| auditor | Friday, July 5, 2024 - 09:18 am 
Dipping my toes into playing with Targon, I had my enterprise open up a pair of corps making the batteries and turned them public to get a higher capped output quality. Unfortunately because the market price never changes due their restricted market access, the corps are actually money losers without and way to keep them afloat once they�re public and can�t receive manual cash transfers. At minimum quality supply input, 150 salary level (and falling), capped quality and effectivity, and 0% profit transfer the corps still lose money in every full unit production cycle. Please consider increasing the base price of Defensive Targon Batteries such that the corps don�t drive closer to bankruptcy unavoidably during standard bare bones operation. |
| James Folsom | Friday, July 5, 2024 - 05:33 pm
Post a link to one. I can do thorough all way analysis. |
| auditor | Friday, July 5, 2024 - 10:04 pm
I appreciate the offer but I'd rather have Andy take a look at the information and provide his input than have a chart showing how within certain specific min-max configurations that I am already well on the way working on, they could not lose money in their production cycle. They could operate profitably if the standard price fluctuations that apply to all other non-restricted items applied, but they cannot change from their base price so as base prices of multiple other products in game have undergone significant changes over time I honestly can't say whether or not Targon Batteries have but I'm willing to believe that they haven't because they're so seldom built. So I'm asking for Andy to take a glance at the supply and production costs and potentially either reduce some of the supplies required or boost the base price of the batteries such that they don't require such an unreasonable amount of babysitting compared to all other corps especially considering the extra work that already has to go into them from the production and transportation and manual supply of the Targon itself. |
| James Folsom | Saturday, July 13, 2024 - 10:19 pm
I've been working with auditor to model the profit from these corps, and our collaboration resulted in a complicated modification of the spread sheet that I use for optimizing profit from corporations.
It's especially difficult to think about the profitably of a corp that only makes one unit of product every 8-10 game months. Because, These corps always produce negative for a few game years and then have a big profit year. This all goes in a cycle. Most months show a steady loss. Also, In the case of Public corps, one has to reason out the country resources used as well. It's difficult to say what profit these make. So it's understandable that the game master may not realize how bad the profits are.
So I decided finally that to think about profit of these is to frame it as "Profit per unit produced".
Other complications include the rounding errors since the game seems limited to 2 decimals for production figures. 1.2 divided by 12 is 0.1. This number goes up slightly with increasing salaries and country welfare indexes. Due to rounding errors a wide variety of conditions can result in the same production number. Much wider than for "regular corps". I've used the Round function in Excel to limit some numbers to only 2 decimals in order to simulate this.
I collected the corp data and after discussion with Auditor. One thing to note is we concluded based on the observed periodicity of the "Heart beats" in monthly profit charts that the Annual production of these is 1.2 batteries a year. So if If Andy would be so kind to clarify this number it would be helpful. I put all the data into my spread sheet and modified the all the necessary calculations to express how much money is made by producing one. These produce 1 every 7-10 months, so you can get monthly profit by dividing the profit by the number of months to get that profit.
If I've managed to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, these things are not profitable. They might make 1B / month if you set the salaries to 30 and supplies quality to 120. (Caveat, I've only seen public and Ceo controlled corps and no state controlled ones. So the N is limited).
I hope all of us can go through some discussion and figure out if my math is right and whether it is wise to improve profitability by simply raising the the base price.
The sheet is attached below for everyone's inspection. Explanatory notes are included there.
Please engage everyone, because players will not engage in trade of these things unless there is a lot a money to be made. It is costly to go get the targon and requires a lot of real life work. These should be the most profitable corps in the game. I think if they produced 10B a month, there would be a real possibility they could be worth while to players to build. Then the rest of us could buy the products.
The sheet once verified could be used to calculate the needed changes.
For those who don't trust files or don't have excel. I know this will import into google sheets. For those from above who also hate google, you probably have open office. Auditor says it works there too. |
| James Folsom | Saturday, July 13, 2024 - 10:20 pm
File here: |
| James Folsom | Saturday, July 13, 2024 - 10:21 pm
Apparently the attachment won't work. Hold tight. |
| James Folsom | Saturday, July 13, 2024 - 10:26 pm
I'll put on google sheets. but it'll be a hot sec. |
| James Folsom | Saturday, July 13, 2024 - 11:35 pm
Okay Maybe this will work,
I think I have it configured so that anyone can edit the parts that should be edited.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LFdKWTYGgU2EvtaMpHadXT3dae9VnQf_JIXnQw590VU/edit?usp=sharing
Probably should just make your own copy. |
| Andy | Sunday, July 21, 2024 - 02:57 pm
These corporations are indeed very difficult.
We have some more such corporations.
Most of them end up producing profits but need a lot of cash to bridge over the long periods of no sales.
the problem with Targon batteries is even more complex because the market price is stuck.
I will follow the suggestion to make them more profitable.
it will be done by increasing their output.
It will be part of the next upgrade. |
| hymy1 | Sunday, January 19, 2025 - 08:33 pm
Targon, Targon Batteries, and Targon missiles remain extremely unprofitable. They are essentially not going to enter the market, from anybody sane anyway. |
| Andy | Thursday, January 23, 2025 - 05:48 pm
What I see is that some are building them and keep the products for themselves.
contracting everything to yourself, does not make very profitable corporations.
doing so, also on Tiny Atlas, is done to make sure you have the products.
The same happened with wind turbines.
Initially there were impossible shortages.
then everyone contracted them to their own countries and made profits
from wind farms.
then, when the shortages in countries with many wind farms disappeared, they started selling them on the markets. |
| hymy1 | Thursday, January 23, 2025 - 09:58 pm
Which is insane because you cannot make money selling wind farms either. |
| Andy | Friday, January 24, 2025 - 11:17 am
Corporations building wind farms and are selling them on the market can be extremely profitable.
can be, because if there is an oversupply of wind farms, their price declines like any other product.
I think that the best strategy is to contract the wind farms to yourself.
keep building wind farms until you have 500 or even 1000, (in a country with a population of 100 million).
make sure you produce the wind turbines you need each month for maintenance.
Then, when you get to the target, stop buying the wind farms, or if there is an oversupply, even close the corporations.
The country will then have a steady stream of income from the wind farms.
many billions in income from EP each game month.
we see this in many countries.
just don't fall into a shortage of wind turbines you need for maintenance because then, the wind farms will stop working. |
| Oxydoor | Friday, January 24, 2025 - 06:40 pm
With my first Targon corporations i managed to make quite a profit and even IPO all of them. 10 producing Missiles and 5 producing Batteries. As i was offline for a few days, the acumulated debt as there was no Targon supply on the market and ... they closed down.
Wind farms are needed in Assest Maintenance corporations so why close them after we reach the desired country stock? I like to profit from over supplies and buld corporations that uses cheap inputs  |
| hymy1 | Saturday, January 25, 2025 - 12:48 am
Show me one wind farm corp that makes any money. |
| Oxydoor | Saturday, January 25, 2025 - 12:37 pm
https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=3482201
https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=3435030
https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=3580020
https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=3580035
https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=3580005
https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=3484174
All of them are public corporations and i am only presenting these because private ones get money transfered automatically if they run out of money.
Even if they make losses each month, they all have positive cash and no loans so from my point of view, they are making money.
Mer Wind Farms 001, the last link, has the best cash flow from all |
| hymy1 | Saturday, January 25, 2025 - 11:24 pm
That'll teach me to check, before running my mouth.
I looked, it was around Dec 28th that we were talking about this very subject, and they were not profitable at that time unless you gave them Q120 supplies.
Since that conversation on discord, The GM slashed their usage of several of their supplies, so now they make the same production output with less material. EG they have lower cost of materials now than a month ago.
they do seem to make more money now. Thanks to the GM that did this.
One important factor you should consider is they only make ~0.1 windfarm a month. So they make 2 some years, and other years they make 1 so you need to look at them on a longer time scale. I think at some point I will work this into my spread sheet. |
| Genered | Sunday, January 26, 2025 - 02:25 pm
its profitable, look at mine, i have 6 windfarm corp, and growing
https://sim03.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgi2nova?SN_ADDRESS=wwwCountry&SN_METHOD=ccorp&miCorpNumber=4830020 |
| Oxydoor | Sunday, January 26, 2025 - 08:06 pm
Unless you IPO a wind farm, Highest Quality upgrade i see it´s 175, that´s why it´s profitable just with Q120 supplies |
| hymy1 | Sunday, January 26, 2025 - 08:14 pm
I guess my post wasn't clear.
Sometime in January the GM modified the supplies they use and they are "profitable" under alot more situations now and with Q220 Supplies. It was pretty big change to their consumption. |
| Oxydoor | Sunday, January 26, 2025 - 08:20 pm
Yes, better now than before. Anyway, my assets management corporations need wind farm ) |
