#Customer cap / growing customer cap.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

green eagle
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As the physical size of the store expands, you start to end up with more space than "one shelf of everything" will require, but it's unclear how expanding stock without expanding TYPES of stock will impact things like how many customers you get / how many sales you get.

I assume shop level, unlocked expansions, maybe decorations? impact it? If I just doubled the number of shelves and gave every book two shelves of space instead of one, would that impact my expected income at all? Assuming I have enough restockers to keep things from emptying out.

gleaming hearth
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every expansion will allow more customers into the store, so potentially more income

green eagle
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But there's no impact on income based on like...number of kinds of book, beyond the fact that having more genres means people will be more likely to find a thing they like?

Ie: If I have a max expansion store, and every book is on one row of a bookshelf, or instead, every book has its own full entire bookshelf, I wouldn't necessarily expect my income to change?

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I very rarely see anybody buy more than 2 copies of the same book, so I assume they're not buying more of book X if there's more copies of book X on the shelf.

gleaming hearth
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ok let me wake up a bit more lol before i read your other posts too 😛

green eagle
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Sorry, I usually ask pretty persnickety questions 😛

gleaming hearth
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So when a customer walks through the door, the RNG rolls for the amount of money they have to spend and the types of genre they are looking for.Then other factors are then the Legendary buffs, the cats, the types of bookcases.
One of the legendary buffs is max amount of books so that means the max that is on the shelf they go too... so if only 2 are on it then they just buy 2 and not the 12 or 15

Also the faster you checkout people the more can come in to buy, (I always do register to start with untill my shop is fully expanded and then have two registers.. one for me and one for who im leveling to get faster.)

green eagle
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I had that max books book running for days and I don't think i saw a single person clear a shelf.

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I assumed it meant there is a max total number of books they may buy (like they walk in able to buy up to 12 books) and will buy 12 books of various kinds.

gleaming hearth
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it works for me... or did...I shall try and take more notice to see if it is working still

green eagle
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May have just been coincidence of picking a low-stock shelf, I did replace it with a better book before I had quite as many stocking staff

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"type of bookcase" meaning putting genre books on their genre shelf up their chance to buy them? or just having better shelves than the basic one make them more like to buy books generally?

gleaming hearth
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for example... the horror shelves give a buff to buy more horror books.. etc

green eagle
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That's a thing in my posts that is very unclear I want clarity on. Does it mean more likely to "buy horror books" or "more likely to buy horror books that are on that shelf" ?

gleaming hearth
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that i do not know

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i shall find out for you

green eagle
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There's a follow-up to that.

Is it like increasing the chance, if they look at a horror book that they will opt to buy it? Or is it like...shifting their purchasing preference towards horror books? or something else?

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The basic mechanic is not very clear. Whether they're like, picking a shelf at random, then rolling against chances to buy or not based on genre/bonuses, or if they're picking a specific book to look for on the shelf etc.

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I guess it comes down to like, "What is happening that results in some people buying 4 books and some people buying 10" and I'm assuming they have an amount of time they want to spend looking, and then a chance to buy each thing they look at, and something like "increases the chance to buy horror books" would mean "the chance to buy when they look at a horror book is higher" but I don't know if it instead or also means they're more likely to look at horror books, or similar.

gleaming hearth
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@sudden pulsar are you able to clarify the way the customers interact with all of Devonin's questions lol

green eagle
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Sorry 😛

gleaming hearth
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dont be sorry... not many ask this type of question so it will be good to know

green eagle
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My assumption from what I know so far and what I've seen is something like

  1. Customer walks in, they have an amount of money
  2. Customer has three genre preferences.
  3. Customer goes to a random shelf and decides to buy or not based on genre preference, price and money on hand
  4. Customer repeats this process until out of money or possibly after a duration, or possibly after choosing not to buy a certain number of times

And "increase the chance to buy X" would impact step 3, where they decide whether to buy the book based on genre preference/price and the chance to buy is higher because it's the right type of book.

gleaming hearth
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  1. also price
green eagle
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But it's also unclear whether something like the Table Display which says "Bonus: Customers have increased chance to buy books" means

  1. An increased chance to buy the books on this table if they look at the table
  2. A globally increased chance to buy books because of the aesthetics of having a table display

And whether something like the Candy stand which says "Bonus: Customers have increased chance to buy candy" means

  1. That it's REDUCING their chance to buy things that aren't Candy (Shifting desire share among the kinds of product, like going from 30/70 candy/books to 40/60 candy/books)
  2. That it's just increasing the chance, if they look at a candy shelf, that they decide to buy the thing on the shelf.
gleaming hearth
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the candy and comics do not reduce the chance on the buying of books...

green eagle
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If the Table Display example is case 1, then it suggests that once you unlock the table display, you'll get more sales overall if you get rid of every standard bookshelf and put everything on table displays.

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Zach must have looked at my thread and just decided to leave 😛

gleaming hearth
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oh he could be asleep .. or not at his pc , or home etc

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but he will answer when he is available

green eagle
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He was online when you pinged him. I'm joking. I know that he didn't leave rather than answer 😛

gleaming hearth
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oh i didnt see him online

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my ping is to let him know i need him lol

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and he will answer when he can

green eagle
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Much obliged.

gleaming hearth
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your very welcome.. and I will learn for others as well 🙂

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now im going to read your suggestions lol

sudden pulsar
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Back online now, wasn't before. Most of your assumptions are correct. If I remember correctly (can't look to confirm atm), the increased chance affects how many of a given item they'll buy.

So, on technical terms, here's the basic run through as of cafe update.

  • Potential customer gets in front of the shop, checks if they should be a customer or continue walking. Potential customers are determined by how many customers for that hour you should get based on employee count, checkout counter count, expansions, and day
  • Once they are a confirmed customer, they will check if they should go to the cafe and be a "sit down" Cafe customer. If so, they will go to the cafe, order a drink and a pastry if possible, sit (if there are tables, stand otherwise), eat, and then enter normal shopping route.
  • Once they get into the doorway, we run an overcrowding check to see if there are too many customers in the store, if it's too crowded, they'll turn around and leave instead of entering.
  • Normal shopping route is split into two sections that work basically the same. Primary items and secondary items.
  • Primary items are basically everything that is not secondary. Secondary items are candy, bookmarks, and maybe used books. In the future, this lets us have specific customers that have specific interests they will focus on first (IE, a board game lover who only wants board games as their primary product, a used book enthusiast, comic book connesiour, etc.)

Choose loop:

  • Customers will choose an item type from their current item type list (primary first, secondary when "done" with primary) and randomly pick between things on offer from that type that they have not looked at yet. The type is a weighted calculation with some types being more prevalent (books vs board games)

  • they will then go to that item on the shelf, and evaluate whether they will buy it (not priced too high). If they choose to buy it, they will then choose how many of that item they will buy. This is where that increase comes in as it makes them more likely to grab more. Each item type has its own limit of how many a customer can grab (Books is like 12, board games is 3 or 4 iirc, etc) and there is a total limit to the number of items they can hold (14 or 15). Then they will animate and grab the item, putting it in their bag.

  • Whether they picked it up or not, that item is added to a "viewed" list of items they won't look at again.

  • Then they run a check if they are "done" shopping for that category (primary or secondary). If done primary shopping, they will shop for secondary items, if any are available. If done with secondary, they will go to checkout.

  • After checkout, they will check to see if they want to be a "take-out" Cafe customer if they haven't already visited the cafe before leaving the store.

Note: this is all from memory as I can't look at specifics at the moment lol. Logic is sound, numbers might be slightly off

green eagle
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So when the table says "Increases the chance of buying books" it means that after they choose the item that is on the table, when they are evaluating how many copies of it to buy, it's a larger number than if it was on a normal bookshelf?

sudden pulsar
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I believe so

green eagle
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Which confirms that it would be better for maximizing sales to replace all bookshelves with tables.

sudden pulsar
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I'll double check for sure when I get back to the code but I'm pretty sure it's increasing the weight of buying more than 1

green eagle
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When deciding how many to buy, beyond just "having at least 12 on there in case they land on 12" is the fullness of the shelf a factor in what number they land on?

sudden pulsar
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No, fullness of shelf doesn't matter other than only being able to grab the number that is on that shelf

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We don't want to punish you for having low stocked shelves lol

green eagle
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Tables hold more anyway, so full table swap becomes optimal 😛

gleaming hearth
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so where do the genre shelves come into it?

green eagle
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And also, do I take it to mean that the horror shelf, say, which has the bonus "more likely to buy horror books" actually means "If they're looking at a ledge on this shelf, and decide to buy, if the book on the shelf is horror, they're more likely to buy more copies" ?

sudden pulsar
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I believe so, yes

green eagle
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If so, I would change the text to say "Customers are more likely to buy more horror books from this shelf"

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And do the same for the other shelves

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I'm not entirely sure that there needs to be a bonus to buy candy off the candy shelf / comics off the comic shelf, since you unlock the shelf at the same time and virtually everybody will just assume you use those shelves for those products, but i guess you -can- put non-book things on the standard bookshelves.

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randomly pick between things on offer from that type that they have not looked at yet

Do they pick a single ledge of a shelf as 'a thing on offer' or a single product regardless of how many ledges or shelves its on?

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ie: If I have Spice on all four ledges of a shelf, do they look at "Somewhere Spice is for sale" and then they've seen everywhere Spice is for sale? Or do they pick a ledge, and have viewed that ledge and may now view another ledge also of copies of Spice?

sudden pulsar
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It's item based so once they look at a shelf with Spice, they won't look at another shelf with Spice in it

green eagle
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Okay so that was the other thing. No practical benefit to having the same thing on multiple shelves

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Easier to ensure one shelf stays stocked than several

sudden pulsar
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Other than more room for overflow in case your customers really like a certain item and it takes you or your stockers a bit to get back to restocking it

green eagle
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Right. Though the fewer total shelves, the easier to get around to them all

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Which isn't going to like govern my gameplay or anything. I love my aesthetics especially for a book store, but I do appreciate knowing HOW to be optimal

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And just knowing how systems work

sudden pulsar
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Same, always nice to know how things are working in the background so you can plan for things if needed

gleaming hearth
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thank you Zach.. your awesome!

green eagle
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Definitely doing a day with all shelves and then one with all tables to compare

gleaming hearth
green eagle
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100%. Hopefully it could also help them balance the power of the bonus

sudden pulsar
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Yeah, let us know, I'm curious as well

west wing
green eagle
green eagle
# sudden pulsar Yeah, let us know, I'm curious as well

First immediate test is entirely contrary to expectations.
Shelves: $18,437
Tables: $14,243

My main thinking for the potential reason is that even if each customer is buying more books from any given table than they would off a shelf, the tables take up so much more floor space that customers are spending way more time walking. But I also only had 3 fewer customers with the tables, and I don't think they'd account for 4,000 in sales.

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Is part of the Choose Loop where they decide if they're "done with primary products" based on how long they've been in the store?

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If so, then the reason tables are worse is that picking products to view at random, they're way more likely with tables to burn a ton of time walking.

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Or I suppose that if time is NOT a function, but they will only view a certain number of things, it taking them longer to get through all their views because of walking means they didn't clear out as fast as they could have, but 3 customer difference doesn't seem to account for that.

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Second day of Tables $16,378, 130 customers.

Guess there's a lot more variability in how much money customers may have than I thought, that splits the difference between the shelf and first table run.

green eagle
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Hunh. I went back to shelves, but all positioned close together by the door to minimize customer walking time, and went up to 133 customers, but worse sales than the second table day.

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All of this together makes me feel like layout largely doesn't matter compared to "whether you get lucky on more or less wealthy customers"

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Setup         Sales      Customers
Shelves       $18,437    129
Tables        $14,243    126
Tables        $16,378    130
Close Shelves $14,545    133
Close Shelves $14,697    132
Bought 3 store expansions
Close Shelves $15,853    138
green eagle
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So obviously a lot of randomness in terms of income of customers, but it looks like it broadly doesn't much matter, and the "bonus" from the table displays doesn't at all translate to higher income

green eagle
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I went back to more like the setup I had previously, where the shelves are broadly close to the center, but directly facing their restock shelves to cut down on restock movement time, and went up to 17,336 and 143 customers

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So it seems like the "best" setup is putting bookshelves and their corresponding storage shelves in close proximity so the bookshelves are as full as possible as often as possible to maximize the ability of customers to buy multiple copies

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@gleaming hearth