Enterprises (Kebir Blue)

I'm going to de-reg at least one CEO, maybe more than one.

Big question: My understanding is that when I do the corps in my countries and other player countries remain alive indefinitely as "gamemaster" corps. Can someone confirm this?

I too have "profitable" CEO's that are bleeding cash and I am putting an end to it, one way or another. I'm going to buy some corps from CEO to CEO but I'm trying to figure out if I should nationalize the rest that are in my countries or let them live on as gamemaster corps after I de-reg.

Happy to hear your opinions, Thanks.

Yes, well until they go bankrupt anyway. They also do not auto-upgrade any longer so steadily degrade to 100 which is probably the biggest issue. No-one having control has to be a worrying factor as well.

If you wanted too Kolenski, you could advertise which ents you are closing and I for one would be willing to buy a controlling share of any that arent complete rubbish.

ok heres another issue no one probably thought through or if you have and intend this to be the case its a raw deal to the players.

ok prescision bombers moved to space station only, ok well i dont like it as everyone whos posed about it thinks thts well u know.

but some of us prepared ourselves well for it and built a bunch of factories to produce our own, well now instead of the bar showing a huge demand for them since no one can order them it shows a surplus and prices are dropping causing all the factories that produce them to lose more money my question is i thought you said and ay logical thinking man would think this would make the price of prescision bombers go up henseforth the factories would make more money but price is down and factories allthough selling out by direct contracts are losing more money how can this be you should remove the supply and demand bar if items not on the world market and henseforth there can be no demand for it through the market are you trying to force everyone to buy them with gold copins at spacemarkets only cause im not gonna participate in the space game this wasnt a science fiction game when i started playing it and well im not gonna play battlestar galactica the game and it seems from the totals sighning up for space 99.8 percent of the other players arnt going to either. agrees with crafty " underestimates the changes effects on the game every time"

also with every 3 factories we close a country player loses that revenue forevor and has to close one of his facories that we were purchasing supplies for the enterprises drvthe economy of this game and 4 quit last night i imagine a lot more will this week its great you saved the countries lil money by cutting down on thier medical costs by making hospital require less medical supplies but 60 countries no longer have my medical factories located in them supplying the huge taxes they were recieving from them and thts just from one ceo im not sure those countries would be so thankfull thier not spending an extra billion month on hospitals when they lose 3 or 6 billion in tax revenue to save it.

Ramasas you can still buy bombers on FB, if you are there.

Ramasas, medical supplies are back in shoartage and if players subsidised their corps through the downturn, then it's C3 corps that would close.

Players will build other corps and the countries' savings will probably be spent on something else, such as as more assets bringing with them extra demand for maintenance products.

no ive got prescision bombers coming out my woohoo i have over 50 plants all contracting to myself thats not what im talking about. on the supply demand bar it shows a surplus of prescision bombers thus driving the price of them down, thus making all my company producing them profits go down. in actuality since a product is not available on this world how can it logicly show a surplus of them and therefore the price you can sell them for go down thats insanely wrong theres tons of people that want them they need to eliminate that bar saying theres a surplus.

and yeah i see the demand for medical supplies have gone back up, the only reason is weve probably closed 1,000 plants (ceo's) medical items have been in severe demand for over 2000 years theyve been deep red so most c3 companies that produce them are 1.8 trillion dollar companies it takes well over a month for a c3 to lose 2 to 3 trillion dollar companies.
in my earlier post i myself said heres our options accept loses due to this change and hope the other guy cracks and closes his before you do or bite the economicc bullet and pay the closing fines. if it was a trillion a day subsidy ok fine i could wait that out a long time, but if you read above

orbiter = well, i had to transfer 50T into one of my enterprises to cover the cost

laguna = At 6 months per day and losses close to 250B per month, I am looking 1.5T per real day to stay out of the red.

homers been losing trillions a day and no doubt so has nia.

i talked to zen i know it cost him a lot also and it cost me more than 1 trillion a day trying to subsidize this this isnt chicken feed money and one nght medical equip was 10 billion shortfall 4 hours later huge oversupply you would think that the biggest shortfall of products in the game would be a safe factory to build but with that little change in 4 hours it went into loses. a tiny change to anything causes big ripples in this game everythings conected you change one thing it changes 100 others, every third factory is built to supply another so if we had to close 1000 then someones gotta close 333 that supplied it well then someone else has to close 110 more that supplied them so on so forth i just wish theyd put a little more thought into cause and effect before they implement these changes or at least inform us of them like theyve been trying to do with sp trading somehow this just seems like someone had nothing to do that night.there were several other items that went from shortfalls to oversupply same night mostly government such as road and traintrack maintenance there was a hell of a lot of factories closed = hell of a lot of money tacken out of the economy = out of the players hands.

n yeah i guess im gonna have to go to fearless blue if you dont play in space the other worlds just dont offer the full gaming experience they used to its just shame i spent so much time and effort and money developing my current empire on lu. its kinda like buying a house and after 5 months they say, oh wait you can no longer use your bathroom lol i know we sold you the house with a bathroom but now if you want to poop you have to buy our truck to take the poop away or to bring in toilet paper :p its just frustrating monopoly doesnt add more board spaces yahtzee doesnt add more dice comnbos they had great product here but it keeps evolving maybee its for the better in most players mind maybee not but i personaly would of rather they started a new game called galactic empire and left this one alone. i guess time will tell if people want a science fiction game or a realistic one or not.

crafty said it best = You consistently underestimate the effects of your changes, every time...

i dont want to rant and rave so ill leave it at this just between 5 players it took over 100 trillion dollars out of the game that will no longer be buying peoples products imagine the full total multiplied over 600 ceo's

I have been playing as one Country and one CEO on LU, I will be closing the Enterprise when it expires because the Enterprise part of the game is fundamentally broken. For instance saying that enterprises do make players profit because the nations where they are built become a lot richer is simply not good enough. Apple does not invest in the USA to make the US government rich, BP oil does not drill for oil to make the government more money. One simple way to change this would be to allow presidents to set the % of Corp revenue to be taxed just like they set the % of corp profits to be taxed. I for one would lower the taxes in my nation to allow CEO's to make more profit if it meant more private investment for my nation.

Also I for one an never going into the space aspect of the game, I play this game because its one of the most realistic economics/government simulation games I've ever found. Space shuttle trade has no part in that. I do not mean to abolish the space feature but rather it should be like real space travel, things that are beginning now like space tourism, improving productivity through use of satellites in communications technology, and at a big stretch the mining of raw materials that can't be found on a home planet. Shipping strategic bombers across the galaxy cos the people on one planet just forgot how to make them is just childish and is inappropriate for this fantastic game.

Sorry for double posting, one more thing, the auto transfer of money to failing corps without our permission and no way to turn it off is seriously not cool. The old system of corps going into debt and then failing was great at removing unprofitable corps and re-balancing supplies, the new system just sucks nations/enterprises dry of all their cash. And what was so wrong with the loans system that was in place before, why this war on the very interesting financial market feature of the game, corps enterprises and governments borrowing money is a good thing, its realistic and adds to the flavor of the game. Bring back loans! And then you can expand on the loans system, create a loans market where market forces set the interest rates, if there are too many borrowers interest rates go up till more people lend money and people decide its too expensive to borrow at that time, if there is a savings glut then interest rates fall till more people borrow to invest and others decided to spend because they are not getting a return on saved money.
They could even create a system where people have to lend money directly to each other and then have to bare the loses if the other person defaults, it would create a great system of a self regulating credit market, people would not be able to borrow excessive amounts because other players would know they were unable to pay it back, that would add a fantastic new dimension to the game

CEOs
On the whole, my 1 CEO makes a profit and it's cash transfers are positive.

I don't see any reason why CEOs should be making lots of money and have positive cash transfers.


Supply/Demand
If you look at the market supply/demand before the month update then it may look as though it changes dramatically. Also, if players sell off masses of stock then this can cause an over-supply.

It is also the longer-term picture that is important and not the immediate one.

Medical Supplies
The adjustment in the use of medical supplies is a short-term affect only. This is not a short-term game and it is the long-term outlook that should be considered to be successful.

If you have a rough patch, you just need to know why and either adapt or ride it out.

If players are losing lots of money and having large negative cash transfers then there must be specific reasons for it and it's not due to the medical supplies situation.


The GM just pointed out how beneficial an enterprise was for a country but they can be very profitable independently.

Still David its much harder to make money as a CEO and that is reflected in the fact that there are many more people playing nations then there are as CEOs, as for why a enterprise should make money and have positive cash flows, its a private business the whole point of a private business is to make a cash profit and then reinvest that cash profit in expanding the business.

One area where David is absolutely right though is in the fact that we are supposed to adapt to the changes that are made. When the game changes we have to change with it and constantly adapt our strategy to the new reality. That is something that is very realistic, many companies that were extremely profitable turn into loss makers when the markets and technology change, just look at general motors in the US once one of the worlds most successful companies ended up going bankrupt and having to be saved by the government because they did not adapt to changing realities.

One change that I really think needs to happen is reducing the tax CEO corps have to pay to nations, its too high and is crushing private investment.

My CEO is now making money again but the damage was already done. I never built any corps that were not in red, and I didn't build multiples of anything that was not making money with the first 1 or 2 I built. I am just pointing out that I was looking at what I built as I built them to make sure they should make money. I closed about 15-20 medical supplies corps for instance because they used to be hugely profitable. After closing all of the corps that had gone into negative, I ended up with 6T in debt and 12T in negative cash. Plus, I had added about 8T in cash as the crisis started. So, I lost about 25T. I am going to wait and see how the cash position of the CEO goes before I put any more into it.

On a side note, my Off Mid Range Missile corps continue to be failures. Some make a very tiny profit (about 1B per year) while others lose about 1-3B per year. Their current shortage is 986,000 and a corp produces 50-75 per month.

Because of the rise in prices of some of the supplies used by all corps, usually services, ht, and electricity, some corps will lose money if the supplies are of high quality or you are buying them from high quality corps by contract. Set quality a little lower and make sure your buy strat takes into account the shortages in some of these products. If the corps don't get them right away, they may be ordering twice or three times before they receive them. Then, wham you have high costs and lose $. Meanwhile the corp is paying the workers to sit around and play cards. Hey, how do I get that job??

So as I'm understanding the GMs, unless you don't mind being a charity and giving other players benefits while gaining little to none yourself, you should not have a CEO and expect to make any real money off it. Given the trillions I've lost in the last couple weeks I'm thinking moving all my corps back to the countries is a better idea and to just stop sinking the 30 gold into maintaining the CEO.

Benefits to countries should not be calculated in as a CEO's profits unless we're allowed to put as many corps in our own countries as we want. The number of corps and having a CEO should also be uncoupled from game levels.

I've been closing a LOT of companies and my situation is improving. I'm making a lot of adjustments, it's still going to be some time before I know where I really stand.

I don't really understand why the game even has enterprises.
It's not robust enough to stand as a game mode on its own and makes little sense that the leader of an empire should also own a multinational corporation.
"Private" corporations should have been really private - owned by your country's citizens and out of your control.
If you as president want to micromanage your country's economy then the less efficient state corporations can be used for that.

I agree with kitsune on this subject.

Everything under the enterprise banner could be done an empire banner.

I'd be very happy not to have an enterprise and do everything through my empire without restriction.

Personally I like the idea of the separation of private and public through having Countries and Enterprises as separate entities. It creates a real dynamic of public and private like the real world where countries and private enterprises have to work together to be successful. Also it allows people to play just the country or just the CEO part of the game if they want to.

I did at first think there was a conflict of interest in having a Country and a Enterprise on the same world, after all in the real world you can't be the president of a country and the CEO of a huge multinational at the same time. However I reconciled this by thinking of the private enterprise as having been set up by my nation as a sovereign wealth fund to earn money for my country. (what a joke that is the country is more profitable then the enterprise).

Talking about being realistc. My main point was this. How does a corp fail when it has all the ingredients to be successful. 1.. Cant sell anymore product.. some left. 2.. supplies, "OK".. 3.. wages, low(250) 4.. employment.. 100%, 5.. Taxes, set at 0.. 6.. Market.. In the RED.(meaning :They realy need it!!), = PROFIT, not breaking even. There is only a few corp types left that break even now with this recipe, and very unrealistic for the others. My question is.. WHY? As the other people in this thread, and many more are asking this simple question, and no direct response? My enterprises are slowly recovering because i needed to close some of these "Others" that where doing perfectly well before and not making a PROFIT now, but WHY did I need to close them in the first place?? WHY are THESE "OTHER" corps NOT making a PROFIT NOW??? ( i must add, My other that I closed.. fitted this recipe to a "T", but i couldnt do anything about it). But perhaps you did respond.. as saying, these corps are only good in your own country "thats where you see the profit". Makes me think now before invesiting in a NEW players country now.. ya, know, to help him out... isnt this what this CHANGE is suppose to do? Help out the new players? Easier to IPO, make it more appealing to invest in other countries other then your own...????

I dont expect a responce from the GM, and If I do, I would be very surprised.

Homer, if you adopt the same strategy for each corp (like many of us do) and then expect to sit back and live off the profits, it is unrealistic.

Just because something sells, it is in short supply and operating at full production, this doesn't necessarily make a profitable corp.

There appears to be many cycles/affects on the international marklets which span many game years. You'll need to expect not all corps will make profits all the time. If you want to optimise profits, then you need to consider also:

Salaries
Market price
Raw material price
Market situation/cycle/events
Welfare

... and for each corp.

With a diverse portfolio of corps and good strategies there's no reason why an enterprise can't remain very profitable most of the time without micromanagement.

In answer to your question Homerdome, a corp that has all of those 6 factors in its favor may not make a profit because the input goods may be high in price at the moment, its not just whether or not you can get the input goods that matters but what price you get them for.

Secondly originally the wage index was started at 100 and the gamemaster is trying to make SC$ more valuable so while 250 wage index may have been low before, now it may actually be high, in my opinion some corps are often better at 200 wage index now that the game has changed.

Thirdly now that there are huge fee's involved with closing a corporation and the markets change so rapidly it may not be wise to close all corps making a loss. I would advise in some cases lowering wages drastically and vastly reducing hiring and wearing the fixed costs while the market adjusts may actually be more profitable overall, in some cases.