Hey again builders!
We have a lot to get into!
Last time we talked about how the build menu works, and today is all about building management!
How are buildings managed in Boardwalk Builders? Primarily, this is done through an in-depth menu called the Inspection Menu. Today I'd like to show off the first tab of the Inspection Menu, the Information Tab. Through this, you can control each individual building's product offerings, number of employees, promotions, and other features. You can also drill down into the daily economy of each building to see if you're gaining or losing money - a very useful tool for the aspiring boardwalk tycoon!
Before we dive in, I need to explain a little bit about the way buildings are organized in Boardwalk Builders. Each building has a shop type. There are seven shop types in total - entertainment, food, media, health, art, gifts, and fashion. Customers don't like to visit each shop type more than once when they visit the boardwalk, so it's important to have a good variety of all business types to grow your boardwalk.
Information Tab Overview
The Information Tab shows a quick snapshot of what's happening with your selected shop. At the top is the name of the business, and below to the left is the building's shop type icon (in this case, it's a gift shop represented by the yellow present with blue bow). In the building's Stats Section, you can see the building level, capacity, popularity, service time, sales price, building costs, and overall revenue. Each of these plays an important part in how the building operates. Below that, you can see the building's Economy Section. We'll jump into each of these in detail.
The Stats Section
Building Level - The current level of the building. As customers visit, the building slowly levels up. Once a building reaches level three, it can be combined with another building to form a larger, higher-capacity building of the same shop type.
Capacity - The pink and blue people icons. This is the amount of customers that can be served by the building at a time.
Popularity - The green arrow. This is a measure of how much customers prefer this building over others of the same shop type.
Service Time - The clock icon. This tells the player how quickly a customer is served by this building, in game minutes.
Sales Price - The coins with the plus icon. This the amount of money you earn per sale. Each customer visiting the shop earns one sale.
Costs - The coins with the minus icon. This tells the player how much the shop costs per hour to maintain. The more staff you have, the more you need to pay to keep the shop open. There is also a baseline cost to maintain the shop, even if nobody is working there.
Revenue - The hand with coins. This tells you how much money your shop is currently making, and is updated every in-game hour.
Building stats can be controlled in a few ways. First, the product for the building can be adjusted by visiting the Operations Tab in the Inspection Menu (more on this in the next post!). This will have an effect on the building's service time and sales price. Second, you can combine this building with another to increase service capacity, sales price, and other stats. Finally, you can spend money to promote the building in the Operations Tab. This will temporarily drive up popularity so customers prefer this building over others.
The Economy Section
In this section, you can diagnose what is currently happening with your building's economy.
On the left is a graph of your building's revenue over time (for the last 5 hours). This is very useful if you find your boardwalk starting to lose money. Having a negative trend of revenue means the building isn't getting enough customers to make money.
On the right is the building's capacity vs. demand readouts. If the green bar is lower than the red bar, this means that more people want to come to your shop than you can currently serve - a good thing, but it means your missing out on money! It's a good sign that you need to expand this shop type's capacity on your boardwalk to take advantage of that extra demand. If the green bar is higher than the red bar, however, it means you might have expanded a little too fast, or that demand has changed and less people want to visit this type of shop now. In other words, your paying for extra capacity you can't fill. In this case, it might be best to downsize the shop by reducing the number of workers, or close the shop temporarily until you get more people visiting your boardwalk, or until demand for this type of shop goes up.
That was a lot of info! Next time, we'll cover the second tab of the inspection menu, the Operations Tab!
Happy building!
-Joel