Donkey's Big Bag 'O Fun and Questions (Fearless Blue)

Okay sim folk! Help me with some crapola that I'm havin trouble squeezing my brain matter around.

1. Yes more IPO questions, deal!! So there seem to be some good advantages to going public with your corps. The increased payments like a private corp, and the upgrades if you own less than 25%. So....

- 1a. Is it advantageous ,then, to go public with every corp you can? Why do I see players sitting on mostly state corps? If it's not universally beneficial, what are the criteria to decide if you should/should not go public?

- 1b. If the big advantages come from owning less than 25% of the stock shares; Why do I have the option to keep more than that and why would I want to use that option?

2. Nuclear juice! So I just built a nuclear power plant. I figured that compared to my regular "electric power" plant it would pump out unholy gobs of power. Nope. Electic company produces 25,000 and the nuclear company produces 25,000. So...

- 2a. Why build nuclear if they both produce the same amount of juice?

- 2b. When I buy nuclear power it gets converted to "electric" and then I sell that to my companies. If I contract directly from my nuke plant to my companies, will it get converted automatically, or do I have to keep sending it through my country stocks and hand it out from there?

- 2c. Will the many countries of the world buy my nuke power on the market, or is nuke power only sold by manual player purchases? There is a huge shortage of electric on the world market. Since nuke power is cheaper right now, why isn't it selling out like crazy to replace the shortage of standard "electric power"?

3. Quality shmality! So I understand how product quality is used for military applications. You have a missle and an anti-missle missle. Whichever one has higher quality is more likely to do it's job and win over the other one. But I don't know how quality works in those less tangible situations. So....

- 3a. So lets say my country uses 15,000 cars a month. That's 15,000 at 100 quality. If I were to buy cars of 300 quality would I only need to by 5,000 cars? Or 7,500 cars at 200 quality?

- 3b. If, as I suspect, I still have to buy 15,000 cars no matter what quality I purchase, then why would I spend the extra money to purchase high quality products? If I need 15,000 no matter what, why not just buy 15,000 of the cheapest ones there are?

Thanks to anyone that takes the time to sift through my mess of a post.

Big burly man love,
Donkey

i'll tackle the IPO question

when a corp is state owned, the country receives 100% of the profits. when it is publicly owned, the country receives what ever % of the profits it owns of the % of shares. so when a country sells a % of the corp, it is selling a % of profits. controlling 25% (or 24.99%) gives yous 25% of the profits. the other 75% goes to the other share holders.

once the owner of the corp own less than 25% of the shares, the corp is able to upgrade to a base of 250, making it more profitable.

the concept, is that a corp at 250 base Q, with 75% TAX, pays the country more than a corp with 200 base Q and profit sharing...

so owning more shares than 25% is certainly possible. but you are kinda shooting yourself in the foot. you could, sell down to less than 25%, wait for it to upgrade, buy back some of the shares... but considering the cost in money, it probably would defeat the purpose. although, a thought, if you are trying to increase your FI, you could do this, even though you would *probably* loose money doing it. the money lost would be in buying shares, for a slight increase in dividends, increasing your FI.

I'd guess, the biggest reason that corps aren't IPOed more frequently, is that... well, IPOs are usually tedious, and time consuming. Also, IPO's are usually used as a method of getting around certain CEO limitations. CEO's can only have 6 corps in a country (12 if its one of your own countries,) but IPOing them and gaining share control with your CEO allows you to get around that. and it allows you to go over the 750 total corp limit for CEOs

as far as criteria for going public, or not... i'd have to say thats up to the player. some questions you have to ask your self... Do i have the time it takes to IPO? their are easy ways, and hard ways... each have their advantages... do you want to transfer control of more corps to your CEO? do you want to do the high tax thing? what is it you want to do? IPOing is a very powerful, and versatile tool. Other than the minimum requirements, i can't really tell you what is the "best," circumstances. Although for me. If i had time, i'd IPO every corp i could. But even if i had the time, i just can't spend days IPOing. So perhaps, if you are interested. pick one country, and work on that, until you have it done. the kick back maybe a week or 2 and watch it, tweek it as you think best.

an aside, their are many, many, correct answers, that seem to contradict each other. various ways of doing things that work, and work in completely different, opposite ways. and these are all correct ways of doing things. based on time, and flavor. past basic settings, you need to gain a grasp of what a feature does, and how to use it, your way. and still play leveled headed to notice when something isn't working. from what i can tell you get this. so i'm really throwing this out their for many of the people that are just trying to play dot-to-dot.

Thanks for the help Josias. Your reply was informative as always. I didn't want to buy the extra coins to keep a CEO running, but the more I learn about public and private corps., the more I think I may have to.

I believe I have answered some of my own confusion about the nuclear power thing. I didn't understand why both types of power plants would have the same output. But as I think about it; I can sell the entire production to my own country at the lower nuclear prices, distribute what I need to my corps, then put the rest up for sale manually on the world market at the higher "electic power" prices. It isn't as automated as I was looking for, but I think it will be effective anyways.