Please Fix Malls

Make a suggestion & let the community sound it out. Almost all the best activities in game came initially from a player suggestion!
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Gorkus
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 2:31 pm

Please Fix Malls

Post by Gorkus »

From my point of view, Malls are broken and impractical. I had two tech kiosk mall units and they each averaged 40K per cycle. I realize that different items have different selling prices and this effects the bottom line of the mall. I ended up placing the two highest value commodities I could find with any regularity into my two kiosk malls. These two items were power conduit buffers and shield emitters. It was with these two products that my two kiosk malls averaged 40K per cycle each or 160K per day, for over a week.

Then I upgraded. I expected that my investment in IP and the increased cost of the Retail Mall, and the simple fact that the retail mall was a higher level item, would lead to greater profits. It does not. In fact, using the very same two commodities, the retail mall averages less than 30K per cycle or 60K per day. The retail mall with two slots can't even match the profits of a single kiosk mall which has only one slot. After several cycles, the retail mall's very bet performance was 88K. That happened just once and was an outlier to the average. One time only, it did match the average performance of the two kiosks. However, over a longer period, there were far too many results well under 30K, or less than 15K per item. This equates to the retail mall generating, on average (taken over several days, not weeks or months mind you - I do realize it is a small sample size) less than half the income of a single kiosk mall. No offense to anyone, but that is flat out wrong and needs to be addressed. I have a hard time believing that others haven't come across this before me as I am a fairly new player.

When I brought this up in chat, I was told (I forget whom, sorry) by a veteran player that each slot works the same regardless of which mall it is in. Maybe that is the way it is coded and I have had the misfortune of always landing a big random number with the kiosks and a very low random number with the retail. But this is wrong as well. The kiosk jewelry store in the front of a real-life mall does not generate the same revenue as a Macy's (or a Debenham's or Fenwick's or whatever else you have there in the UK as an equivalent). I was told the same number of shoppers visit each. Well, that's not true either. Larger stores advertise and generate a buzz that a simple kiosk store in a mall would not. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the kiosk mall lives exclusively off the chaff from the other, bigger, department stores.

It is my opinion, though it carries little to no weight, I am sure, that the retail mall ought to be able to sell far more items than a kiosk store and therefore generate significantly more income than a kiosk. Each step up in mall magnitude ought to come with a corresponding increase in sales, or the potential for increased sales as predicated by the player's negotiation skill or whatever.

Thanks for listening.
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Hunbaba
Posts: 146
Joined: Sun Jul 20, 2014 5:34 pm

Re: Please Fix Malls

Post by Hunbaba »

Congratulations! Being able to compare things and draw your own conclusions is most basic skill needed in order to play CE at least somewhat efficiently. So you are up to a promising start.

Next thing you will have to learn is that real world mechanics bear no influence on how things function in CE. The two could be identical, similar or completely the opposite. Basing arguments on how things work in real world, most of the times wont get you far. Best way is to learn game mechanics as they are and make best use of it.

Dont place high hopes on things you persume as broken will get fixed. Malls in this case are not broken to begin with, they are just terribly inefficeint, at least those at low levels. Best way to deal with this is to ignore them and use your structure points on something better, like extractors. Later in the game you might even get to a conclusion that under certain circumstances malls can be rather good.
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XPLODE
Posts: 271
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2014 9:32 am
Location: In my bed.

Re: Please Fix Malls

Post by XPLODE »

My mall goes up to 340-380k(i think) but hovers around 280k.
SilverSun
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Nov 08, 2016 4:59 pm

Re: Please Fix Malls

Post by SilverSun »

Yes your right, it's a little random what slot in your mall sells how much... But I see it like this.
Sale slot Nr 1 (Kiosk only has 1 slot) will be the same sale like slot nr1 in the second mall.

So if you have a mall with 1,2 and 4 slots, then all you 3 malls will be selling the same amount in slot Nr. 1...you will earn the same amount from slot nr. 1 in all 3 different mall types... But only if you got the same goods in slot nr. 1
If you got a goodie in you kiosk and 2 less lucrative goods in your other mall... Then it's possible that you possibly will actually make more with your kiosk.

Tip from me, without spoiling... :)
There are a lot more goods and much much better goods that you could sell in your tech malls. Find them... You will see that some are hard to get, or buy on the GBM, and you will see that some are even very easy to get or buy cause they can be manufactured in a factory. Maybe get the right factory and sell your own goods in your malls? Something like that. :)

In general I can say malls are really great income. Just really depends on what your selling and if you can get what you want to sell. :)
Golden Ribblez spotted studying helioseismology, with defrosted Fish Tacos eating Hilton, on Messor.
SilverSun
Posts: 44
Joined: Tue Nov 08, 2016 4:59 pm

Re: Please Fix Malls

Post by SilverSun »

Oh, one more thing... Very important.
You can only really compare the income of a complete 12h income cycle. If you fiddle around with your goods, then you might only get the sale of the sold goods from a few hours.
Today I try never to remove the goods from my malls, but rather just try to find or buy more to refill the old stock. If I do have to or want to change the stock I'm selling, then I try to do it right after I get my paycheck mail.
... it did happen to me that if I change the stock shortly before my paycheck mail.. Then my mall income for that 12h cycle was extremely small. So I actually have the suspicion that the sold goods before the stock change wasn't counted. But I'm not certain. :)
Golden Ribblez spotted studying helioseismology, with defrosted Fish Tacos eating Hilton, on Messor.
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Gorkus
Posts: 96
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 2:31 pm

Re: Please Fix Malls

Post by Gorkus »

Thanks for the responses! It has been a while since I wrote the OP and much has become clearer to me. I really appreciate Hunbaba's quote, "real world mechanics bear no influence on how things function in CE." This has become oh so apparent to me. I did end up scrapping my smaller malls for extractors, but eventually got ahold of some 0 SP factories and a 0 SP mall. I am soon to get a second as at this point the credits they produce are quite helpful if not in the amounts I originally anticipated.
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