Broken Business [x]

[Henry Craven]

Hello. So, I've run a few businesses in my time on Path, but lately I've been encountering bugs. From Levi DAmico's business not being able to gain stats, to Claude Lambert's which broke on creation, and now Henry Craven's going the same way.

Platinum Physio was launched last week, but the popularity rating won't budge, he's making a loss of up to $1,000 everyday, and I don't know what to do. :/

I'm pretty certain this is a bug. I've never had a business run at a loss this consistently. All of his options are set to Average, he's got 2 members of staff, and he's got Local Radio for advertising, which explains the output. But why no input? I'd expect to be making some profit.

Help!

[Alexandrea]

I *think* the magic number of employees is 4
but yeah, I agree that the businesses do still seem a bit off.
It might all just be bad luck but it never hurts to ask to have things looked at when something doesn't seem right.

[Henry Craven]

I just had another -$911 profit for today.

Founded: 2019-04-18

Reputation is at 3. Popularity remains at 0. Morale is at 5.

3 staff members with 16 stats in their appropriate areas (Clerical, Sales, Security).

All options are set to 'Average' in the Control Panel and Advertising is set to 'Local Radio'.

[Caligrace]

I would try hiring a fourth? It may not help, but it helped some of mine.

I say may not, because I opened a business on another person who only has 1 employee and nothing is wrong.

There is definitely something up with it, and it requires more tweaking of our stats then it used to. :/

[Henry Craven]

Okie dokie. I've hired a fourth staff member with 17 in Sales.

Henry's Business Skill is at 12, his Speechcraft is at 6, his Charisma is at 12, and his Skill is at 20.

He really shouldn't be having this much trouble. :/

[Caligrace]

He shouldn't, no.

I don't know what happened - or when it did - to make things seem wonky.

Hopefully that helps until it can get looked into. ><;

[Henry Craven]

0h 0m ago: Your business (Platinum Physio) earned $-1027 profit today.

Yeah, no. That's costing me even more money...

I'm going to stop doing his businesses because I can't afford to keep losing $1,000 a day.

[Azraeth]

I'd actually fire 3 of the 4 employees. I'll do some testing on McTesty - though that's going to take some time to get any conclusive results.

ETA: On the outset though, I think part of the problem is probably that everything is set to average. He's probably going to need to drop the price of his goods and increase the quality. Which might have him operate at a deficit, but is likely to bring in more customers and improve his pop/rep score.

[Henry Craven]

Alright, I've fired 3/4 and dropped the pricing and wages to Competitive and Low, respectively.

I don't remember having to change from the default settings before and have had my other boys run very successfully businesses with cheap-*** brick-a-brack on extortionate prices and slave labour without losing any Rep or Pop.

So... Maybe they're the broken ones!

[Azraeth]

I went ahead and copied the stats you gave for Henry over to McTesty, and Testy's business is set to:

High wages, Good stock, Insanely Cheap (which will probably hurt), and Local Radio

I'll go ahead and track losses/gains here over the next few days and see if I can't put my finger on what's going on. <3