Why is my starbond adjust prediction wrong?

There's a lot of money to be made from starbond adjusts, and it can be very worthwhile to do your own starbond calculations.  It's very easy to do starbond calculations quickly, and if you need advice you should check out this column and also this other column.

There are also a few starbond tools put together by other HSX players, including howprofitable.com, kaigee.com (which, at the time of writing, had not been updated in a while) and the hsxdude.com - specifically the Pre-Delist Adjust Show, the Post-Adjust Bond Show and the StarBond Tip of the Day columns that you can use to double-check your work.

Now, let's say you've done your starbond calculations, but they don't match what other people (or HSX) have calculated.  Where have you gone wrong?

Here are the steps you should go through to figure things out.

Check that you are using the right formula

For most starbonds, you calculate the next adjust by:

• taking the total box office for the starbond's four most recent movies
• adding your estimate for the delist price for the starbond's next movie, and
• dividing the result by five.

However, some starbonds are attached to fewer than five moviestocks.  For these starbonds, the TAG is calculated using a different formula, depending on how many movie credits the star has.

When a fourth movie is coming into the TAG, you take the total box office of the starbond's previous movies, add your delist estimate for the next movie and divide the total by four.

When a second or a third movie is coming into the TAG, it's the same process - take the total box office of the starbond's previous movies, add your delist estimate for the next movie, but this time divide by three.

Starbonds do not adjust in price for the first film in their TAG.

Check that you have the right movie coming into the TAG

Movies enter the TAG in order of when they delist.  But because movies are listed by release date on the starbond page, it's easy to assume they enter the TAG in this order too.

This mistake is most commonly made when a starbond adjusts for a wide release, but is also attached to a limited release that (a) opened before the wide release and (b) has not delisted yet.  So check the credits section of the relevant starbond page to see if 

Check that you have the right movie dropping out of the TAG

Even though movies enter the TAG in delist date order, they drop out of the TAG in release date order.  And if two or more more films share a release date, only one will get dropped from the TAG - the one with the lowest box office.

If you're unsure, check the credits section of the relevant starbond page.  The moviestocks that the starbond is attached to are sorted by date, and sub-sorted by box office, so they are in the same order as the "dropping out of the TAG" order.  Just look at the movie that is delisting, count five movies down the list and that is (almost always) the movie dropping out of the TAG.

I say almost always, because there is one cautionary note here - the "starbond attached to a limited release movie that hasn't delisted" issue mentioned above also applies here.  When counting down the list of movies on the starbond page to figure which movie is dropping out of the TAG, make sure you are only counting movies that have already delisted.

Check that not just one movie is coming into the TAG

Sometimes, a starbond is attached to two (or more) movies that delist on the same date.  When this happens, those movies come into the TAG, the same number of movies drop out and the starbond is adjusted to the new TAG in one step.

If you're expecting just one movie to come into the TAG, your calculations are wrong.  This is especially hard to catch when a starbond is attached to both a wide release and a limited release delisting on the same day.

There's no easy way around this, beyond looking at the list of moviestocks the starbond is attached to and then figuring out whether two or more share the same release date.  But double and triple adjusts are often mentioned on the Stars board when they are coming up.

Check that you're using the right box office figures

Starbond adjusts happen the day after a relevant moviestock delists, but that doesn't mean the box office used in calculating the TAG is frozen at that the movie's delist price.  Instead, the TAG will be updated in the weeks to come, based on updated box office figures - including box office earned after that movie has delisted.

So, don't even look at the delist price when calculating the TAG.  Use the actual box office figure - on the moviestock page, under "Gross", to get the right number.

The only exception here is that the box office figure used in starbond calculations is capped at $250 million.  So even if a movie has earned more than $250 million at the box office, it's not going to count as more than $250 in the TAG.


Going through these five steps should help you fix any problem you are having with calculating starbond adjusts.  But if things still aren't working out, there is absolutely no shame in posting your questions in the Stars board, especially if you show your math to help others see what the problem is.