Every industry good now carries a quality you can raise. A brand is worth its reputation against the other names on that cargo. You can build your own industries and own them outright. And the hard charters no longer ease off once you find your feet.
Every good an industry makes carries a quality. It starts low and climbs slowly over the months an industry is worked, and while it climbs it lifts what the cargo is worth before the market bonus is even counted. On Your Holdings you set the target each industry aims for, one to 5.
A higher target trades volume for worth. The output drops at once toward that level's floor - a top-quality run makes about 8 per cent of what a mass run would - while the value climbs over the months after. The climb is steep, not flat: low quality is barely worth more than mass, while full quality is worth about 25 times the base. A mass line ships the volume at ordinary prices; a premium line ships a fraction of it at many times the price.
A factory, mill or refinery you develop used to stop responding partway up, however much further you took it. It keeps answering now - to development, to efficiency and to the output your quality target asks for - across more than double the range it had. A well-fed, well-developed plant reaches an output it could not before.
A brand's value used to be your awareness times your share of the cargo, and everyone who worked at it ended up near the same ceiling. It is your REPUTATION now: an ever-growing figure, unique to you on that cargo, that rises each month from your share of its branded sales and is sped by awareness, prestige, quality and the other brands you lead. It only fades in a month you sell none.
What the brand pays is where your reputation stands against the rest. Alone on a cargo a brand is worth 200 per cent. Every rival brand on it adds up to another 100 per cent, and you take that share by out-reputing them. Dominate a crowded cargo and a brand can pay many times what it did; sit level with the field and it pays about two to three times.
You can give a cargo's brand to another player. Their name, reputation and prices then sell your output. You keep your maker's cut, so both of you earn more. In chat it is !brand <cargo> <number>. Type !brand on its own for a numbered list of the companies and a note on how it works. !brand clear <cargo> takes one back; !brand clear all takes back every one.
The brand page on Headquarters does the same with a click. Its Compare tab lays every brand selling one of your cargoes beside your own - each with its value and reputation and an estimate of what selling under it would earn you - and you can filter it to the cargoes you want. Yield to one from its row. A Controls tab lists the brands you have handed out, each with a button to take it back, beside your minimum-quality floor. The Rivals tab names the leader and runner-up on every cargo, with the reputation behind each.
The seeded companies play this too. One that cannot compete on a cargo will, after a couple of years running its own name there, adopt the strongest brand instead and sell under it. A Magnate never gives a name up.
Efficiency - more output from the same input - is no longer a dial on each industry. It is company-wide. An Industrialist has +20 per cent of it built in, and an Industrial Efficiency research track adds +2 per cent a level for any company, up to 60 per cent. It lifts every industry that company works.
Fund an industry and you are its sole owner: you are the only company that can hold a stake in it, however many rivals come to serve it. Every industry type can be funded now, not only the factories - and a town still holds only one of each kind. Building one costs two times what it did, so it is a commitment rather than a whim.
Nightmare and Hell were fierce for a year or two and then eased off once the money was rolling. Not any more. Each company carries its own cost inflation, anchored at the day you found it and scaled by your charter, so on a hard charter your running, upkeep, research and expansion costs run away over the years while your income does not. Normal is exactly as it was, and so is every gentler charter.
The Cargo research tab is gone; every per-cargo market bonus now sits under Market where it belongs. Market Analysis pays 4 per cent a level, the whole Headquarters tab pays 5, and a cargo's own brand research now buys +5 per cent influence and prestige on that cargo as well as its awareness. A research plan set from the website now counts your holdings income as profit, so a plan funded from dividends actually spends.
Five major nodes on the talent board carry the new work: efficiency and quality ramp for the Industrialist, brand reputation growth for the Magnate. Nothing you already built changed. Nobody respecs.