W3C - Enterprises

We have from the start of Simcountry set a limit to the number of corporations that can be owned by an enterprise.

despite that limit, a few enterprises kept growing and reached numbers of corporations that are completely out of proportion and cannot be reach by any player even when playing very intensively for years.

The few players with such enterprises can relax now.
we have no plans to reduce the size of any existing enterprise.

we are however looking at limiting the growth of enterprises as intended from the start. Our intention is to make sure enterprises that have reached a very large size will not increase the number of corporations.

Building large and very profitable enterprises will remain an attractive feature.

we are encouraging players to build large enterprises as they are very profitable, quite stable and provide a steady line of income.

Andy, I am relaxed, but you are wrong about profitability unfortunately.

If you check my 5600 corporations biggest CEO in SC you will see that cash is not growing anywhere. I made no cash transactions in or out for real months and CEO can hardly sustain itself. That stopped me from building 10K corporations that I really wanted and had been working for months to achieve.

John and myself have explained the triple taxation situation many times and until this changes big CEOs will not be popular among players.

I am also having such issues, no matter how "profitable" the enterprise is, they can not cash flow. The only benefit is building corps in my own nations to get back to work schools / special clinics, and store weapons. Plus a bit of economic warfare to soften an enemy economically.

Thanks for the heads up, Andy.

However, I definitely agree with Mndz and Jiggle Billy. Just because your finance report says you're making profit doesn't mean you actually realize that profit. This has been true for some time - in fact, it's largely been true since I played heavily almost 10 years ago. You can make money with commodity trading, but you can do that with countries too. I only really use enterprises so that I can have more control over the corporations in my countries (and I had previously used them to store weapons). Paying a monthly gold coin fee for relatively minimal profit is already a stretch.

If anything, I think players could use an incentive to build and grow their enterprises. I only see a few players who make the effort these days, and very few newer players have enterprises of any substance. I don't see almost any newer players doing what you describe (building large enterprises).

Ultimately, I'm not sure why this change would be prioritized. If you're not going to adjust large enterprises that exist and players generally aren't making them anymore, why work on this? A far more relevant change would be to adjust the taxes Mndz was talking about. Lower them on small enterprises. 250 corps+ you hit first tax bracket. 500+ you hit second bracket. 750+ you hit the current tax bracket.

Just my opinion.

I'm working to build my enterprises up, but they do not create enough cash flow to pay for their own growth, typically have to direct trade money from my nations to build them up. I typically find they can self sustain at best.

exactly - while CEO has the only purpose to make money.. but they are not making any for years.. A single country from my empire made tens of times more with 200 corporations than CEO with 5600

I would like to add something else to this discussion.

My 2 main CEO's earn me several hundred billion per game month each. I am not complaining about their profitability. But they only make so much money because each has around 550-580 corporations in my own 0% tax countries.

I do believe there is some money to be earned with ceo's but they really are not as profitable as advertised unless you create some very specifick conditions.

There are two issues here.

1. Some enterprises are far too big.

It creates a situation with several huge players and then others with a tiny fraction of what these players have.

It will not be possible for anyone to ever compete.
If enterprises have a reasonable max number of corporations, everyone could compete.

I understand the very large enterprise owners reactions but their arguments are not in the interest of the smaller players.

It is hard to have a real discussion about it when everyone is arguing for himself and not for the general interest.

2. You are all arguing about the profitability of enterprises.
This is a good reason for us to reevaluate enterprises and come back for a discussion when we know more.

We thought up to now that enterprises are profitable.
Do they need to earn 6T per day? I don't think so.
Profitability is not a trivial discussion.

I will come back with some observations.

Enterprises have other attractive features and are very beneficial to the players building them.

If you are interrested in looking at some CEO's mine could be somewhat interesting.

None of my ceo's are above 750 corps
I have 2 CEO's that are mostly in my own countries with 0% tax (those on LU)
I have 1 CEO on WG where none of my corps are in a country I own
My CEO on WG is using boosters to grow faster and has as much cash as needed to grow.
I think that CEO's are more then profitable enough once all corps are fully upgraded *until then they cost a bucket load of money*

The hard part with their profitability is that they show solid profits on the Profit and loss statement, but that statement doesn't include expenses like the enterprise tax. Both my enterprises "profit" several hundred billion per game month, yet they cash flow out negative.

Also, what do you consider a very large enterprise Andy? I know we can agree that Lord Mndz enterprise is large but where is the line?

Andy, i have made tons of proposals on ceo Life and it is not fair to say that they are only for my interest, i don't care about money as there is nothing to spend them on anyways. i want ceo game to be interesting.

ceo need to grow and compete for markets, what they compete with if they are all at 750 corporations size? you then just set coonfiguration and leave it. ceo game is only interesting when you are building it. the moment you stop building it gets boring.

Please consider this scenario. just imagine that world has 100 ceos with 5000 corporations in each, i am sure at that stage they will compete for everything, so this will be interesting to play for them. forum will be full of conplains about hostile bidding etc. presidents of countries will benefit even more due to ceo paying more taxes and employing housewifes.

i bet you have never thought about this scenario, which would be great and easy fix.

I'm not sure where you're seeing players arguing for themselves. It seems like players are attempting to let you know how they see the game working out - and Mndz and Jiggle Billy are two of the best players who play your game (apologies, DETA, I don't know much about you ).

It just seems you are looking at the situation backwards. If you want to help smaller enterprises, help them directly. Limiting bigger enterprises doesn't make the game more fun for smaller players. Give smaller players boosts. Lower the tax on them. Let them make more money. They'll grow more easily that way. Your problem is that there are only a few large enterprises - so help more players build them.

Business isn't a pie Andy. I have ~1500 corps that doesn't mean others can't build any. I am limited to using the stock market to acquire new corps, what is the plan to limit that further?

If there are no back-end issues then I don't see the point of this.

Any player who is willing to put in the time to acquire several thousand corps should be allowed to.

There are players who joined in the last month or two in the top tens.
The scoring already favors a newer player expanding their empire.

CEO's should be able to do more, not have additional limitations put on them. Mndz posted some good ideas about this.

I have 2 CEOs on KB. 1 with 99 mostly mining corps turns a profit. The other with 752 corps would turn a profit except that the taxes run 30 to 40b above net every game month. I have nothing in storage in the mining CEO but about 44T in product stored in the CEO losing money. I'd like to know if the product being warehoused there is being taxed.

The larger CEO turned a large profit in the beginning and allowed me to transfer cash to build my countries. But with the current losses this CEO is only good for weapons corps and storing product. If military storage is being phased out or excessively taxed I'm not sure it is worth keeping.

My CEO has around 450 corps. It doesn't make money. The finance sheet will show 100-200B in profit each month but if I let that go, I quickly go into debt. For instance, I was out of town the last few days and didn't log into SC. My CEO went 7T in debt. I moved cash out of my corps to get money back but I am still paying the debt. I totally admit I don't understand the cash flow in the CEO because I don't see where to access a cash balance sheet. All I have is the finance page. I do know that every day I move cash out of corps down to 40,000. It typically makes me 2.5-3T. The next day, I will have no cash left and a small debt usually. If I miss a day, the cash out does not double. I may get 4T or so if I miss one day. I missed 3 days this weekend and got 4.8T. If did not log into my CEO every day, I will go 7T in debt very fast.
I honestly only keep the CEO at this point because I can store weapons there. When that is taken away, I will probably close it because then it is just a money hog.

There are about 100.000 corporations in a world. The smaller worlds with much smaller numbers.

100 enterprises with 5000 corporations each is 500.000

we have less than 500.000 corporations in the entire game, most of them state corporations.

there are not enough people around for so many corporations.

I think that 100 enterprises with 1000 corporations each is most probably impossible. they will produce at far less than 100% and make losses.

The cash flow of enterprises is complex as corporations in the enterprise hold most of the cash.

if you will limit each corporations to a fixed amount of cash (example: 50B) and let the surplus cash go to the enterprises, their cash will grow fast.
in addition, they contribute a lot of cash to the country where they are located.
Most enterprise owners, have such corporations in the countries they own and the income is visible on their country financial pages.

Enterprises are kept by players because they are money making entities that produce profits month by month.

enterprises are collections of corporations that are all or nearly all profitable and unlike countries, have no cost of education, health, transportation defense and what not.

Nobody would pay for keeping enterprises if they were not profitable.

there are many players with multiple enterprises because they make lots of money, directly or indirectly, contributing to countries in several ways and earning their cost multiple times.

If they run a loss for anyone, then dump them.

Once they reach the max size, there is very little effort to keep them running and the money comes in.

the money is used to build empires, large ones, with mo limit to the number of countries, buy weapons and ammunition and build a huge army.

much of the money originated with enterprises.

many players think they are not profitable and they are missing the main way to make a fortune.

We have looked into it for years and the results are very clear.
In recent months, corporations became even more profitable than before and well managed enterprises became even more profitable.

1000 corporations in an enterprise seems like a probable limit to be set in the coming weeks.

we do not think that many players will be able to build such huge enterprises, produce at 100% capacity and optimize profits simply because there will not be enough corporations in the entire world to be built of bought.

We will have to discover where it goes as it happens.

In the mean time, such a limit will harm no one.

Larger enterprises will not be required to reduce numbers and smaller ones have enough space to grow. we think, as I said above, that it will not be easy to get to 1000 because of population limits and the current number of corporations in each world.

Andy, CEOs will compete for their place on earth and this will be great, but this won't happen if they have no money to grow or hostile bid other corporations. Just imagine CEO wars, which is mass bidding.

new CEOs actually can compete as they can build mining corporations. so there should not be an issue to enter the game.

As an illustration about the difference between the "profit" listed in the finance section for your ceo and actual realized cash, consider this test I ran:

- I stopped building/buying corporations
- I didn't move any corporations
- I cancelled all contracts
- I made zero purchases
- I turned profit transfer all the way up to 100% so cash would move as quickly as possible from corps directly to my enterprise.

In the last three days, the profits shown in my finance report for this ceo averaged a little more than 300b per month (across the 18 months shown). In theory, that means the game is saying I made 5.4T in profit.

In reality, the cash of my enterprise went up by ~400 billion. That's an average of about 20b profit per game month, or about 13.5 TIMES LESS than what the finance report illustrates. This is about the profit that I make in a country I have of 30 million over that time span.

It really isn't worth the time or energy to build enterprises as they currently work in my opinion. I only have them because they're required for game levels. Arguing that they're these highly profitable entities is honestly not based in reality. It's far more profitable and time-efficient to just take a couple countries, let them sit there and accumulate population, and make 20b a month from each of them.

I believe most players keep enterprises as a tool not because they make money. How many stand alone CEO's are there in the game?
Whatever reason they have them for any loses are accepted as a cost of doing business not a reason for dumping the enterprise.

If the goal of a few players is to have 5K corps and they cause no harm to gameplay then what's the problem? Other players with different goals won't be interested in building mega enterprises.

CEO score seems to be based largely on assets. If a CEO with over 1K corps can't acquire more and through attrition will drop to a 1,000 then their score will fall. They'll have to hoard more products to keep their score, something you said you wanted to limit in another post.

You might have a good point about the CEO rating. I will look at it again.
last time we did was a long time ago.

Also we know that we need some improvement on the financial reporting of enterprises.

this is in the making but so many more urgent items get in the way.