Can you let my friend, an eNigerian prince, borrow some money? He’s royalty, he’ll pay you back!
Huh, no, it isn’t counter-productive. Given that level 3 workers are apparently offered today about 6 IDR (there’s one offer at 7 IDR) you might become less of a good deal if we get a full staff of acceptably qualified workers, but at the moment, please hire yourself and pay yourself. If you turn out to be a faithful employee, maybe the board of directors will consider keeping you at this rather high salary ;), especially if you keep such a high wellness.
Speaking of which, if we happened to have an employee with a cute dog picture, who happened to have a level high enough to fight and only 60 wellness, living in a region with a Q5 hospital and it happened that there were two active wars in Indonesia, maybe we should advise him to join a battle. Just saying, ** RandMcNally** 
Regarding worker’s productivity :here’s the wiki page where the formulas used are explained. Here’s the calculator which will give you the productivity and total cost of production per worker. It has been modified and simplified today, apparently, so it’s really easy to use now (more intuitive, less data to fill in, you just have to mention the relevant sector, in our case weapons). The previous version was accurate, I’m going to assume the new version still is. Another calculator : the cost part doesn’t seem to work, but the productivity part does, and it allows to enter the data for each individual worker and get the total productivity. I don’t remember if I double-checked its accuracy.
Things there is to know about productivity :
-A weapon takes 5 production point to make.
-Up to 10 workers, each new worker raise the productivity of everybody. For instance, Raza would produce 1.5 weapon/day if he’s working alone, 1.65 weapon/day if there’s another employee (even if the other doesn’t work), 1.92 weapon/day with 3 other employees (which is currently the case). Above 10 employees, individual productivity decreases (so we would get more weapons at a higher cost, which might or might not be a good thing)
-Skill 0 employees produce almost nothing, IOW they’re worthless, except if a) they never play again, hence boost other workers productivity without being paid until they die of starvation/they’re fired or b)they stay with the company when they level up.
-At the current market price in Indonesia, skill 1,2 and 3 workers (current salary about 2,4 and 6 IDR) are great. The total cost of a weapon is about 4.65 IDR (they sell for 6) with them, assuming a full staff and the lowest current price for iron (0.47 IDR/unit), if I didn’t make any mistake. And the higher the skill, the better regarding production. A full staff of skill 1 employees would produce 8.5 weapons/day, a full staff of skill 2 17/day, of skill 3 26/day.
-At higher skill level, salaries are significantly higher currently (about 10IDR for a skill 4, 15 IDR for skill 5). They will produce more, but at a higher cost. Again, this might be a good thing or not.
About raw material :
-Each weapon takes 5 Iron to make. That’s going to be a lot of Iron if the company runs at full capacity (in the ideal case of a full staff of skill 3 workers, that’s 130 Iron/day). If there isn’t enough Iron, the employees can’t work, and probably won’t be happy about it.
-Q2 is the same as 2 Q1 iron, Q3 iron the same as 3 Q1 Iron, etc… We can buy any quality of Iron (I’ve been told that most Q1 raw company only live thanks to people who believe they can only use Q1 raw material for their Q1 manufacturing company). For instance, to be really sure, I just bought 1 Q3 iron, and 3 irons were added to the stock.
-There are important differences in price on the market for various qualities of Iron. The cheapest Q1 now was at 0.8 IDR. The cheapest Q3 at 1.4 IDR, or 0.47 IDR/iron. That’s a 0.33 IDR difference per Iron, or a 1.65 IDR difference per weapon. So, the GM will have to check the price for higher qualities, which will probably be much lower overall. We probably should note the lower prices on a regular basis, in order to notice particularly low prices and stockpile when they appear. It might even be worthwhile to pay for a plane ticket (for the organization) to buy a large quantity of cheap iron in a foreign country, I don’t know.
Finally, two skill 0 workers (plus RandMcNally) have already applied. They’re stuck with us for 72 hours, but I assume our HR guy should write to them so they’ll stay when they’ll level up, and promise raises, cheap Slovakian food, houses, whatever he can figure out. Of course, we want workers with high wellness, so we must make sure they’ll relocate to a place with an hospital and fight when they’ll be able to. My employer, for instance, pays more significantly more workers with a wellness above 90.
One last thing : I’m willing to buy our first weapon when it will be produced (probably tomorrow if ** Raza ** works), since I’ll have to go somewhere to fight soon (precisely in order to keep my wellness above 90), so if I have to travel, I might as well take a couple weapons in order to maximise the benefit.
I posted all that to clarify how companies worked for whoever didn’t really know. Now, it’s up to our GM(s?) to figure out how much we can spend on each worker, what offers must be posted, and so on. Have fun .
One (really) last thing : we can communicate with shouts, but also for people who access the company, by replying to a message in the “sent” box. This way, the company is sending a message to itself, and the next person logging in can read it.
I’m not that naive : eNigeria doesn’t exist in the game yet. 
And **Raza ** : the company’s name is great again. I hadn’t thought of that, even though it should have been obvious.
Way ahead of you on that one, buddy. I’ve already used my hospital for today so I’m waiting till the morning then I’ll fight a couple of battles, heal, then I’ll work then train. I will be at my full wellness (I think 80) before I press the “work” button.
Which brings me to a question: is my wellness only taken into account when I work or is the entire day used? I like working when I’m full, fighting battles until I’m low then refilling wellness before I work the next day.
But yeah, I’m part of the company now and I plan to stay for the duration.
I wonder when they do exist if we’ll start getting those e-mails, they seem to be Nigeria’s number one export.
I’m not sure but when I trained this morning I got a .15 boost. It is either due to having a 100 wellness or joining to guard. I won’t have a 100 tomorrow so I’ll report back and let you know if wellness effects training effectivness.
We’ve made - and sold - our first set of 5 precision-made, gelatin-bedded, stainless hickory 6-calibre rifles. Price was roughly 6.7 each (net was slightly less, after sales tax).
Sweet, did we make a profit?
Wooo! So when is our “hookers and blow” party?
I somewhat doubt it, since we’ve been paying 2 IDR/day for two days a handful of skill 0 workers who were doing almost nothing.
I’ll try to use the calculator to know the current production cost later, even though I don’t know at what price the iron has been bought. Do I assume 0.47 IDR???
Problem is that at this point, they’ve reached skill 1, and another skill 2, and some have worked three times, hence will be able to resign soon, when they’re becoming productive. Did/does/will someone write to them, offer them raises, etc… so they’ll stay??
Plus, we still need two workers to raise the company’s productivity.
I’m going to apply for a skill 3 position there on the 16th. Also, I can message all the employees later tonight.
I noticed the guy who reached skill 2 was paid about 2 IDR, while there are a number of offers at 4 and even 4.5 IDR.
I also noticed that Raza didn’t pay himself much.
Finally, ePerson has a problem. He has only 32 wellness I’ll send him a gift later, but maybe he could chime in and tell us what is the problem and what he needs. I’m also going to give him a food from the stock, just in case.
I did the maths, assuming everybody working, at the current skill level, at the current salary and with iron bought at 0.47 IDR (problem is that none of these elements are correct : people worked today with a lower skill and might not be there tomorrow, they won’t be paid the same, I don’t know how much was paid for the iron, etc…I assume it should become more stable with workers levelling up). With these assumptions, production should be about 7.6 guns, costing 5.11 IDR a piece. Raza alone produces 1/3 of the total, at a total cost of 4.36 IDR.
That’s pretty good even if you’re off by ~20% we are still breaking even. Considering things are going to get better from here I’d say we’re off to a good start.
Considering how long it took us to plan this much do we want to start initial planning for the next phase?
Shouldn’t we open a forum (someone said he could do that) to discuss the current situation (it’s a bit confusing) and the future plans?
Yes, actually, it seems to start better than I expected. In particular, I thought that it would be more difficult to recruit. Let’s pray for war, brothers.
I think one thing we could do when we get situated is send a person to a smallish country without an arms factory and have them smuggle for the government. Might be able to make some under the table money that way.
The second batch (which comprises probably 75+% of the stock) was at 0.465; the first batch I overpaid, having assumed (very incorrectly) that all stock was listed in order of “price @ Q1 equivalency level” (which is how eRepTools does it, hence the confusion). At 0.465 that equates to 2.325 IDR per weapon for raw materials, so I think the key is keeping the labour component at optimum.
If I understand the concepts, we’ll wait until we get 10+ employees before we start dropping the 0 producers. Right now we’re trying to get to that 10-body point for maximum productivity.
ETA: I am keeping a spreadsheet of the purchases and sales, as well as ~daily cash balance. IMO, the game is poor in its tools for managing profitability. For example, there’s really no way for me to know how much we paid in salaries yesterday.
I noticed that we have our ten employees now so we should be more profitable.
I was thinking about what our next step could be and it seems that Q1/2 resource corporations are out due to all of the idiots selling at a loss. When we looked at using gifts or food to off set salaries I remember that it cam out as a loss as well. But one thing we haven’t looked at is starting another weapon corporation. I think that we might even want to consider trying to create a monopoly on weapons. If we create another weapons corp. we can have multiple companies with 10 employees so we could create more weapons more efficiently then having a single company with more employees.
Something really has to be done with the employees. We had a full staff earlier in the day, but two left today, after having reached skill 1. And there’s another who is paid 1.6 IDR and has skill 3. He won’t stay for long, either.
There are tons of other weapon companies in Indonesia, however. Also, an org can’t own two companies of the same kind, if I’m not mistaken.
There’s also the possibility to upgrade to Q2.
Or to create a company in a different country, say a gift company in a country where diamonds are cheap, or something like that. However, I understand it’s impossible to transfer directly products from one company to another. If it’s correct, then it would be complicated to give the gifts to the employees, but they could be sold locally, or something like that.
But for the moment, I think we should concentrate on having this one running. I still don’t really know who’s managing it, for instance. Raza?