SWmud

Merchant Corporations

1. 0 INTRODUCTION

Merchants are able to create their own corporation, purchase ships and assets, purchase wares and deliver them for cash. They can convert their earned money into credits or experience points, or can choose to continue to grow their company, hire new employees, etc. This document provides an overview of the main concepts involved in corporations.

1. 0 OBJECTIVES

Merchants are typically the middleman in any business. They make money by selling and delivering goods to venders across the galaxy. When they are able to do this while buying the goods at a much lower price, then they can profit. The main duty of a merchant in a corporation is to successfully complete as many deliveries as possible, purchase those goods at the lowest possible price to maximize profit, and schedule the subsequent pickups and deliveries to maximize throughput.

The Control Terminal in the corporate headquarters allows merchants to perform all actions on behalf of a corporation. Each corporation acts as its own entity, with credits, assets, ships, etc. Owners are also given extra options and commands on the terminal (for example, pay bonuses, purchase new ships or factories, etc).

1. 0 PURCHASING

From the control terminal, a merchant will purchase goods using the corporation's credits. These goods are then available for pickup and are

added to the list of pickups available. Corporate ships will automatically fly to the pickup destination, pick up goods, and return to the corporate the hangar where the goods are saved in the corporation's cargo container. These goods are then available to be delivered.

As with any economy, the price of goods fluctuates according to supply and demand. Items with high availability are cheaper than those with low. The availability of an item is based on both its total quantity in the universe, as well as the sector's current quantity. As such, a merchant must be wary when purchasing the goods for their corporation to ensure they get the best deals possible.

1. 0 BIDDING

From the control terminal, merchants are able to see a list of all the current delivery requests. Each job shows the items required and their respective quantities, and the payment for successful delivery of all items in the job. Depending on the corporation owner's merchant level, the corporation can accept between 20 and 40 jobs at a time.

Once a job is accepted, it is the responsibility of the corporation to deliver the items required. There is no time limit on delivery, but there will be no payment for the job until it is completed. Upon completion of delivery, the corporation will be paid the amount indicated at bidding.

1. 0 SCHEDULING

Truly enterprising merchants will usually desire to schedule pickups and deliveries manually. The system will automatically schedule both of these, but is far from optimal. As a result, significant improvement in pickup and delivery time can be made by properly scheduling these jobs. In addition, choosing specific ships with larger or smaller capacities can help optimize time.

Scheduling is also done from the control terminal. A current list of pending pickups and deliveries is presented to the merchant along with the ship's queue of jobs and present job status. Once a job is completely scheduled to a ship, it will be removed from the main system and exists only in the queue of the ship.

1. 0 SHIPS & SHIP POINTS

The corporation will start out with a Transport Shuttle. This is the most basic ship a corporation can own, holds the lowest quantity of goods, and travels the slowest. Corporations will eventually wish to purchase faster and better ships to pickup and deliver more goods. To do this, a corporation must have enough ship points. Corporations start out with 4 ship points, and further ship points will cost them 100,000 credits per point. Purchasing more ship points incurs overhead costs for the corporation. See section 9.0 for more information.

Ships and ship points can be purchased and sold by the corporation's owner from the ships menu. The costs and stats on ships available are also located in this menu.

1. 0 FACTORIES

As corporations grow, they will eventually desire to branch out and invest in even better sources for their wares. Purchasing factories is one way to do this. A factory will produce a specified item privately for the merchant at a fixed cost (which is typically lower than other producers in the galaxy). The item will show in the purchase menu like any other purchasable ware, but is only seen by the corporation. Corporations are currently limited to 5 unique items produced, at up to 5 items per minute for each. Factories also incur overhead costs; see section 9.0 for more information. Note that there are research items available that allow the number of factories and production rate of factory goods to be increased.

1. 0 EMPLOYEES & PAYMENTS

Owners can hire merchants of level 5 and up to work for their corporation as employees.

Employees like to be paid. Every hour, active employees are paid a salary by the corporation in the amount of 20,000 corporate credits. These can be exchanged in the payroll menu for experience points, credits, or both, or can optionally be reinvested into the corporation. Additionally, owners are able to pay bonuses to employees that perform exceptionally.

The experience obtained from payout scales up according to the player's merchant level. Additionally, the maximum bonus amount payable by the owner scales up according to the owner's merchant level.

1. 0 OVERHEAD COSTS

As corporations grow, they incur overhead costs. The overheads are calculated as the maximum between the sum of factory productions per minute and ship points over the minimum multiplied by 1,000, and the net profits (not including overhead) in a given hour. In other words:

1000 * (factories + extra ship points)

OR

net profit before overheads, whichever is less.

In addition, if no employee has been active in a given hour, the overhead costs are automatically 0, even if the corporation still makes a profit. Here are some examples.

1. The company has 8 ship points, a factory producing 2 Weapons per hour and a factory producing 3 Foodstuffs per hour. The company started with 30,000 credits at the beginning of the hour, and ended with 70,000. The overhead costs are: ( (8 - 5 ship points) + (2+3 factories) ) * 1000 == 8000 credits So the company made 40,000 credits and incurred 8,000 credits overhead.
2. The company has 5 ship points and a factory producing 5 Weapons per hour. The company started with 10,000 credits at the beginning of the hour and ended with 11,000 credits. The overhead costs are: ( (5 - 5 ship points) + (5 factories) ) * 1000 = 5000, but profit == (11k - 10k) == 1000 credits So the company made 1000 credits and incurred 1000 credits overhead, effectively having a net profit of 0.