-60%)) = 10 – 2.4 = 7.6
  • And it will slowly absorb the demand of Notebook computer (eventually absorbing a total of 2.4 demand points) until it has reached its full potential demand of 10.

About the OUTSPEED field in Product_Types.DBF

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.

To better understand the range of values that you can assign to OUTSPEED, you may take note of the following examples.

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.

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 Phones phasing out Camera Phones, 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.