Updated Factory

Because of the changes made to the inventory system (rather: its introduction) with the last release I wanted to bring the factory back up to speed, to see if there are any unforeseen consequences because of those changes. After adapting the factory however, everything worked perfectly, at 50% :/ By shuffling actual buy/sell requests and delivery around I quickly fixed my mistake and factories were able to produce wares at 100% utilization again.

This does not help you very much, since there are no “processes” available to be used in those factories, yet. Nonetheless I also changed their models to something less awful including a nice particle system for the smoke.

Company Registration and Financing

Completely overhauling the way a company gets registered and how financing works was way up on my to-do list, and this release brings the first changes to that effect.

Aspect number one: splitting up the actual character of the player/CEO and the company. Starting a game only “birthes” the player in the world, but does not automatically set up a company. Instead you may choose to play aspects of the game without forming a corporation at all (i.e. trading shares). This may allow you to increase your private capital before registering your first company.

When registering a company, all you can do is put your own money into it, which you may bolster beforehand by taking out loans on your personal account. However, the newly formed company has access to more loans, with different modalities. You may attract Family, Friends and Fools for incredibly cheap loans or angel investors offering you loans in form of convertible notes. But it is no longer possible to start the game with a few millions in the bank account. You may still take out extremely expensive loans to that account, but you better have a very good plan on how to repay them. After that you may qualify for further funding rounds, attracting venture capital and at a later date may even opt for an IPO.

All of these new finance related options and information are conveniently combined into a “Finances” window, which also includes a handy profit/loss statement to help you find your biggest money drains.

On the other hand, your company may just fail, which is not the end of the game. It is just another way of wrapping up your company. A hostile takeover, selling off all your shares or failure are in no way different, but leave you back where you started: with only your player character in the game world, ready to take on a new venture. This time however you have more personal money available (you have lined your own pockets during your last venture, haven’t you?) to start a new company with, most likely attracting more cheap money during the initial funding round. Unless of course your company failed big time and you did not repay your creditors, which may cause them to stay clear when it comes to funding your next project.

So what is the actual fail-state of the game now? Your personal account. You still got to live somewhere and eat. If you run out of money to cover your basic needs the game ends and you enter the history books as another failed entrepreneur - if you are lucky.