Need some smart people to offer some opinions.

[Neonjoe]

I've been playing around with the crime city money buildings spreadsheet, trying to find a mathematical solution to the best upgrade to get next to maximize every possible angle. What do you think the validity behind a calculation something like this would be:

(Build cost * Build Time * ROI) / ( $/hr gain * $/hr/sq)

Basically you have three numbers up top you want to be low (ROI is return on investment, or how long it takes to recoup the cost of building the building, which most people reading this will already know). On the bottom you have two numbers you want to be high, $/hr gain is how much more income per hour the building will be making over the previous level of it, and $/hr/sq is the figure of how much income per hour the building makes divided by it's footprint on your neighborhood (LxW).

This basically gives you an arbitrary number, where lower is better. My question then to the forum think-tank, would be how valuable do you think that number would be based on the calculation used to find it?


Edit: What I'm basically trying to come up with, is a number that will not only calculate the value of the increase in income, but find a way to value your neighborhood space with it and provide a single number that can be used to valuate future upgrades. The issue at this point, is that it needs to incorporate the total number of collections per day on a building. Basically the number is over-inflating the value of the Laundromat due to it using the value of collecting all 288 times per day. If you can remember that, then I think it can be used to give some kind of useful information, but I don't know to what extent. If someone knew a way to add a % based collection number, based on the number of collections per day (say you collect from laundromat on average of 29 times per day so it's $/hr figures only reflect 10% of their full potential). I'm just brainstorming here to try and create an all-in-wonder mathematical solution for what do you build next, as I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to those kind of things. Any on-topic input would be valued.

Edit 2: In making more completely arbitrary changes to this number, I decided to take the $/hr/sq figure and square it, thereby greatly increasing the value of those buildings that have high output in comparison to their relative footprint (laundromat stays high because of it's small footprint), but it greatly decreases the value of things like the warehouse, since in reality, it's pretty terrible over-all.

Leaves the formula I'm using looking like this (Build cost * Build Time * ROI) / ( $/hr gain * ($/hr/sq)^2) Any thoughts?

Neonjoe

[mnju_03]

Count me out! :P

[Boom]

Im too smart for the question

[Maniaxe]

You do what now? Daggum! You done lost me when you start goin on about dem fancy math and such.

[King of the Dudes]

Say what now?

[Neonjoe]

More contribution?

[Dreno33]

NeonJoe, nice formula. It makes perfect sense.

EASY FIX to your concern about the (i.e. LM) inflation of collection(s)/day. All you have to do is edit the IPH figure on the values before entering those value into your equation.

EXAMPLE: Laundrymat

Let's say you only average ≈48 collections a day. Edit the income per hour to fit.


48 ÷ 24 = 2
That is 2 collections per hour (average)

1 Tycoon Laundry Mat: Level 10 = 413

413 x 2 = 826
That means 826 Per Hour for one lvl 10 LM (average)


Now, calculate your new IPH for that LM into your ROI, new IPH gain, and $/hr/sq. Then carry on with your formula as intended.

THIS WILL FIX THE INFLATION, if you understand what I meant.

Hope that helps,
Dreno33(:

[Maniaxe]

Ahhh hah see I knew there would be someone on here to talk to you late night besides us bunch of possibly inebriated muppets. Thanks Dreno.

[xclusiv]

Im too smart for the question

what he said.

[ShawnBB]

Great, guess I have to get involved after explaining so much about the gold buildings.

Here is what I thought.

Your equation is all about proportion, right?
It seems reasonable that all of the factor on the numerator stay as low as possible and all of the factor on the denominator stay as high as possible in order to make the building good.

But statistically it is wrong to simply calculate like this. Because your didn't consider anything about the data's range, mean or standard deviation.

If you do the ratio calculation, first of all you have to make sure that the data range's ratio is close. Imagine one factor on the bottom varies from 1 to 100, but the top factor varies from 1 to 1000000.
Then the final ratio would become completely pointless since the top factor dominates the whole thing.

And talking about the mean and STD, if the two data groups'
mean divided by STD. has a huge difference.
It would lost the meaning of the ratio test as well.

I wont do the calculation, but I'm pretty sure your result from the equation must be a mess instead of close values.

You know what I'm saying?:)

[Neonjoe]

What I ended up doing is calculating a percentage of the collections I made on each building per day. I then divided my arbitrary number by my percentage of daily collections. What this effectively did was make the value of very long collection buildings go up, since you have much less overall delay on collections. I still ended up estimating my 24 and 48 hour buildings at 90% to account for time between when they come available til the time I actually pick up the money, since real life happens. Most buildings I estimated around 90%, until getting down to the 6 hour and less, where I did some guesstimations about my lag time in picking up money stacking up until it put a collection point during my normal sleeping hours, leaving me to estimate about a 75% efficiency on collections, and then the 3 hour I estimated around 65%, 1 hour about 50% and laundromat about 7%. This definitely will put the longer buildings at a higher value, which for me is more realistic, but someone that can make nearly all their collections would have to valuate it to their own playstyle. I'm just trying to come up with something that anyone can use by just having to tweak the number only based on their play schedule, with the rest of the values being kind of a standard formula.

[Neonjoe]

Great, guess I have to get involved after explaining so much about the gold buildings.

Have a question for ya, joe.
What do you do with the gold building's build time? (you don't want to put it at 5 mins, because in that way your equation would broke)

Gold building's build time would not have any effect on the equation, since their build time is still measured in...... time?

[Dreno33]

@ShawnBB and NeonJoe. With Gold buildings CONSTRUCTION time (NOT upgrade time), it is ONLY accurate to compare them to other gold buildings, b/c the calculation is just to get the biggest bang for you buck (gold).

Make sense? It is kinda useless to compare the building of a building when the currency is completely different

[Neonjoe]

@ShawnBB and NeonJoe. With Gold buildings CONSTRUCTION time (NOT upgrade time), it is ONLY accurate to compare them to other gold buildings, b/c the calculation is just to get the biggest bang for you buck (gold).

Make sense? It is kinda useless to compare the building of a building when the currency is completely different

In my formula for build time I'm using a figure measured in hours, so for build time gold and normal buildings would be calculated exactly the same there.

[Dreno33]

In my formula for build time I'm using a figure measured in hours, so for build time gold and normal buildings would be calculated exactly the same there.

not for the COST, the cost is in a total different variable

[ShawnBB]

I just edited my answer on the first page, you might want to check it out.

Good job dreno! You are hitting the exact problem of his equation.

[Luciferianism]

I would like to comment on this thread only to add this, TL;DR.

[nopenopenope]

I would like to comment on this thread only to add this, TL;DR.

It's fairly apparent from your other posts that you haven't read the BoB guides either. Maybe hold off on providing others guidance before you do. Have a nice day.

[Luciferianism]

Wow. Okay ****head :/

[Neonjoe]

not for the COST, the cost is in a total different variable

The cost is a totally different variable, one that you never touched on in any of your previous posts, either of you. Every question was in regards to the time variable, which gold building or not doesn't matter in my equation. Gold building for my equation would only matter with the initial purchase, which you would have to find a way to valuate the initial gold cost in to a $ figure for in game cash. After that, it doesn't matter at all. Once it's built, all I'm doing is calculating what is the very best building to build at this exact moment in time, trying to include all relevant variables in to the equation. Any gold building you already have on the ground will fall right in to the equation seamlessly.

If you want to find a way to calculate when would be the opportune time to place gold buildings, that is something I'm not touching with a 10 ft pole, as it seems overall value gold is better spent on beefy ass items than gold buildings, since there is a giant plethora of money buildings in the game.

So really, I'm not sure what you guys are trying to get at on the gold building thing, the equation works for anything else right now, but what the whole discussion I was trying to get input on, was the validity of the number being produced. What other factors should be considered, etc.

[Hank]

gangsters and calculators dont mix, just upgrade the best money building you can afford and you will be fine.

[Dreno33]

gangsters and calculators dont mix

leaders and calculators do. I'm leading my mafia(:

[Neonjoe]

Great, guess I have to get involved after explaining so much about the gold buildings.

Here is what I thought.

Your equation is all about proportion, right?
It seems reasonable that all of the factor on the numerator stay as low as possible and all of the factor on the denominator stay as high as possible in order to make the building good.

But statistically it is wrong to simply calculate like this. Because your didn't consider anything about the data's range, mean or standard deviation.

If you do the ratio calculation, first of all you have to make sure that the data range's ratio is close. Imagine one factor on the bottom varies from 1 to 100, but the top factor varies from 1 to 1000000.
Then the final ratio would become completely pointless since the top factor dominates the whole thing.

And talking about the mean and STD, if the two data groups'
mean divided by STD. has a huge difference.
It would lost the meaning of the ratio test as well.

I wont do the calculation, but I'm pretty sure your result from the equation must be a mess instead of close values.

You know what I'm saying?:)


Here's the thing, both the numerator and the denominator are both going to be growing exponentially larger as the level of buildings increase. You have build time and cost in one, while you have the $/hr/area^2 in the other. It keeps things doing what I like to see at the moment, it's placing a value on time for building initially, as low level buildings get upgraded in to the mid ranges with a priority, but once things are in the mid level range, then your really high paying buildings begin to take priority as their $/area value begins increasing and outweighing the cheaper costs of the faster/cheaper upgrading buildings. This should play well in to the live game, as once you're getting these buildings in to the mid ranges all around, your economy is high enough to start moving away from the ROI focus and the concern about the upgrade costs, and it becomes more about how much bang you can get all at once.

I don't really know what you're saying, I have a small data set at the moment, but what I'm seeing so far is a kind of curve that puts a lvl 1 building for type b's starting off with a decent value, then falling off hard at level 2, and then working itself back up. Type A buildings are starting off poorly, and working up in value exponentially, although I have seen a few of them take a dip in the 4-7 level range.

[ShawnBB]

The cost is a totally different variable, one that you never touched on in any of your previous posts, either of you. Every question was in regards to the time variable, which gold building or not doesn't matter in my equation. Gold building for my equation would only matter with the initial purchase, which you would have to find a way to valuate the initial gold cost in to a $ figure for in game cash. After that, it doesn't matter at all. Once it's built, all I'm doing is calculating what is the very best building to build at this exact moment in time, trying to include all relevant variables in to the equation. Any gold building you already have on the ground will fall right in to the equation seamlessly.

If you want to find a way to calculate when would be the opportune time to place gold buildings, that is something I'm not touching with a 10 ft pole, as it seems overall value gold is better spent on beefy ass items than gold buildings, since there is a giant plethora of money buildings in the game.

So really, I'm not sure what you guys are trying to get at on the gold building thing, the equation works for anything else right now, but what the whole discussion I was trying to get input on, was the validity of the number being produced. What other factors should be considered, etc.


Your intention is good, but by simply jam them together using multiply and division like that is strongly against the rule of statistics. Which means the result implies nothing at all.
Your unit is like (time^5, space^2 over $) LOL
Seriously dude, stop abusing data like that.

Looks like you are a non believer. So I randomly picked two buildings,
night club and history museum.
The ratio for NC is 65510, HM is 45045

Here we go! HM just won the new best building title!

[Dreno33]

The cost is a totally different variable, one that you never touched on in any of your previous posts, either of you. Every question was in regards to the time variable, which gold building or not doesn't matter in my equation.


(Build cost * Build Time * ROI) / ( $/hr gain * $/hr/sq)

but it does.....

[ShawnBB]

but it does.....

Dreno, he is using the cash equivalent value for gold buildings,not gold cost.:(

The problem for him to put all gold buildings build time to 5 mins is that it caused an unproportional build time growth for gold buildings.

while cost is moving up, IpH is moving up, IpH per sqr is moving up, all of them are gradually increasing.
but the build time is not moving at all!

This leads to the general lower result for all gold buildings. While some trash gold building will be over valued a lot by its build time advantage.

[Neonjoe]

Your intention is good, but by simply jam them together using multiply and division like that is strongly against the rule of statistics. Which means the result implies nothing at all.
Your unit is like (time^5, space^2 over $) LOL
Seriously dude, stop abusing data like that.

Looks like you are a non believer. So I randomly picked two buildings,
night club and history museum.
The ratio for NC is 65510, HM is 45045

Here we go! HM just won the new best building title!

I think we're mis-understanding each other somewhere. I put HM and NC in to my formula on my spreadsheet (level 10 version upgrade). Now keep in mind in my formula, lower means better, and here is what I came out with.

3,356,744.14 - History Museum
5.61 - Nightclub

So if you're sitting on a level 9 history museum and a level 9 night club, my formula says it's about 750,000 times more efficient to build the level 10 night club.

[Neonjoe]

Dreno, he is using the cash equivalent value for gold buildings,not gold cost.:(

The problem for him to put all gold buildings build time to 5 mins is that it caused an unproportional build time growth for gold buildings.

while cost is moving up, IpH is moving up, IpH per sqr is moving up, all of them are gradually increasing.
but the build time is not moving at all!

This leads to the general lower result for all gold buildings. While some trash gold building will be over valued a lot by its build time advantage.

I'm not trying to look at a what is the best overall building though either, I'm looking at a 'What is best to build right at this second' scenario.

[murf]

I like the general idea of the formula, $/hr/sq is def integral in building. But, if you have no intention of selling certain buildings, then I don't think you need it when you are considering upgrades...I consider the footprint at that point a sunk cost for upgrades. i.e. if I'm going to keep both my Casino and GC Club, I don't see the upgrade for the GC club better just because it has a smaller footprint (6x6 vs 10x10)

Also, I'd have to look at the results, but my initial concern would be weightings...you are mixing items with different fundamentals (can't think of right word)...Build cost is in $$, Build Time is in hours, ROi is in days, etc...just using them as is may give more weight to one variable then another unknowingly.

[ShawnBB]

I think we're mis-understanding each other somewhere. I put HM and NC in to my formula on my spreadsheet (level 10 version upgrade). Now keep in mind in my formula, lower means better, and here is what I came out with.

3,356,744.14 - History Museum
5.61 - Nightclub

So if you're sitting on a level 9 history museum and a level 9 night club, my formula says it's about 750,000 times more efficient to build the level 10 night club.

I used non tycoon data. Please check where i did wrong if it is a misunderstanding
NIght club. Build cost 40000000. Build time 144. ROI 1515
IpH 29167. IpH /sq 456

40000000x144x1515/29167/456 = 656112. (sorry that I miss typed last time,it's actually a lot larger)

Here is the data of warehouse

3300x1.33x145/23/0.36 = 76861

Just found another winner....



Meanwhile, like murf mentioned as the game going the IpH /sq of a building has a less and less importance actually. Your way of squaring it is doing the reverse.

I'm not sure if a native speaker can convince you on this, your equation is logically correct but statistically incorrect due to the irregular jump for lot of the data.

[Ramshutu]

I think it's always best to word what you are trying to achieve, that way you can get at the meaning of the equation.

For example, how many $s do you pay for each $/hr gained for each square the building occupies for each hour of upgrade time.

Making it much more complicated starts to the point that you can't word it, it makes it more difficult to actually quantify what you are actually trying to calculate.

Not only that but you have the issue that you may need two calculations if you want to include two measures of 'goodness' for example, ROI is basically $/$/hr which is to an extent mutually exclusive from $/hr/hr which is the measure I prefer to use. The resulting equation would necessarily have to make a value judgement to determine 'which is best' thus negating the purpose of the equation...

[Cracka Jack]

Just a thought, may want to consider likelihood of robbery for buildings that pay out frequently. Lately I've shifted towards buildings from which I only have to collect every 24 or 48 hours, so I don't have to keep track of the timers on all my money buildings. Eventually, I get to the point where half of my buildings can be collected from at the same time every day.

However, if I fail to collect on time, that could be disastrous...waiting another day or two for half of my buildings to produce definitely sucks.

[murf]

Just a thought, may want to consider likelihood of robbery for buildings that pay out frequently. Lately I've shifted towards buildings from which I only have to collect every 24 or 48 hours, so I don't have to keep track of the timers on all my money buildings. Eventually, I get to the point where half of my buildings can be collected from at the same time every day.

However, if I fail to collect on time, that could be disastrous...waiting another day or two for half of my buildings to produce definitely sucks.

The way I do this is by adjusting the collection time I enter into my calculations...for instance, my NC I will collect a minimum of 2.4 x's a day (twice + once robbed), however 1-2 times a week I may collect 4 x's. So that's 5 x's 2.4 + 2 x's 4 or 20 collections per week, that's 2.857 collections per day or a collection every 8.4 hrs. I'm conservative and assume that I collect my NC every 9 hours on average. Some people do a similar thing by adjusting down the $$ collected using the same methodology.

[QPR]

"Need some smart people to offer some opinions."

That counts tony and the tiger out

[Ramshutu]

I just want to do some expansion of brackets with your equation:


(Build cost * Build Time * ROI) / ( $/hr gain * $/hr/sq)

This works out as

Cost(b) * Time(b) * ( (Time(b) + Income(g)/Cost(B))
/
Income(g) * Income(g) / sq.

G = gain/hr
B = build

The income/sq is misleading, I think you only need to add "sq" into the equation as the income gain is already considered, I will replace this with just sq.

You can simplify this by removing the items divided by themselves:

Cost(b) * Sq * Time(b) * ( (Time(b) + Income(g)/ Cost(b) )
/
Income(g)

It is, however, best to consider the items you want to be good and bad for the equation. For the above, small is good.

Bigger income per hour gain is good.
Bigger build time is bad.
Bigger number of squares is bad.
Bigger one off cost is Bad.

IMO, ROI is a useless metric. If we get the equation right, it would be taken into account by the values.

However, we do need to consider relative values and weightings, as has been mentioned. In my view, the number of squares isn't a big deal. In my view, beachside inn would tank compared to brownstone, but while I like the footprint, Income gain and upgrade time is king. So, I'll propose the following equation which is very similar to the above.

SquareRoot(Sq) * Time(b) * Cost(b) / R * Income(g)

Where R is the Ramshutu constant, and signifies the relative weighting given to income over build time and cost. For the sake of being an arsehole, the Ramshutu constant is defined as PI / square root of 2.

[Neonjoe]

I like the general idea of the formula, $/hr/sq is def integral in building. But, if you have no intention of selling certain buildings, then I don't think you need it when you are considering upgrades...I consider the footprint at that point a sunk cost for upgrades. i.e. if I'm going to keep both my Casino and GC Club, I don't see the upgrade for the GC club better just because it has a smaller footprint (6x6 vs 10x10)

Also, I'd have to look at the results, but my initial concern would be weightings...you are mixing items with different fundamentals (can't think of right word)...Build cost is in $$, Build Time is in hours, ROi is in days, etc...just using them as is may give more weight to one variable then another unknowingly.


That's exactly the type of feedback I'm looking for. Any thoughts on how one might weight the stats better?

[Neonjoe]

I just want to do some expansion of brackets with your equation:


(Build cost * Build Time * ROI) / ( $/hr gain * $/hr/sq)

This works out as

Cost(b) * Time(b) * ( (Time(b) + Income(g)/Cost(B))
/
Income(g) * Income(g) / sq.

G = gain/hr
B = build

The income/sq is misleading, I think you only need to add "sq" into the equation as the income gain is already considered, I will replace this with just sq.

You can simplify this by removing the items divided by themselves:

Cost(b) * Sq * Time(b) * ( (Time(b) + Income(g)/ Cost(b) )
/
Income(g)

It is, however, best to consider the items you want to be good and bad for the equation. For the above, small is good.

Bigger income per hour gain is good.
Bigger build time is bad.
Bigger number of squares is bad.
Bigger one off cost is Bad.

IMO, ROI is a useless metric. If we get the equation right, it would be taken into account by the values.

However, we do need to consider relative values and weightings, as has been mentioned. In my view, the number of squares isn't a big deal. In my view, beachside inn would tank compared to brownstone, but while I like the footprint, Income gain and upgrade time is king. So, I'll propose the following equation which is very similar to the above.

SquareRoot(Sq) * Time(b) * Cost(b) / R * Income(g)

Where R is the Ramshutu constant, and signifies the relative weighting given to income over build time and cost. For the sake of being an arsehole, the Ramshutu constant is defined as PI / square root of 2.

I like it, but I'm still early in the game (less than 2 weeks played) so I'm not in to the late game yet. I've got my movie theaters down, and going to be placing lofts soon, so I'm not sure what is going to become extremely important. On another note, I don't plan on selling any buildings, my end state ideally would consist of a gigantic hood with every building placed (I don't plan on placing all the gold buildings, especially the Type B gold buildings, but I have put down 2 ice cream shops in my hood). That's why I'm looking for some help with how to weight the different variables according to overall importance, but I guess importance is going to depend heavily on individual playstyle. In my spreadsheet I have taken in to account collection efficiency, but I think that's something each individual is going to have to do for themselves. I'm just looking to get a sort of initial formula in place for buildings first, with weighting on proper stats, and then have it so people can fill in their own collection efficiency.

[murf]

That's exactly the type of feedback I'm looking for. Any thoughts on how one might weight the stats better?

Unfortunately, not off the top of my head...I don't do a lot of statistical manipulation, so I've have to think long and hard about it.