IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FED2
BUSINESSES AND FACTORIES
DEPOT MAINTENANCE
Before 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. We'll start with depots.
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 had to sell all your warehouses before you could promote to Industrialist, so now if you want your factories to be able to have any storage facilities, you will have to buy some depots at a cost of 1,000,000 ig each - one per planet. Your business can't own more than 16 depots, so choose their sites carefully! The command is, guess what, 'BUY DEPOT', and you must be in an exchange. Since it's the business that owns depots, the cost comes out of the business's working capital.
Your business display lists all your depots, and you can look at an individual depot with 'DI DEPOT planetname':
Location: Rigel 4
Capacity: 30 cargo bays Workforce: 8
Bay # 1 Clays Cost 520ig/ton (Origin Rigel 4, Rigel system)
Bay # 2 Clays Cost 520ig/ton (Origin Rigel 4, Rigel system)
Bay # 3 Clays Cost 520ig/ton (Origin Rigel 4, Rigel system)
Depots have much stronger foundations than those cheap and flimsy warehouses you used to own, which means that they can be upgraded to hold more, 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 business 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 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 business. If the goods were not manufactured by your business then the sale is treated as if you had fetched the goods from the depot and then sold them personally - in other words, the business 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.
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