Our Informatist site is set up to automatically detect multiple accesses from the same computer, so if you use the same IP address or if you are a school player, our system may flag you as a potential cheater and temporarily block you. If that happens, don't worry. All you need to do is to email info@informatist.net and explain what happened. The Administrator will read your explanation and if it's ok, your username will soon be placed into the Statistics->White List which will entitle you to full access to the entire game. Simply check the menu for information and you're back in the game!

Informatist is a business simulation game which has various benchmarks to determine who are the best players. You'd think that the player who makes the most money should be the best, that's only partially true. The Statistics->Page of Honor shows that there are various types of winners. Over and above Players with the most money, and Companies with the most money, you will also find Companies with the largest real-estate holdings, and Players with the most INFO.

The highest level is Players with the most INFO, as the main goal of the game is to get the greatest amount of information (INFO) in order to become the biggest Informatist. To do so, you create a business, purchase real estate for the business, recruit your employee, allocate your Workforce usage, adjust the price of your products, and go all the way up to trading stocks.

The game lets you get into profitable activities and then use those funds to raise the image (the index of different territories) or upgrade the territories in Real Estate->Districts->your chosen district, so you that you can receive the INFO in return. Informatist features the INFO concept to make sure that the players with greater ability have to show a higher level of responsibility and that there is a direct relationship between larger contributions and higher honors.

Upon registration, the system will allocate to you 1,000 units of energy and 100,000 Euros in initial funding. The initial funding is just what it seems: it is the virtual money of Informatist.net and it is expressed in € or Euros. This initial funding is not the free money, and it is a pre-approved 28-day unsecured personal loan. And you have to pay it back at the end of the first month. Energy is one of the most necessary things you need to run your business properly. It is generally referred to simply as E. As you proceed in the game you will discover that E is generally as necessary as the virtual money. This guide will keep referring to both € and E, so it is a good idea to grasp this at the very start.

Each player can select one district as their residential location, but only one. In Real Estate->Map, you will find a map of the globe. Right now only Europe is available for game play in Informatist. When you zoom into Europe, you will be able to view all of the various countries (districts) that are available in the game. Every district has its own image index, thus you can easily click on any country shown on the map or just check Real Estate->Districts, and look for the index under the District name column. The higher the image index is, the greater rent you will have to pay for that area, but at the same time, it also means that you will be able to gain more E per hour. Any businessperson wants to get the most that they can for the least money possible and the game understands this. However, the system is set up to automatically locate the newest players in each district with the lowest image index values to help the newcomers be able to get up to speed quickly.

There will be times that you will not find any land available. In those cases you will see 0/n at Real Estate->Districts: Territory available, which refers to the number of total lands in one particular country, and in this case that means that there is nothing available there at this time. But don't worry about that as you can still live there. Keep in mind that residential sites occupy very little land as compared with commercial or industrial sites, thus the Informatist system will ignore these residential lots when it sums up the total of land occupation.

You can check the status bar under the logo at anytime to review your current situation. This information includes your username, location, current ranking, amount of INFO, cash in hand and energy levels.

Here we go! It is now time to launch your business empire and build a mighty enterprise. However, before you start your mega-corporation you need to do some preparation and choose the industry field your business will be in.

It's a good idea to choose a field that has a sufficient available Workforce. To check the status of each area, choose STATISTICS->Job Pool and you will see the number of employees that are currently available.

Never choose a field with low availability, since it's almost impossible to survive when you are in the startup stage.

The Workforce contains six types of different occupations: Assistants, Laborers, Salesmen, Managers, Engineers, and Scientists.

The Informatist system breaks down its job pool in this way: The first three types (Assistants, Laborers, and Sales) are the Workforce. They are the employees that provide your business with the manufacturing and marketing manpower. Assistants and Laborers are the employees who perform the various manufacturing tasks and the Sales are the ones who actually sell the products to clients. The other three classifications (Managers, Engineers, and Scientists) are not directly involved in the manufacturing or sales of products, but having them on your payroll can boost those functions by as much as 100%. Informatist calls these employees the Brainforce. Managers are in charge of sales, and thus are named the Sales Brainforce, while the Engineers and Scientists are in charge of production, and are therefore called the Production Brainforce.

Although the Workforce can work without anyone from the Brainforce in the company, its working efficiency will be low. However, the Brainforce can't work without a Workforce.

Each category of employee has its own productivity rating shown by a number: Assistant 1, Laborer 2, Salesmen 3, Manager 4, Engineer 5, and Scientist 6. That means that in one game cycle (which is updated every twenty minutes), if one Assistant manufactures 1 product, one laborer produces 2, and one Salesmen sells 3.

The formula is as follows:

Production Workforce = (2 x the number of Laborers) + (1 x the number of Assistants)
Sales Workforce= (3 x the number of Sales).

Furthermore, there are similar calculations for the Brainforce:

Sales Brainforce = 4 x the number of Managers;
Production Brainforce = (5 x the number of Engineers + 6 x number of Scientists).

Let's take some examples to ensure that these calculations are clear:

For example, to what degree do Brainforces boost production and sales? The calculation formula is: 1 + (total Production Brainforce/total Production Workforce), and (1 + total Sales Brainforce/total Sales Workforce). These results range from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 2. By working out these formulas it is clear that even if you hire a large number of Scientists and just a few Assistants, the best result that you can hope for is that you will double your Production Workforce, but you will not be able to go beyond that. A very similar effect applies to the Salesforce.

Note that it is also strategically important to choose fields with low salary levels.

The different categories of employees have a relative effect on the cost of your lands. The multipliers are the same as in the Job Pool: Assistant 1, Laborer 2, Sales 3, Manager 4, Engineer 5, and Scientist 6. Those are the multipliers that are used to figure out the land numbers that each category occupies.

Land is always in high demand, and there may be a great deal of land available in each district. You should be aware that each district is only suitable for a selected number of business fields. You should check Real Estate->Districts to locate the districts that currently offer sufficient available lands, and make sure that the field types are the ones which best suit your business.

There is an additional important business type that you will find in Real Estate->Districts: Office. Offices are only necessary when you are ready to hire Brainforces (Manager, Engineer, and Scientist). You will not be able to hire these Brainforce employee categories if your firm is located within a district that is indicated as not suitable for offices. This can be a big consideration as the business engine of the game is built around sales, and there is a strong likelihood that you'll need Managers as your business grows and you go on in the game.

As soon as your first enterprise is launched, the system will grant you 50 free lands in your district. These lands are chosen randomly, and each is a work place that is accessible through the Your Companies->your own company menu.

Once you have checked Statistics->Job Pool as well as Real Estate, you may find that the choices of fields for your business may have dwindled down to just a few. It may be a good idea to choose a business field where competition is low. Check Statistics->Monopoly->your chosen business field and you will locate all the companies in this field, along with the market shares for each one. Keep in mind that the monopoly enterprises occupy a huge amount of lands and employees, and can set product price levels however they want. Competing against monopoly enterprises can be very challenging.

It is a good idea to review Statistics->Bankrupted Companies. If you find that a particular business field has been hit with a bunch of bankruptcies lately, you might want to steer clear.

Now you should complete the settings in Your Companies->Establish A New Enterprise. There are some very important aspects to Authorized Capital and Veiled Taxes: You should avoid investing your entire initial funding of 100,000 Euros. Some of the more experienced players have discovered that approximately 40,000 Euros is just about the right amount to invest.

Check the Your companies->your own company, go to the Money line, and then find Financial Report on the right hand side. Click on it, and you will find a list of your income and expenses, listed by items, from Sunday to Saturday.

You should be aware that expenses are mainly made up of four separate parts: Raw Materials, Salaries, Maintenance of Quarters (Corporate Rent) and Taxes. To avoid confusion you should remember that the salaries shown here are not equivalent to the salaries shown in your company page. The formula to apply is to sum up the total of the salaries shown in the Your Companies->your own company, then multiply this number by 0.67: This will give you the figure that is shown as salaries in the Financial Report. The difference between the two salaries is the taxes, specifically Citizen Income Taxes. Veiled Tax allows you the option of veiling, or illegally hiding, Citizen Income Tax. For example if you select to apply a Veiled Tax of 30%, that will reduce your Taxes payable to only 70% of what they should be. You will save 30% but you will also have a similar 30% chance to get busted! If you are caught veiling taxes you will pay a big fine equivalent to 10 times the amount that you veiled.

During the start-up stage of your business, you should try to make some pocket money through Business Opportunity.

A Business Opportunity can also be called a virtual project and is basically a short term project which requires the cooperation of two separate partners. You can choose to be the Consignor who actually creates and develops the projects, or the Consignee who accepts it. You don't need to actually complete the task. However, you should review Your Companies-> Your Business Opportunity whenever you can as the information shown can change quickly. You might want to grab the opportunity if the status is shown as: 1) "New"(As Consignor), or 2) "Find"(As Consignee).

If you are a Consignor, you should post the project on the "Business Opportunity" section of the Players Forum. If the status of "As Consignor" changes from "Open" to "In Progress", it means that the project has been accepted.

If you go ahead and actually accept the opportunity while acting as a Consignee, the status of "As consignee" changes from "Find" to "In Progress".

You should be aware that both of them will cost you E and virtual money, but you will definitely earn back much more through the duration of the project.

There is one thing important about the Business Opportunity which you might want to know - The more assistants you hired, the more valuable project you can take.

Before you launch your enterprise, you might want to spend some time at the Informatist->Learning Center in order to pick up the various skills you'll need in your business. Each field contains 16 levels of skill. You have to complete the first skill level before you can go on to the second level and so on. The Skill Level you have completed becomes your qualification to recruit employees. Each Job Pool category has a number: Assistant is 0, Laborer 2, Salesmen 5, Manager 8, Engineer 12, and Scientist 16. It is clear that the minimum level is 5 since the only way to make margins in your business is by selling products and the number of the Sales is 5.

As in almost every other activity in the game, learning each level of skill requires fees, energy and time. If you don't want to waste rent money while you are waiting to learn the skills, you may "Hasten" the process. Each "Haste" costs you double the amount of energy that is normally required, however, it will reduce the learning time by 1 day. It is possible to learn all of the 5 levels in just one day by applying "Haste" many times but be aware that it will cost you a considerable amount of energy.

As an employer you should set your salary levels at a slightly higher amount than the average. If the area you are operating in has a current employee shortage, you may have to set your salaries much higher in order to attract the proper Workforce. The changes you make will not take effect immediately but will show as of the next cycle. To determine the effect of your previous fine tuning, you can calculate the differences between the next two updates.

You might want to change the salaries in order to modify the numbers of the employees rather than modifying the maximum numbers. The latter will cost you valuable Es.

Each field lists five products which are designed by the system engine. Diversification of your product offerings is an important factor. The average prices you will find in Statistics->Product information->your chosen field, go up and down constantly to reflect the fact that your competitors change their pricing all the time too. You should check them frequently and make adjustments in Your Companies->your own company. Otherwise, you may pile up tons of products or deplete your stock after one or two cycles.

By the way, you have to purchase raw materials before manufacture and sales begin. You can also setup a daily raw materials purchase plan to make an automatic purchase at 1:30am everyday. System will purchase the raw materials based on priority setting (High 5 to Low 1) for your company if you have enough money and warehouse space.

Businesspeople know that pricing is likely the single most important factor in sales. If you choose to apply a price that is too low, you will run out of your inventory very quickly and be unable to fill the market demand. If you set your price too high then the sales of your product will be disappointing. You should experiment with various price levels to figure out which balance is the one that works best for your business. Check your Stock Level and Profit frequently as it shows you how your business is doing.

Check how much inventory you currently have by checking Statistics->Production & Sales. As you have found out in pricing, if your prices are too low, you'll soon be out of stock and that will have a negative effect on your business. Also, pricing too high is just as bad for business since you have to pay for warehouse spaces. If you find that during each 20-minute game cycle you are getting some more small stock, it is a sure indicator that your pricing is within a successful range.

You will get 2000 free warehouses on establishment of enterprises and JSCs. When you run out of warehouses, you cannot buy any more raw materials. Even if you continue the manufacturing with previously reserved raw materials, you have to deplete all of the newly produced before next update. Otherwise, system will automatically discard some of them. Of course, you have the option to purchase extra warehouses.

In your Company page you will see a number next to "Next Update After:". This shows how much time remains until the next tick. The game is set on a cycle which updates every 20 minutes. Note your current level of funds and wait until the next tick. The difference will show you how much profit you are currently making.