Here 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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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: http://wiki.virtonomics.com/. 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.
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.
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): http://virtonomics.com/lien/main/common/main_page/game_info/game_map. 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.
Today is my frist day and my GOSH! There are a lot of parameters and it takes some getting used to the user interface. This game reminds me of when I was a university graduate student.
Didn't think I had to do that again.
I have products where my sales price is greater than my cost. I wish there was a link to take me directly to the product that is problematic. Because the ones I see are priced more than my cost.
I have efficiency issues and entities that are not working at all.
So if I deleted everything and start over, do I simply lose all of my virts or whatever they are called? Because I used up a heckuva lot of them trying to learn.
Is there a guide on the real money I have to spend to get particular items set up?
Is there a recommended roadmap for a beginner because that WIKI makes me dizzy. lol
no need to start over imo (you will lose your rl$$). Set your factories on holiday and try to get your offices efficiency at 100% first. If you can manage enough office clerks to handle the extra load of factories, then sure, open up factories again. Be advised: on day 1, you cannot handle a factory with 10.000 workers. You're going to need to grow your production qualification for this. So, start out really small and see how far and fast you can grow from that.
My biggest advice would be to read the section about qualification growth and how it works. It's right here in FAQ section on the forum.
Welcome to the game!
23.02.2019, 02:46. Subject: BEGINNER START UP GUIDE|
15 - 18 = experiment Lv's. you should be enable to do 20 - 50k Sq/m + 250w + 6,00-8,00 worker Qualification
Commerce Q18+ = No more rookie. You're on your own.-
Supply section:
Start off with buying
cheap goods : 50 - 100units
average goods : 25 - 50 units
expensive goods : 1 - 5 units
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Notice!
At all points you gotta keep your top1,2,3 at 100% so keep adjusting a little at each checkpoint till you got 100% or else you would not get 100% growth.
wish i could add picture. but it doesn't work.
Keep in mind. you have to adjust your office too with advertisements, start with Outdoor advertising (28-32k expense/do minumum)
Mangement (Office setup)
Lv 1 - 3 = 3w 2.9WQ (adjust/increase worker qualification til top 3 drops then adjust till 100%)
Lv 3 - 5 = 5w 3.3-5WQ (increase worker qualification til top 3 drops then adjust till 100%)
Lv 5 - 10 = 10w 4,5 - 6WQ
Lv 10+ = 10w 6.63WQ+
12.03.2019, 14:01. Subject: Infos about selling enterprises
I was wondering how fast can my enterprise be sold? I have seen that there is a huge number of weaving mills enterprises on sale in Sweden but I didn't find any analysis on how many enterprises are sold. I am not sure anyone is willing to buy such a business : it produces small quantities, with high prime cost and low quality; and low quality fabric doesn't sell well in the country; also it is not possible to compete with the low prices of the markets.
If I'm not able to sell my enterprise what should I better do? Increase the quality of the produced goods or close the subdivision and focus on retail stores?
Upgrade the quality. There is a fair trader of wool on Mary that sells wool quality 16 for $15. If you buy from that company and install tech 9 your fabrics will be much better (around quality 17-18) and competitive in most Swedish cities. But be prepared to pay for a license (around $1,000,000) and upgrade machines which will cost you another $1,000,000. Do some calculations before attempting this if your budget is limited. In this scenario, your production cost should not exceed $50/product and sales price is around $800-$1500, which is an extraordinary business.
Improve the efficiency if it's less than 100%.
2. Escape:
Export the wool fabrics. Though Swedish government will charge you deadly, it is still possible to make a profit if you sell the fabrics in a less-developed market. Fabrics price is extremely high at the moment and export is temporarily an option.
3. Erase the problem:
Close the factory. Nobody will buy it.
Do some market research and open a new business, or maybe just focus on retail for a while as you proposed yourself.