New pricing system

Production Line Game discussion
1

First screenshot of the new pricing system I’m working on. Much more transparency, and non confusion I hope. Plus makes my balancing job way easier.

new_pricing_system

2

Looks way better, but I would like it, if you could see the difference between sales price and production cost in % as well. (Margin) And be able to set it the % or dollar. That’s how we set prices in our store. :slight_smile: But even if you do not include this it’s better :wink:

3

Looks Good.

If I assume correctly:
Component cost is for parts?
Overhead Cost is labor?
Capital cost is Equipment?

4

I do plan to add some tooltips to clarify it all, but right now component costs is the face value cost of parts (which you may have made for less locally), overhead is rent, wages for production & sales staff and power purchase costs.
Capital cost is the construction cost of all powerplants and vehicle production slots, divided by a thousand to give a rough value per car.

marketing & Research costs are separate and assumed to be paid out of profits.

1 Like
5

Updated version:
even_newer_pricing

2 Likes
6

There is the magic green gross profit! Thank you! :smile:

7

Looks great!

I don’t think you really need this. For my part, I’m really interested in the recurring operating costs vs sale price. I’m not sure an estimated capital cost is very helpful and its estimate would seem to just skew the calculations unnecessarily. In the early game, I’d be managing re-tooling and reconfiguration out of profits much like marketing and research. In the late game, I probably have a mature factory that isn’t being re-tooled nearly as much anymore, and I wouldn’t be interested in factoring in my capital investments anymore from long ago.

If you’re on the fence, I’d provide some subtotals to help with our mental math when we’re trying to subtract this back out to get the number we’re after.

EDIT: After watching your blog post on this, I’ll further suggest you add a total for the market value of the car (features & base value). They’re all sitting there and it would be convenient if they were added for you. This screen would then tell you what the gross profit and fair market value (per your sales staff) of the car is for the player to make an informed decision on price. Without this total, I think there’s a bit of a disconnect from the point of adding in features in the first place.

8

thanks for details in pricing system.

but, are you kidding ??

where is the percentage of profit ?
how we can balance without precentages ? count dollars cent by cent ?
world economic system runs on percentages for clear view.
please give some percentage information.
it’s foolish!

9

Played a round last night on 1.55 - the Pricing model is so much BETTER. No more needing to constantly watch the market pages to ensure my vehicle designs stay in the market segment where I put them. For some reason though, my sedan design had an oddball price - $xx,[3,8]92, rather than the even $500 increments of all the other models.

Also - I seem to have survived much better, not sure if thats related to better balance or i’m just getting better at the game, but I wasn’t in nearly as much of a constant fight for survival.

10

i’m blind without percentages!!

i can’t adjust and can’t plan price strategies

please put some percentage info somewhere in the price screen. please.

11

Thanks for the feedback, I’ll see what I can do to squeeze them in.

1 Like
12

Added!
prices

3 Likes
13

How about adding the total market value of all the selected options and putting that on this screen as well? Otherwise, it just feels like we’re arbitrarily setting the price with no MSRP-like value to track. I’d rather not manually add all the values, especially in the later game when there’s a lot of options selected.

I’d also suggest being able to turn capital costs off on this screen. It skews the total when I’m only interested in recurring costs.

14

huge thanks

15

Interesting ideas, thanks :smiley: