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Monday, July 28, 2008 - 05:14 am  Well folks, Imma makin a run at the top 300 for the first time! Almost there, I'm at 365 currently....Do I get a 30 gc award or something to crack 300? Finally got my little kingdom turned around and actually making money, and building corps. I'm just miles away from leveling to numbe 2...don't know how to get my defense index up without crashing my economy like i did when i first started. I know strategic weaps have a lota to do with it. I'll start build strat weap corps soon as I get a high pop i guess...
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| Monday, July 28, 2008 - 09:40 am MM-The game should change the name of either the Defense Index or the Defensive Force Index, it confuses a lot of people. The thing you want for levels 2-4 is your Defensive Force Index. The Defense Index doesn't play until level 5. Hopefully you are joking about needing to get nukes quickly. NOT the way to go. Get your DFI up by garrisoning all your forts (should eventually have 100), capital, cities, towns, bases and airports, and factories if they are state owned. After that build an Air Force. That's the quickest way to do it.
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| Monday, July 28, 2008 - 03:21 pm actually, I'm experimenting a little bit with an small empire I have in Little Upsilon. I was trying to build a nuc industry in there, and I see it's almost no use for a new country. uses too many higher professionals, too many high tech corps needed. I think Imma just trash that slave country, bleed it for all it's worth. With my White Giant country, I think I wanna pay off all my loans first before I start building that defense force. That's how I got in trouble in the first place....buying too many weapons too quickly. But thanks for the advice!
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| Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - 12:16 am Sell off strategic and offensive weapons and buy defensive ones, they give you full benefit while the other two only are like 25% counted towards levels. Ron
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| Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - 12:26 am yeah, sold off half my offensive force. Leaving a the other half to make a small empire in white giant
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| Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 09:31 am offensive forces count 50 percent and are more expensive. strat forces....if your strat force is above 10 or something it isn't going to count towards your defense at all really, and your country will not handle it. (If anyone has a strat level of 10...pm me, i wanna see it..haha) I have no idea how high strat forces do go as I am not a warlord....but....lol...I would just start with eco and defense. Buy defensive, missile interceptor and interceptor missile batteries. Slowly. don't buy the batts more than a 1000 a month and after you buy them check at how the numbers are pulling on your worker hiring. i.e. how many llw and mlm are now suddenly hired per 1000 bat.
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| Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - 05:15 pm I have a couple over 15 I believe.
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| Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 05:06 am I have one with a Strategic Force Index of 55.95 and a FI over 100. I'm sure there are others much higher.
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| Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 06:31 am cool beans, I been taking you guys' advice, and am seeing a noticeable improvement in my eco situation. I even paid off a couple of loans I recieved form treasurer :P. Been buying 500 bats a month instead of 1000, and my score is inching its way up. Thanks again guys!
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| Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 03:01 pm Also be sure that your corps are contracting as much as they can from your own local corps. This can add quite a bit to your score, and helps keep all that cash circulating at home.
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| Thursday, July 31, 2008 - 03:13 pm Please don't pay off my loans. I need the interest. I'm going broke for chrisakes.
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| Friday, August 1, 2008 - 06:06 pm I saw that, lol. I can't afford all these loans, I have over 2 trill out in loans. and RJ, I made a spreadsheet to keep track of my corps, and what all they consume. Whatever resource is being used by the most corps, I open a new corp (when my work force allows me, of course) of that resource and cancel ALL contracts from all my corps of that resource and contract it to the new corp. That's actually something about this game. It kind of hard to get at the information you need. There is no page that shows all the consumption levels in a clear manner. Took me the better part of about 5 hours total last week to come up with a spread sheet in MS Excell, but now that I have that, it makes life much easier in deciding which corps to open
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| Friday, August 1, 2008 - 11:03 pm There's a fine line between how much help your score gets and the health of your corps. If you max out your quality and contract it out to your corps, the receiving corp will be paying too much for supplies, and their profitability will suffer. There are ways to address this, but just keep an eye on your corps profit margin. Remember, if the corp they're buying from is maxed on quality, they pay triple market when they buy it, then they pay triple market when they use it, so it's a double hit. And the increased quality of production doesn't pay off enough after a certain point. You can acheive max quality without having max quality supplies. One of the things SC says it is going to be working on in the future is a revamping of how contracts are done.
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| Friday, August 1, 2008 - 11:19 pm Ok, sounds good for the future. I am really of the opinion the way contracts are done currently is rather inefficient. So what your saying is, The end product (Let's talk about my medical equipment corp for a second here as an example) The end product, in this case, medical supplies, won't be that much more expensive, and so make a larger profit for that corp if the corp buys all high-quality products from the other corps in its chain? For instance, Medical supplies consume Aluminum and steel. Buying higher quality aluminum or steel is not going to increase the quality of medical supplies this corp produces, and so actually INCREASE the profit margin? If so, that doesn't quite sound right to me. Better quality steel and aluminum should result in an even better end-product in my opinion....Although I could see it wouldn't really matter with electric power, because electric power is just electric power. Can't exactly have a "higher quality" electric power lol. I was always under the impression that the point of the use of "higher quality" raw materials meant an increase of quality in the product itself, and that the production and highering percentages was a meant to be an indication of how well the corp is doing.
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| Friday, August 1, 2008 - 11:24 pm Sorry to double post, but this thread seems to be answered with decent regularity. I don't have the time to go through all the different forums. I mainly look at this forum, adn the general forum. Anyways, my next question about corps: The system automatically sells my stocks down to 88%. Would it be better to sell them down to 51%, that way I'm still the majority stockholder, and so still have a controlling interest in my corps? That way I can control the contracts and so forth. I know I read somewhere on this site they were going to change the 51% thing sometime in the future. wasn't sure if it still applied.
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| Friday, August 1, 2008 - 11:29 pm Triple post, sorry bout that. Just looking at my MedEquip corp, and the P/E ratio is 7.8, which is pretty good. The earning per share = 6.88, which also is pretty good. The profit margin is between 2 - 5 mil a year, which, again, is pretty good. This company is buying mainly my higher-priced raw materials from my local market. Which is why I asked those questions in my previous 2 posts. (The company is called Moreno Medical Equipment. Most of my other corps are in a very similar state as this one. VERY stable, and rising in value.)
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| Friday, August 1, 2008 - 11:47 pm Okay. The deal is that yes, buying higher quality supplies WILL lead to a higher quality product, up to a point. If your med corp is upgrading it's quality process, that also increases quality. The thing is that, unless you are a "truly" public corp, (I think 25% ownership, some one can correct my numbers if wrong),your quality will max out at 333. At that point buying 333 quality supplies will hurt your corp. It may still make a profit, but not as great as it could due to the double whammy purchase/usage costs. There are differing views as to what quality product you need in supplies to produce the max profit. The majority of what I have read on the forum is that 190 supplies produce the top profit, although I've seen some argue that 150-160 is the figure. I use 190 myself, and my 200 corps in my CEO average about 140-160 billion a month total profit. Would be better if I could find stable homes for about 15 or 20 of them! LOL. It involves lots of factors of course. Salaries, buying strategies, etc. If you can sell your product for 60% over market consistently, it probably doesn't matter a hill of beans what your quality of supplies is. Or if you pay your workers slave wages, just enough to get full 100% production out of them, it probably wouldn't matter either. But, in general, buying your supplies at too high a level will hurt the company in the long run. Also, if you don't upgrade your quality process you will HAVE to have high quality supplies to get a decent return. See where I'm going with this? It's really something you can and should experiment with. Find the level that you're comfortable with.
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| Friday, August 1, 2008 - 11:59 pm ok! I see what your saying! I have yet to set target quality levels for my corp contracts. I wasn't sure what the point of that was, since i just assumed to get the best on the world market, before I figured out how to get local/common market contracts. So I should keep a close eye on the quality of the raw materials my corps are producing. I'll probably let it rise to about 200 before I start looking elsewhere for cheaper products. Most of my corps aren't quite to that point yet. Although I do see a problem with the whole max out on quality issue your talking about. What would be the point of maxing out quality of raw materials, above 200, let's say? Because if that happened, then no company would want to purchase your raw materials in that case. Because they are "too good" and "would hurt" their corporations in the long run. I know there are many users who do not know that, and would so still have a market for products 200+. But I'm just saying, sounds kind of contradictory.
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 12:09 am Doubler. Sorry. The question of how much ownership is best is also a strongly debated point. If you want to guarentee ownership, don't let it go under 50.1%, but this doesn't give you the benefit of the increased productivity and quality that a truly public corp can give. The benefit to owning a significant % of the corp comes from the dividend yield. When a public corp reaches a certain cash level, it triggers an automatic 4 billion dollar dividend payout. I'm still trying to figure exactly where that level is, but it's someplace between 50-55 billion in cash. Anyway, when the dividend is paid out you get whatever % you own times 4 billion. Other words, if you hold 50%, you'd get 2 billion, 75% three billion, and so on. There are tricks to getting your ownership down to the magic number and still keeping control, but not for a public forum. Again, it's a matter of what makes you comfortable. If you want to lower your ownership % you may want to consider taking part of the corps profits in the "profit transfer" section. This will lower the frequency of the dividends, as the corp is paying you monthly out of its' profits, so its cash level won't rise as fast. If you're maintaining a high % ownership you may want to have a zero profit transfer to get the 4 billion dividend more often. Be careful, though. When a corp pays the dividend, it is marked against their profit for the month. A while back I had a corp which was just screaming with profit. It paid out 8 dividends in the year, and when the new year came the "previous year's profit" section said profit last year 28+ billion, net profit last year -4 billion. The PE went down, as did the share price. So short term it was great for my CEO, he raked in 16 bil (had 50.1% ownership), but long term was bad for the corp, took about a year to recover.
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 12:19 am So it wasn't a doubler after all. Quick on the draw MM! Where your higher quality products come into play is on the world market. The game "cheats" in a sense by not matching up the exact numbers of different qualities produced with those requested. As best I can figure it just lumps all the production into a pile and divvies out the requested qualities to each requester. So if no one is producing 100 quality products you can still buy 100 quality products. So on the world market the higher the better. Of course you don't benefit score wise by selling there, but I question just how much the score is actually improved by the whole contract and common market thing. Common markets are well known for not being worth the time and effort, but again, this is something that SC has said they will work on now that the new war engine is pretty much complete. I DO use a common market, for score purposes, but what I do is only contract 10-15% of my supplies out, the rest goes on the world market.
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 07:34 am lol you still ended up with a doubler after all. I saw the time stamps, and we were posting about the same time. (if only my schools network would allow me to use IRC *grumbles*) I see with corps it's all a balance game. I'm glad I took the road of slight changes all last week every time I logged on. With as much money as my country is finally raking in, I don't think the extra 2-3 billion is really worth it. So I guess I' should just lower my tax levels on some of my corps and get ceos to bid on them. Like my medequip corp, since its an end-product type corp that is quite successful, I would want a ceo to bid on it. The raw materials corps I think I'll keep in my court for now. In fact, I'll stop ordering quality upgrade when they reach about 175. Use those corps for establishing defense-related corps, and have THOSE ones nationalized, and fully contracted to me. That way I wont have to purchase war materiel on the world market....hhmmmm, I think I'm really getting the hang of this. And maybe learning a thing or two about real world business at the same time! (I hope lol)
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 09:48 am Considering I live in the same time zone as you, what are you doing up at 3:30 a.m.? Geez, I need to get some sleep! LOL. I like your idea on the corps, and I forgot to answer your question about CEO bidding over in the other thread. If you belong to a Fed just send out an announcement over your Fed network advertising corps for sale. I'm sure someone will snatch them up. If you're not a Fed member your best bet would be to advertise on your world forum with a header like "corps for sale, low tax country" and I'll bet you will have no problem getting bidders. I'm computer literate but on a dialup connection (can't get a satellite link where my house sits and I refuse to give our local ripoff cable company any more of my money than I already do!), so IRC isn't much of an option for me. If you check out the nationalities forum, I mention in there that there was a chance you sold me a soda at the LLWS one year. Small world. Of course can't say for sure, but I was there one year when you were working it, and I always buy a couple drinks whenever I go to a ballgame. Good night! LOL.
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 09:50 am Crap, another doubler, maybe. When you sell your corps to a CEO, the contracts go out the window. You can maybe talk to him/her about resuming them, but I've found that not too many are receptive to the idea.
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 07:00 pm oh really? heh, well that's opk i suppose, as long as only my "end-product" corps are being sold to CEOs. My other corps that are in the beginning/middle of the production chain could use the extra available production capacity for when I begin opening defense-related corps anyway. I like using that word: end-product lol. I'll look for that thread about the LLWS in the nationalities forum to respond there. Kind of hard to keep 3 different conversations going on in the same thread lol
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 07:12 pm Yeah, when the heck are we supposed to play the game? lol.
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| Saturday, August 2, 2008 - 08:32 pm I know right? I ended up logging in today, and responded to like 7653763 pages of the oil crisis thread in nationalities, instead of checking out to see what my country is doing. Now I ran out of time and have to go to work in a half hour. GAWD!
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| Sunday, August 3, 2008 - 12:08 am Do what I do, be a free lance journalist/writer. As long as you meet deadlines, you work when you want to!
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| Sunday, August 3, 2008 - 05:41 am lol, actually, i'm opting to be a free-lance web designer. Although, Lord knows I can bullshit with the best of them sometimes. As, I'm sure, you already have witnessed lol
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| Sunday, August 3, 2008 - 08:45 am I forgot, you're one of the "young bucks"! Al Gore hadn't gotten around to inventing the internet yet when I was your age!  And according to my girlfriend, if they ever gave out annual BS "Artist of the Year", no one would join the competition 'cuz they know they ain't got a chance against me! Woo-woo.
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| Sunday, August 3, 2008 - 07:27 pm Lol..."young buck eh?" Imma be 30 in 5 years! And I think Al Gore would win the bullshitter of all time award! sorry to dissapoint ya JMR, but ya know that's true.
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| Sunday, August 3, 2008 - 10:25 pm Al Gore didn't come up with the internet. I'm still trying to understand where that american myth comes from. The internet was invented by an european institution located in Switzerland: CERN. http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html Before you question me: Necessity is the mother of all inventions.
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| Monday, August 4, 2008 - 03:51 am Yup, that's why I credited Al Gore as the ultimate bullshutter of all time! Where that myth came from is that Gore himself said so. He DID introduced the idea to Congress of having a network that would have a bunch of computers be able to talk to each other in the Pentagon or some such thing. But INVENT the internet? Not really....The military did that. Well, the military had a form of their own "internet," but CERN invented THE internet.
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Monday, August 4, 2008 - 03:56 am
Al Gore claimed it...No one believed him about that or global warming....
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| Monday, August 4, 2008 - 06:44 am Thank you Quetzalcoatl, on BOTH counts. That was why I put that silly smiley face after my statement, because it's a crock of crap, just as was his fake polar bear picture in his movie. MM, if you double your current age you'll have my current age. You're a young buck. And Gore couldn't whip me in a BS contest because the critical thing in BS'ing is to make it believable or at the least plausible, and he just doesn't have ANY credibility. I have actually hung upside down and kissed the blarney stone in Ireland, so you're dealing with a pro here!
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| Monday, August 4, 2008 - 05:24 pm haha, should I believe that? and JMR, your still a decade and a half younger than my dad. If that helps..... I AM still in college, and still playing baseball. BUT I finally got a REAL job with a 401k all set up, if that counts for anything!
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| Monday, August 4, 2008 - 06:06 pm Good, MM, you're catching on! Actually though, it is true. My girlfriend took a 6 month sabbatical from her teaching job and went to live with an Irish girl she had met in Britain one summer, and I spent a week there visiting. Kissing the blarney stone is a trip. You actually do have to lean over to get to it. I suppose being 15 years younger than your Dad should count for something. But you know the saying "Only the good die young"? I figure I'm good for at least 250 years! LOL I was a political science/history double major in college. To show how times have changed, my tuition (out of state) at Mich. St. U. was 5000 dollars per year. Of course, back then 15k a year salary was considered middle class.
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| Monday, August 4, 2008 - 10:13 pm LMAO
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 03:42 am out of state tuition @ MSU was only 5 grand?! My school is 6 times that! and thats instate as well. course PA is pretty lousy with the expense of college compared to most other states...
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 09:28 am Don't you believe it! Of course state universities will be cheaper than private ones, but the rise in tuition rates across the country is ludicrous. And totally unneccessary. It's been covered in a thread somewhere else in the forum, but the dirty little secret is that the vast majority of the universities are sitting on so much cash in their investment funds that they could provide ALL their students with free tuition for generations. We're talking billions. And they would still have enough left over to pay for all the salaries and athletics, etc. and STILL show a yearly profit. Putting that aside, 5k seems like chump change now, but putting things in perspective a little, my first job paid me minimum wage. One dollar and ten cents an hour. I left that job to move into the big time making a buck and a quarter. On the other hand, gas was 33 cents a gallon, cheeseburgs at McD's were 29 cents, and I could take a chickster out to dinner and a movie for 5 bucks. So 5k was actually a bit of money back then. My family was considered "upper middle class", my Dad made around 27 grand a year. Couldn't get student aid 'cuz Dad made too much money! I chose MSU mostly because they offered me a 50% academic scholarship. By working during my summers and breaks I was able to afford it. LOL NOW do you believe me when I say you're a young buck?
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 03:44 pm jeez.....your old!!!
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 03:51 pm I wonder if he's as perverted as the rest of us though. :p So far, he doesn't seem to.  In the name of my personal God, Simcountry Tour Girl, I shall convert you, JMR! Mark my words! By the way... have you seen my pants?
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 04:07 pm Yeah....who is that girl Laguna? She has one hell of a nice rack! Anyway - your pants? You didnt leave them here last night...
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 04:20 pm You can see her on the Simcountry Introduction Tour. A very accurate omen of all which is to be expected of some people on the forum. :-P I wish I knew more, Stuart, I wish I knew more... Jozi doesn't wish to share the details with me. Com'on! Of all the people he could at least tell *ME*. I'm a harmless tanned south european. What threat could I pose to anyone? Besides, I always wanted a nice pair of boobs... she would fulfill that desire for me and complete me. LOL *inner thoughts*hmmmm I wonder if I should turn the convo in another direction...*inner thoughts* What? I didn't leave them here? But that was my only pair and I'm too poor to buy another. I guess I'll just have to walk around here pantless. I hope you don't mind. ;-P
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 04:30 pm Lmao. dont worry, being naked helps me concentrate too p.s. i am the tour girl, but don't tell anyone.
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 05:32 pm You know - i'd never seen that tour. It's a bit basic though - I think that the SC gods should consider upgrading it a bit, and include a proper tutorial for new players. Anyway - i wouldn't worry about walking around naked Laguna - from what i've heard, you don't have much to hide!
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| Tuesday, August 5, 2008 - 07:16 pm You know, you can see the tour girl if you go to Daconia's country Sex on the Beach (GR). Just moved a corp there and woo-woo. JR- I am definitely just as preverted (no, not a typo) as all the rest of you'ns, just a little shy! LOL Oh, and check with Treasurer, he'll probably loan you enough to buy a new pair of pants, although being a southern Euro, why do you need pants? It's always hot there isn't it?
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| Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 08:55 am I started in January 2562 and I'm ranked 228 on white giant Feb 28 2565. I'm totally new to the game. Is that good?
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| Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 03:54 am Bob is a dirty creepy old man! But anyway, I got two more years left before I can apply to be accepted to start on my Master's. Imma be well over 100 grand in debt by the time i'm finished. And it has to be paid off within 10 years, too. While I am going to be just a lowly high school teacher, I have no idea how the hell that is going to be possible on that kind of salary..... Dirty greedy bastards with billions to spend, and just hoarding it all.... Oh well, at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I actually am working at a noble profession for living, instead of leaching off of others, like that Treasurer guy...those kinds of bastords always seem to be able to FORCE people to take out loans wihtout your actual approval, and sit there and just collect all the interest without doing any kind of productive activity.... Yeah, Treasurer, my Loan God...
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