Econ Thread (Fearless Blue)

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If you need any econ guidance:
My Advice:
as from player to player the things they tell you to do with your settings/corporations/tax rates/random issues often it gets differentiated, sometimes completely contradicted and only confuses you as new players of SC.

I am by no means saying there is one strict way to do Econ There are literally 1000's of combinations to have a successful profitable country (I use around 10 different approaches in 15 countries or so I have setup for econ) So really don't get set in one persons way of thinking, investigate ask around, and then form your own opinion dont let anyone sway you from that opinion.

Constant changes of settings/econ stuff only confuses you as new players, SC takes patience when you first begin especially with building your country a stable base (Infrastructure better known as: Education Health SS Taxes Transportation, etc.)

So before you go changing settings back and forth, Make a base for your country

220 Education index
120-160 Health Index
180 Transportation
SS set to 80
Profit transfers: 80
Tax: 0

The above is just a general idea of settings you'd like to set as a target. Sure others have starting figures for their own empires, but when I learned SC 4 years ago, those were the settings then, and still similar now.

(I use around 10 different approaches in 15 countries or so I have setup for econ) -Wild

i'd like to highlight this. Their are several basic econ templates, with hundreds of specialized, or generic twists to them. Following guides to the letter... well, i'd suggest trying to stay close to a known successful econ strat, and as you start to understand how it works, please, experiment.

The 2 most clearly basic Econ Strats

1. All CEO's, the most popular
Set you tax to 0% and advertise on the forum for CEO's to build/buy/relocate

Pros... CEO corp, usually, pay out more in country resources than state corps. So you don't have to worry allot about corp settings yourself, just keep all the right worker categories.

Cons... You have less control over your country. And not every CEO is out for your best interest.

Additional advise. If you want to create more control over what kind of corps CEO's control in your country, build the types you want, hose them... then advertise their sale, to keep the price of buying them low. That will attract CEO's that are looking for deals, and you get the corp types you want.

2. All state corps
Look at the corp types that top ranked econ countries are building. And build those. Most of those will be heavy techie corps, (not all,) so the high Education Index that Wild mentioned will be essential. Her suggestion of 80% profit transfer is best, until you start to make your corps public, (IPO,) then 75% tax is better than 80% profit tranfer. But IPOs are a different subject.

Pros... If you are good are managing corps, you can make more money this way. Plus it sets you up for the highly profitable State Public corps. And you have more control over your country. You can set your salaries to what ever level you want. And can close looser corps. Both of which are harder to do, with other people running your corps.

Cons... If you aren't above average on running corps, then you will probably not make as much money. And it takes more time to manage your country.

Additional advise... a quick easy way to increase your State corps tax payments... Preform an IPO, create new shares, and then set the target shares to 24%. The game will automatically sell down to 24% shares, (provided the corp is making a profit,) and your corp will be able to upgrade 50 points. Doing this, you'll want the 75% tax. be aware, that this way, you are selling off 76% of the corp, and 76% of the profit, after the 75% tax... (get my point?) I've used this method when I was to busy preparing for war to do the normal IPO methods. Just throwing it out their.

Josias, Thanks for that input I've added it to the 50 Microsoft Word Pages I have from input of players for the upgraded leaving guide

yay 51 now *shakes her head* will be worth it in the end though to sort through it all but anyway,

Yes Josias is correct, and listed above the most used/known/efficient approaches to Economics.

I did oddly find Avalons Start-Up Guide in my SC docs I have stored, I'm going to updated it and repost it here, as having the keys is kind of necessary to start the engine :P

Question about state corps. seeling goods at +30%/-5% following quality and the connection to SUPPLY QUALITY.

I was told, that a 30/5 would be a good setup selling at, but the corps. cant sell for a long period. Does this harm anything, when they are waiting up to 3-4 gamemonths before selling their goods. Isnt it just a question about patience, because they will sell their goods anyway?

Why is 160% supply quality the best level and it is the best level for all types of corps, or should I consider adjusting this, based on what type of corp I am dealing with?

Best

supply first... if you are buying 160 q, what are you producing??? play with setting from 140 to 180, and of course this i simcountry, give them some time...

sales strat... what are your sales at? i've heard many sales strats from 69/-11, to 0/-10 try a few and look at your bottom line. allot depends on you producted quality, and the type of corp. when you make a change, understand how long that might take to effect things, and wait.

i'm sure thats not the answer you where looking for, but its the only correct answer

Thanks for reply

So, if I sell products at fx 160% quality, I should buy supplies from 160% quality and above that, or..?

for a starter setting, set supplies to the 180, and sales strat to 20/-5 follow q, and best for buying. also for a starter on sals, set 300 for corp sals, and 250 for gov sals

Can someone explain what the IPO thing is
i know it has to do with shares but i thought if you sell shares or buy shares that the corporation looses money

well, IPOs are a subject unto themselves. but buying and selling shares itself does not effect the profitability of a corp.

normally a corp has one owner, the country, or a ceo. when you create an ipo, it sells parts of the corp to multi-owners, and they all share in the profits of the corp. according to what percent of the shares they own.

an additional feature, is that if the controlling party owns less than 25% of the shares, the corp is able to upgrade production and quality to 250. making the corp, (in theory,) more profitable.

although, when the corp is upgrading to 250, it does have to buy the upgrades, so it might loose money, but i've never actually worried about that.

so your saying i can buy shares from a hole bunch of corps and get income from them?
and if so how much

yes, and depends

first some etiquette, don't buy more shares than the owner, with out permission first.

ok, public corps pay out dividends. one such place you can see this in action is in the financial page, under the Investment Funds.

Public corps need a minimum cash level before they pay out. I'm not sure what that level is, but once they have that, they'll pay out according to the "profit transfer," setting for that corp. if you look in the corp page itself, you'll see a line for profit payments made. once the cash level of the corp goes over 200B, it will automatically pay down to 200B in increments, regardless of the transfer setting.

So of course the more a corp makes, the more it'll pay out.

further, their are several different places that money can be paid out. if we are talking about countries... normally, if you buy shares, the money to purchase them will come out of your Investment Fund, IF. and the dividend will be payed back into the IF. If you do it this way, turn off the auto setting for buying/selling IF, because the game will probably auto-sell everything you manually buy

The country itself can own shares in corps. This is separate from the IF, and these pay straight into your cash balance as part of your monthly income. Special rules apply. A country can not purchase shares in a corp it does not already control. So the only way a country can own these kind of shares is via an IPO. Please note, that this is not for the IF, but for the country directly.

CEO's can buy shares, pretty much with out restrictions. You must have the money of course. and these dividends pay directly into the monthly balance for the CEO.

Several things to know here. Not all corps are very profitable. Spending time looking through public corps for good buys... is a good way to be come familiar with what kind of things work in corps, and what doesn't. but i've found that the time versus reward factor, for buying shares isn't really worth it for me. But please, give it a try!!!

thank you for the info

Heres a question:

Local and Common Market trading has always been regarded as not great for a country's economy. Why is that so?

good question funkmaster, and glad you asked

i'll use CEO corps for this. but its the same thought behind state corps.

The max quality a CEO corp can produce is 333Q. and you get that buy buying around 180Q supplies. So if you set up a Common market. and via the CM you buy supplies. you are buying 333Q supplies. That means 150 of the supplies quality is lost, and you are paying nearly double for supplies, with no extra benefit!!!

now their are way to use the CM. If you want to spend the time. You can use the auto contract option. then go through and cancel most of the contracts. with that you set your base supplies at 100. so you can purchase cheaper supplies types, services for instance, at the higher Q, and buy the more expensive stuff, like household products, at lower cost. doing this, your trying to average out your supplies in the 160-180 range. this is a type of ASQ, average supply quality. I've been playing with this myself, but i've far from mastered it. So thats about all i'll be able to say regarding.

but to recap, using CMs, usually results in you buying higher quality supplies than you can actually use.

See WildEyes Leaving Guide for details, Funkmaster.

The general notion is that supplies are in "units" of equal value but not cost.
eg. one unit of power at 90k counts towards ASQ the same as one unit of coal at 360.

So buy the cheap stuff at high quality anf the expensive stuff, FMU and Power especially, at low quality.

Using the common market page linked above the supplies section on your coporation page will show the cost totals for each supply.

The idea is move ASQ to 296 at the lowest cost possible.

You can check what works best by looking at the percentage on the bottom of that CM page.

If you can get to 296 by contacting only 17% of high Q supplies, that saves you more than getting the same average by contacting, say, 33% in some other combination of supplies.

Not all corps are useful for this approach. Air Fuel, Gasoline, and Electric Power are fine examples. Because the majority of their supply use is in only one product, Oil, contracting for high Q oil will be wasted as the ASQ boost is pulled way above the quality cap of 296.

That is the goal, remember, to get to 296 product quality for selling on the market.

For corporations that are providing the supplies to other corps, you can go to higher Q and still get paid the higher Q prices, thus profiting on both ends of the common market.

To implement this, you need to build supply corps first. Services and High Tech services are a good place to start.

Once you decide what corps are going to be your Market money makers, Oil, FMU, whatever, build the supply corps to feed them.

Hope this helps. Good luck to you.

i have another question
why does the value of my corporations keep going down? its going down like 100B a month

Oh! Oh! Me me me!

So if I understand you right. The advantage of a public corp is that if you retain less than 25% of the shares, you can upgrade quality and effectivity to 250.

So once you're done upgrading can you buy some or all of those shares back and retain all the profitability for yourself, while keeping the better production stats? Or do you always have to keep less than 25% controling shares?

Always keep less than 25%. For it to be a TRUE public corp, no share holder can have 25% or more shares.

mister carter, mister carter... i love it!!

sorry S, if you sell down, and wait the time for the corp to upgrade, then buy back. the corp will VERY slowly down grade back.

i noticed your question rjk, i need more info. if the corp loosing money? is it a public corp making money? (a public corp making money can loose market value!)

it sounds like a public corp, i'd have to guess you just made public... as a guess. check the PE ratio, if its above 100 PE, that would explain it. auto-IF will trying to bring the price to 100 PE, so if it is above 100, then it will go down, meaning the market value will go down, and visa versa.

i'm sure some one can explain the PE thing better, than what i just did. sorry for the cryptic response.

Thanks for those that answered my first question, heres another:

Does the country consume products at 100Q minimum? Is this why local trading is a waste of money then?

It will consume whatever you buy for it. On the Automatic systems setting on the corporations page, there is a setting for supply quality for your country. Set that setting at 100, and save. That way everything the country buys will be bought at 100%. Anything bought above that quality is wasted money. So the answer to your qestion is yes. However you do get a few ponts for trading on the local market so maybe a few small contracts are in order. Especially if they aren't selling well on the market,
That said, most weapons and ammo should be above 180 Q. The reasons are explained in the forum in other sections. Don't buy cheap weapons, and be aware that they degrade fast, much faster than they should IMHO. Quality costs so do the math. Market price * quality /100 will give u a price range for whatever you are buying. Things bought with high quality cost much more.

The P/E ratio is simply the earnings/ # of shares. Before you IPO, you have only 100M Shares. But after you IPO, you may have 1 billion or several billion shares. So the ratio changes radically. As long as the company is making money every round, then you don't have too much to worry about, as the P /E will stabilize but at a much higher ratio then before your IPO.

I like this thread. Very enlightening!

No there all state corps
Iv upgraded them and there still loosing value
I already lost a trillion in value