Bill Bates, Empire Builder or Extraordinary Brick?

[Vanguard]

Bill Bates (the head of Mitrosoft) either: A. does not know what the hell he is doing with his money, or B. wants to help human beings conquer the galaxy.

Why else would this trillionaire philanthropist offer such attractive lease rates on everything under the suns? In the future, the rate of population growth is so inhumanly fast that, for all practical purpose, not only does Mitrosoft not charge any interest, they are basically willing to reduce the price of hurry building if you buy on the installment plan. Sweet deal.

Basically it seems to me to be worthwhile to Mitrosoft lease everything up to antimatter plant. Agree? Disagree?

[LDiCesare]

I tend to disagree. I'll lease only Trade Goods, and rushbuild things at the highest cost/no monthly cost otherwise. Mitrosoft can get you in the red easily if you aren't careful.

[Vanguard]

Strangely, I rarely have any problem with the lease payments. I find that they basically pay for themselves if you focus on the money/morale returning ones early. The stock market, which returns both, is very much worth rush building almost everywhere, imo.

As far as I'm concerned, rush building social projects is not a waste of resources. It is only a reallocation of resources. You will need huge amounts of military spending anyway, to develop starbases at the very least. So put all you basic (slider) spending into the military and research and hurry build the social improvements that will pay for themselves over time.

[Harry Seldon]

I usually get burned leasing projects. I'll do it occassionally but I like to keep my finances open in case I start getting crushed and need to rush build some dreadnaughts.

[tetleytea]

I don't think Stock Markets should be leased. To calculate their break-even point (i.e. where they pay for themselves), don't compare the 25% econ bonus vs. the lease rate. That would be an accurate gauge of leasing the Stock Market vs. not having one at all, but not an accurate comparison of leasing it vs. building it yourself. The cost of building it yourself is 200bc (is that right?) + the lost econ bonus during the time you're building it. And even in that 200 you're getting a lot of free production. Usually that total doesn't even exceed Mitrosoft's upfront cost; let alone the lease.

For example, suppose your planet's doing 100 IU's/turn and 50bc/turn, and 1/3 of your IU's are free (a typical number), and you're at 33% Social spending (and that I'm right about the 200 for the Stock Market (: ). It will take 6 turns to build it yourself. That's 6*50bc*25% = 75bc in lost econ bonus. Add in 200 - (200/3 free) = 133, and your total cost is right around 200. That's lower than even Mitrosoft's upfront cost. There's also an opportunity cost involved that I didn't factor in (i.e. the time you spent could have been spent building something else), but because we're not even close I won't get that complicated.

[Egbert]

I rarely lease anything. The only exceptions are trade goods which I then onsell to recover my costs.

I might lease a galactic wonder if I am concerned anyone might be able to build it AND if it provides sufficient benefit to justify the lease expenses.

Leasing is better thought of as "loansharking".

[tetley]

Heya.

After playing some more, I'm realizing that even weighing econ bonuses vs. lease costs is wrong. You can only squeeze a little over 4X Planet Quality in econ from all your planets. So you don't even get the full 25% bonus from Stock Markets. The morale sure is nice, though.

[bonscott]

I don't lease anything unless I have military emergency or need a trade good *now*.

[Harry Seldon]

You don't lease colony ships at the beginning? I usually have to buy at least two or I get killed later on. I play small, though, so not as many planets to go around and not much time.

[casualGOD]

Why lease colony ships when you can kick one out every 2 turns with 100% military and 100% spend?

[Pyrkaige]

Leasing takes a bit more thought with the latest version and the tweaks to leasing costs. It's still useful for the occasional trade good (or more importantly, Galactic Wonder, since you can't trade for them); leasing the first ships seems to be more cost than its worth, though, on big maps. On small maps you absolutely have to grab the few star systems available, so it's kind of a different strategy.

[marc420]

Unless I missed something, everyone seems to have missed the point of the original post.

When paying to rush something, take a look at the top two options. The first is always a flat rate. The second is Mitrosoft. This is a lower initial cost, then something like a 4 or 5 month lease.

The thing is, when you look at the numbers, if you multiply the lease payments times the number of months, then add the down payment, its always less than what the first option would charge you straight up.

This is like a car dealer saying we'll sell you a car for $20k. Or, if you give us $10k up front, and pay $1k for 5 months, we'll sell you the car for that much. Hmmm, which deal would you take?

The general rule of money is that its worth less tomorrow than today. That's both because of inflation (which isn't in this game), and also because of the opportunity costs in that you don't have the money today to do something else with it. It should always cost you more to make payments over time. The 3rd and 4th options do that right, but the Mitrosoft option blows it.

[Scorpi40000]

Mitrosoft is actually the 4th...

[Darkstar]

Scorpi is correct.

And I almost never lease in the game. If I have to lease something, I have generally already screwed up the game pretty badly.