Definitely a bug. I'm on vacation right now, far away from my dev rig, so it will be a while before any of this is addressed but revealing the merchant math more completely is going on the back log. Insofar as the actual loop itself goes - That's the balance I'm trying to find right now. Too easy and you will simply breeze through, too hard and prestiging becomes a punishment. Big part of the reason why I didn't push to the main site with this is because I know the balance needs work, but to really dig down into where I need the exact feedback you're giving me.
Have you been using the new Corpo skills to improve efficiencies for your company? Those are the main early game levers for gaining capital so you can start snowballing with the parts of Corps that aid you in the rest of the game loops. There will be more avenues for the corp helping the player directly in the future, but for now the only real direct aid is paying yourself a wage from its earnings (equivalent to 4 levels of Trust Fund at max right now) and with the missing community projects I've noticed that it is a lot harder to pop off, so to speak.
I must be missing something huge - it looks like to get any income from the Corporation I need real estate, a production line, a sales desk, and employees. All those are an arm and a leg, seemingly outside the pre-Legendary cycle potential. So I haven't been working on my corpo skills, since the one I did had no apparent effect (since I had no production) and the theoretical boost listed had disappeared in two lifetimes from attrition.
With no way to build a Network since I've been ostracized from the Community, I'm spending a lot more time each life Schmoozing so I can hit baseline Intel needs. It's slow going, about 1 Retirement boost every other life.
Implicit in your question is the idea that the corporation can be active immediately or in short order. Is the corp supposed to start with some/all of the Incorporate fee? That would be enough to get off the ground. For my prestige, though, it starts with $0. (ie the Incorporate cost was all licensing fees and red tape)
That would be great! A simultaneous layer that interacts with the main might make climbing the prestige system and REP later again easier and different enough to feel engaging.
But no, I incorporated with zero dollars. I've dumped seven prestige bonuses into Corpo and done some REP/Mission free money making dives, caching 10k at a time until I could afford an office, warehouse, sales staff member, two production machines, and a pair of line workers. So I think I'm around the intended start point now!
