Land & Buildings

Overview

• Lands (and the buildings on them) are the main asset in Simunomics. Buildings generate income, produce or improve products, and earn score to level your company up.
• The 5 main building types are:
  • Retail Store
  • Factory
  • Farm
  • Raw Materials Site
  • Research & Development Center
  and it is usually recommend to build roughly in that order.
• Additional buildings considered more niche or complex are:
  • Apartment Buildings
  • Banks
  • Construction Centers
  • Transportation Hub
• The information below is generally applicable but there may be exceptions by building type.

Construction

Most of the comments in this section don't apply to Raw Materials Sites, which are purchased differently.

• When you want a building you need land to build it on. Rather than fight over individual plots, a system company named Destination Real Estate, SSC will find a suitable space for you. All you need to do is tell them what type of property you want, and they will acquire it for you to build on.
• There are several types of land available for any property. A Standard plot provides a baseline offering and is suitable for any building. But other types can offer bonuses that make costs lower or output faster, usually with the expense of being more expensive to build on.
• After choosing the property you'll be asked what the building should focus on. For Retail Stores this is a store type with one or more categories. For others it will be a specific product.
• Once built, changing a product is simple. Changing a building type (including a store type) is not. See Conversion below.
• Construction on most properties requires one Build Kit per 100 ft² of construction.
  • Build Kits are created at special properties called Construction Centers.

• Each Build Kit requires 350 Bricks, 5 Pipes, 50 Glass, and 250 Wood.
• Any Build Kit will work for standard construction. At higher levels you can expand at faster speeds using Build Kits of higher tiers, which are made from higher-quality materials.
• Properties are closed during construction, for a duration that varies by building type. However, new companies get a speed boost on their first 5 properties.
• Initial construction always starts at 100ft², which can later be expanded in 100ft² increments. If you want to skip the 100ft² and go right to a larger side, you can instead purchase the land vacant and develop it to whatever size you need.

Expanding

• Expanding a building increases the capacity and number of employees that can work there. Doing so closes the property down for a while, in order to re-open it later at a larger and more productive size.
• Although expanding a building always improves it's total output, they also experience Diminishing Marginal Returns (see below).
• Buildings can handle up to 1 employee per 100ft². Employment is handled automatically so you don't need to interview applicants yourself.
• At higher levels, players have the option to pay more to have their expansions complete faster.
• Another option is called a "Speed Boost", available at level 4. Using this button on an active construction will allow you to spend Tickets to take up to 6 hours off of the construction time.

Land Slots

• Every company starts with 50 land slots. Most buildings require 1 slot although certain special buildings may require multiple (e.g. Transportation Hub).
• You can gain more land slots by upgrading your account to Gold (80) or Platinum (100) status.
• If you have a premium status expire, leaving you with more lands than legal slots, the extra lands will be made unavailable. They will be returned when slots are freed up (by regaining the status or by selling some of the available lands).

Selling Lands

• Land can be sold back to the system to free up the slot for something else.
  • Each property has an appraised fair value (used for valuing the company, suggesting invoices, and mortgage loans). Fair value takes into consideration the build time, which means it grows exponentially.
  • Properties are also given a system buyback price, which is a portion of the fair value. The bigger the property, the larger the gap between fair value and system buyback.
• Starting at level 6 buildings can be sold to other players via invoices or sold off at auction. There is no level restriction on buying them, provided you are high enough level to own that building type.
  • Some buildings, such as those built on Starter Land, can only be sold back to the system.
• It is usually advisable for small companies to purchase additional properties instead of expanding the old ones. However, you also may want to keep a few slots open in case an opportunity arises.

Conversion

• Buildings on a land can be converted, though it may not always be cost- or time-effective to do so.
• A retail store can be changed into any other type of retail store. This change is fast, taking 15 minutes per 100 ft². However, it is not cheap. So when you are building a store, be sure to take into account all the categories that you will want to sell. It's better to build a broader store then to pay the cost to switch back and forth.
• A factory, farm, or R&D center can be refitted for another product at that building type very cheaply. This takes 15 minutes per 100 ft².
• A factory can be rebuilt into a farm or R&D center, and vice-versa for the other two. Because you are selling off all the old parts, this is very cost efficient. (In some cases, when moving from an expensive building to a cheaper one, you may even get money back.) However, it takes a long time - so long that it would be faster to sell the building and build from scratch.

Diminishing Returns

• The Law of Diminishing Returns states that the marginal benefit of a resource will diminish as you have access to more of it. Meaning that each successive unit is slightly less useful/desirable/beneficial than the one before it.

Example: Suppose you are lost in the desert and dying of thirst. You come across someone who is selling water, but they want $1000 for a small bottle. The water at that point is so important to you that you would buy it despite the huge price.

But would you pay $1000 for a second bottle? A third? The answer is no because the value comes down as you get more of it. Maybe you'd pay $500 for a second bottle, $100 for a third, $20 for a fourth, et cetera. Eventually you have so much water that you wouldn't really want any more even if it's free. The more you have, the less another unit is worth.

• This applies to things like hiring, where the more employees you need to hire, the harder it is to find top-quality ones.
• In Simunomics, Diminishing Returns (DMR for short) are used to increase the difficulty of the game as you advance. Early levels are made simple but as your company grows the costs become more challenging.

Buildings

• As a building needs more employees, it's hard to find the same quality workers. This means that while an expansion always adds capacity to a building it won't add quite as much as previous sections did.
• The rule is:
  • 100 - 65,000 ft: each 100 ft² is 99.7% as effective.
  • 65,100 - 400,000 ft: each 100 ft² is 99.99% as effective.
  • 400,100+ ft: diminishing returns levels off at 10.18% of the original 100 ft².

Example: Suppose a 100ft² farm makes 1000 grain in a day.

You expand it to 200ft². Now it makes 1997 grain per day. (Second level = 1000 * 99.7%.)

You expand it to 300ft². Now it makes 2991.009 grain per day. (Third level = 997 * 99.7%.)

• Costs (Salary, Utilities, etc) are based on the building's size. That means cost-per-unit will increase as you level. However, the use of things like Research, Brand, etc can improve your revenue to counteract this increase

Research

• Research demonstrates Diminishing Returns as well. Each new level will be harder to achieve than the one that came before it.