Inside Scoop page 1

HOW MUCH IS THAT PLANET IN THE WINDOW?

by Jezz

Recently, one particular question has reverberated over the space waves on a few occasions. So I thought I would take the time this week to try to answer it more fully.

Q: How many groats should I have before I link my planet?

A: How long is a piece of string?

You see, it's really not a question of need. You can link a planet with three groats, two wooden nickels and an old tuna sandwich in your treasury and the planet will still appear. The question is more along the lines of: What do I want to be able to do with my planet once it's linked?

To start with there are builds to do. You don't HAVE to do them right away, but it will help your planet make money more quickly if you do. These first builds affect the efficiency of your exchange. The faster your exchange runs, the faster you are able to make groats from it. There are three builds that can be done right after your planet links, that will improve efficiency. These are schools, the agricultural college and canals. You'll want four schools to support the college and five canals to help you transport your goods around more easily, and each build costs ten million groats. So the maths looks like this:

Maybe at this point you look at your manufacturing company treasury and see that you have 200megs in there... Plenty, yes? Well no... not really. Don't forget that investors have bought shares in your company. Your investors now own a share of your treasury and those voracious financiers have been waiting a long time for the big pay-off, the moment that you link your planet and your company treasury is shared out amongst them. To know how much your planet treasury will get from your company treasury you need to look at the percentage of shares that you own.

When you made your initial public offering you had 500 shares, the broker kept 1000 shares and the other 8500 shares were likely snapped up by financiers before you could draw a second breath. If you've managed to wangle any shares back from the clutches of the fins at manufacturer level, you'll probably own 2000 personal shares and 2000 treasury shares. If you completed a certain puzzle at the right time, you may have an extra 125 shares. For the purposes of working out what your planet treasury will retain you can lump your personal and treasury shares in together, that would give you 4125 of the 10125 shares issued or... 40.74%.

40.74% of 200megs is 81,480,000ig so if you had 200megs in your company treasury before you linked, you would be approximately 18.5megs short of the cash you need to do those first 10 builds right away. In fact you would need about 246megs in the company to keep 100megs for your planet treasury when you link.

OK, so we've looked at what you might want to spend on builds right away. There's no law to say you have to build them but it will improve the groat making ability of your planet if you do. What about other start up costs? Well there is the money you might want to spend on goods that you will store in your exchange for other people to buy or to export yourself. That's where the "walk up" comes in. If you want to be able to haul out of your exchange you'll have to pay for the goods you buy from your planet. How much you pay for them can be easily controlled by walking the exchange up slowly. If you slowly walk up just a handful at a time and haul in your deficits to help offset the cost, the effect on your treasury will not be devastating. You can buy goods from your planet or from haulers even if your treasury is in negative numbers. You cannot, however, build on your planet without having enough groats in the treasury, so if you think you might run low on cash, get the builds done before you spend on commodities.

So... the answer to the question of how many groats you need to link a planet depends entirely upon how you want to manage your planet (assuming you are actually going to do some managing). To get the first ten builds done and leave yourself a little cushion you'll probably want in excess of 280megs, but it's not necessary to have that much. You have to ask yourself how much you want to work at planetary management. You may want enough groats to immediately promote your planet if you don't like the look of the exchange. That would require a lot more starting cash but it's possible. However I would like to point out that all exchanges will make groats if you try.

There is a way to get your hands on more than 40% of the shares in your company but you would need to plan for it when you were a merchant. For every warehouse you buy and keep at Merchant level you'll receive 10 extra personal shares in your company when you reach Industrialist. Given that you can only have one warehouse on any planet you'll have to do a lot of running around the galaxy to make this worthwhile.

If you buy 150 warehouses at Merchant level, you'll have 2000 personal shares when you IPO. (1500 from the warehouses plus the 500 you get from the broker automatically). All this really does for you is relieve you of the burden of begging for 1500 shares from the Financiers at a later date. You cannot buy more personal shares if you already have 2000. You can still buy 2000 treasury shares to make up the 40%.

However, if you buy 200 warehouses at merchant level you'll have 2500 personal shares when you IPO. Buy 250 warehouses and you'll have 3000 personal shares when you IPO. You can still buy 2000 treasury shares. It's quite possible to end up with more than 50% of the shares in your company before you link your planet.

Whether all that extra effort is worth it or not, depends entirely upon you and your style of business. You can fill the warehouses with commodities to sell after you IPO, thereby putting more cash directly into your company treasury so that your initial share price can be lower. That will save you groats in dividends later. You'll keep more of the dividends you do make. It will save you from having to beg so many financiers for shares later and having to pay out to buy them back. If your business plan calls for a long factory ownership, this may be the way for you to go.

As I told a friend recently... How much you need for a planet is entirely up to you. There is no wrong way to be a planet owner unless you have no idea what you are doing and why.

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