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.
i am not able to sell the products that i have been producing in the factories pls help to recognize which keys to press while selling the products off in the SALE tab of factories
i generaly tick mark the boxes of the customers who intend to purchase products from my factories and then i press the enter key and then what i find is that i haven't sold a single product and this continues for days pls help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You just have to set a price (and sell "to any customer") and wait for customers to make orders. Hopefully they will, after more or less time. If not, you might have to consider lowering your selling price.
You might as well transport your products to one of your warehouses and sell from there.
28.08.2012, 13:02. Subject: Increasing prices in towns with low wealth???
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 stores' brand is high
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
put powerful store(e.g. 100'000m, reputation > 500)
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
How can you increase local supplier`s price if you use the formula?:
,,For cities with low welth level:
Your price = (1/1.5) * Local suppliers' price * (Your quality / Local suppliers' quality)^0.5 ''
Using this formula you will lower the price in cities with low wealth and not increase it...?
I'm playing about a week now and thinking of expand my business, but i'm not sure how should i do that properly. Maybe you could help me with some tips. I just opened my third store, profit from two previous onces are not stable, sales volumes are low (selling motocycles and similar stuff).
Few questions:
What are benefits and drawbacks of warehouse? should i built one or it's not worth it for small business?
When to increase store size? there about 150 costumers per update now, but they buys just about 5 items. Maybe expansion in store size would result in higher sales.
Do the variety of products in stores helps attendance?
I read lot of material in this forum but i think i was not able to find answers. I would also be grateful for useful links
warehouses: I'd steer clear from those until I had a LOT of cash on my hands.
Store size: increase as soon as your qualification allows you to hire the extra staff required to retain an elite service level.
Larger stores do in fact attract more visitors. Also, your advertising budget will be used more efficiently.
@Aleliuja
Motor goods are hard to sell. You need a lot of visitors for each item sold.
I made the "mistake" of adding a motor goods department to my second store. It never really payed off. I have one store now that sells about 100 jet ski's but it has a lot of visitors. Not sure how much exactly the game update is in progress. Probably at least 2000 (big China city).
Hi,
How can i repair my computer? Automatic repair isn't available and I want to repair or change my computers. computer wear and tear reached 25% and my Work efficiency decreased to 59%
How can I fix it?
In the same page for buying equipment, choose the "repair" option at the bottom. And don't worry if you open a new thread for a single question, in this one they might be overlooked.
Why doesn't my office size change when I tell it to? why do my new hires show up? Is there some sort of automatically imposed budget for buying supplies for retail?
Unless you already have it at maxed size, or not have enough money for the change, it should change when you choose it. No idea what you mean with the hires, try to refresh the page just in case.
About the imposed budget, it's not for buying supllies, but for producing them. If the profit tax is lower than the minimal defined CTIE, it will charge you with that tax based on your production cost. (In your case, it would be a 4.4% for fabrics, and 6.6% for the furniture.) So, when you are "buying" your own products, that tax is being deduced. You can sell them to yourself at the production cost with the added percentage to counter it. (Cost * 1.044, or Cost * 1.066)
Check the CTIE in the reports page by articles. You can check the CTIE of each world region in the Game world > World Map > Any Country > Any Region > CTIE.