Fine tuning companies (Kebir Blue)

I have 25 or so state companies in Nullarbor and for the most part they tick along making a profit and doing their thing. Obviously there are a lot of things I could be doing to micromanage them to get the most out of them, focusing at the moment on left over products. The assumptions I have made are, that "Some Left" is the words I'm looking for, "None" means the product is too cheap, "Too Much" it's too expensive, that I can set the sales and purchasing for all companies at once and that I should wait for a pattern of sales problems (None of Too Much) before reacting. Should I try to set a quality based or fixed price, and what sort of % reduction per month? I'll set it for all companies and tinker with the ones it's not quite right for.

Dex

Hey, Dex - We talked about this in chat. You're on the right path. Hang in there.

Thanks Scott. I'll let those changes settle for a couple of days before I start on my productivity and hiring questions.

Dex.

I have noticed that my state corps tend to order relatively large quantities of supplies. I have seen supply inventory stocks of 20 to 30 months. It would seem that a 12 month supply would be more reasonable. However, I have not been able to locate any place to set a quantity for automatic ordering.

First question is do I want to let these large supply inventories continue, and so inflate corp asset value?

Second, if I want to lower the supply inventories, where do I go to change the automatic ordering for quantity?

Comments and suggestions appreciated!

Hi Jim,
Obviously I'm no expert here, but your asset value doesn't change when you buy the supplies. As supplies don't perish and there is no interest on cash in bank, both assets are static and when you buy supplies, you just swap one asset for another. Besides, I can't find a place to fix it anyway. I'm more concerned about how late the company leaves it to buy supplies.


Dex.

My hiring and productivity is suddenly all over the shop in my slave. I played with the salaries recently, trying to lower costs, and that is getting the blame, but I'm having trouble correcting it.
So much for waiting a few days for next question, but this morning things are worse. All bar 1 or 2 of my corps used to read 112 and 100 production and hiring. Today about 1/3 have 100 hiring so it's obviously one of the group settings. There are plenty of workers available in all fields.

Dex.

selling strat can effect production and hiring.
A "too high" for several mths in a row will reduce production.Continued "too high" will result in workers being fired.

That might explain it. I had selling strategy at +100% on quality (miss understood the setup) and had too much stock left for quite a while in some cases. Scott has set me straight there and I'm waiting for the correction. The lowering of salaries coinciding with the hiring drop looks to be a coincidence.

Dex.

Hi, Dex -

I looked at some of your corps in The Riverland. You might consider changing your buying strategy. Right now you are buying supplies at 102%, raising 5% each month that product is not delivered. I use 90% of market, raising 8% per month. That might get you some of your supplies at less cost.

In automatic settings, what do you use for Quality of Corp Supplies? (I use 190, though to be honest I don't know exactly what effect this has.)

While your employment numbers are headed in the right direction, you seem to have zero LLW available. Best to get more if you can.

Regards -

Scott

190 for corp supplies is too high, lower to 160.
Buying at 190 was the ideal, until gm's tweaked the game.

"Value of Supplies" does count towards "Assets".

In this sense it's possible, and sometimes desirable (before IPO for example), to stock large quantities of supplies, then transfer in cash to replace what was spent for supplies.

Good thread people. Well for me anyway. I had my buying strategy the same as Scott, but changed to 102% + 5% trying to have less shortages. I'm happy with all the results so far. When the changes have had a few more days to settle down, I might start creeping the buying strategy down towards 90% and see what happens.
Does anyone know what the star next to a company name means?

Dex.

At 90% you won't get many supplies. At 98% you will get most. 106% you will rarely have a shortage but it is possible especially if the price is rising.

If you start your first bid at 96% you are more likely to get your bid.

star means new corps your not able to close or bid on

Taking all that on board. I've got a little red triangle with an exclamation mark in it next to one of my corps. No need for expert advise here. I'm putting myself through a crash course in saving a corp from the nackery.

Dex.

Unprofitable corps? The message I'm getting on a few of my companies is "corp salaries have been reduced because 1: corp is in debt or not making a profit 2: Government salaries are less than halve the av corp salaries". The salaries are reduced to 16.7 and this message would show in all corps if the salary problem was my issue, so I'm not looking there. I'm transfering money to the corps to fix the debt, but it seems it would make more sense to make them profitable. Question is, how? One in particular has all its product contracted to my country, so is making sales. That leaves purchasing price.

Dex.

Product sold on contract to your country is priced at market. If you are contracting higher quality goods at market price, you may be leaving some profit on the table. Your selling price per unit has to be higher than your cost per unit. If your quality is relatively high, you may be better off selling into the world market and buying what your country needs on the world market.

That makes sense, I think. The GM makes up the difference between quality premium and market price, right?

Profitablility may be questionable in local markets, but you seem to get points for it (Departments/Business/Trade Statistics). I'm looking into common markets now, because I'm told I should. Are common markets basically the same idea as local markets but with a select group of entities, rather than just the one country/enterprise?

Dex.

From your home page, Click on "Common Markets" on the far left hand side of the screen. At that page, you can select to join an existing common market or create your own.

The value of common markets is debatable. If you do not join a common market, you take a hit on some indexes. On the con side, you may get better prices for your products, with a greater chance of selling at higher prices on the world market.

I've heard its better to join a CM, but not participate in it. The products sold on the CM are sold for base price. Products sold on the WM have quality upgrades, and are sold for much more.

It's a shame if that's the case because it wastes a large part of the game. The concept that all products aren't just sold into the ether but someone has to want to buy them, and pay for better quality, is integral to this being an economic simulation. To join a common market, can you just roll up and join, or you need to be invited or at least accepted? Same question about feds, actually.

Dex.

Hey, Dex -

Speaking only from my own experience...

Common Market: I've belonged to one for about 4 real time months and have never offered, or been offered, a contract. I think it's fair to claim that this hasn't affected my country score. Does simply belonging help in that regard? I don't know.

Fed: I've been in a Fed for about three months. Activity there would be nil, except for the chairman occasionally kicking out inactive members and the odd warmonger who proposes a change to the rules that will make bailing out his ass happen faster. But there has never been an actual call to assist anyone. In short, I don't get it.

I have not joined a common market as yet, choosing to concentrate on my local economy and will worry about index points a bit later. Thus, I really have no comments on them.

I consider federations to be absolutely critical -- to your sucess if you find a good one, or your failure if you do not. I would suggest GREF on Golden Rainbow as an example of a very good one! A good fed will provide a lot of answers to your questions and will contribute enormously to your success.

I also suggest you read the thread on the Golden Rainbow Forum section entitled "Looking for a fed and/or common market" (Feb 20). I started the thread by asking for help in finding common markets and federations. Nute Gunray and Zeba, in particular, explain exactly how to go about finding a good federation, which is what you are looking for -- the questions you need to ask when looking for one to join.

If you are not getting what you need

As advised, I have started as a CEO and was curious to hear how others started. I have bought 8 companies so far, starting with a good one and a cheap one from my own countries, and a complete random from a different continent, just because I can. I set up two from scratch actually. The thing is, I have cheated 1T or so in from coins and have a 400B debt, and it still seems to take a long time to build up enough cash to buy the next company. With no roads or hospitals to build, there isn't much to do but wait for enough cash to buy the next one. Did everyone else just swap heaps of coins for cash? What makes one company a better buy than another?

Dex.