Learning Factory Guide on Cats’ Shopping List

This guide aims at explaining how the cats’ shopping list work to help you setup your stores properly.
All the information found in this guide is either found in-game (through the wiki or experiments) or given by the devs on their discord.

I call “shopping list” the list of items cats will request when visiting your factory.

You can find all of the cats’ needs directly in the in-game wiki (shortcut H).

There are 3 kinds of purchases:

• Pyramid purchases
• Specialized purchases
• Upsale purchases

Cats come into your factory to make either a pyramid purchase, or a specialized purchase.
A single cat will never make both kinds of purchases.

On top of that, cats may have a second shopping list for an upsale purchase depending on their type and your factory’s hype level.

Cats who come for pyramid purchases will buy items listed in their personal satisfaction pyramid.
They may request one or more kinds of items in varying quantities.

The Personal Satisfaction Pyramid represents the needs and satisfaction of a single type of cat.
Each row of the pyramid represents a level of satisfaction.
On the left, you can see the number of recently satisfied cats and the number of cats who visited your factory for each level of the pyramid.
This can help you identify cats who are not satisfied.

When cats are satisfied, they go up one level in the pyramid, allowing them to request more complex items, until they eventually reach the top, which allows for other types of cats to arrive at your factory.

Tips:

• Each type of cat has at most 7 different items in their personal satisfaction pyramid.
• You can sort cats by type by using a Cat Sorter or a Cat Manipulator which allows you to make dedicated stores for each type of cat.

When a cat comes into your factory for a specialized purchase, they will pick one category of items and request one of more kind of items from said category.

There are currently 5 categories of specialized purchases:

• Essential
• Food
• Materials
• Luxury
• Tech

Each type of cat only has access to certain categories of specialized purchases.
For example, a worker cat can only request items from the Materials or the Food categories.

Each type of cat also has a list of items they will request in each category.
Two cats of different types may request different items from the same category.
For example, both the regular cat and the clerk cat can request items from the “essential category”, but the clerk cat won’t request boxes.

Opening the wiki page about a cat will show you all the categories this cat has access to and the items they will request.

Tips:

• A single cat type can have access to up to 3 different categories of items.
• The largest category is the Food one, which contains 8 items.
• You can sort cats by the category of their specialized shopping list with a Cat Request Splitter or a Cat Request Manipulator.
• Later on, you will unlock the Specialized Smart Store which allows you to sell goods by category and with a larger shelves capacity.

Depending on your factory’s hype and their type, cats may have a second shopping list for an upsale purchase.
This type of purchase is made in a Roadside Boutique, a store that has to be unlocked through research.

Roadside Boutique are placed next to a conveyor belt and sell items for a price of 1-3 coins (set manually).

Tips:

• Each type of cat has its own list of items they may be interested in.
• Worker cats, wholesale cats and legendary cats are not interested in upsale purchases.
• Regular cats, however, seem to enjoy upsale purchases. So much that their list of possible purchases contains 7 items.
• Upsale purchases may increase cats’ loyalty and the chance they will invite a friend, as well as lower the chance they will dissuade a friend if their main request isn’t fulfilled.
• Cats may ignore a Roadside Boutique and enter the next one. Placing a few of them next to the same conveyor belt can be useful.

Testing booths are buildings you can place on the side of cat carrying conveyor belts.
When a cat passes next to the booth, it may be tempted to enter it to test the product, but only if the product is a possible purchase for said cat.

For example, a cat coming into your factory for a pyramid purchase will only enter the Box Office if boxes are part of its personal satisfaction pyramid.
However, a cat coming into your factory for a specialized purchase will only enter the Box Office if it comes for a category of items that contains boxes (the essential category in this case).

There are currently 4 testing booths in the game:

• Box Office (Box)
• Scratch Testing Booth (Claw Sharpener)
• Hammock Testing Booth (Hammock)
• Napping Booth (Pillow)

The higher your factory’s hype, the higher the chance cats will enter the testing booths.

Testing booths have 2 possible effects on cats:

• Increased loyalty
• Higher purchase count for the item and at a higher price

Both effects are independent and are affected by your factory’s hype.
Which means a cat going through a Box Office may have increased loyalty, or it may purchase more boxes at a higher price, or both, or maybe nothing will change.

When cats are satisfied, their loyalty increase, and as their loyalty increase, their behaviour change:

• They purchase more items (and they have more money)
• They have a higher chance of inviting a friend to your factory if they purchase something
• They may also share some cat knowledge when they purchase something (which is used for research)
• They have less chance of dissuading a friend if they couldn’t purchase anything
• They will start asking for higher quality items

When cats reach a loyalty level of 3-4, they will start asking for (+) quality items, and once they reach loyalty level 5, they start asking for (++) quality items.

Here is a list of things that increase cats’ loyalty:

• Purchasing higher quality items
• Using Testing Booths
• Upsale purchases in Roadside Boutiques
• Moving upward in the Personal Satisfaction Pyramid
• Using “Sale Pricing Mode” in stores and Roadside Boutique (at the cost of less profit)

Tips:

• Cats will purchase higher quality items if lesser quality items aren’t available
• You can sort cats by their loyalty level with a Loyalty Splitter or a Loyalty Manipulator.
• Be careful, legendary cats will always request (+) quality items.
• Later on, it can be a good idea to clone high loyalty cats with a Shrodinger’s chamber
• There is no maximum level of loyalty. Cats’ loyalty will keep going up as long as they are satisfied, which will keep increasing the number of items they purchase per visit.
• You can tell a cat’s loyalty by the colour and number of arrows next to them, or by placing your cursor on them.

Hype is a percentage value that can be seen at the top of the screen.
It affects:

• The number of items requested by cats
• The chances of cats entering Testing Booths and being affected by them
• The chances of cats entering Roadside Boutique
• The chances of getting cat knowledge from successful sales

Your factory’s Hype will increase with successful purchases and decrease in the case of a failed purchase.

Sending a cat through an exit gate will also lower your factory’s hype, but it will not lower a cat’s loyalty or dissuade their friends from coming.

Machine Learning is used to analyze sales and predict prices in order to raise profits.

There are different kinds of Machine Learning Models:

• Linear Regression
• Polynomial Regression
• Neural Network
• Deep Neural Network
• Logistic Regression
• Neural Classifier

However, Logistic Regression and Neural Classifier are not used to predict prices but to display relevant advertisements to encourage cats to enter Roadside Boutiques.

All Machine Learning Models require training before they are able to work properly, and their accuracy depends on how they are used.

Here are some tips from our main man GospodinNoob (one of Learning Factory’s devs) on how to use Machine Learning Models efficiently:

• Polynomial Regression is an upgraded version of Linear Regression.
• Polynomial Regression is good when used on a single store to predict prices accurately.
• Neural Network is good when used on ~4 stores selling similar items.
• Deep Neural Network is better than Neural Network and can be used on up to 6 stores selling similar items.
• Neural Classifier is an upgraded version of Logistic Regression and can be used on multiple Roadside Boutiques selling the same items.