View manual text
BUSINESSTycoon
™
02442 BUS TYCOON ENG MANUAL
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02442 BUS TYCOON ENG MANUAL
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Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Object of the Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Starting A New Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Multiplayer Gaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Playing the game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Understanding the map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Units on the Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Command Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Navigating the map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Building Up Your Campus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Engineers are people too . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Marketers aren’t people (well, okay, maybe) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
World Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Direct Action Cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Keyboard Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
www.stardock.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Getting Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Online Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Walkthrough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Mini-Strategy Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Customer Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Warranty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Warnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Credits
Designed by: Bradley Wardell
Programming: Bradley Wardell, Michael Duffy, David Braun, Victor Lesperance
Artwork: Alex Gounaropoulos, Bradley Wardell, Mike Duffy
© 2000 Ubi Soft Entertainment.
Developped by Stardock Systems, Inc.
Business Tycoon is a registered trademark of Ubi Soft.
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Introduction
Welcome to Business Tycoon the game of ruthless world conquest via economic
domination.
The Object of the Game
The object of the game is to take over the world by building up your own
corporate empire and crushing your competitors in a particular market that you
choose to play in.
Business is War
In the real world things aren’t fair. The best product rarely wins. The most
original concept rarely gets created and often, hard work amounts to very little. If
these realities bother you then you should close this booklet and take this game
back to the store right now. Nevermind worrying about us, we’ve already marked
you with a highly sophisticated
tracking device that is integrated into
the paper of this user manual. We’ll
find you shortly.
However, if you are prepared to
face the business realties of the
world, you’ll probably like this game
or at least like it enough not to use
the CD as a frisbee for a few months.
Business Tycoon is about starting your
own company and building a corporation
that can survive in today’s competitive
world.
Because of the complexities of the
business world, we’ve had to cut a few
corners. For instance, you do not have to
hire accountants to take care of your
corporate taxes or any of that sort of thing.
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And while there are some pretty dastardly deeds that can be accomplished via the
direct action cards, we do not go into some of the minutia such as having to send
the buyer at your company’s wholesale distributor a stereo to give to his kid so that
he’ll talk to the purchasing guy at the local super store into carrying your product.
We are trying to make the game fun, not cruel afterall...
Specifically, you have to manufacture products and sell them into enough
regions of the world so that you can eventually achieve an effective monopoly in
your given market.
To do this you’ll need of course to build factories to make your products, research
centers to improve your products and keep them reasonably competitive, build
marketing buildings to create awareness and manipulate the perception of your
product and that of your opponent’s product as well as build numerous other
buildings.
In order to win, you’ll have to achieve some sort of balance of these things. You
may make the better mousetrap but the mice won’t be coming unless you have
some effective advertising for them and have it available in quantity in their local
mouse hole for their convenience.
The Object of the Game
The object of the game is to conquer the world.
You must become the undisputed market leader.
This means you must hold a certain percentage of
the market depending on the number of competitors at
the time.
This works out to be:
70% if there are 2 players.
65% if there are 3 players.
60% if there are 4 players.
55% if there are 5 players or more.
System Requirements
Windows 95/98/NT/2000
DirectX supported SVGA video card
Pentium 100 (Pentium-166 or better recommended)
16 MB RAM
Sound card recommended
Internet connection or IPX network required for multi-player games (28.8k
connection or better)
Double-speed or faster CD-ROM drive Mouse
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Getting Started
Starting A New Game
When you load up Business Tycoon, you are presented with these choices:
Start a new company
Continue your last company
Load a previous company
Create a Multiplayer Game
Join a Multiplayer Game
Stardock.net
Starting A New Company
So you’ve decided to go into business for yourself? When you choose this
option, you are starting a single player game. Now you must decide what your
specialty is:
Manufacturing
There’s an old saying “Being there is half the battle”. Manufacturing experts
play to be in as many places as possible. Your laborers will be able to produce twice as
many goods per employee when compared to non-manufacturer types. The game isn’t won
by having the best product, it is won based on who makes the most money and the
person who can supply the world has a big advantage. General Motors would be a
good example of a manufacturing expert.
Marketing
If you choose to play from the marketer’s point of view, you’re going to be
playing to win by controlling perception. Your Marketers will be twice as produc-tive
which means you’ll be able to create marketing campaigns faster and have more of them. Your
technology may not be the best and you may have problems meeting demand but
you will be the master at controlling the perception of your products, and those of
your opponents. Microsoft is the classic marketing strong company.
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Engineering
Choose Engineering if you want to play the game as someone who is good at
developing new technologies. Your Engineers will be twice as productive which means
you’ll be able to research new technologies much faster. You may have problems supplying
everyone in the world and you may risk being out-marketed as well. IBM is the
ultimate example of an engineering firm.
Once you’ve chosen what your expertise is, you’ll want to enter in your name
and the name of your company. From there, you’ll proceed to the player list
screen.
On the player list screen, you choose who you will be playing against. The
computer players have their own personalities (based on Stardock’s advanced
SDS/AI artificial intelligence engine). This means that each player will try a
different strategy based on modeling successful human opponent strategies.
By clicking on the arrow buttons on the left you can choose to add or delete
computer players from the game. When you are done, press “Start” and the game
will begin.
Multiplayer Gaming outside Stardock.net
Local Area Network (LAN) games
Starting a game on your LAN is the easiest way, just choose IPX as your join
game and it will find other Business Tycoon games on your network. If you’re creating a new game, simply choose to create a new game and wait for others to join.
If you are running OS/2 Warp, you’ll need to have TCP/IP installed on your LAN.
If you want to play a private internet game, you can do so by creating a network
game and telling other players what your IP address is. If you are on a Windows
95/NT LAN, your game will be listed when your friends select the “Join” network
game.
Stardock.net
Many games will boast that they can play on the Internet but most of them
require you to jump through a lot of hoops to get an Internet game going. Business
Tycoon has Stardock.net which is probably about as easy as you can get to find
Internet games. Just logon to the Internet, start Business Tycoon, and click on
“Stardock.net”. From there, you will be able to talk to other players and join games.
You cannot join games in progress. Games that are grayed out are games that are
in progress.
The left side of the screen shows all the people in your particular channel. If
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you are very new at Business Tycoon and the “Lobby” channel is relatively full,
you might want to go to the “Beginner’s channel”. Please keep in mind that it’s no
fun to be creamed by an expert. Many Internet games have become “unfun” because
experts will pretend to be new at the game and slaughter a newcomer. If you’ve
become an expert, you’ll be able to find other experts in the other channel.
Dealing with Latency
Lag time or “latency” is the amount of time it takes for your computer to send
data to another computer and get a signal back. If you are using a modem, a typical
ping time is about 300ms. But sometimes, the Internet will just “Freeze” up for a
few seconds. A few seconds is an eternity in an Internet game. If things get bad
enough, the music might start to skip or things may slow down to a crawl (or even
freeze). Don’t worry, your computer is not “crashed”. Just hit the Pause key to stop
the game and let it catch up for a second and then continue. The further someone
is away from you physically, the higher the chances of lag time. So before you
begin to play people who are on another continent, be aware of these things. You
can greatly reduce these affects by playing the game at “Normal” or “Fast”. Do not
play at higher speeds than that unless you are very comfortable with your
connection speed. Also note that Computer players tend to actually send out more
data that human players. This is because, well, humans are a lot slower than
computers at making moves. The computer players are thinking and acting all the
time. They don’t forget to hire those workers to keep up with demand or to keep
researching regions. So if you have 3 or 4 human players, get rid of the AI players
if you can (again, unless you are pretty comfortable with your connection).
Please keep in mind that Stardock.net is a public forum where people from
many parts of the world are on at the same time and are of different ages. Please
keep in mind that there are real people behind those names. The anonymous
nature of the Internet tends to make people forget that courtesy and kindness are
still important traits.
Choosing your market
Business Tycoon only comes with the computer market but other markets will
be made available shortly after release by Stardock, Stardock Developer Network
members, and third parties in the form of Dynamic Industry Modules (DIMs).
Choosing a world
You can pick where you want to play. A list of different worlds are available to
choose from.
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Your First Game
Welcome to Business Tycoon
Okay, this is the tough part. This is one of those times we wish we’d cloned
some already successful game, put on some neat graphics, and gone out the door
since everyone would know how to play it. “Of course, the TAB key brings up the
map in these games.” Unfortunately, there’s no other game quite like this so we’ll
have to go into some detail here.
You start the game with a single office which already has a garage. This is your
base of operations. Because the world map has randomly generated statistics,
starting in a third world region of the real world doesn’t mean anything here as the
poorest nation in Africa in the real world could be the best place in the world in
Business Tycoon.
Understanding the map
The Business Tycoon map is divided into regions. Depending on which demographic (the buttons at the bottom of the screen) you have selected, the regions are
colour coded to reflect the data of that demographic. You click on a given region
to select it which brings up its statistics into the two windows on the right.
Not only are the regions colour coded, they may have an icon of some type on
them. These icons can include:
Distribution Centers
Getting into distribution is very important in any industry. Your sales executives
are in charge of making sure your product is available in the region it is in
and 2 regions distant in every direction. However, being the market leader
in a region that has a distribution region will improve your adjacency
bonus. You see, being market leader gives you a 10% bonus to your demand value
(which we’ll discuss later) in every region adjacent. But being the market leader in
a region with a distribution center gives you a 30% bonus which can be very important if you fall behind technologically and need to use marketers to capture that
region. Distribu-tion Centers increase in cost as more are built in the game (by any
player). Hint: Build them in regions you feel you need to hold that you are already leading
in.
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Economic Centers
The little “Star” symbol on the map represents an economic center. These
regions, thanks to intense corporate sponsered empowerment zones and
community funding are much more wealthy with much stronger economies than
most other re-gions. You can build these zones but be warned, each one gets more
expensive. The more economic centers there are, the more they cost. Hint: Build
them only in regions you are strong in.
Special Resources
Some regions have a special characteristic just as the real world. Any large
corporate executive can tell you that sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you
sell but where you are selling it at. Special resources are primarily used for Direct
Action Cards (more on that later) In Business Tycoon, there are 5 special resources
that you can use:
Labour resource. Direct Action Cards that affect your laborers or ability to
build will require that you hold regions with this icon.
Marketing resource. Direct Action Cards that relate to influencing the
media or the world require this.
Research resource. Direct Action Cards that improve your research, steal
technology, or sabotage research will require that you hold regions with this
icon.
Underworld resource. By holding these regions, you will have access to
certain types that will be able to do very destructive things to your opponents.
Political Resources. Regions with this symbol are places where local or
national capitals are. Direct Action Cards that get you unfair favours and
bonus’s will require that you hold regions with this icon. Similarly, Direct Action
Cards that allow you to do unfair things to your opponents require these regions
as well.
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Demographics
The strategic way of winning Business Tycoon is to understand what people
want and making sure they get what they want. The buttons at the bottom of the
map screen allow you to view the map in different ways that will aid your decision
making.
Market Leader
The market leader demographic allows you to see who is #1 in a given
re-gion. Unlike traditional war games, winning a region isn’t an all or nothing
proposition, it just means that that player is making more money in that region
than anyone else. What’s the advantage of being the market leader then? First off,
it gives you an advantage for sales in adjacent regions. Secondly, if there are any
special resources in that region, they are available to you. The colour of the region
corresponds to the player’s chosen colour.
Distribution Penetration
For all you would be Bill Gates out there, the first thing you have to
realize is that the key to winning in any business isn’t technology, it isn’t even
marketing necessarily, it’s distribution. Your ability to get your products onto the
shelves or whatever it takes to get your widget in front of a potential customer. This
demo-graphic will display how good your market penetration is. The lighter the
colour, the better.
Wealth
There are two important factors in how much money you will make in
a given area. Their economy and their wealth. The wealth of a region is essentially
how much potential money there is to be made there. Economy is how rich or
poor the people there are. China would be a good example of where there is a lot
of money to be made but the people there are poor. You can combine the graphs
together by clicking on both light-radio buttons. Be wary of doing this though, a
lot of new players will try to just sell to the place that has the best average of both
traits. If your product is relatively inexpensive, sell it to places that have a high
wealth value. If your product is expensive, concentrate your sales executives in the
high economy regions. Most players won’t be able to really meet demand so there
is a strategy in picking the places where you will be most competitive. As with all
graphs, lighter colours are better.
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Market Share
To see how well you are doing from a market share standpoint, click on
the share button. The lighter the colour, the better your market position is.
Sales
Wealth and Econony will tell you how much you can potentially make
in a region. But sales will tell you not just what regions are the busiest sales regions
but you can look and see where a particular opponent is making all their money.
Region Desires
Possibly the most important demographic in the game, the region will
tell you what traits they value the most. The longer the bar, the more they care. For
example, let’s say you’re general motors and the computer player is Ford motor.
Your car has a great engine and thus is a high performance car but is somewhat
weak on its styling. If you’re trying to sell to a region that values styling and Ford
has a product that is higher in that trait, they’ll probably sell better even if their
product is somewhat more expensive. You can use marketing campaigns to
improve the perceived styling of your product (which will help) but this only goes
so far.
Employee Qualities
When it’s time to build a site you need to decide what you plan to do
there. The quality of the regional labor can greatly affect the productivity of your
site. Regions with a high labor value will allow you to manufacture products faster.
Similarly, regions with a high engineering and marketing score will yield better
employees of that type. The recreational value, believe it or not, is possibly the
most important trait since that indicates how nice of a place the region is. The nicer
the place, the easier it is to keep your good employees and keep morale up. The
cost of living affects how much your employees cost. These attributes can make up
to a 30% difference in your productivity so pay heed to them.
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Units on the Map
Sales Executives
Your sales executives are essentially the economic version of your armies. They
are the ones who make sure your products are available in the region they are in
and 2 regions out in every direction. When you click on your sales executive (the
one that has your colour), it’ll say “Yes?”. By right-clicking on a destination region,
your sales executive will move to that destination. Choosing where to move your
sales executive is crucial to your success. Use the demographics screens to determine
the best place to move your sales executives. Your company automatically gains a
new sales executive at the beginning of the year if your company has grown enough
in revenue. You can click on your opponents’ sales executives to get an idea of what
they are selling and how much they are pricing it for. The market penetration that
sales executives give does not come instantly. It takes 3 years for you to gain full
market penetration so don’t expect to jump into a region with the wonder product
and begin making the big sales.
Marketing Campaigns
Marketing Campaigns behave as the “commando” troops for your com-pany.
You send them to regions of the world that you feel you absolutely must control.
To use one, simply click on one and send it to where you want it to go by right
clicking on the destination. You create marketing campaigns by building a marketing
office and hiring marketers to create the campaigns. You can hit F1 for details on
each unit.
Your Site
The minitature version of your office site on the map is where you
have a site. You can build new sites by clicking on the “build” button. Each new
site costs more to build than the last one (due to higher overhead of inter-site
communications). The small stick-like buildings on the map that are colour-coded
represent your opponents’ sites.
Enemy Sites
Your competitors will also of course be building offices and factories. When
you see a little flag in a region, that means an opponent has an office site there.
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Command Buttons
When you begin your game, not all these buttons will be available. Only as you
construct the proper buildings will these buttons appear.
World Map
The main map is where you control all the action. From anywhere in the
game, you can always get back to the main map by pressing this button.
Factory Screen
The factory screen controls all your production. On this screen you set your
price and can monitor your supply and demand of your product.
Marketing Screen
This button will take you to the marketing screen. The marketing screen
allows you to create campaigns which affect the perception of products and
companies.
Research Screen
The research screen is from which you can improve your product and
become more compettitive.
Intelligence Screen
The intelligence building allows you to gather information on you and your
opponents. Eventually, enough intelligence buildings will allow you to see all the
region data in the world without having to individually investiage it.
Site Screen
This button will take you to the site screen from where you can construct
buildings to improve your company.
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Navigating the map
To get around the map, you can move your mouse to the edges of the screen.
OS/2 users running the windowed version can move their mouse to the edges of
the window to get the map to scroll. You can also navigate around the map by
clicking on the mini-map on the top right hand side.
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Your Office
Building Up Your Site
Your office site is where you build up the infrastructure necessary to conquer
the world. By clicking on the blank areas and then pressing the upgrade button,
you can (if you have enough money) build new buildings or upgrade existing ones
in order to increase productivity and make room for more employees. At the
bottom right you can see your morale. If you go in debt, company morale will start
to go down as people begin to worry about their jobs. If your morale goes to 0, you
go out of business. Not being the market leader in the region your site is located
will also lower morale. Luckily, you can improve your morale by building
recreational buildings (or at the very least making sure you build in a decent
recreational area).
This section will discuss the various buildings.
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Factories
Your garage (which can be upgraded to a factory and beyond) is where your
products are manufactured. By single clicking on the building, you can hire and
fire employees by adjusting the slider control. The little red area on the left (where
you hire/fire employees) displays the minimum number of employees you have to
keep on hand to function. If you double click on a building you are taken directly
to that building’s screen (if applicable).
Sales Office
Initially, your site will only be able to sell to the region that it is in. In effect,
your office site will behave like a non-mobile sales executive except it only sells to
the region it is in and not the surrounding regions. Sales offices will increase the
radius of sales. Each upgrade to the sales office increases the radii of surrounding
regions to which you can sell without a sales executive (up to a maximum of four
regions away).
Research Office
Your research office is where products are improved as you invent new
technologies to introduce to your products. By single clicking on it, you can
hire/fire engineers by moving the slider on the left side of the screen. Double
clicking on the building will take you to the Engineering screen.
Marketing Office
By building a marketing office, you gain the ability to create marketing
campaigns (after hiring marketers of course). As you create marketing campaigns,
the number of marketers necessary to maintain that campaign increases. Double
clicking on the building will take you to the Marketing screen.
Happy Fun Land
Recreational buildings you create allow you to increase morale at your site.
Though the buildings may seem expensive, this is quickly offset by the gains in the
productivity of your workers. And remember, do not taunt Happy Fun Land!
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Training Center
The best way to get the most out of your employees is to build an on site
training center. Each level of training center increases your employee’s productivity
by 25%. You’ll find it virtually impossible to win at higher levels against the AI or
against an experienced human player unless you’ve built at least a couple of these.
Company Stores
Company stores and other kinds of perks are a great way of getting away with
not having to pay your employees so much. You’d be surprised how much a
conviently located store for your employees will lower the employee’s costs in time
and money and thus save you from having to pay them so much.
Intelligence Buildings
The phrase “Know thy enemy” is as true in business as it is in war. Each time
you upgrade this building, new graphics will become available for you to read on
the graphs screen.
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Manufacturing
Meeting Demand
There are two basic ways of meeting
demand: Hire or fire employees or
modify your price. The Manufacturing
screen allows you to analyze the
demand of your product and change
prices. By double clicking on the labor
points button at the top right of the
screen you can return to the site screen.
Pricing your Product
The entry field on the right allows you to change your price. Simply enter the
price you want and press the [Enter] key to make the change official. Be careful
with this as you need to make sure you have enough gross profit to cover your
expenses. The gross profit of your product is merely how much it takes to build it
and does not take into account labor, marketing, engineering, or other costs.
How to hire/fire people quickly from this screen
If there are any flaws in the user interface of Business Tycoon, this is it. You
cannot hire or fire employees on this particular screen. The manufacturing screen’s
only user input is in changing the price of the product which will allow you to
observe changes in demand.
But there was a method to our madness, we wanted to discourage people from
using the hiring and firing of employees as just another slider. If you’re grossly not
meeting demand or grossly over producing, then adjusting your labor force makes
sense, but if you’re close to matching demand, then modifying the price makes the
most sense.
The user interface does allow you to quickly go back and forth to the site screen
- where you do hire/fire employees. Double-Click on the top right hand button
that lists how many labor points you have and you’ll return to the site screen. From
there, you can change your labor force and then double click on the appropriate
building you want to go to.
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Engineering
Engineers are people too
The research screen is where you can create new technologies to be used in your
product line. On this screen you will see a picture of your product in its current
state. To the right is information on how long the currently selected technology will
take to research. Below that is a button that will allow you to begin researching a
given technology as well as a progress bar that fills up as you near completing the
research.
Below, you will see how your product stacks up compared to your competitors.
Remember, all products are graded on a “curve”. Your new Pendium II 400 might
be fast but if your competitor is selling a Pendium III 600 then your perfor-mance
rating is probably going to be a “C” or lower because it’s relative to your opponents.
On the left side are two lists. The top list is the technologies currently available.
The ones available here and now are coloured white. The ones that will become
available due to what is currently being researched will show up as gray. The second
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list box is your research queue. You can place a few technologies into the queue
and they will automatically be researched in that order. You can empty the queue
if you make a mistake.
You can speed up your research efforts by hiring more engineers or improving
the productivity of your existing engineers (via new buildings on your site).
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Marketing
Marketers aren’t people (well, okay, maybe)
In essence, marketing is about controlling perception. The marketer be-lieves
that perception is reality. However, if you ever spoke to a marketer, he or she would
likely say that their job is “educating the public”. The perception is reality mantra
turns out to work pretty well in practice. For example, in the PC industry some
years ago, the Intel Pentium chip had a floating point bug that caused calculation
errors in extremely rare cases. In practice, no one ever saw this problem or would
be affected by it (or at least so few people that
it didn’t matter). Unfortunately for Intel, they
lost control of perception which rapidly create
a scenario where Intel ended up giving a free
replacement to anyone who asked in order to
maintain the perception that they aren’t a
bunch of greedy corpo-rate types.
Car commercials rarely focus on what the
car actually does. Instead, they try to create
manage the perception of what type of person
uses the car. Every market has its own style of
trying to manage perception but when it gets
right down to it, it is perception, not reality
that is being manipulated.
The Business Tycoon works the same way. On your site, you can build a
marketing office. When you hire marketers, they add marketing resource points to
your company’s resource pool. You use these resource points to create marketing
campaigns from this screen. But here’s where things get tricky, when you create a
marketing campaign, it doesn’t just go off and do its own thing, you have to keep
marketers on that particular campaign. In other words, as you create campaigns,
some of your marketers are used up in maintaining those campaigns leaving fewer
to create new ones. Eventually, all your marketers will be used up in maintaining
your existing marketing campaigns leaving not free ones to create new ones. At that
point, you either have to build more marketing buildings to hire more marketers
or kill off some of the marketing campaigns already in play.
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The number of resource points you have is based on how many marketers you
have plus other factors that affect the productivity of your marketers (such as morale).
You cannot fire the marketers that are maintaining your marketing campaigns so if
things get bad for your company, you’ll need to terminate those campaigns first
and then downsize those marketers!
When you decide to create a marketing campaign, you have to decide what
kind of campaign to create - a positive one or a negative one.
Positive Marketing Campaigns
Positive marketing campaigns are the most common and least-risky to do. In
essence, they are campaigns designed to improve the perception of a given quality
of your product. Of course, there are different levels of marketing campaigns. Each
level is more powerful than the last but more expensive to create and maintain.
To get access to the higher levels of marketing, you have to upgrade your
marketing building. Negative marketing campaigns require one level higher of an
upgrade to create than a positive one.
Negative Marketing Campaigns
Negative Marketing Campaigns are more powerful than positive ones but also
much riskier. With a negative campaign, you target a specific competitor and
depending on what level the marketing campaign is, damage the perception of that
opponent’s products. The risky part is in the fact that you’re not actually helping
yourself, just hurting a specific competitor. If you pump enough money into a
negative campaign, you can eliminate your opponent in a region of the world. But
if you’re not the #2 company in that region, that competitor is merely replaced by
another.
Strategies for Marketing
While entire books have been written on this topic, in The Business Tycoon, it
is effective to use your marketing campaigns like you would commando units.
Send them to regions that you feel you strategically must have. Whether that be
regions in which you have offices in, regions that have special resources that your
direct action cards require, regions that are very wealthy and economically strong,
or enemy regions in which you want to hurt your enemy’s morale, the decision is
up to you.
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World Events
Losers sure are lucky!
Well, at least they are in Business Tycoon. A typical Business Tycoon game may
last 20 to 30 game years. During that time, a lot of important world events may
occur that will affect the course of the game. Strangely enough, events tend to work
to help the company that is in last place or hurt the companies that are leading. A
typical example would be an economic recession that seems to be at its worst in the
regions that the leader is making the most money. An economic explosion, on the
other hand, would seem to take place more often than not in regions where the
companies that are hurting are still leading in.
There are lots and lots of different events that occur in the game and many you
won’t see until after playing the game for many months. Some events may just give
government grants to a particular player (which is a pretty straight forward
monetary transfer) all the way to more subtle ones such as an explosion that takes
out one of your buildings.
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Direct Action Cards
Doing unto others as you wouldn’t want them to do unto you
No game or simulation can simulate 100% of how the real world behaves.
Business Tycoon is a corporate conquest game that tries to favour action over
having too many “realistic features”. For example, in the real world companies
routinely try to lure away key executives from their competitors. This has a
devastating effect on the competitor since “brain drain” is major reason for a
company to lose its competitive edge. But in a game or simulator, how does one
go about simulating this? Do you have a game screen that takes you to a special
“Trip to Seattle on the corporate jet?” or a list box listing all the different gifts and
signing bonus’s you could give to a potential executive to get him or her to leave
your competitor? And if you did put all this into a game, would you not then open
the door to others features that many would consider just as relevant such as
buying up other companies, government grants, lawsuits, patents, etc.?
Business Tycoon’s answer to all this comes in the form of Direct Action Cards.
In a nutshell, here’s how they work: Each card allows you to do a specific task in
the game. To use that card, you must be the market leader in regions that have
special resources (the regions with the resource icons on them). At the top of the
card, you can see what resources this card specifically needs.
The types resources the card requires to use will depend on what type of action
the card does. For example, exploiting child labor would require you to be the
market leader in a red $ region which signifies that it is a very poor region of the
world.
You begin the game with 3 Direct Action Cards. At the beginning of each year
you will receive a new direct action card up until you obtain 7 (after which you
won’t get any more until you have used some).
At the beginning of each year, the regions with special resources that you are
the market leader in go into your resource pool. When you have enough resources
to use a card, it will light up and allow you to use it.
Be careful how you use the card, however. If you’re in the lead, for example,
you probably don’t want to use cards that your opponents will get afterwards.
If you’re losing, your best bet is to try to pick on the winner if possible.
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Keyboard Help
Key
Function
Esc.
Options Screen
F1
Help Screen
F2
Context Sensitive Tutorial
F3
Sales Statistics
Tab
Send message to other players.
Pause
Pause the game
+
Speed up game
-
Slow down game
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www.stardock.com
Getting Updates
While we do not expect that you’ll need any updates to Business Tycoon, you
may want to take advantage of the free updates that Stardock will pro-vide over the
course of your use of the game.
At http://www.stardock.com you’ll find lots of add-ons, links to user based web
pages and a lot more!
Online Support
Online support can be found by emailing [email protected]. There is a
website interface for sending in queries that will allow you to obtain the fastest
response times:
http://www.stardock.com/techsupp/preport.html
Common Problems
My Mouse is moving very jerky on the screen!
If you’re running Windows 95 or NT, your graphics card may have limited
DirectX support. To get around this, run Business Tycoon with the MOUSE parameter:
c:\program files\CorpMachine\>machine mouse
or you can simply type “mouse” (no quotes) into the parameters field in the
Business Tycoon properties from Windows.
Stardock.net just hangs (or gives an error) when I click on it!
Sometimes the Internet has a hickup where certain servers are not available for
periods of time. Just try again later. You can also try pinging ent.stardock.com and
see if there is any response.
My music begins to skip and then the game seems to freeze when I’m playing an Internet
game!
If latency gets bad enough, your send buffer will get full. Hit the pause key and
wait for everyone to catch up before continuing. Try playing the game at a slower
speed (using the + or - key).
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Walkthrough
Note: This portion is still based on an older beta and thus
some of the information is not accurate but it should serve as
a good start.
Starting the game
The only real decision that needs to be made prior to starting the game is what
type of specialty you will be: manufacturing, marketing, or researching. Each
specialty is twice as efficient at its job than the players of another specialty.
Depending on your strategies for playing the game, you may decide that one
specialty better suits your style of gameplay.
Getting oriented
Take a quick look at the “popup” help items on the main screen.
These will only appear by default on the easiest level, but then can be
recalled any time by hitting F2. Similar screens will also appear in your
marketing, site, research, and production windows (more about those
later).
Use the +/- adjust the speed of the game. Initially, Fast
or Faster are probably the best choices, though you’ll quickly
find that multi-player games become a lot more challenging when
playing on Fastest or higher. Press the Pause key (upper right of your
keyboard) at any time to pause the game. Press it again to resume play.
Let’s Play
Click on a region adjacent to your initial starting region and press
Investigate Region in the right-hand panel. The Investigate Region
Button.
Click on the Site button on the right-hand side (not the one
toward the bottom) to enter the Site screen.
Site Screen
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Site Screen
Click on your garage. This is where you initially manufacture your product. Use
the slider to hire some workers (20 should be good to start).
Click on the empty “plot” in the upper-right of the site map. This is where your
research buildings are built. Note in the top display that it will cost $6 million for
the next upgrade. Upgrade the building (which actually builds it in this case) as
soon as you can.
Double-click on the garage to enter the Production Screen.
Note: once a building is constructed, you can double-click on it to enter the corresponding
screen for the building (if available).
Production Screen
The production screen is, in many ways, where you win or lose the game. Set
your prices too high and demand will fall off. Sell an inferior product, when
compared with your competi-tion, and watch the toads conquer the world as your
corporation goes bankrupt.
Since all products are about equal in the beginning of the game, you can
overcharge a great deal. In the computer market, a price of $6500 (be sure to hit
Enter to make the change official) is about right to start with. In only a short time
(In terms of game years), you will have to return to this screen and adjust your price
to be more competitive. But, for the initial stages of the game, he who has the most
money comes out ahead.
Note the demand on the bottom of this screen and the corresponding figure for
how many units you are producing each period. Overproducing is not a big factor
initially, but you’ll want to keep an eye out so that the amount you are supplying
is relatively close to demand.
To get back to the Site screen to adjust your production (if desired), click on the
little “button” in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Back on the Site Screen
By now, your Engineering Lab should have been constructed.29 However, we
need to check some things out before hiring any workers (why waste the money on
their salaries when they are not doing anything?).
Click on the lower-left “plot” and start building your first Marketing Office.
At this time, you may want to hire an additional 5-10 workers, on the expectation
that demand has increased while you have been working with other things.
Return to the Main Map by clicking on Done or on the mini-map near where
your site is highlighted.
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Back on the Main Map
By now, you’ve investigated two regions (your initial region and the one you
started investigating before going to the Site Map). Click on another region
adjacent to your first and investigate it as well.
If this is your first time playing, now might be a good time to pause the game
while you learn what the inhabitants of these regions want.
Click on any of the regions that you’ve currently researched.
Click the Region button on the bottom toolbar. The window pane in the lowerright of the screen contains the Regional Desires for that region (Reliability,
Performance, etc.). By researching these traits, you can improve your product and
make it more attractive to different regions. The longer the bar in this window, the
more the regions desire that attribute (w/green bars being the most desirable).
Check the other regions you’ve investigated as well. Their desires are relatively
unimportant during the first year or two of the game (since your products have not
been enhanced yet), but you will quickly find that they will buy a lot more of
products that they like (vs. your competitors).
By now, you should have investigated your third region (if you did not pause
the game-if you did, unpause now). Start investigating a fourth region.
Goto the Production Screen by clicking the Produce button.
Production Screen
How is your demand relative to supply? If you are under or overproduc-ing and
click the button at the top of the screen to jump to the Site Map.
Site Map
Adjust your production as needed based on the info you just got off the
Production screen.
If you have more than $3 million, now might be the time to upgrade your
Garage to increase your manufacturing capacity. If you do not do this now, keep
in mind the fact that you will need to upgrade at some point. When is now up to
you, but the sooner the better if your demand is higher than you can supply.
Another choice that can be made now (or later) is whether to invest $1 million
in a Sales Building (center-top “plot”). This building functions much like your
salespersons on the main screen (more about them in a minute). By building Sales
buildings, you can sell to the regions surrounding your site without needing a sales
executive in the area.
Click on the Engineering Lab and hire some workers. Then, double-click on the
Lab to enter the Research Screen.
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Research Screen
The Research Screen is where your engineers work on upgrading components
of your product. For the default computer market, there are seven components
(plus the case) that have attributes that can be improved via research.
Some components have a larger effect than others on specific attributes. For
example, improving the performance of your CPU (the “chip” to the left of the case)
will boost performance the most. Similarly, increasing the ease of use of the operating
system (the OS 4 box on the right) will help lift the overall ease of use of the product.
Researching product upgrades is not an exact process. Since different regions in
the game desire different things (remember the Regional Desires indicator on the
main map?), improving one aspect of your product at the expense of another could
cost you later in the game. Juggling all aspects of the product, while simultaneously
marketing the product, investigating new regions, upgrading your sites, and
competing against other players may seem daunting at first, but you’ll quickly get
the hang of things.
For now, recall the Regional Desires of the regions around you. If, for example,
they really liked a product’s Aesthetics, increase the Aesthetics of a component and
hit the Research button to start your engineers working.
Initially, since you have few researchers, you can only increase the attributes by
a small amount without requiring enormous amounts of time. While you are
learning, you may want to limit individual research projects to somewhere between
15 and 30 weeks duration. Later, as you upgrade your engineering labs, you’ll be
able to research things more quickly.
If you start researching something and change your mind while it is still in the
Research Queue (the listing to the lower-right), select it and hit the X to prevent
that particular project from ever being started. Note that you cannot cancel the
current research project, so be sure not to start one that will take many years.
Return to the Main Map by clicking Done.
Main Map
By now, the sales executive in your home region should have a little number
next to him. This represents the number of sales executives that are in a particular
region. As your corporation increases in revenue earned, you will gain additional
sales executives.
Click on your sales executive. Notice how the display on the right changes to
display him and the attributes of the product he is currently selling. If there is more
than one sales executive in a region, you can select them simply by clicking on
them (notice how the graphic becomes highlighted). Any selected sales executives
or marketing units (more on them in a minute) will move to any region that you
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have researched when you click the right mouse button (RMB) in that region. Try
moving him to another region now. Your sales executives will sell to the region they
are currently in as well as surrounding regions, though at a decreasing level of
effectiveness the more distant those regions are.
Now might be a good time to click the Share button on the right. This will
show you who is selling products in the current region, the number of products
sold, and the number of each product de-manded by the population. If the
number sold is less than the number demanded, you may need to increase
production. This might also be a good time to consider dropping your selling price
as you research cheaper and cheaper components.
Start investigating some additional regions. Notice that they become more
expensive to research the further they are from your site.
Now we come to the most misunderstood, but most powerful, units in the
game--marketers.
Return to the Site Map, hire some marketers, enter the Marketing screen
(remember how to get to screens from the Site Map)?
Marketing Screen
Here is where you will develop the marketing campaigns to assure your utter
domination of the world. As you upgrade your marketing buildings, additional
types of marketing campaigns (positive and negative) will become available.
For now, think about the Regional Desire of the areas around your initial site and
develop a radio campaign based on the desired attributes. Click on the attribute on
the left and Create Campaign on the right. Go back to the Main Map and continue
investigating regions, adjusting production, and researching new components until
your first marketing unit appears (it will look like a small card in your home region).
Click on this marketing unit and move it to a neighbouring region by using the
RMB on the target region (just like your sales units).
Conclusion
By now, you’ve gotten a firm start on the basics of Business Tycoon. Practice
makes perfect. As you continue playing, you will quickly get the hang of
manipulating all the various facets of the game.
Other Resources
Visit http://www.stardock.com to find links to sites dedicated to the strategy of
Business Tycoon.
Business Tycoon is a game that is very easy to play but very hard to master
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Mini-Strategy Guide
Introduction
Don’t you hate buying a game and then having to put out another $20 to buy
some strategy guide just to get some basic strategies down? We sure do and for that
reason, we’re including this mini-strategy guide with the game.
Strategy guides are good at getting into great depth in the game but some basic
ideas on how to play and win shouldn’t cost money.
So here are some different strategies at playing Business Tycoon.
The Regions
Pick the regions you target very carefully. Most contemporary strategy games
rely more on your fast reflexes than through analytical evaluation of your situation.
This isn’t a bad thing but it’s not the way to succeed at Business Tycoon.
In Business Tycoon, control of a region gives you advantages in the region you
are in plus in the regions surrounding that region. Regions with distribu-tion centers (regions with the big bluish buildings) give you a huge bonus in that region
and surrounding regions if you control them.
How much can this make a difference? If you click on the bonus button on the
top right hand corner (by the mini map), you can see that region adjacencies can make
it so that someone else’s product has to be twice as good as yours to kick you out.
Keep an eye on the competition
Information is power in Business Tycoon. Knowing why you are winning or
not winning in a given region is what separates new players from experienced
players. The big difference comes into play by directly comparing your product
versus your opponent’s product.
If you’re not winning in a region, here are some of the things to look for:
(1) Cost. How much does your product cost versus your opponent.
(2) Quality. Look at what the region wants versus what your product has in that
area. It’s not enough that your product is overall “better” than your opponent,
what matters is whether your product is better in the areas that that region cares
about. Click on the region demographic button at the bottom and click on the
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region you want to know about. Let’s say the scale is from 1 to 100. If they want
ease of use and the bar is very long, say 80% as long as it could be and your
opponent’s ease of use is twice as high as yours, he’s getting twice as many points
overall. You could have the most reliable, fastest computer out there and if his ease
of use it twice yours, even if both of you have very poor ratings, he’s probably
going to win that region.
(3)
Adjacency bonuses. Click on the bonus button on the middle right of the
screen. If his bonuses are much higher than yours, that means you need to be that
much better. This is used to represent the cold hard unfair world. If all was fair, we
wouldn’t be stuck with Windows 95, we’d be using Amigas or Macs, or OS/2 or
something probably. But market momentum is something you have to deal with.
(4)
Supply. If your product is better, cheaper, and better known in the area, make
sure that you are supplying their demand. If you are not producing enough
product, that means the store shelves in some places are empty.
(5)
Marketing. Check to see if there are any marketing campaigns nearby. A TV
advertising campaign can more than double the perceived value of an opponent’s
product.
(6) Direct Action Cards. Pay close attention to what cards are played. They can
knock you out of a region or make your prestige go way down or worse.
Research Research Research
It’s important that you research new technologies for your product as soon as
you can. When I play, I usually alternative between researching technologies that
lower my cost to produce and technologies that improve the quality of my product
specifically in areas that I care about.
There are a few traits in Business Tycoon which are subtle and few take advantage of them. In the computer market, make sure you remember to decrease the
number of manufacturing hours. On the accessory (video card), you can bring the
time to produce from 22 hours to 14 hours with very little expense. The monitor
is another one that is good to bring down quickly.
One of the trickier issues in Business Tycoon’s computer market is how to raise
aesthetics. It’s not straight forward but you can click on the case and change the
size of it. The smaller the case, the higher the aesthetics value of it goes. To get to
those smaller cases, you have to research techs to decrease the size of your components.
Look carefully at how much gain you get by improving a technology. Look at
the number of units actually increased. Sure, you can increase the reliability of
your computer’s memory but it doesn’t have much impact on the computer’s
overall reliability. Don’t spend 3 years researching something that only adds a few
points to your overall quality.
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Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. These are the friends of the
marketer
There’s one rule in Business Tycoon’s marketing: Bigger is better if you can
afford it. A TV ad campaign may cost you $10 million to produce but it only
requires 2000 more marketing resources to maintain. So don’t fool yourself into
thinking that you can go and create a bunch of little marketing campaigns and
over-whelm your opponent. This is not usually the way to go late in the game.
Early on it is probably a good way to go but eventually you will want to kill off
those old marketing campaigns and create new ones.
Deciding when to create negative marketers versus positive ones is also a real
trick. Basically, don’t make negative marketers unless you’re in second place (unless
you’re in a multiplayer game and you just want to mix things up).
Pricing
Every top Business Tycoon player will tell you that the key to victory is to overprice your products whenever you can. Just think to yourself “What would Bill
Gates do in a time like this?” The smart companies will price their stuff as high as
possible. Don’t worry about what your opponents are pricing their stuff at unless
it’s cutting into your sales too much. Try to maintain at least a 20% profit margin.
Real companies try to maintain somewhere between 15% and 35% profit margins
and you need to do that too.
Many people will slowly go out of business because they keep lowering their
price to the point where they aren’t making enough money to compete. Better to
be in fourth place but very profitable than in second place and making no money
at all. Only if someone is on the verge of winning should you really worry about
what place you are in, worry more about how much money you’re making.
The Cards
When you’re new to the game, it might seem like the cards aren’t very
powerful. But there are cards and then there are cards. The more powerful cards are
rarer so make sure you always keep your hand open for drawing new cards every
year. Before the end of the year, go through and get rid of the cards you won’t use
so that you can be prepared to receive the good cards. Remember, success =
preparation meets opportunity. A card that gives you a $30 million grant from the
government can help turn things around in a hurry. But if you don’t have any card
slots open, you’ll never get that card.
Hopefully, these tips will help you on your way to becoming a master at
Business Tycoon.
- Brad Wardell designer of Business Tycoon.
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Customer support
If you are experiencing problems with either the installation or running of
Business Tycoon, you can ring our Online Support line on 0181-944-9000. You
must be able to provide the following information:
Type and speed of processor
Amount and type of Memory
Soundcard specification
CD-ROM type and speed
Hard Drive capacity and space remaining
Operating System
Direct X driver information
This information is necessary for our online support staff to deal effectively with
any problems you may be having installing and running the game.
Warranty
Ubi Soft Entertainment Ltd warrants the purchaser of the original material that
the compact disk (CD) supplied with this product will be faultless for a period of
normal use.
The software together with this manual and the accompanying booklet are sold
under copyright with all rights reserved by Ubi Soft Entertainment Ltd. No part of
this manual nor the products accompanying it may be copied, reproduced,
translated or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written
consent of Ubi Soft Entertainment Ltd. This software, CD and documentation are
sold as is. Except for manufacturing faults in the CD, Ubi Soft Entertainment Ltd
does not cover any other written or oral warranty concerning this software, CD and
documentation, whether direct or implicit, including, and without limitation of
the above, warranties and conditions for commercialisation and specific use, even
if the company has been informed of such use. In the same way, risks related to
use, results and performances of this software, CD and documentation are left at
your entire responsibility. Ubi Soft Entertainment Ltd will in no case be held
responsible to yourself or a third party in the case of indirect, consecutive or
specific damage related to the possession, use or poor operation of this product,
including and without limitation, damage to property and, in the limits provided
for by law, damage in case of injuries, even if Ubi Soft Entertainment Ltd was
informed of the possibility of such damage or loss. The purchaser tacitly accepts
the fact that, in case of legal complaint (contract, prejudice or other), Ubi Soft
Entertainment Ltd’s responsibility will not be binding beyond the amount of the
initial price paid for this product.
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Warnings
Health warning: Some people are susceptible to epileptic seizures or loss of
consciousness when exposed to certain flashing lights or light patterns in everyday
life. Some people may have a seizure while watching television images or playing
certain video games. This may happen even if the person has no medical history
of epilepsy or has never had any epileptic seizures. If you or anyone in your family
has had any symptoms relating to epilepsy (seizure or loss consciousness) when
exposed to flashing lights, consult your doctor prior to playing. If you or your child
experience any of the following symptoms: dizziness, blurred vision, eye or muscle
twitches, loss of consciousness, disorientation, any involuntary movement or
convulsion, while playing a video game, immediately discontinue use and consult
your doctor.
Precautions: Always play in a well lit room and sit as far way from the monitor
screen as possible. Avoid playing if you are tired or have not had much sleep. Rest
for at least 15 minutes in every hour of playing.
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