New Player How do I compare my progress?

[tdeandreas]

I just started this game yesterday and I am really loving it but, how do I tell if I am doing the right thing with my company. Right now I am making on avg about 19k a month in profit is that good, bad, about even? Should I be changing the products around in my store to max the highest profit or should I just leave things to way that they are now?

Side question what does "Months" mean on the home page Goods Summary right after Storage.


Sorry if this has been answered before

[Morpheus]

the months means one of two things:

a) you produce more then you use => it displays how long till the current max. amount is stored (the units u set in the warehouse)

b) you use the stuff u have stored => how long till its all gone



if u click on your company name (or an other you are interested in) on the page marked "home" or look at the first couple of lines on the one marked "reports" youll see some stats of your company/the company u look at (eg. P/S, P/E etc.).

directly next to the value of each stats there may be some arrows.

green arrow pointing up mean its good (two means its even better)
nothing means its ok
red down arrow means not so good, might look to improve something (two reds mean theres either something seriously wrong, someone bought a lot of the given companys shares (and driving the price and therefore these values up) or you're in an upgrading circle with too many production lines)

so these values display the "health" of a company and are the main pointers for ppl like ray, who look for as much green as possible to buy the shares, since the net worth of this company will grow (=> shareprice rises, giving them more money to play with)



also dont panic if you see lots of red when the economy comes down from the boom. thats normal, but u might look at the prices in your stores....

and switching around products.... its one way, the risky one.

in later stores groups youll have 6 products. and 6 stores are taxfree => fill all 4 slots of a store with one product and also start producing it yourself. upgrading lines will help to satisfy the demand.

also look through this forum, it isnt that big and i know i posted the last paragraph in depth somewhere here already. and other ppl might have had the same questions, and gotten (real) answers for them.



honestly i like this community here. no silly spamming or flaming.

[Casey]

On the profit front, I try to keep my Return on Investment Capital over 15% in "Normal" years. Under new player protection, you won't see the effects of bad (Panic, Recession) years, but you should see profits in the 17% - 20% range in good (Prosperity, Boom) years. There are lots of strategies to accomplish this, but I try to focus on selling one good product in my highest sales license, and producing one good product from my top few production licenses. You can run six stores and 30 production lines without getting taxed, so usually I consider that my limit.

Right now I'm producing and selling MP3 players in stores, and making all the raw materials myself except LCD screens, which I haven't unlocked yet, and I'm using my remaining tax-free production lines to produce CPUs. Previously I had been making Video Cards, but the bottom fell out of that market, and I retooled my lines. Retooling isn't as important in the early part of the game, but later, when you're upgrading production lines to squeeze every penny out of them, it's critical.

If you're just starting out, I'd recommend making as much canned soup as you can afford, and build stores to sell it as the money rolls in. Once you've unlocked Heavy Industry, add aluminum and can production to make the cans you're using, then build more aluminum lines as you get money to reinvest. The aluminum will get dumped on the market, but at a substantial profit. Watch the goods prices, though, aluminum won't always deliver your best profit!

-c.

[Morpheus]

i still remember the old days before the metalurgy lines were introduced... (and i intentionally didnt say good old days)

just producing steel to the max, till u wanna cry. but getting started was way easier back then^^

[Raymond]

Yep, that or plastic pellets, there was always a big demand for them too.
If you could catch the petrolium prices low, they were an even bigger money machine than the steel and sometimes aluminum lines.
You had to watch them closer because of that.

The one problem that I see constantly is people letting the cash just pile up. If you are saving for something specific, cool.
Otherwise, if your money isnt invested in something, it can't make you more money.

If you havent reached the thirty production line limit, then just pick something towards the top on the market summary page, something with the highest price markup due to demand. Almost all production lines will earn enough to cover the setup fee within six months at the default prices.

It is best to make what you are using yourself, and when possible, plan ahead and build the ingredient lines a few months before you make the finished goods lines, so you can use your own ingredients and not have to pay the markup price the market charges. After you get your company up around a billion dollars net worth, it is often more profitable to buy some of the parts than to make it yourself. You have to deal with it on a case by case basis.

Warehouses help, but watch that you don't run out of operating capital because you are storing too many things in the warehouse.

[Morpheus]

Previously I had been making Video Cards, but the bottom fell out of that market, and I retooled my lines. Retooling isn't as important in the early part of the game, but later, when you're upgrading production lines to squeeze every penny out of them, it's critical.

of course u gotta watch the costs of the retooling.

switching from steel to aluminium is nearly for free, but if u retool to a line from a different group it can get expensive, depending on the upgrade level of the line and the difference of the lvl between the two groups.

reason:

upgrading a line of heavy industry for the first time costs 500k $ (and always last 2 months more than the last time, starting at 2 months)

upgrading a line of toys for the first time costs 20 mio. $.


now if u retool from heavy industry lvl 2 to toys lvl 2 u gotta pay 20 000 000 - 500 000 = 19,5 mio $ PLUS some extra, which depends on the result of the substraction, so it seems to be a percentage.

the retooling also takes time, but just half of the last upgrade. (so starts at 1 month for the retooling of a lvl 2 line)

i still remember when appliances where the top of the goods, and the max lvl was 5.

retooling from heavy industry lvl 5 to appliance lvl 5 cost more than a billion per line. (if billion comes after million in british AND american english. in german it doesnt, that i know. we have million, milliarde, billion, billiarde, trillion, u see the pattern)

[tdeandreas]

On the profit front, I try to keep my Return on Investment Capital over 15% in "Normal" years. Under new player protection, you won't see the effects of bad (Panic, Recession) years, but you should see profits in the 17% - 20% range in good (Prosperity, Boom) years. There are lots of strategies to accomplish this, but I try to focus on selling one good product in my highest sales license, and producing one good product from my top few production licenses. You can run six stores and 30 production lines without getting taxed, so usually I consider that my limit.

-c.

Do you mean ROIC of the stores or total on Net income?


I have a few more questions when you get to retirement the game states that your company is reset, does that mean I have to start over from scratch again?

I have my marketing on full but sometimes I sell three types of good and sometimes I sell four why does it cost more in marketing to sell three types of goods for example when I sell Vitamins, Gasoline, Milk, and Wine the marketing cost 11,800k but when I sell Vitamins, Milk, Wine and Wine it cost 12,400k shouldn't it cost less since you are marketing the same product and not more?

[Morpheus]

On the profit front, I try to keep my Return on Investment Capital over 15% in "Normal" years. Under new player protection, you won't see the effects of bad (Panic, Recession) years, but you should see profits in the 17% - 20% range in good (Prosperity, Boom) years. There are lots of strategies to accomplish this, but I try to focus on selling one good product in my highest sales license, and producing one good product from my top few production licenses. You can run six stores and 30 production lines without getting taxed, so usually I consider that my limit.

-c.

Do you mean ROIC of the stores or total on Net income?


I have a few more questions when you get to retirement the game states that your company is reset, does that mean I have to start over from scratch again?

I have my marketing on full but sometimes I sell three types of good and sometimes I sell four why does it cost more in marketing to sell three types of goods for example when I sell Vitamins, Gasoline, Milk, and Wine the marketing cost 11,800k but when I sell Vitamins, Milk, Wine and Wine it cost 12,400k shouldn't it cost less since you are marketing the same product and not more?

the marketing costs are fixed per product and slot.

so one slot of wine costs x$, two slots cost 2*x $


this x solely depends on the product, and wine seems to be more expensive than gasoline. but since gas has a base price of 750 and wine of 2100 that doesnt come as a surprise.