[Ultimate Campaign] Upkeep and managers

[hechatonchires]

How many business's can a manager run? I have a player that runs 10 farms, an inn, a store and some mercenaries per town in 3 separate towns. If he wants to fight capital attrition does that mean that he needs a manager for each business? That does not seem worth it as the cost of the managers would far exceed the losses when you factor 7 days vs. 14.

Can all of those farms be combined into 1 Organization that is managed by 1 hireling or can he just have a manager that runs around to all of the business's in a 30 day period just to make sure they don't revolt? The cost of the manager seems to far exceed any loses he would take in the Capital attrition phase.

It seems like it would be better to have 1 manager in every town that visits your business once every 30 days to prevent business attrition but as long as your business generates enough capital to combat your 7 day losses why bother using a manager for your business it seems far to expensive when compared to the 14 day loss savings by having a manager for each building or Organization.

[Rands]

Personally, I would have PCs hire 1 manager for each separate business in each town.

So unless the store business was somehow attached to the inn business (or the inn was located at one of the farms, for example), each of them would require a separate manager.

For the farms, I would allow 1 manager to oversee the 10 businesses, as they are the same type.

If they had this setup in 3 different towns, they would multiply the number of managers by 3.

Yes, this does make it a lot more expensive for the PCs, but I don't have a problem with that.

The way I see managers is that they are full time overseers (which makes sense to me given the high cost/day), getting the most out of employees in one business (YMMV).

[hechatonchires]

Ok so if the business's in an area are linked like say a shop and a warehouse they can be run by one manager? That seems fair to me.

Another question:

I have another player who is trying to setup a caravan train that would trades goods between 4 towns and would also be used to stock items for his store. Can he use those caravans to generate capital? I say yes cause he could just be selling those goods to his own stores and everything should wash out expense/profit wise. Also can he use one manager to run the caravan trains? The rules are not clear on something like this that would be traveling between multiple towns.