| Rpotwc | Wednesday, March 10, 2021 - 10:10 pm 
I have a few things that I would like to suggest and have questions on.
Loans
I'm a bit confused on the loans feature. I've been trying to conduct LBO's (leveraged buyouts) with my enterprise. I've been trying to take on debt, but the game seems to randomly pay back the debt in a couple game months instead of waiting until the due period. If you look at my Loans taken graph, it starts at 0 on June of 4496. Then it goes as I borrow more, then it drops down, then it becomes a up and down battle as I try to take out more loans while the game automatically pays them back. It's only been about one year since my first loan. My enterprise's leverage is only at around 0.6%, so it doesn't make sense for me to be restricted from a high level of debt. I looked through the automation setting but don't see anything that might be causing loans to be paid back prematurely.
It would be nice if we could see a list of loans that are being offered by players as well as the game engine along with yield in game years instead of real years, term length, and amount. Same goes with offering loans. It would be nice to see a list of loans that have been requested with the proposed loan terms.
Supply to Market
I use a common market for my corporations. The corporations needs go up and down which can cause a corporation to end up getting more supply than needed. Over time, this can rack up to a decent amount. Is there a way to sell off some of the excess supply stock to the world market? I've been looking and can only find a button to sell the output product, not the excess input products.
Automatic Supply Adjustment (JIT Inventory)
This excess supply issue could also be remedied by providing a feature where common markets are able to automatically increase and decrease contracts based on given demand to help reduce ballooning supply inventory. For example, let's say that Oil Company A is supplying 100% of its output to Chemical Company A. Then Chemical Company A experiences a worker shortage and is only capable of producing at 50% capacity. Then Oil Company A can shift supplies and provide 50% of its output to Chemical Company A and 50% of its output to Chemical Company B that is also in the same Common Market. This can be seen as JIT (just-in-time) inventory.
Common Market Contracts Offered When Cancelled
When I cancel a contract from the common market, I notice that the quantity offered in contracts for the supplier goes down. I then need to go back in and update it which can cause problems, more on this later. It would be nice if when a contract is cancelled, the supplier doesn't decrease the number of offered units. For example, if Milk Company 1 supplies 1000 units of milk via common market contracts and then Milk Products Company 1 cancels its 100 unit milk contract with Milk Company 1, the units of milk that Milk Company 1 offers in the Common Market goes from 1000 to 900. At least this is what I believe is happening. I haven't gone and done all the maths.
Growing Offered in Contracts Number Bug
I don't know if these are related, but in addition to the available units in contract number changing, I have seen the number of available units in contract continue to go up. For example, Milk Company 1 offers 100% capacity of 1000 units to the common market. Something happens (not sure what) that causes it to change to 1001 units which is greater than 100%. Then when I go in and do a 100% Contract Offers for All Corporations at once, the number of units offered by Milk Company 1 goes up to let's say 2000. Then I do it again, and it goes to 3000. This aren't exact numbers, but I have seen this sort of thing happen multiple times. When it does happen, I have to go in and cancel all my contracts across all my Common Market member countries and enterprise. Then go back in and create all the offers over again because they decrease when contracts are cancelled. Then I have to go back in and accept the contracts. This is quite time consuming.
Public Enterprise
This one might not be possible due to how accounts work in Simcountry, but would it be possible to make your Enterprise public? It would be nice if my countries can own a part of my Enterprise and therefore get a portion of its income through the form of dividends instead of needing to buy a portion of every public corporation that the enterprise owns. Then again, this may cause problems with accounts being taken over.
More In Depth Cash Flow Statement/Log
I noticed that on my Enterprise Cash Flow, I see a line for "Cash Transfers To and From Corporations. Its help text reads "This is the total amount of money that was transferred into or out of the country. It includes money transfers from other countries or money given to others in the empire." The issue I have with this line is that my Enterprise is not a country, and I don't recall ever doing these transfers. Transfers to Corporations fall under the Profit Payments and Cash Transfers line. Where are the 25 to 50 billion SC$ going every month?
The other line I would like more details on is the Corporations bought, closed or moved and Enterprise Tax line. Would it be possible to break this down? I see a cash outflow on this line even when I'm not closing, buying, or moving corporations which makes me think it's enterprise tax. Would you be able to show details on what this enterprise tax is and how its being calculated? I guess an Enterprise level income statement would help solve this.
Horizontal Integration
This is more of a nice to have since it would be quite dev heavy. The common market functionality allows for an enterprise to be built in a vertical manner (enterprise can having corps that produce the raw materials and supply corps that produce the final product). The features seem lacking when trying to build an Enterprise horizontally and utilize existing expertise. For example, when my enterprise has 10 Services corporations pumping out services with over 300 quality thanks to years of R&D and upgrades, it doesn't really make sense that when I build the 11th, it starts off the same as though another enterprise with 0 Services experience does. It would be nice to see a feature that provides efficiency bonuses from the similar corporations that the Enterprise has. Maybe an R&D feature that is shared by the same product corporations of the enterprise. That would likely make the development of a more robust horizontal integration feature simpler. This also might make it possible to build R&D specific corporations that are able to sell its "research products". Of course these research products will expire as technology moves forward which incentivizes corporations to continue to invest in R&D. |
