|
IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FED2 - COMPANIES AND FACTORIESDEPOT MAINTENANCEBefore we get into the high finance details of how to manage your company and keep the shareholders happy, you need to get to grips with the nitty-gritty of depots and factories. Depots are not the same as the warehouses you used to store goods when you were a Merchant. The depot is the company's main storage and distribution center for the planet on which it is located - it needs to be staffed and maintained, and it can be expanded to hold more goods. You can buy more depots at a cost of 1,000,000 ig each - one per planet. The command is, guess what, 'BUY DEPOT', and you must be in an exchange. Since it's the company that owns depots, the cost comes out of the company's working capital. Your company display lists all your depots, and you can look at an individual depot with 'DI DEPOT planetname':
When you bought the company, your old warehouses (if you had any) were converted to depots. The conversion process includes reinforcing the foundations of the building so that depots can be upgraded, with 'UPGRADE DEPOT' - you must be in the relevant exchange. The cost is 500,000 ig. This builds an extra floor on the depot, increasing its size to 30 bays. In order to upgrade your depot to more than 30 bays, you will need to obtain a depot permit. This costs one megagroat (taken from the company's balance) and you will also have to use a slithy to persuade the clerk to give you the permit- the command is 'BUY DEPOT PERMIT'. You can then keep on adding floors, to a total of 5 which will give you 50 bays. But there is a downside to expansion - the depot will need more workers to run it, which will cost more in wages. The depot display tells you how many workthings are needed. There is a difference between depot workers and factory workers. Factory workers are skilled and highly trained, which come out of a limited pool of trained workers on the planet, while depot workers are unskilled labor drawn from the limitless ranks of the lumpen proletariat. Depot workers therefore have no effect on the number of workers shown on the planet display. Each worker is paid the minimum wage for the planet (which for Sol planets is 40 ig) each factory cycle. The wages are paid at the start of the day, at reset, with the assumption that there are 16 cycles a day; therefore, the wage bill for a basic depot with 7 workers would be 4,480 ig per day. To put goods into a depot or retrieve them you use the same commands as with warehouses - 'STORE' and 'FETCH'. Because the depot is owned by the company rather than you personally, when you store goods in the depot, the company will pay you the cost. When you fetch goods you pay the company the cost. You can also use the 'SHUFFLE' command to rearrange goods in the depot. You can also sell goods from the depot direct to the exchange, without having to put them into your ship first. This will save both you and the stevedores work. The command is 'SELL BAY bay#'. You must be in the exchange for this to work. If the goods were produced by one of your factories then the proceeds from the sale will all go to the company. If the goods were not manufactured by your company then the sale is treated as if you had fetched the goods from the depot and then sold them personally - in other words, the company receives the cost of the goods, and you get the profit (or take the loss) from the sale. If a planet owner decides that your depot is unwanted then it can be expropriated. It will vanish, along with its contents, and you won't get any compensation. It therefore pays to stay on friendly terms with POs, and never build on a new planet without talking to the owner first.
The Idiot's Guide - online index |