Our manufacturers should be able to ship inventory to one another. We would effectively “buy” the merchandise from our other manufacturer and would have to pay the shipping and import taxes to get them there. We would technically lose money on the transaction, but it could be a useful long term strategy to fill market gaps and balance shifting distribution demands. It would also provide an additional element of realism to the distribution process.
@Aegis, thank you for this thought. We will include this in our Feature Requests files for consideration.
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Aegis, we will review this further internally, but I don’t think it’s where we will want to go.
Carrying multiple products is more what a DISTRIBUTOR would do, not a manufacturer.
In the real world, manufacturers rarely ever consider inventorying products from other manufacturers. This is particularly true of the automotive industry.
Adding such a feature in GoVenture World would require significant effort because of all the interface and gameplay changes required to support it. I think we are better served by focusing that effort on other types of businesses (maybe even a distribtor perhaps) and enhancing the current mfg and retail businesses.
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I didn’t mean inventorying from other people’s manufacturers, I meant inventorying from our own. In the real world if a company got a large contract and had multiple factories, they would use all those factories to fulfill that contract. But here, even if we have factories in the same country they cannot contribute to the workload.
Also, I didn’t mean mingling different inventory types. I meant that if someone orders say 400 cars at one factory, it may be more efficient to ship some of them from another factory that already has a lot of stock built up.
An example of this in the real world would be when Oshkosh Corp was awarded a $30 billion government contract to replace ~55,000 of the US military’s Humvees. They have manufacturing operations in 8 U.S. states and in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France and Romania. Granted not all are used to fulfill that contract, but multiple factories are. They also have over 300 suppliers in 31 states supporting the operation.
I know we don’t have orders to that scale in this game, but the principle of sharing resources or distributing workload among a company’s facilities is a viable tactic.
Aegis, I see what you are saying now. You are right that the same company with multiple mfg plants around the world would use them to fill a large order. It is interesting to consider for GoVenture World, but we have some gameplay issues that would make adding such a feature very complex.
Specifically, that each lot of products manufactured at a plant have their own Features and Quality scores. intermingling products with different scores from different manufacturers (even if owned by the same Holding Company) creates a lot of complexity. We already do that with Retailers but adding it to manufacturers too would be difficult.
Also, note that we will be adding more limits on the amount of inventory that a Retailer can have on hand and on order because we find that currently it is too easy for a retailer to stockpile too much inventory and then not have to do much work on their business. We would like to motivate a retailer to have to interact with their business at least every 3 to 5 days RT. These limits will end up reducing the size of large orders.
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Mathew, That sounds like a good idea limiting retailers. Currently they are much more hands-off than manufacturers, and even though I think an active manufacturer can make more money in the long run, a retailer can stock up and cruise for days, only checking in to adjust prices from time to time. Even the retail mini game is played less, as selling for 25% above cost is rarely worth it. Conversely, an active manufacturer will want to play the the mini game every day to increase their stock.
With regards to the sharing & mingling of manufacturer inventory within a company, could you not average the feature and quality scores of the mingled inventory as it is currently done with retailers? I think it would be helpful for people using this game as an educational tool to learn the real world concepts of resource and workload sharing.
I do understand that requests are easier for players to think up than for the dev team to code and implement, so I realize some features may not be practical. Ultimately, I’m excited for this game’s potential as I think it offers a great blend of education and entertainment for those interested in business/finance. It’s also very admirable that you and your team work so closely with the community to consider these suggestions!
Aegis,
Good note about the 25% above cost on the mini game … we will have to think about that one too. (Posted)
We will continue to think about the merging inventory possibility.
Thanks for your enthusiasm for our game. We are definitely committed to listening carefully to our players as it’s the only way we will be able to keep building a game that people want to play. We have our overall vision for the game, but it’s how people actually play it that will guide new features. We are also super-grateful for the in-depth bug reporting that people are sharing with us.
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