Corporate Cash Investments
Today we're launching new functionality to the Corporation code. Corps can now accept cash for two different purposes. The first is a straight-forward cash donation which the Corp founder or admin can use as they see fit. The second is the ability of a Corporation's members to invest cash in the Corp. The way this works is a bit complex, so let me explain it in detail.
Corporations are now transitioning to a sort of virtual mutual fund collective. Members invest cash in the Corp and, once daily, interest is calculated based on a couple of factors. The first factor is whether a member has selected the Corporation as her/his Primary Corporation. Selection can be made on your User -> Preferences page (the same place you can change your user name, email, password, etc). A player can receive interest from a Corporation ONLY if that Corp is selected as her/his primary. Investments in other Corps will not receive interest. This is done to prevent a serious exploitable situation.
Second, the share holdings (in cash value) are summed up for all members of the Corp who have selected that Corp as Primary (and only those members). Share value is simply shares x price for each blog held by the qualifying members at the time the script is run. This total share value determines the interest rate that will be used to figure member investments in each Corp. This value varies wildly from Corp to Corp, as does the applied interest rate.
Premium Members receive three times the interest rate of non-premium members. The minimum daily interest applied is 0.01%, with a maximum of 0.5%. Each B$10,000,000,000 in share value held by members is 0.1% of interest paid daily (for premium members). This may sound like very little, but compounded over time, it can be a nice return on cash that would have otherwise just sat inactive in your player account. The interest cash amount is figured by taking each member's invested balance and multiplying it by the interest rate for that Corp.
Players have two options for how interest payments are handled: Reinvestment, or direct payout. Reinvestment adds the interest to the invested balance, allowing the amount to be compounded (meaning that the interest payment adds to the principal and starts earning interest itself immediately). Corporately held cash also benefits in the same way, with interest payments being reinvested automatically. Direct payout will deposit each day's interest payments in your player cash balance. Players can withdraw any or all invested balance from the corps.php page on their row in the member's table.
Now, to prevent a group of players snagging all the big blogs just before the interest script runs, a random factor has been thrown in. The script will run once and only once every day. But, the exact time is unknown, and could take place at any time of day. It might run at 11pm one night and then run again at 12am an hour later on the next day. This keeps players on their toes and (hopefully) encourages some team play to hold high value blogs over longer periods.
Data presented on corps.php pages and on corpmain will (unfortunately) be cached data from the last time the script ran. The summation of share values is quite a long-running part of the script, so trying to present that data live would kill the page loads. Instead, the data is stored and recalled only as one query to the db on page load. Any changes since the script last ran will not be reflected in cash balances or corporate assets. However, member investments are displayed live on corps.php pages (this adds nothing to page load).
I'm planning out a very light blog share search to help players find blogs out of the top 100 with good price / PE combos. I'm still working on finding the right queries to keep this very light on the db, but hopefully, I can get this together soon.
Also, a small addition will be made to blogs.php pages. A row in the main data table for the blog will show the Corporation flags of the top share holders in the blog (as determined by the share holders' selections for primary Corp). You can see an example here. I'd encourage any Corps without a flag to add one. This change may take place at any time, so look for the new row on blogs.php pages.
Finally, no, this is not the final change that will be made to Corporations. I expect over time they will gain tremendous and powerful functionality, but what that might look like, no one yet knows. I'm hoping this is just one step toward improving Corporations, team play, and to a small extent, share play. More will certainly come. If you are not already a member, consider joining Task Force Corps to get B$ msg updates when I'm working on Corp code. TFC members have known about this new investment functionality for several weeks now, and a few have helped Beta test it. Suggestions are always welcome. Please let me know ASAP of any bugs or issues.