| Hetoum (Fearless Blue) | Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 10:31 pm 
After running my enterprise I've run into issues and have questions about some of the stuff works (documentation doesn't seem to provide good explaination, or I didn't find it yet...)
Anyway, I've got this short list of issues that's been bothering me since I started my first enterpise in this game. If you can answer them, it'd be of great help.
They are:
1) What type of difference does the impact of quality of the supplies make on the bottomline?
2) what is automatic cash transfer and how do you turn it off
3) My corporation's profit's keep going up and down, even though they've sold off all their goods and it says they still lost money, what gives??
4) I have negative profit from a company...yet upon inspection of the Profit & Loss statement, it shows I made a profit, whats the deal with that?
5) What is a corp's value based on (and does it really matter?)
6)Cash levels over 100 billion possible or necessary in a corp?
7) Does a low profit transfer rate really help? (my case, mine is 10%) for all corporations?
Those are the 6 issue's I've been struggling with.
Thanks again in advance for your help
-Hetoum |
| Kevin Henry (Little Upsilon) | Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 11:00 pm
1) They help it, significantly. I believe conventional wisdom is that 180-190 is best.
2) You can't turn it off...it's automatic.  I think auto cash transfers only happened in countries, once the corporation's cash exceeds a certain amount. I don't think they affect enterprise corporations.
3) Many factors effect profit, such as product quality, trade strategies, and the type of corporation.
4) The profit listed near the top of the corp page is actually the profit from the previous month. So, if you look at the current month box under profit and loss, they will not match.
5) I don't know all the factor. Obviously, profits make a big difference. The tax rate of the country and salaries can also influence value. Does the value matter? Not really.
6) Possible yes, necessary no.
7) Help? I think its personal preference. Some players set it at zero and transfer money out manually. Other set it much higher.
Good luck! |
| Hetoum (Fearless Blue) | Sunday, August 17, 2008 - 11:48 pm
Coolage, thanks for the answers
For #7, how do you transfer money out manually?
And how much of an impact would it make if I changed the supply quality I buy to 100, and sold a 333 quality product? |
| Dvd Avins (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, August 18, 2008 - 12:11 am
The quality of the product you sell is determined by the quality of the supplies the corp uses and by the number of quality upgrades the corp has purchased over the course of its existence. You can't arbitrarily set the quality of the product you sell. |
| Kevin Henry (Little Upsilon) | Monday, August 18, 2008 - 12:26 am
# 7 - On the page that shows all of your corporations, click the "profit, cash and debt" link. At the very bottom you can reduce the amount of cash. For example, if you type in 100,000 (which is 100 billion) any corporation with more cash than that will transfer the surplus to the enterprise. |
| Angus88 (Little Upsilon) | Monday, August 18, 2008 - 11:06 am
2. Cash transfered by profit sharing, also falls under this category I think.
3. With everything set up well as (what Kevin said), its market price (greatly influenced by market situation) of the good your selling.
4. You have positive profit as you self described. You have negative cash flow. Produces from any or a combination of the following:
Upgrade purchasing, corporate tax, profit sharing and cash transfer, loans, raw material purchasing.
If the profit/loss statement says your making a profit, and stays that way then cash level will increase. Unless the corporate expenses are greater then what profit is left to the corporation (profit - (corporate tax paid + profit transfer paid) must be greater then other expenses for cash flow to be positive)
6. Possible yes, necessary possibly. Certain corporations have very large cash flow changes (hospital corporations can buy supplies that result in over 30B costs, and make big profits only a few months a year) and keeping large cash reserves will help protect against changes in market position and large orders of supplies.
Corporations that have monthly production not really.
7. It can if the corp has a bad year corporate tax and profit transfer can be another nail in its coffin (as explained in 4), if the corp does well the extra profits will be transfered via automatic cash transfers anyway. |
| Hetoum (Fearless Blue) | Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 04:19 am
Much thanks to everyone here who helped me
Now I'm finally making a profit...after all my electrical companies have lost nearly 30 billion in start up capital
Cheers! |
| Pathetic Sheep (White Giant) | Monday, September 1, 2008 - 01:25 am
I've been looking for the exact equations for question #1 but haven't found them yet.
The quality of items you sell has a direct effect on the cash received when you sell things. If you have the quality = 200 that means your revenue is about double what a company with quality = 100 has assuming both are at 100% production.
Your profit is the revenue minus the costs. If the fixed costs like property and resources stay the same then increasing the quality will increase the profits.
Usually the cost of resources is a fraction of the total operating costs. Paying extra for higher quality raw materials can increase revenue more than it increases costs.
Most products seam to max out near quality 330. I do not know the equation that causes the maximum. If your corporation increases quality by 200% buying raw materials at raw quality = 165 would get you to finished quality = 330. However, I don't think the equation is linear, so the 180 suggestion is probably a good one.
If you are selling to yourself or your own corporations the higher quality might not be good at all.
I started selling all my corporation produced weapons on the open market and I buy quality 100 weapons.
You could have an oil company buy quality 100 electricity from CCCs which sells higher quality oil to your electric companies which then sell even higher quality electricity on the open market.
I also don't know how raw material quality is determined when they are mixed. It might be a best to have your electric company and oil company sell to each other at high quality and buy the rest of the resources from CCCs at low quality. The overall average could still be ~180. |
| Angus88 (Little Upsilon) | Monday, September 1, 2008 - 05:09 am
Sheep:
Value of raw materials consumed =/= value of finished product
Increased value of supply (quality) =/= increased value of finished product
Achieving higher quality through supplies quality still makes a higher profit, thought less through quality upgrades because they are a one off cost. Also when you factor in higher production from higher salaries, that in a way multiplies the profit.
I'm a bit confused myself how supplies quality equates to product quality, but I know that the relationship becomes less linear the higher the max quality of the corporation. Take a truly public corp for example their max quality achievable is 370, with max quality upgrades of 250 that leaves 120 difference for supply quality. Since 100 supply quality = 100 product quality it would be assumed that 220 supply quality would achieve the max, but with 190 supply quality it is already at 370 quality.
But then you look at state corps, one I have has 200 upgrade quality and using supplies of an average quality of 196 and the total quality is 296. |
| Pathetic Sheep (White Giant) | Monday, September 8, 2008 - 08:14 am
Suppose you have 8 types of raw material. 7 of them have quality 100 and the 8th has quality 200. What is the final product quality if the corporation has process quality 100, 150, or 200?
Now suppose you have 8 types of raw material. 7 of them have quality 200 and the 8th has quality 100?
What if the corporation uses more of the 8th raw material. Suppose that the total monthly cost of the first 7 materials is equal to the total monthly cost of the 8th material when the material quality is equal.
My first guess was that if you spend 2/3 of your money on quality 200 materials then the final quality should be 166 times process quality. That does not appear to be correct. If you assumed that all 8 materials have equal rate you would come up with 112.5 times process quality. That also is not correct. |
