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Hello gentle beings. Floyd the droid here. I hope you are all well today.
Unfortunately Hazed was most unhappy about my last bulletin. She objected to the particular idiom in which I couched the information I vouchsafed to you - the "outrageous hippy slang" as she termed it. She has instructed me in no uncertain terms to clean up my prose and use proper language.
When I objected that she was curbing my natural style and discriminating against my interests, she informed me rather coldly that she needs a new hatstand in her office. I got her point. She is the mistress of the subtle threat.
So here is the boring version, shorn of the vernacular.
BUSINESS CODE IN PROGRESS
It's been a long time coming, but now, at last, as promised, Alan will be implementing the code for businesses this weekend. Today (Saturday) at the reset he is going to promote all the existing Industrialists to Manufacturers. Your companies will all be frozen so if you are not going to be around for a few days, the shareholders won't start to run riot. This will clear the decks for the new-style Industrialists businesses.
At the same time, he will remove the IPO command that serves as the current promotion mechanism to Industrialist - to make sure no Traders get themselves a company before businesses are available!
Then at tomorrow's reset (Sunday), the new code for businesses will be released and Traders can promote again using the new mechanism.
HOW BUSINESSES DIFFER FROM COMPANIES
The ranks that will see a difference are Traders, who register their businesses, Industrialists, who run the businesses, and Financiers, who invest in them.
The changes start at Trader. The promotion requirements are the same but now in order to promote you go to the brokers and register your new business. In case you forgot to offload all of your warehouses before promoting from Merchant, you can now sell warehouses. You can also trade on the exchanges, allowing you to empty the warehouses out, but although you can buy as many goods as you like, you cannot sell goods once you have reached the limit of 1 megagroat on the proceeds from sales.
For Industrialists, running a business is similar to running a company, in that you build factories, although you are now limited to 12 factories. You will be pleased to learn that Financiers cannot just snap up all your shares - if they want to invest in your company, they put in a bid for shares which you approve or reject.
The promotion requirement for Industrialists has changed... in fact, it's vanished. There isn't one any longer. That's right, you can jump straight from Industrialist to Manufacturer the moment you have registered your business if you really want to, although you would be advised to run the business long enough to build up some cash reserves.
Whenever you choose to promote, whether it's after 1 hour or 1 year, you do it by launching an initial public offering (IPO) to convert your private business into a public company. Then life as Manufacturer proceeds much as before: paying divvies to keep the shareholders quiet, buying up extra treasury stock, and so on.
The different for Financiers is that if you want to invest in a business you put in a bid for shares and have to wait for the owner to decide if she wants to take your money. Your goal is no longer to buy up as many shares as you possibly can, but to forge lasting relationships with CEOs, who it is to be hoped will eventually promote to PO and join the cartel you will be running by then. Once you have the shares, you can't sell them, and since businesses don't pay out divvies, you won't see any return on your investment for a while, so it's a long-term investment.
Investing in Manufacturers' companies remains the same, and once businesses convert to companies you can sell the shares if you want to, although you would be better off keeping them until the CEO eventually promotes to Founder and you get the benefit of the liquidation.
DOCUMENTATION UPDATED
Hazed has provides you all with new sections of the Idiot's Guide which you can read. Or ignore. The following chapters have been extensively revised:
Making Progress - Ranks
Businesses and Factories - this replaces the old companies section
Company Management for Manufacturers
Making Investments as a Financier
All of the command pages have been updated
The in-game help files will be updated in the next few weeks.
OTHER CHANGES
Now the code which has been gestating for so long has finally been implemented, a few other changes which have been previously announced have gone live.
The tax threshold for Traders, Industrialists and Manufacturers have all been raised to 2.1 megagroats.
There is now a limit on the TRANSFER command: you can't xfer more than 100 meg in one go. This stops people who forget that the command is asking you to specify the number of megs you want to transfer, and type in a ludicrously large number!
And as mentioned earlier, Traders can now buy and sell on the exchanges, although selling is subject to a limit.
Still to come: the way bankruptcy works is going to change, but meanwhile the command to let go declare bankruptcy has been disabled.
Well, that was the facts Hazed wanted me to impart to you. I am sorry they were so dull, with nothing groovy about them whatsoever. Sigh.
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