Q: How early do I need to start the screening phase for Littlefield or the Supply Chain Game? Is two to three hours sufficient?
A: Running the initial screening period for Littlefield and Supply Chain Game assignments usually takes less than a minute, but it could take several minutes depending upon the number of teams and load on our server.
Q: Help, I accidentally started a game running the default scenario! How do I reset my game to run the correct scenario?
A: To reset the default scenario, now suspended at 50 days, to a different scenario follow these steps:
Q: One of the teams cannot login. What should I do?
A: To diagnose the problem and provide a solution, please e-mail the following information to support@responsive.net :
Q: We are starting our second simulation this evening. Do students access their second game from the same web address?
A: Teams are associated with accounts. All teams will use the same links to access an account regardless of the scenario chosen. When your account is reset to a new scenario, the teams do not change. If teams want to make changes to their team password, name, or roster, they will be able to login to their registration page between the two assignments. Running the historic data will once again disable student access to this page.
Q: Help, I've accidentally deleted the current scenario and it won't let me initialize the second assignment!
A: Don’t worry, it's an easy fix. Select default from the pull down scenario list and click the edit button—to open the Edit Scenario page. Scroll to the bottom of the page, enter the name of your current scenario, and click the Save As button. This will create a temporary placeholder for your prior scenario. After initializing and setting your second assignment, you could delete the placeholder.
Q: When I go to the administrator's page, it says that Team modification / addition is allowed, but it also says that “Student access is currently disabled”. Will this prevent my students from registering?
A: Those two lower quadrants correspond to the student registration page on the left and the login page on the right. Only one link can be active at a time. An administrator could also choose to disable both pages. The available options for the two lower quadrants are determined by the run state of your simulator. The options change when you click a button in the upper left quadrant. You want to see “Team modification / addition is allowed” in the lower left quadrant--it tells you the registration page is active. The message in the lower right quadrant, “Student access is currently disabled” , tells you the factory link is disabled. Your students can register teams but they cannot enter the factory.
Q: Can I view the list of students registered for each team?
A: To see a list of registered students by team, click the “download team members” button found in the lower left quadrant of your Main Administrator’s Menu. Save and open the tab-delimited text file with Excel. (This is for all games except the electronic beergame.)
Q: A team was late registering and the simulator is now running. Can we add another team or modify an existing team?
A: You must contact us to modify or add teams unless you are running Littlefield. For Littlefield only, an administrator can edit any team at any time. Click the button “Modify/Add a single factory.” Enter an existing team name but do not enter their password. Click submit. On the resulting page you may edit the section ID, team roster, team name or password as needed. If you delete all registered members, you will delete that team. Teams need at least one member to exist.
Q: How do I change a team’s password?
A: Passwords may be edited by students during the team creation phase. Teams change the password on their registration page by overwriting the existing password spots and clicking submit; however, this can only be done during their registration phase. Students become locked out of their team registration page once the game begins. For Littlefield only, an administrator may edit teams or passwords by clicking the “Modify/Add a single factory” button on their main Administrator’s Menu. Enter an existing team name, leaving the password blank, and click submit. On the resulting page passwords may be altered by overwriting the black spots. Changes will take effect after the submit button is clicked.
Q: Do teams have to enter a section number when they register their team? Will it cause problems if some enter a section number and others do not?
A: The section ID number on team registration pages is provided only for administrator convenience. When the list of registered teams is opened in a spreadsheet, section IDs will appear in the second column. You may use it as you wish. It has no effect on the game. Students often ignore the field unless instructed otherwise. It is typically used to sort teams by section when multiple sections are combined into one big game.
Q: Regarding contracts, you mentioned that orders completed in less than 1 day collect $1000 and orders completed in more than 3 days collect nothing. What about the orders completed in more than 1 day and less than 3 days?
A: Lead time penalties are explained in the student's overview handout. When students are offered alternate contracts, they must assume similar lead time penalties are applied. Orders with actual lead times lower than the quoted lead time earn 100% while orders with actual lead times greater than the maximum earn zero. Between quoted lead times and the maximum lead times, the payout decreases linearly from 100% to zero. If we take your student as an example, we see a decline of $1000/(72 hours - 24 hours) or $0.3472 per minute late; a job delivered in 29 hours would earn $895.84 ($1000 - 5 hours *60 minutes* $0.3472).
Q: Can you please explain the meaning of the following terms under “financial”: Interest Rate, Initial Cost of Debt, Debt Rate / Year?
A: Each simulated day every team receives interest on their average cash balance during that simulated day. The daily interest rate is (1 + r) ^ (1/365) - 1, where r is the equivalent annual interest rate. If debt is enabled, teams can borrow money starting on a specific day. Teams pay debt interest each simulated day at a rate of (1 + d) ^ (1/365) - 1, where d is the equivalent annual debt rate. When teams increase their debt, they also immediately pay a transaction fee that is proportional to the initial cost.
Q: For games other than the electronic beergame, how can I get a record of every transaction made by every team?
A: We can provide that data on request after a simulation finishes, as long as the simulation results have not yet been erased.
Q: How do I move a student from one account (i.e., for one section or course) to another?
A: Our student FAQ describes how a student can do this. If you prefer to do it yourself, then there are three steps: