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List of forums -> Questions and answers. Help. -> Newbie's GuideHere you can learn from the interaction between experienced businessmen and young entrepreneurs. You are welcome to place your questions related to our business simulation game and get the answers from experienced players
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================== ... Before we begin ... ================== Below is a compiled list of FAQs that I can think of for starters. In fact, at this time of post, I have only begun playing for about 2 weeks only so most of the questions below were actually raised by myself. Thanks to this helpful community, I got all the answers and additional information accompanied. The list below will be updated from time to time. Please feel free to raise your questions here. Once they have been answered, I will update the first post with the new Q&A. For those who are unaware, there is a wikipedia created for Virtonomics and there are many information you can find pertaining to this game. The link can be found at: . There are many FAQs in there too. Wherever possible, please look through the list below before posting your question as there might be duplicates. Thanks! 
================== ... FAQs ... ================== ++My First Week of Virtonomics++ Q1) I have just created an account, selected the realm that I want to play in. Now what? A1) You can choose to accept your rich uncle's gift (A basic setup of your business empire), or to build your company from scratch. For those who like the excitement of building things from scratch (And at the same time learn more in the process), I would recommend that you choose the latter and tweak around as things get bigger. Q2) What do I do after I have built my office? A2) You need to employ staff and get a computer equipment for your staff. Also make sure to tweak the number of employee to hire, their salary and the computer equipment accordingly to ensure that you have full efficiency for your office. Additional Information (Contributed by VLLord) Better to start with computers quality 1 and employees qualification = required = 1. Don't put workers' qualification higher than required! On the foot of the main page of your subdivisions there is a link "Work efficiency". It shows efficiency of this subdivision for tomorrow. This link updates every ~15 minutes Q3) Why is my office not making money for me? A3) Because it can't. For a start, you might want to branch out towards Commerce field. This is where you construct retail stores, get supplies, and sell them to your customers. Alternatively, you might want to go into Production field and build factories, organise your suppliers, and eventually producing items. These items may then be sold to other players who will then sell these items to the market. If you already have operational retail stores, you may also sell to your retail customers by supplying to your retail stores directly. Q4) Where is a good place for my store? A4) Frankly, anywhere is a good place to start a store. For a start, you might wish to find a wealthy country, and place a store in city centre and at 500sqm. Additional Information (Contributed by VLLord. Examples are geared for Mary players) Don't start your stores in rich countries(Germany, France etc). Workers' required qualification is very high there. Instead of this find a good market in Africa or Turkey. Sometimes markets there are more profitable, than in Europe 
Q5) Why hasn't my supply come? A5) There are two things to note here: 1. Supplies do not come immediately! You need to wait for a game-week (or a day in real life) for them to arrive. This is applicable for ALL sort of setup (retail stores, factories, etc). 2. When ordering your supply, look out for the Available column from the supplier. Yes, the supplier might be producing 400,000 products a day (represented by All column), but if the supplier has nothing available, you won't be getting any supplies unless your supplier produces more the next day, or to give you priority when distributing the products. In this case, you might want to drop the supplier a note and network with your supplier for a long-term working relationship. 3. You can choose the "Automatic Purchase" option to let the system make some purchase automatically for you. Unlike your usual way of ordering goods, these orders are delivery immediately. However, I personally do not recommend this mode as the profit margin for these goods are usually not very high. You are better off spending the 100k on other things. Q6) How do I know what are the good items to sell? And by good I mean profitable  A6) What would you do in real life if you wanted to open a retail store? Know if your products are unique, and who your competitors are, and possibly what price rate are they selling for their products, right? Similarly, you would want to do the same in Virtonomics. There are extensive functions available to assist you with your market research. For a start, you can go to Game World -> Reports. Select the country/city that your retail store is located at, then look at the different types of products that you want to sell. Pay attention to two things here: 1. Local Suppliers' information 2. Stores' information The local suppliers in Virtonomics would mean non-player-controlled companies that are in the market. Stores would mean the ones controlled by players. In essence, you want to have a edge-on over the local suppliers. It could be same pricing but better quality in products. Look through the list of suppliers you have access to, and select your products from there. Another thing you want to take note is the location of store. Customers shopping in City Centers tend to care more on quality than in the pricing, as compared to customers shopping in the suburb. Also, take note of the wealth index of the country. In rich countries, generally, quality is favoured over price. Q7) What is this "Work Efficiency" that everyone is talking about? How does it affect me? A7) VLLord created a thread to help people curb with this issue: The link can be found at: . Q8) Argh, what's all these "Qualifications" and "Work Efficiency"? How do I link them up? Please paint the big picture! A8) Think of Qualifications as your 'level' in this game. To be able to deal with large businesses, you need to be of the appropriate level to come in. Which is why your Work Efficiency has to be tweaked in accordance to your Qualifications. For example, refer to the charts in the link stated in Q7. At Qualification 1 (Q1 for short) for Commerce, how many staff should I hire to gain 100% work efficiency for a retail store, if the required qualification is 3.00? This can be calculated by: (Quality of Staff needed * ((current staff / left column of the chart) ^ 0.5)). In this case: 3 * (5 / 50) ^ 0.5 = ~Q1. You know that you can hire 5 staff. So you see, if you hired more than that, you might experience a drop in Work Efficiency. Sometimes though, it could be a good thing. For example, if you were to expand your shop to 1,000sqm and hire say 10 staff. You will experience better sales volume (due to increased crowd) despite having lower work efficiency! Take note that your work efficiency is also affected by your office efficiency! So make sure you tweak them well
Lastly, you can also do quests to gain more experience in your Qualifications! Q9) Can you tell me what to do, in a nutshell, if I want to setup a retail store? A9) First of all, DO YOUR MARKET RESEARCH! Then find a country and set up an office. Staff your office with employee/equipment and then set up a retail store in the city center at 500sqm. Find your supplies and try to stick to one department (Same type of product). Set the selling price of your products and watch your sales grow
Additional Information (Contributed by VLLord) How to make market research: open warehouse and choose specialization that you need. Then go to supplies and press green car. Choose avaliable from 1. After you'll look at avaliable goods and prices - close warehouse. Q10) Help! I'm stuck! My required qualification for my store is 9.0, but if I set my salary range to accommodate to that, I am not able to get 100% work efficiency! A10) Look up at Q8. Q11) How do I complete Quest [AAA]? A11) Read this thread for tips on how to complete the quest in question: Q12) How much time is needed for me to increase my Qualifications? A12) Look at this post by noglues5: Q13) Eeeeek! My supplier just went missing! My retail store's operation is screwed.... A13) This is one of the common problems everyone faces when we decide to go Commerce. There are a few ways you can do to work around this, and hopefully, mitigate similar threats to come. 1. Build a warehouse, and stock up on supplies. Direct all supplies from your warehouse to your retail stores. This way, you have ample backup supply to fall back on while you go on search for another supplier, and you don't have to do that for all your stores; just a simple point of contact 2. Never depend on one supplier! Look around for similar quality-price ratio and play a bit of mix-and-match. 3. Network with your suppliers. Always request for early notifications so that you can make the necessary arrangements. ++My Second Week of Virtonomics++ Q14) Cool... Some of my Commerce and Management Qualifications have improved, and I'm getting a stable income from my retail stores now.. What should I do next? A14) Glad you didn't give up on this game From here on, you decide where you want to go next. Logically, since your front-end (retail stores) have a steady stream of customers, you need to work on your back-end (production/supply) now.
One thing I learnt in business is that there is only *this* far you can do for your front-end - You can only lower your price to get more customers. But hey, why not work on the back-end instead? Basically, to increase profit, you just need to lower the cost! I know there are a few people who might have missed this page out, but this is very, very helpful (especially for beginners): . For those in other servers, amend the server name in the URL to the respective servers that you are on. Now, if you study this road-map, you'll realise that I am actually moving from "Trade" to "Production and Research" track. Of course there're other ways to help you earn more money, but I chose this path because you get to get exposed to more things (and learn more things)
For example: Your retail store is currently purchasing 1500 meat at a price of $45 and you're selling at the price of $120. Why not construct a farm, with an initial capital of around 350k (including staffing and livestock/supply) and start producing 1200 meat at a prime cost of $15? You work the math; usually it's very good ROI. |
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A2: better to start with computers quality 1 and employees qualification = required = 1. Don't put workers' qualification higher than required! On the foot of the main page of your subdivisions there is a link "Work efficiency". It shows efficiency of this subdivision for tomorrow. This link updates every ~15 minutes A4: Don't start your stores in rich countries(Germany, France etc). Workers' required qualification is very high there. Instead of this find a good market in Africa or Turkey. Sometimes markets there are more profitable, than in Europe
A9: How to make market research: open warehouse and choose specialization that you need. Then go to supplies and press green car. Choose avaliable from 1. After you'll look at avaliable goods and prices - close warehouse. P.S.1. Nice work! P.S.2. From the next week I'll start adding lessons to this thread. First lesson will be about commerce. |
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Lesson #2
Subject: Commerce. Theory Part I. Begginer
First of all read . Market development index (MDI) 
Market development index (MDI) = Players' supply/Market volume. E - MDI < 0.2 D - MDI ~0.4 C - MDI ~0.6 B - MDI ~0.8 A - MDI ~1 AA - MDI~2 AAA - MDI>3 Try to find E..B markets. To trade on A..AAA markets you need big stores with high reputation. Market share Market share = price * volume Players' market share = Players' average price * Total players' volume Local suppliers' market share = Local suppliers' price * Local suppliers' volume I will use this information later. Number of departments For stores 100..1'000 sq.m. better to use one department, for 10'000 sq. m. stores better to use 2 departments, for 100'000 sq. m. store better to use 3..4 departments. Don't make 5 departments in 100m store! Adding of the second department reduces sales of the first one in ~1.5 times. Adding of the third department reduces sales of other ones in ~1.3 times and so on. Trade marks (TM) Adding of TM to the store increases regular sales in ~1.25 times. Adding of another TM (for the same good) reduces sale of the first one in ~1.5 times, so there is sense to use several TMs only if their quality is equal. How to choose goods for your store There are 2 types of goods: expensive(cars, jewellery, electronics) and cheap(others). Expensive goods like fashion district, high brand and high store's reputation. So start with cheap ones. Part II. Intermediate
How to set up prices Quality of goods influences price, you can set up and brand - sales in pcs. To sell equal volumes of goods with different quality, prices for them should be approximately next: Q1 ~ 1x Q4 ~ 2x Q9 ~ 3x Q16 ~ 4x Set up your price next way: Your price = Local suppliers' price * (Your quality / Local suppliers' quality)^0.5 This formula is for cities with middle welth level. For cities with high welth level: Your price = 1.5 * Local suppliers' price * (Your quality / Local suppliers' quality)^0.5 For cities with low welth level: Your price = (1/1.5) * Local suppliers' price * (Your quality / Local suppliers' quality)^0.5 Why do local suppliers change their price There is main trend and additional trend(created by playres' activity). There are min and max(20% of "all city's money") possible local suppliers' prices for each market. If price is low, then there is uptrend(main), otherway - downtrend(main). Main trend depends on: average prime cost of this product, produced in this city buyers expectings (for cities with the same average salary prices are moving to become equal) buyers expectings (for cities with high welth level price is higher and for othres is lower) Local suppliers will decrease price/increase quality if (additional trend):
average store's quality is considerably higher, than local suppliers' quality if players' market share is bigger, than local suppliers' one Part III. Advanced
How to increase local suppliers' price
take 10..20% of market volume(your products' quality should be a little higher, than local suppliers' one) increase your price by 1..3% every day |
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Lesson #3
Subject: Interesting tips How to buy tech, if you don't want to build/buy subdivision For example, you need 5-th tech for Jewellery factory. Start to build a new jewellery factory. Choose country, region... Step 7: choose 5-th technology. Press "Continue". On the last step press "New subdivision", then press "Cancel". Done. How to sell goods at different prices from the same subdivision For example, you are selling brilliants from the warehouse to "any customer" at $20'000, but you want to sell these brilliants to your friend AAA Corp. at $5'000. Also you don't want to make separate warehouse for AAA corp. What could you do then? Choose at your warehouse "sell only to certain companies" and add AAA Corp., change price to $5'000. Ask him to put his order quickly and then return back to "sell to any customer" and put an old price back. AAA Corp. is happy  |
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Awaiting more guides/strategies, if that is possible.  Thank you very much for your time. |
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| thanks for your initiative VLLord. how about a topic on using the warehouses and fine points of ordering supplies- quantity and quality-wise?? |
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thanks for your initiative VLLord. Noted. |
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Research - Laboratory - Technology  |
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Research - Laboratory - Technology |
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| Can't wait for the new guides to be out
Do you reckon I should put up some FAQs on commercial taxes? |
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| waiting eagerly for new guides |
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Lesson #4
Subject: Branding Branding.... What is it? Branding is basically an identity. It can be a specific business, product, or a service. Virtonomics offers the option to increase brand awareness of your store (a.k.a Store Reputation), and the products that you produce (a.k.a Brand, which, I will be discussing here). Products with high brands give you an edge-over, whether you are selling them in your retail stores, or as a distributor. How do I increase the branding of my products? You can only increase brand awareness of your products for the countries that you have offices in. By that, I mean products that you are manufacturing. And the office is where you start doing your branding (Office -> Advertising). Select a city, and the type of advertising campaign (adjust the budget if you so wish). Do note a few things: 1) Branding in smaller cities is faster than branding in bigger cities, due to the differences in population (I assume there are some calculations involving percentages in relation to the size of the cities). 2) First day brand grows at 1X, second day at about 0.7X, 3rd - 0.49X ... until growth become less,than 0.01. Final result is 3.33X. 3) Day growth for average city (population 1..2m) will depend on the amount of advertising next way: - smaller, than radio advertising(~$30'000 a day) X=0.5 - radio advertising (~$100'000 a day) X=0.8 - TV advertising (~$600'000 a day) X=1.5 - bigger, than TV advertising (~$2'000'000 a day) X=2 How does it exactly help? In terms of sales volume for whoever is selling your branded products: 0 - 1.0X 1 - 1.3X 2 - 1.6X 3 - 2.0X 4 - 2.4X 5 - 2.9X 6 - 3.4X 7 - 3.9X 8 - 4.5X 9 - 5.0X And that means customers (players) who are finding suppliers (like yourself) will be more likely to purchase your products as branding helps with their retail stores' sales volume as well. What is the difference between manually checking all the cities of a country, versus checking the "All Region" option for branding? Why does it cost more? "All region" gives bonus ~10% + brand is growing a little faster. There could be two different situations. 1. Northen Ireland. Population. All region = 1.7 mil Total in 3 cities = 0.4 mil In this case you'll pay 4 times more for 10% bonus. It's not rational. 2. Kuwait. Population. All region = 3.1 mil Total in 2 cities = 2.8 In this case there is a sense to use this option. You'll pay 10% more, but you'll get a bonus + faster growing. The data provided above is purely an estimation and for your own reference only, and they do not represent actual result
I hope this lesson/article is of some help and use to you. Good luck! -------------- P/S: This was between a Q-and-A session with VLLord. Thought I would share with the rest And thanks VLLord, as always
Comments are welcome. Thanks! |
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| Comment to the lesson #4: all data in this post are approximate. They just show general tendency and don't give exact result. P.S. Nice work |
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List of forums -> Questions and answers. Help.-> Newbie's Guide |
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