------------------- Free Enterpri$e Guide ver. 1.0 by Playbahnosh Copyright © 2005 ------------------- ----------- Legal crap ----------- This Guide may not be changed or reproduced, and is provided "AS IS". You may not make money of this Guide, you cannot sell, rent, lease or anything like that, that is illegal. The things written in this document are as accurate as possible, but I'm only human, I can make mistakes. I take no responsibility for any damage caused by the content of this document, so use it at your own risk. Things answered in the Guide are subject to change without further notice, so seek the most recent version. I delete hate-mail, so don't even bother. Contact rules in the Feedback section. The only site promoted to host this Guide is GameFAQs(www.gamefaqs.com). If you found this document on another site, please let me know. If you brake any of these legal rules, I'll kill you with flamethrower. Thats about it. --------- Contents --------- 1. Intro 2. The Basics 3. The "New Game" 3.1 Setting up your company 4. The Interface 4.1 The Layout 4.2 The Menu Bar 4.2.1 The Catalog 4.2.2 The Personnel Menu 4.2.3 The Management Menu 4.2.4 The Report Menu 4.2.5 The Miscellaneous Menus 5. Building your Factory 5.1 Machinery and Offices 5.2 The Staff 5.2.1 Hiring Personnel 5.2.2 Assigning Jobs 5.3 Progressing in the Game 6. Advanced Tactics 6.1 Research 6.2 Spying 6.3 Mechanize your Factory 7. FAQ 8. Feedback /----------\ | 1. Intro | \----------/ Free Enterpri$e is a very detailed and complex business simulation made by Tsunami Media in 1996. You job is to lead a manufacturing company, organise the staff, buy machinery and produce different stuff, buy misc. equipement and everything you can think of. This is a hardcore business simulation with every real life aspect you could expect if you were leading a real company. The economy is fluctuating, the supply-demand market is changing, your workers complaing about low wages, and everything. Your employees are different in every aspect. They have 42 different attributes that determines their personality. Starting from their level of education, through their individual skills, to their addictions and fears. They are doing what a real worker does. Working at their post, taking a break, smoking, chatting, lazing around or goofing off. You can produce almost 100 different kinds of real products, from real raw materials, with real machinery. This is the most accurate and complex business simulator ever released. /---------------\ | 2. The Basics | \---------------/ This is a hardcore business simulation and barely fits in the game genre. Not a Tycoon game, don't get confused. It's more like The Corporate Machine released not so far. More like and educational game, and you will only enjoy it if you like economics and business in general, and like to think, plan and strategize. And it requires a whole lot of patience in the first place. If you want instant fun, look elswhere. But if you'll like to become the industrial mogul of the whole world, read on :D The main menu has some buttons. Yay! Let's see! The "New Game" button lets you create a new game, and you can set up all the options to your liking. The "Quick Start" button sets the options for you, and places you in a moderate factory building with a plastic case machine and some starting supplys. The "Open Game" button lets you load a previously saved game. The "Start Tutorial" button starts the tutorial of the game. Recommended for newbies! The "Start Scenario" button lets you chose a pre-made scenario, or you can generate a map with random resources. The "High Scores" button opens the High Score tabe. Wow. The "Exit" button exits the game. Exciting huh? Okay, let's start a new game. /-------------------\ | 3. The "New Game" | \-------------------/ I recommend you to play the tutorial first. It explains the basics of the game. You can choose not to play it, you can read my tutorial. It is almost as good as the original :D When you star a new game, you will be taken to the map of the USA with many cities marked. If you click on a label, you'll get a brief description of the territory, the average rental prices/wages, the workers average experience and the best markets. The city with the lowest rental fee and wage and the highest population and worker experience is the best. Choose one that you like, and click the "Visit" button. Now you are on the map of the choosen city's industrial area. You can see many buildings here. The white and crowded ones are already belong to another company. The grey ones are for rent. Click on a white building to get info about it. You can see how many employees it has, and what does is produce. The $ signs indicates the value of the firm. If you click on a grey building, you can see the info about the dimensions of the place, the rental fee/Sq.feet and the whole rental fee. The buildings are cheaper on the edge of the map and gets more expensive towards the center. If you click on the "Products" button, you'll get a box with hell a lot of informations. You can choose the products in each chategory to get info about it, such as the raw materials needed to produce it, the price of the ingridients and the finished goods, the finished goods that utilises this product...etc. If you check in the checkboxes, you can see the companies that manufactures or consumes this product, and the firms that supplies the raw materials. The best place to chose: Far from the competitors but near the raw materials. Try to find the lowest rental fee/Sq.feet but don't buy a too small warehouse, becouse you'll run out of space. The best is around 50-80K Sq.feet with around 0.62 $/Sq.feet. The best product to choose to start with: The least competiton and the most consumers. Use the checkboxes to determine the locations, and the boxes for numbers. Try to find one with cheap raw materials and high sale price. The best starting product is always "Plastic case", but if you like to risk, you can choose another. If you have chosen your place and your product, click the "Select" button. ---------------------------- 3.1 Setting up your company ---------------------------- You are now taken to the Game Options dialogue. You can set up your company and the game options here. First, set up your new firm. Click on the name box. Here you can change the first and last name of your president, the gender, and choose one of the three color coded avatars. Click OK. Then replace the name in the company name box to the name of your firm. Now you must choose a funding source and an amount. The "Inheritance" gives the lowest money with the lowest risk. The 400K$ option is the least amount, but it has no risk at all. The other two has a term that needs to be completed in order to avoid the penalty. With the "Loan" option, you take out a loan. You can choose the term and amount too. This is pretty straightforward. If you don't pay back the loan in the intended amount of time, you get fined and possibly go bankrupt. The "Capital" option can get you a lot of money instantly, but you have to work hard to complete the term of the contract, or the creditors will bail you out of your own company. On the bottom, you'll find the "reality switches". Let's have a look: "Free Economy" turns off the supply-demand simulation. This way, you can purchase and sell goods whenever you want without any restrictions. No more shortage of supplys, maket or price wars. Every businessman's dream. It takes away a lot of realism though. "Auto Paperwork" turns off the administration part of the game. You don't need to hire any White Collar workers, buy offices or anything. The paperwork will handle itself, rendering all admistrative workers and equipement needless. But it takes away your option to improve or fine-tune your business. "Robo Workers" every boss's ultimate dream. Your employees are mindless, programmed robots. They don't need any food or drink, they don't take a brake, they don't go to the bathroom or have any addictions to satisfy. Furthermore, they don't complain about anything, including low wages, and they are not affected by stress. The personality is a factor however. A poorly programmed robot is still useless. "Editable Personalities" turns on the personality editor. This way, you can edit every aspect of the personality of your workers including your president. Be careful with the tampering, or you'll end up with a bunch of defective zombies. "Postal Mode" is just that. If one of your worker had a really bad day, he goes mad (going postal), and wrecks havoc around the factory. After that, he will return to his everyday job, relieved. With this mode off, your worker won't go on a rampage, but he (and his job performance) will continue to suffer until you do something about his working conditions. You can always see the difficulty rating assigned to the currently chosen options in the lower-left corner box, along with your share in the company for Capital mode. If you are happy with your settings, click the OK button. /------------------\ | 4. The Interface | \------------------/ After the Game Options dialog, you are presented with a warehouse in top-down view. At first, you will only see some red-striped areas and some wierd drawings. But first, let's see the layout: --------------- 4.1 The Layout --------------- The interface's layout is very simple. On the top, there are the menus. Under that are the quick buttons, the symbol says it all. On the bottom is the status bar. On the right you can see your balance, and the detailed current game time. On the left is the "For help, press F1" message wich is quite pointless, as the help file is useless most of the time. On the rest of the screen, that's the graphical interface. You will play your game here and take care of your factory building. The various dialogs of the game appear in different windows all the time. Well thats about it. Move on. -------------------- 4.2. The Menu Bar -------------------- The menu bar consists of several buttons under the regual menus. My explanation may seem a bit confusing, but I'll try to do it as easy as I can. I will only talk about the important menus. The rest is self understanding I gusess. ++++++++++++++++++ 4.2.1 The Catalog ++++++++++++++++++ The "Catalog" button is a blue catalog book. If you click on it you'll be presented with the Buy Menu. You'll see a lot of machine categories, and two misc. ones. If you click on a machine category, you can see the currenty avalible machines for purchase. You can get a bunch of info about the machine using the radio buttons there. The "General" is the first one, it just shows you the look of the machine, what it produces and it's price. The "Diagram" let's you view the layout of the machine divided into sections. This is a very handy feature, you'll use this often. The "Details" presents a lot of info about the machine, it's product and the raw materials. The "Products" shows you what finished goods use this product as a raw material. There are two other categories. The "Equipement" and the "Office". Let's start with the "Equipment" tab: The "Conveyor Belt" and the "Storage Bin" are advanced features, we'll talk about them later. The "Hand Cart" allows your workers to move a whole pallet of boxes, instead of transporting them one-by-one with hand. The "Forklift" is the same, but with two stacked pallets. Your workers will not use these tools unless they have to move a lot of boxes. They prefer carrying boxes themselves. The "Storage Zone" lets you store four double pallets of raw materials or finished goods. One Storage Zone can only hold one kind of product. The "Safety Zone" warns your machine operators of danger. You must place a Safety Zone in front of every machine input or your workers may be sucked into the machine resulting emloyee loss, a broken machine and tons of fines. You cannot place them elswhere though. The last one is the "Smoking Zone". This a place where your smoking employees may feed their cancer. Place this zone at least two squares away from machinery and offices. If there are no Smoking Zones present, your employees will smoke in the Breakroom. Place Smoking Zones near machinery and offices where smokers work. The "Office" tab contains different Offices for your White Collar emloyees to work in. The Basic Office is the most basic and the "Computerized Records Office" is the most advanced. Don't care about the name of the office, every White Collar worker can work in any type of office. What matters is the % boost it gives. The "Rotate" button lets you rotate the machinery or equipment you chose, this will come in handy later. The "Place" button lets you place it in the warehouse. After you are finished, you must close the Buy Menu. You'll be presented with the billing dialog to confirm your purchase. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4.2.2 The Personnel Menu +++++++++++++++++++++++++ The "Personnel" button is next. It is symbolised by two figures. If you click on it, you'll be presented with the personnel screen. You can see your current employees in the employee list and a (no task) sign if that worker hasn't been assigned to any workplace. You can see the name of the worker, his/her status and salary on the left. If a worker is doing good or bad, you can give a raise or cut the salary. Click on the % amount you wish to modify either + or -, and click the "Compensate" button to adjust the workers salary. The task list show the tasks currently assigned to the worker. The stress graph shows the amount of stress the worker sustained in the time inteval you choose. The yellow line is the warning zone, and the red line is the postal zone. The History button lets you view the last ten actions this worker performed and how much time he/she spent with that. If a worker was doing misc. things or just lazing around too much instead of working, you can cut their salary or even fire them. The Change button let's you modify your workers name and appearance, and with the "Edit Personalities" enabled, more than 40 attributes of your worker. The Place button lets you assign a task to your worker. Blue Collar workers cannot work in offices. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4.2.3 The Management Menu ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In the "Management" menu, you'll find the "Bank", the "Personnel" and the "In-Basket" dialogs seen earlier. But there are additional menus here too. The "Product Information" dialogue, contains informations on every raw material and finished goods found in your warehouse. This dialogue can be important in advanced management. You can set the purchasing guidline for every raw material used in your factory. For example, if you set it to "Price" your Purchasing Agents will buy it from the cheapest source avalible regardless of the quality, but if your change it to "Quality" your agents will buy only the top quality materials no matter the price. The "Value" switch balances the two. You can also turn off the purchasing of that material if you think you have too many already. You can set the price of your finished goods here. Setting it to low will get rid of the inventory fast but wont yield much profit, whereas setting it too high will scare away the low budget costumers leaving only poor sales performance. Take note of the quality of your finished goods, the price of the raw materials, the avaregae sales and set your prices accordingly. You can also purchase emergency stocks here from any material. This is a fast but extremely expensive way to get raw materials during shortage. Notice: The changes made on the Product Information dialogue will only apply in the next turn. With the "Hire Consultant" option, you can hire an outsider market researcher to assemble a report. It contains your rivals performance, market share and standing as well as yours. It reviews your machines productivity and efficency, your research standing and everything. It costs money so don't use it mindlessly. The "City Ranks" dialogue will show your companies standing in pretty much every aspect of the game. Check your standing regurarly. If you fall behind in some areas, you better start improvments. ++++++++++++++++++++++ 4.2.4 The Report Menu ++++++++++++++++++++++ This menu contains different reports from your company, the factory, the assets, the economics and pretty much everything. Very detailed, accurate and useful reports so read them regurarly and adjust your strategies accordingly. The reports are one of Free Enterpri$e's streghts. Well done! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4.2.5 The Miscellaneous Menus ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The file menus: The "New" button starts a new game The "Load" button opens a saved game The "Save" button saves your current game. The "Start Turn" button is symbolised by a traffic light. If you click on it, you can start the turn. You can choose the amount of time of the turn, from days to a whole year. The "City View" button takes you back to the city view. You can do anything like before, but you cannot change your warehouse. Also the "Spy" button became avalible if you click on a white building, that allows you to spy on rivals for a price. The next one is the "Inbox". You will recieve a lot of memos and other messages from your employees and other sources. The personnel resumes go here too. The $ sign is the "Bank". You can view your balance and transfer money from checkings to savings and vice versa. The savings account gives a monthly interest but you can't spend anything from that until you transfer it to checkings. The next one is the "Game Options" dialogue. You can adjust the speed of the game during the turn. If Auto-Throttle is turned on, the game will slow down to normal speed if something significant is happening on screen, this way you won't miss anything. The rest is self-understanding. /--------------------------\ | 5. Building your factory | \--------------------------/ Now that the basic menu system is covered, let's set up shop! Look at the warehouse layout. In the upper-left corner, you'll find the warehouse door. Your workers will use this to come to work or go home. If you look slightly right, you'll see the two transport doors. One for import and one for export. This will be used by transporters to ship raw materials to your facotry or take away finished goods. On the left side, you can see five red-striped areas. These are storage areas where your raw materals and finished goods are stored. On the upper-center part of the building, you'll see a grey area with some wierd markings. This is the Staff Room. It consists of a Break Room, a Conference Room and two Toilets. Regardless if you are a good boss or not, your workers will spend most of their time here, unless you turned on Robo Workers. Apart from these areas, your warehouse is empty. We're gonna fix that! ----------------------------------- 5.1 The Machinery and the Offices ----------------------------------- First of all, we need some machines and equipment to produce stuff. We already have some storage areas placed, so we will use that. Let's assume you chose Plastic Case as your starting product. Open up the Catalog, and select the "Case" tab. Select "Plastic Case". Now you can see the machine in the dialog and the picture of the product. If you wish, you can take a look at the detailed description if the machine, but after that select the "Diagram" box. You can see your machine in a top-down view each part labeled. Now rotate the machine with the button until the copper and nickel inputs face to the left. This way, your workers can more easily load the machine or take back the finished goods. Place the machine two squares away from the storage area and two square from the top wall, so the machine's upper edge lines up with the storage areas topmost square: .---------**-----+------+ * +------+<-staff room | ++ +-+ | || | |<- machine | || | | | || +-+ | || | ++<- storage Like this. Now select the "Equipment" tab and place a "Safety Zone" in front of every machine input, to avoid accidents. This is enough for a start. Later, if you want to place more machines, place them in line with each other, at least two quares far from each other. And don't forget the safety zones. Now let's assume you have the "Auto Paperwork" turned off, so we need offices, for our management staff. The golden rule is to buy the most advanced office you can buy. This way, fewer employees can work more efficently, and you don't have to pay more staff for equal performance. Place the offices as far from the machinery as possible, this way they won't be bothered by the noise and stuff, and that reduces stress. Open up the Catalog again and select the "Office" tab. We need offices for every admistration employees. For the start we need and Accountant, a Salesperson, a Purchasing Agent and don't forget our President. So we need four offices. Select the "Computerized Records Office" and rotate it so the opening faces to the left. Now place four of them along the right wall. Put the first in the corner and the others lined up. Like this: -------+---+ <- wall | | | | <- Office ___| | | | | ___| | | | | ___| | \ Okay, we have four offices now. That good for the start. Now we have to place down some Smoking Areas for our addicted workers. The best spot is one near the offices and one near the machinery. And a Hand Cart or a Forklift won't hurt either. Just place it near the storage areas. There! You have a fully equiped factory ready to start! Only one thing remains... --------------- 5.2 The Staff --------------- Okay, we have all the machinery and equipment, but they wont operate themselves. We need to get some workers to operate them. ----------------------- 5.2.1 Hiring personnel ----------------------- Select the "Hire Person" option from the management menu. You'll end up on the hiring dialog. You see all the jobs of the game. On the left are the White Collar emloyees alias management, on the right the Blue Collar workers alias modern slaves. You can see the city's average salary for the job type under the job's description. Hiring is done by selecting the job you want to hire workers for and press the "Place Ad" button. Now your ad is placed in the local newspaper and some job applications will appear in you In-Basket. Go to your Inbox and select a job application. You can see the applicants name, the job it applies for (and the number of workers we already have of that type). Below that is the desired salay, the sum of the job interview conducted by your President, the estimated job fit and the job experiences. Choose the one with the best skills and lowest salary, and the highest job fit rate. Seek the ones with the most job experience. Don't hire anybody under 80%, becouse their performance will be poor. And don't hire anybody who has a salary demand much over the average. Be careful though, there are some unashamed freaks who asks much more then their skills permit. Reject them. The minimal staff requirement for the factory to funtion is: Accountant, Salesperson, Purchasing Agent, Machine Operator and a Minteneace Engineer. Without these jobs filled, your company won't make any profit nor function. (This is no entirely true. You President can do EVERY job in the factory.) The other jobs just add boosts to the present staffs performance, exept for the researcher. Read the descriptions for information. --------------------- 5.2.3 Assigning Jobs --------------------- After you hired your desired staff, give them work. You can assign the jobs to your employees through the "Personnel" dialog. Click the "Place" button to assign a job the selected worker. White Collar workers are intended to work in offices, however you can assign them to machines as well, but their work there will be disastrous. Blue Collar workers cannot work in offices, you can only assign them to machines. All administrative employees should be assigned to offices. They'll do the rest. All the two-hand workers should be assigned to machines and Storage Bins. You have to assign your Machine Operators to every part of the machine, like loading, unloading, controlling. The Maintenance Engineers should be assigned to the maintenance ports, they'll repair the broken machinery. ---------------------------- 5.3 Progressing in the Game ---------------------------- If you've set up everything, you can start to test your planning in real time. Select "Start Turn!" from the View menu, or just press the Traffic Light button on the menu bar. You'll get a menu where you can select the duration of the turn, from days to a whole year. WARNING: You CAN'T stop the turn once it's started! It is highly recommended, NEVER choose the year option, better yet do not choose the month neither. You can encounter some unforseen problems, and you cannot stop the turn to solve it. Only choose the longer interwals when you are sure your firm will run itself in that period. Think before you choose or you can ruin your day's work with one wrong decision. When the turn starts, the screen swiches to a 3/4 isometric view of the factory. The normal time option is 1/60 so 1 minute in game = 1 sec in real time. The other options are exponentially faster or slower. You can see your employees come to work, attend the morning conference, then go to do their daily workload. You management personnel will go to their offices and start oredring supplys, advertising finished goods and do all the paperwork. When the first shipment of raw materials arrive, your assigned workes will load the machines and start producing goods. You can see your emplyees behave just like in real life. They occasionally go and have a rest or smoke. You can see them talking to each other, lazing around or just goofing off. You can check what each workes does by selecting the History option from the Personnel dialog. Eventually, you'll get notices if something unusual happens inside or outside your factory. You'll get memos from the staff for different things, be it a low-salary-complain or just a staff report. You can watch your workers load up the machines, operate them and take the finished goods back to the storage area. You can see the transporters arriving with raw materials and taking away finished goods purchased by other companies or consumers. Just watch how the your salesman licking the butts of the consumers through the telefone or the accountants hammering the keyboard all day. Later, when you'll have more machines more personnel and equipment, the place will become a bee-hive, swarming with life. When the turn ends, you will be taken back to the top-down view and you can adjust your settings once more. Okay, this covers the basic gameplay. If you read this all along, you know everything to confortably play Free Enterpri$e. From now on, it's up to you to become an industrial tycoon. Good luck! (You gonna need it!) :D /---------------------\ | 6. Advanced Tactics | \---------------------/ Here are some advanced game features that hasn't been expalined in the tutorial nor the help file. If you want to, you can discover these while you play, these things are not essential to play. However the research is pretty important... -------------- 6.1 Research -------------- This is a very important part of the game. Without researching new products, you will be shoved out of business in no time. Your products will go out of "style" and you will be left to dry with your priceless stock. Unbeliavable, but this important part is somehow left out of the game's tutorial and the help file too. So, I'll have to clear things out for you. First of all, you'll need a significant capital to even think about research, because it will just burn your money away if you don't pay attention. The ammunt needed depends on what you want to research. Basic and easy research is not too expensive, but the new product won't yield to much either. The more lenghty and difficult research will cost tons of cash, but will return a huge amount of profit in the future if the right market develops. This is a long term investment, so don't expect instant millions. -------------- How to do it? -------------- It may seem confusing, but its actually easier than it seems. Fist of all, decide what do you want to research. Just open up the Products dialog and choose a category you want a new product for yourself, be it Radio, Digital, Garden or anything that has THREE PRODUCTS ONLY. The rest, like Case, Motor and the like, cannot be researched any further! (Just a tip: Wood is the most basic and Media is the most advanced :) If you picked your favorite (and hopefully profitable) category, and you have enough money, open up the Catalog and select your category. Now buy a machine of that category (no matter wich one) and place it in the factory, farther away from the real production if possible. Place the safety zones like earlier. Now open up the Hire Person dialog and place ad for Researcher. Go to your Inbox and browse through the applicants. Hire at least two researchers from the best ones. Additionaly, you can hire an R & D Director, to boost the research performance and reduce the time it takes to complete, but not necessary if you don't have much money. Here comes the fun part! Now open up our research machine's dialog. Click on the Upgrade button. Move the slider right until the dropdown boxes become usable and the upgrade button changes to research. Now we're talkin! Move the slider and note the product names on the top, and the tech level. The higher the tech level the more money and time needed to research, but it'll be more profitable if complete (only if the right market is developed too, I can't stress that enough). But don't go overboard with your imagination! Don't try to research the most advanced products, like the Holoroom, right when you start the game. The raw materials needed aren't even discovered/invented yet in the game, and it will probably burn away all your money in a flash, so it'll be a waste of time. And if by some miracle, you succeed, nobody will be interested in your product, so you invented the most expensive and modern useless piece of shit of all times. So take care! In the beginning, only go for level 4 or 5 products. The market is not yet ready for the more advanced ones, and probably no raw materials are avalible now, wich will render the research a waste of time righ now. If you picked your future product, comes a little puzzle. Now you make use of those dropdown boxes. You have to GUESS what raw materials are needed to produce this good. I'm not joking, you have to guess. Imagine the product and try to guess what is that made of. Select the raw materials of your choice from the drop-down menus, and hope for the best. If you are happy with your setup, click the research button. A msg.box will tell you how much will the research cost. Click OK to continue. The only thing left to do is to put our researchers to work. Assign each researcher to EVERY part of the test machine. If you hired a R&D Director, put him in an office and assign him to every machine part too. Now wait until raw materials arrive. Yes the research machine needs the same ammount of raw materials to work, but it won't produce anything. That is why research is so expensive in the first place, cuz many of the needed materials costs a lot of money, and those are all wasted during research. If no shipment of a material arrives in two weeks at the longest, consider the project dead, becouse that material is not yet on the market. Try again a couple of months or a year later, or try to research something else. However, you can purchase non-avalible materials on the emergerny purchase dialog but that is horribly expensive, not worth it. If all types of the needed materials arrive, we are ready to work. Okay, the only thing left to do is wait until our smarties finish the development. You can check the % of completion if you open up the test machines dialogue, and eventually you'll get messages regarding the status of the research. It will take much time according to the tech level, the complexity of the research, and the number and knowledge of your R&D staff. Sometimes the research may stop at 50% and you'll get a message that informs you that the research is failed. It'll also tell you what components you guessed right. Go to the upgrade dialog, try another guess and change the wrong materials. Start the research again and hope for the best. Eventually, you will guess the components right! If that so, you'll get a message that the research is completed and a newsflash that informs that your company discovered a new product. The machine will become active and ready for production. You can now assign machine operators to the machine and produce your fresh goods. If there is a market for it, you'll be booking some major income during the next year or so, until your product loses it's novelty and other companies start to produce it too. Congratulations, you researched a new product! Now you can assign your R&D staff to a new, possibly more advanced project. Have fun! ------------ 6.2 Spying ------------ Somehow, this part is also left out of the tutorial, and the help file too. Well, it seems I'll have to tell you the secrets of spying. Industrial espionage is the part of real business. You can't win without knowing your enemy, the competitors. You have to find out your rivals plans, strategy and everything, and turn that to your advantage. Information means power, power means money and you can't have enough of that. First of all got to find out who is your rival in the city. After you set up your business, go back to the City View. Now open up the Products dialog and select your manufactured product (or one of them if you have more). Now check the Production checkbox, and you'll see the factories also producing this kind of product. Select one of your competitors building. The first stop: the publicly avalible informations. You can see how many employees the firm have, and how many other products does the firm manufacture. Also, you can see the little icons on the buildings picture: A $ sign means $100,000 in net worth, and a box means 1000 units of goods produced monthly. Just add up the $'s and boxes to get the net worth and production of the rival factory. I there is no icon from a type that means that either the companies net worth is below $100,000 or the production is below 1000 units monthly, or eventually both. Second phase: Going underground. Click on the Spy button. Be careful with that becouse it costs $5000 per view. Now, you'll see a whole lot of info about the rival. This dialog gives the same informations as the Hire Consultant button, but about your competitor's company. You can get information about the standing of your rival, the sales in $ and units, the market share and the price of the finished goods. You can also get info about the competitor's machinery, the volume, and their efficency. And the most important info is the research informations. You can see what products the rival is researching, the completion status and the materials used by the research. This is golden information. (If by some miracle, you know that the competitor is researching with the WRONG materials ;) , you can start your own project with the RIGHT materials, rendering his research a waste of time and money therefore set back his progress a LOT! :D ) You can use the collected informations to figure out the right price and set the production volume for your goods, and hire needed staff if you fall back accoring to your rivals. This is a very important part, and it helps you stay in business when your competitors get far ahead of you. That's about it. It's up to you now to put the information to good use. /----------------------------\ | 6.3 Mechanize your Factory | \----------------------------/ Another feature greatly neglected by the tutorial and help file, is the usage of the Conveyor Belt and the Storage Bin. These utilities can greatly improve the efficency of your machinery and worker staff management. Basicly the Conveyor Belts replace your two-hand workers by transporting raw materials and finished goods to or from a machine, hence reducing the machine operators workload rendering some of them needless, and speeding up production a lot. For example, the Conveyor Belt can transport a material (Plastic Case), from the producing machine's output, straight to another machine's (Radio Machine) input, and requires no interfeering from your workers at all. The Storage Bins can geather finished goods from up to three(!) machines of the same kind, and store it in one place, from where your workers can easily carry them to the sotorage area. The Storage bin can also be used to distribute one kind of raw material to up to three(!) machines in the same time. This way, the Storage Bin can do three(!) workers job. Needs no pay wich is good for your balance. One Storage Bin requires only one(!) worker to function, so you can reduce your machinery staff. Storage Bins have no need to take a brake or go out for a smoke, it doesn't even move, and only requires some regular maintenance. Hell, it's better than Robo Workers, and it is real! This way the reality is not damaged, but you can legally cheat :D ----------------- What do you need ----------------- First of all, you'll need a bigger factory building, becouse despite of all the positive things, the conveyor belt and the storage bin takes up hella lot of place even if placed correctly. Not much workers are needed, but the maintenane staff and the operators must get through to the control stations and maintenance ports. So if you decide to use conveyor belts, some serious planning is needed EVEN BEFORE YOU PLACE YOUR MACHINES. Becouse the machines can be moved after you place them, BUT cannot be rotated. This is bad becouse the machine inputs and outputs should be placed facing to each other or at least one rotation away. First, let's face with the restrictions: * You cannot place a conveyor belt: - perpendicular to machine inputs/outputs or storage bins - in front of control stations, maintenance ports, storage areas, cargo doors, offices or the staff room - to block access to anything - to overlap each other even if one of them is lowered In addition * You cannot place a storage bin: - near anything or parallel to conveyor belts - on top of lowered conveyor belts - to block access to anything In addition to all that: A conveyor belt can only start and end at a machine input/output or a storage belt. So you cannot connect two storage bins, and this, unfortunatly shatters the idea of a complex conveyor belt/storage bin system. But fear not, I'll show you how to do it right. -------------------------- Here comes the modern age -------------------------- First of all, put your machinery at least three squares away from the storage area and each other. This way, your conveyor belts and storage bins will most certainly won't block anything important. Move or sell any misc machinery or area in the vincinity of your machinery, like Hand Carts, Forklifts and Smoking Areas. Now plan your belt and bin placement on paper if possible, this way you won't waste any money on misplaced items. I will only show some of the advanced placement tactics, you can figure out the easier ones and experiment with even more advanced ones. Lets see some examples: * Direct Transportation +--------------------------------+ ----------------------- | Legend: | | | +--+--+ <-Plastic Case machine | PO -> Plastic Case Output | | | | | | +--+--+ | PI -> Plastic Case Input | | || | | +--+--+ +--+--+ <- Radio Machine | # -> Conveyor Belt | | |PO|#######|PI| | | | +--+--+ +--+--+ | /-\ | | | | | | | -> Storage Bin | +--+--+ | \-/ | | || | | +--+ +--------------------------------+ This way, the Plastic Case from the machine will be delivered straight to the Radio Machine's input. This is an efficent way to feed a machine with another machine's product, no workers needed. This is also a problem however, becouse the workers CAN'T take away the surplus cases. If the reciever machine is not operational but the producer machiner is working, the cases will pile up in the output/input of each machine. If the output/input bacomes full, your workers will not operate the producer machine, but if they do, your surplus cases will be sold as inventory leftovers. This method spares on workers but not economic at all. * Storage and Transportation ---------------------------- +--+--+ <-Plastic Case machine | | | +--+--+ | || +--+--+ /-\ +--+--+ <- Radio Machine | |PO|###| |###|PI| | +--+--+ \-/ +--+--+ | | | +--+--+ | || +--+ This way, the finished Plastic Cases will go to the Storage Bin, and they will be stored there. The bin will supply the Radio Machine with cases until it's input becomes full, then it will only supply additional cases if required. If too many cases start to pile up in the bin, your workers will deliver them to the storage area. Easy, clean and effective, but most importantly economic. * Dual-channel -------------- +--+--+ <-Plastic Case machine | | | +--+--+ | || +--+--+ /-\ +--+--+ <- Radio Machine | |PO|###| |###|PI| | +--+--+ \-/ +--+--+ # | | | # +--+--+ +--+--+--+ | || | | |PI| +--+ +--+--+--+ --| | | +--+--+ <- another Radio Machine Here's the ultimate solution, the Dual-channel as I call it. This way, your Plastic Case machine will feed two Radio Machines simultaneously, and all this requires only ONE worker. Your case machine works faster(provided the right workforce) than the Radio Machines, so it can supply more than enough cases. The surpulus will be taken by your bin operator to the storage area. * Tips ------ Some useful tips: You can lower the Conveyor Belt underground if it is more than three sqares long, so your workers can walk over it. This way, your belts take up less space in your factory and your workers can walk around more easily. Use your belts to feed more than one machine, you spare on the workforce. Try to put your Storage Bins close to the storage areas. Your machines will be more efficent. That's it! You now know the secret of the Conveyor Belt and the Storage Bin. Use it wisely! /------------------------------\ | 7. Freqently Asked Questions | \------------------------------/ I gathered some questions and answers here that was asked before and I don't want to answer them again. If your question is listed here, I won't reply to it again, you can read I assume. Q: Where can I get this game?/ Is it free? A: If you are reading this FAQ I assume you already have the game, but if not, you can get it at www.abandonia.com And yes, it is completely free. Q: Can you send me the game/help/trainer/etc? A: No, I won't send you anything. You can download the game from the above address, and I'm certain you can find a trainer or more help elsewhere. Don't even email me about sending you stuff. Q: The game is not working/crashing/lost my data/HEEELP! A: Please read the README file and the help file of the game. Troubleshooting is not my job. If everything fails, ask help on a forum or reinstall your OS. Q: My machines aren't producing anything. What's wrong? A: This could be caused by several things. Check your stock if you have the raw materials for that machine. Hire more purchasing agents if necessary. If no raw materials arrive in two weeks, consider selling that machine. Check that every position on the machine is filled by a worker at least. Check that your storage area is not full. If it is full, your workers won't operate the machines until you sell some stuff or place more storage areas. If your machine is broken down or in flames, it won't produce anyting until it's fixed. I hope this is enough. Q: I can't research anything. What's the problem? A: Read the Research part in this document. The base component machines like cases, motors and those that already have more than 3 products CANNOT BE RESEARCHED ANY FURTHER! Don't even try. Second, you have to assign your researchers to EVERY part of the test machine or it won't work. Most importantly you need raw materials for the test machine too, if you don't get any in two weeks, try to research something else instead becouse that raw material is not avalible right now. Q: My workers are constantly striking/quitting/not working! Help! A: Make sure you pay your workers well. If you underpay them, they will ask for a raise or even strike. Always monitor the average salary of the city and pay your workers accordingly. Make sure you have enough smoking zones and equipement for your staff. If they feel like they are being treated unfairly, they will moan about it, won't work just laze around or simply quit. This is a bad way to lose quality workforce. Q: I've done everything but I keep losing money? What am I doing wrong? A: The best thing you can do is check the statistics screen. See what cause you to lose money and act accordingly. Check your sales. Maybe there is no market for your product. Adjust the price of your good. Fire some not crucial workers and sell eveything unneeded. Try to keep your expenses at minimum and try to find a way to raise profits. Q: The warehouse is too small. I can't put more things in there. What now? A: Well, you are just unlucky I'm afraid. You can't buy a bigger one. If you chose a too small warehouse at the beginning, you made your worst choice. Remember to buy a middle sized building. If you buy a small one, you will run out of space in no time, but if you buy a too big one, you will run out of cash. Try to be reasonable. You must make use of what you have. Try to reorganize your offices, machinery and misc. equipement. Try to sell not needed stuff. Q: This conveyor belt/storage bin stuff gives me a headache. No matter what I do, it won't work... A: Using the belt and the bin is advanced stuff. It is not required to run your factory. If your can't get to use it properly, leave it. After some time you will eventually learn how to do it right. Q: This sucks! No matter what I do, I keep losing. I'm fed up! A: Not everybody can play this game. If you are not patient enough and you are bad with numbers, I suggest playing another game. Only the hard-core strategy
   fans and economy students may enjoy this kind of entertaintment in the first
   place. If you are not having fun playing this game, don't break your neck,
   playing games is about having fun, seek a game that you can enjoy.

Q: Your FAQ/Guide is a piece of shit. Even I can do it better!
A: Well then, do it! Feel free to write a FAQ/Guide and show the world how
   good you are, but don't come and flame me about it.

Q: What is this? I can't understand this/that! What's your problem man?
A: I'm Hungarian, that's all. I tried to keep grammar and language mistakes
   at a minimum, but English is not my mother language. I'm working on it
   but bare with me for the time being okay?

Q: You suck! I hate you!
A: This is your problem. Why do you even bother to tell me?

This is it. More questions and answers shall come with the next update. For now,
this is what I had.

                         /-------------\
                         | 7. Feedback |
                         \-------------/

If you still have questions or opinions about the game or this guide, feel free
to write email. But there are some rules here:

 - I delete hate-mail! Don't bother.

 - Don't ask me to send you anthing like trainers, games or any files! I won't
   do it.

 - I don't do warez! Don't even ask!

 - If you ask something that is covered in this guide, you won't get any answer.

 - Do not send any attachments! I delete it ASAP!

 - Don't spam! If you don't get your answer in a week, check the rules again.

If you obey these rules, you will get answers.

My email address: playbahnosh@freemail.hu


This is it!

THE END


Playbahnosh © 2005