[DoEE] Company Profitability with new taxes
Ilene Dover
It's been a busy few weeks here in eAustralia. We have a new President and most of our home regions back. Regions mean production bonuses on companies. We also have a dicktator, and a new tax regime. So, I thought it might be time to update my earlier article about what investments provide the best returns with the new numbers. Not to mention, market prices have dropped almost across the board...
To quickly summarise what this article will consider:
An upgraded training ground
Cost: 20 gold for the first upgrade. Then 70, then 170. And there are four different training grounds...
A food raw materials company
Cost: 10 gold (for the fishery) or 35 gold (for deer) or $1500/$3000/$8500 for grain/fruit/cattle.
And factories, either a new Q1 or an upgrade
Cost: 10 gold for a new one. Or the same sliding upgrade costs as a training ground. Only it goes up to Q7.
Now, a few assumptions and upfront statements:
- I have used the conversion of 1 gold = $200, and vice versa. If you look at the exchange rates, this is patently wrong. Regardless, it is approximate enough to draw broad conclusions.
- Taxes are as they currently stand. A work tax of 2%. VAT of 5% for food, no VAT on raw materials.
- If you hoard your gold you can reduce the cost of an upgrade by 45%. There was an offer last week, no doubt there will be another in May. None of the upgrades consider this discount.
- The food bonus is currently 60%. We have no weapons bonus. So, if you're looking to make money build food companies! If you're a gun runner, do your own maths...
- Housing companies are complicated. We'll look at them in a different article.
- We're only going to look at Q1-Q4 factories. If you've got enough gold to get to Q5 you don't need my help!
Still interested? Well, read on!
TRAINING GROUNDS
Upgrading the free training ground contributes more strength/day. Each upgrade is worth 5 more strength each day, with a super soldier medal (5 gold) coming for every 250 strength. Each training session can therefore be seen as "earning" a portion of that 5 gold. Running the calcs on a monthly basis, we wind up with:
As you can see, the first upgrade to your training ground is very much worthwhile!!
For interest's sake, I also looked at the second training ground. This one only produces 2.5 strength/level/day. And it costs gold to use too! Clearly inferior to the first training ground. Regardless, running the numbers results in:
So if you invest a mighty 260 gold in order to reach Q4, you break even. Worth it? That's up to you...strength has a very subjective value.
FOOD RAW MATERIALS
We need to sell these little buggers on the market, which are currently going for $0.02 apiece. And we need to pay work tax. Currently, that works out at $1.02 per company and may continue to increase as our average salary continues to rise.
For comparative purposes, I've translated the build cost (in AUD) for grain/fruit/cattle companies into a gold cost. Straight off the bat you'll notice that these are poor choices. For completeness, I've left them in. Adding up our sales and deducting our expenses we're left with:
Fisheries make the best profit for your investment out of the bunch. As work tax continues to climb, deer may overtake fish. Regardless, they all make money. In the case of grain, not enough to make it worthwhile ($3/month).
FOOD FACTORIES
We need to sell our food on the market too in order to make any money. And we need to provide raw materials (at $0.02 each) to make them run.
Current market prices for food are $0.05/$0.08/$0.14/$0.19 for Q1 to Q4 respectively. From our gross sales we deduct sales tax (net income = revenue/(1 + tax rate). Letting Excel do the work again, we come to:
CONCLUSIONS
With the aid of Excel, we can see a few things quite clearly.
1. Far and away the best investment is a Q2 training ground. More strength never hurt anyone either, for that matter.
2. Ignore raw materials companies that are bought in AUD.
3. The best returns are on low quality factories. While you might make more per company with a Q4 factory, for the 270 gold it cost you to get that far you'd be 5 times better off owning 27 Q1 factories
Comments
Very nice writeup
Love your work 🙂
Yay for fishes 🙂
3. The best returns are on low quality factories. While you might make more per company with a Q4 factory, for the 270 gold it cost you to get that far you'd be 5 times better off owning 27 Q1 factories
That is not true. When you want to buy Q4 factory you will do it during the discounts each month saving 45%. When you downgrade it you will take 50 % back. It means investing 55% and taking 50% back, which is 5% investment. But you will pay one WT only (1.02 cc) and you will use 10 energy for production (0.12cc). So if you are low Div farmer you better have 10 Q4 factories instead of 40 Q1. The profit from Q1 factory would be very small for nations with high WT.
I'd argue that upgrading your factory to Q2 for 11 gold and downgrading it to get 10 back is a short route to bankruptcy... At higher levels you just lose gold faster.
If you want to run a Q4 food factory, you need to sink 170 gold into it - "invest" it if you will. 10 Q4 factories will cost you 1700 gold. For so much, you could have 170 Q1 factories, not just 40. Or 80 Q2 factories, if you upgrade with the discount.
Your point about energy use is well taken though. I will deduct the $ cost of 10 energy in a revised article in a day or two. It is another point in favour of higher Q companies.
10 Q4 factories = 55% of 1700 G = 935 G. If some future day you want to downgrade the factories you will lose just 5% + 5 gold. It means you have those 850 G anytime.
For 935 G you will build 94 Q1 factories (there are no discounts for Q1), but if you want to take the goldfrom them you will take just the half = 470 Gold. You will lose a lot of money here. When players ghange their CS they often downgrade some companies and upgrade others depending of the bonuses in the new place. Q1 factories can't be downgraded.
If WT is higher then you can't cover the expenses from Q1 production. All the money from 94 Q1 factories will go to the treasury.
10*BH gives a chance to many players in 1-st and 2-nd Div to become farmers. 94 exp points are too much, especially if there is no profit.
damn i have 10 raw material company....
Training grounds are 20 - 50 - 100. Its showing you the total from your starting point to get to each level right now.
Bugger! That was an issue in an older version of the spreadsheet. I was sure if changed it though... It's an issue for factory upgrade costs too.
Note to all: conclusions are invalid until I can get around to correcting the issue (probably Mondat sometime). Only rawaterials returns are calculated accurately. Sorry!!