Guide: How much can you charge for your shops?

[Deurklink]

Every park needs shops in order to satisfy the hunger, thirst and bladders of their guests. Shops can also be a good generator of cash-flow, especially in parks where you cannot charge any money for your rides. So, the big question is: How much can you charge for your shops? Although they are technically not shops, i will also handle toilets in this guide because the game considers them a shop.

Toilets

First off, let's take a look at the code for toilets:

  

All peeps have a variable called bathroom, which is a number from 0 to 255. The higher this number is, the more the peep needs to go to the toilet. If this number is lower than 70, a peep will not enter a toilet. This number increases over time, especially when a peep is drinking something. In game this number is represented by the red bar behind the peeps' toilet stat (on the page with hunger, thirst, nausea, etc.). If it's empty, the value is 0, if it's completely full the stat is 255. Now let's see how much a peep is willing to pay for a toilet visit:

The maximum a guest will pay for a toilet is their bathroom stat divided by 40. Since the minimum bathroom stat needed for a guest to visit the toilet is 70, and the maximum is 255, that gives us a price range from 1.75 to 6.375. To get to in game currency (let's use €) these numbers have to be rounded down, and divided by 10. That gives us a price range of €0.10 to €0.60. 

If the price is higher than what a guest is willing to pay, he will lose happiness, so the price should not be too high within this range. I have found from experience that pricing your toilets at €0.20 will typically make your toilets profitable, and practically no guests will complain that it is too expensive.

Shops

Now that we have discussed toilets, let's take a look at other shops. To determine the value of an item that can be bought, they have all been given 4 values in the code:

The first number for every item is the cost. For the balloon this is 3, which means that every balloon costs €0.30, which is deducted from the price you charge for it. The second number is the base value, which is the standard value in normal weather. The third number is the hot value which is the value of the item in hot weather (above 21 degrees celsius). The last value is the cold value, which is the value of the item in cold weather (under 11 degrees celsius). For example, the base value for a standard drink is 12, in hot weather it becomes 20, and in cold weather it becomes 10. The maximum price you can charge thus depends on the weather!

If the price that you charge for an item is more than the value (based on the current weather), the game will calculate the price difference. If a guest is happy (over 128 happiness, on a scale from 0-255), this price difference is divided by 2. If a guest is very happy (over 180), this price difference is again divided by 2. The code then generates a random number from 0 to 7 (actually 0 to 70 cents). If the price difference (after dividing) is bigger than this random number, the guest will not buy the item, and complain that it is too expensive! For unhappy guests, if you overcharge 80 cents or more, none of them will buy the item. For happy guests this number is 160 cents, and for very happy guests this number is 320 cents.

The more you overcharge for your item, the smaller the chance that the guest will buy it. The happier the guest is, the more chance he will buy an overpriced item. If you want all guests regardless of happiness to always buy your items without complaining that it is too expensive, you should charge no more than the actual value of the item. In parks where most guests are very happy you can get away with overcharging around 30 cents (but unhappy guests may still complain).

Example: A burger has the values {5, 19, 19, 22}

A burger bar, when first placed, asks 1.50 for a burger. The cost is 5, which means it will cost you 0.50 per sold burger. The profit you get with the initial price is 1.50 - 0.50 = 1.00.

The base value of a burger is 19. This means that you can safely charge 1.90 for a burger, which nets you 1.40 profit. The cold value of a burger is 22. this means that in weather under 11 degrees, you can charge 2.20 for your burger, gaining you 1.70 profit. 

Example 2: Ice cream has the values {4, 10, 15, 6]

The value of ice cream is very dependent on the weather.

Initial price is 0.90. The cost of ice cream is 0.40 per sold unit. In normal weather, the base price is 1.00, in hot weather the base price is 1.50, and in cold weather the base price is only 0.60. In hot weather, you can make 1.10 profit from ice cream, but in cold weather this is only 0.20. If your park has a cold climate, you should probably not sell ice cream there. 

Update: It turns out there's actually a line in the code that prevents guests from buying ice cream or sunglasses when the temperature is below 12 degrees, so the cold value for these items is never used!

Umbrellas

Umbrellas are a special case. When it is raining, above price check is ignored! This means guests will pay any price for an umbrella when it is raining. This is a great way to make lots of money. In other weather conditions, however, guests will complain if the price is too high. Be careful with this, because guest happiness will decrease if they complain that an item is too expensive! My advice is to either close the information kiosk during normal weather or only charge more money during rain.

Also, guests will not buy the following items when it is raining: Balloons, Sunglasses, Ice Cream or Candyfloss.

Spreadsheet

I will now work on a spreadsheet which shows the values and cost of each item, and the profit you can make from them in every weather type.

EDIT: 

I have added one spreadsheet made in excel, and one in an open format. The excel sheet contains comments to clarify certain things. Feel free to modify the table or host it elsewhere in a different format.

Excel: shop price.xlsx

Open datasheet: shop price.ods

Google spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ns2Rx7GeHdNqDzamPe0i8iouB8igdlNQ5jplEpzYpUQ/edit?usp=sharing

 

Edited December 4, 2021 by Deurklink

[saxman1089]

Man, if you keep up this pace, we're gonna have a guide for everything in the game pretty soon! =P

Have you thought about contributing to OpenRCT2? You obviously aren't afraid to look at and decipher code!

[Deurklink]

9 minutes ago, saxman1089 said:

Man, if you keep up this pace, we're gonna have a guide for everything in the game pretty soon! =P

Have you thought about contributing to OpenRCT2? You obviously aren't afraid to look at and decipher code!

I have thought about it, but my contributions would probably stay limited to cleaning up code, or adding extra comments. 

[Miska]

That was very helpful, thank you for your hard work!

[Deurklink]

I added a video to the guide!

[NateTheDBA]

Amazing guide! I learned that I've been under-pricing Balloons & On-Ride Photos, and over-pricing Fries/Chips and Popcorn. Thankfully my "gut feeling" that Drinks should be around 1.50 was right.

A couple notes:
1. "Drinks" includes "Moon Juice" when that theme/variant is available.
2. "Candyfloss" is "Cotton Candy" for the Americanized version
3. "Chocolate" should be "Hot Chocolate" unless that's a UK thing to drop the 'Hot'.
4. You don't have "Starfruit Drink" yet.. assuming it's the same as regular Drinks?

Thank you again for putting this together -- well done!

[Jackalope_Gaming]

Hello!  I downloaded both spreadsheets and noticed something a little odd:  Ice Cream is apparently programmed to have base value 10, hot value 15...  And cold value 18?  Is the in game ice cream cold value actually higher than its hot value or is that a typo?  You mention in the examples its cold value is 6 which makes perfect sense, but that 18 value has me confused.

 

Edit:  I looked in the Google Docs version and there it's at the proper 6 cold value.  I think I'll copy the Google Docs version over since it seems more up to date.

 

Thank you for this work!  It helped me breeze through Bumbly Bazaar in only a few months.

Edited March 20, 2021 by Jackalope_Gaming

[Deurklink]

I have added a comment in the guide, since I found out guests will not actually buy ice cream or sunglasses when the temperature is below 12 degrees: