FACTORIES FOR BEGINNERS: PART II
or Meats Won't Save Your Bacon
by Jezz
As some of you may remember, last week I talked about buying your first factory. This week I'd like to explore the effect a bad choice might have on your company, and what you can do about it.
For one accounting cycle your factory foremen have been whipping your workers into a frenzy of industry and your factories have been churning out the product and shipping it to the exchange or the depot, to the benefit of your company. Well.. most of them have. Remember that meats factory that you bought first? For one week you've been feeding your herds with overpriced fodder and the salesmen have been selling tenderloin to the exchange at pig's feet prices. The factory is just managing to scrape up a meager profit by selling the contents of the slaughterhouse drains to Nosferatu.
So what are you going to do about this one piece of clinker in your otherwise bejeweled industrialist crown? If the rest of your factories are doing great, can you afford to keep a bad factory going for the sake of not upsetting the PO? After all you don't want to look greedy, right? To answer that we have to time warp a few weeks into your future and take a look at what could happen at Manufacturer and find out why factory one is so important.
You're sailing along at Manufacturer when you get an important phone call. You announce to the Fed Universe that the President needs your company at Camp David for a few days. You rush to pack your bags and drive to Hoboken, NJ where your mother needs help removing the flock wallpaper from her dining room. During those agonizing days you're away from Fed you miss the auditor's visit to your company, miss making a dividend, miss one of your shareholders dumping shares back onto the market and by day three your poor neglected company is being torn apart by rebelling investors. You arrive back to find your treasury decimated and everything gone except for one factory. I'll give you one guess... yes, it's factory number one! Your future now looks like the chopped liver you've been producing. The meats factory doesn't produce enough profit to pay for its own repairs let alone get another factory so you might as well just get in that proverbial hand-basket and pray your destination freezes over before you get there.
Ok, enough time-warping. Let's get back to the present and your dilemma with factory 1. Obviously you can't afford to do nothing as your entire future could depend on that first factory. It really needs to be a profitable one. Your first stop should be talking to the PO about it. Selling a factory can seriously affect the unemployment level on a planet so it's best to make every effort to let the PO know first. You may get a better offer if you explain your problem. If the PO isn't available you can post a message on the board... a polite message.
There's a chance that the PO can adjust spreads to make a mediocre factory into a better one. The lower the spread the better your profit margin will be. But that sort of adjustment is purely up to the PO and he will be sacrificing profit to help you so don't think of it as your entitlement. There comes a time when it's better to simply sell and buy a better factory elsewhere.
Now a PO might offer you a package deal such as one arts factory if you also build a power packs factory. That could be a fair offer. The power packs will probably bring in half what the arts will so make sure that if one of those factories is your number one factory, you buy the arts first and follow it up with the power packs in a less crucial position..
Events will also affect your factories if the planet suddenly starts to produce a commodity your factories are making. So check events often and check the board for messages everyday in case your PO needs to tell you about a change on the planet.
If you've been allowed to build a "no-haul" factory then remember that the PO wants you to buy the inputs on his planet and not ship them in from somewhere else. Also, switching your output to depot and selling elsewhere when the PO expects you to sell to the exchange is one of those ways you can end up with the smoldering pile of unprofitable rubble. No Haul means no hauling.
So, if you haven't worked this out by now, being a successful factory owner is about wise choices, communication, awareness and being prepared for changes to your company. I've found that POs are more than willing to share their expertise when you ask them nicely. Be patient but don't be complacent and don't look at that all important first factory as a practice run. It just might be the one you have to depend upon.
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