DESIGN: Economy Details for v.2

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EntropyAvatar
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#121 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Krikkitone wrote: instead of a hard bankruptcy point, have 'fraction of discretionary spending allowed'
Well the proposed bankruptcy limit isn't quite hard, as there's a range of increasing probability of failure. The width of this range determines the hardness of the limit.

The main objection I have to decreasing discretionary spending is the 'feel' of the game. I think the game should encourage players to take risks.

I'd like to make deficit spending kind of tempting, as long as the player believes he can pull away from the fire before he gets burned. Interest is the snare, so it's really easy to move towards insolvency (and the extra cash flow has major benefits) but it gets increasingly hard to move in the other direction.

If we start automatically putting the brakes on as we approach bankruptcy, I think it's taking an interesting decision out of the player's hands.

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Krikkitone
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#122 Post by Krikkitone »

Oh, I misread it..I thought yours was a hard limit... yeah that sounds better.

A simple comparison of economy size v. government debt could give a nice 'soft limit'

Actually for encouraging risks... perhaps the % chance of default doesn't go up that much beyond a certain point, but the severity of that default does.

Also with debt allowed, then non-discretionary research works.

(essentially the player during any turn can see what the 'bill' will be for Research and can decide to underfund it... not getting any of the surplus research)

(perhaps people may spend a small fraction of their wealth on the surplus research...which should then go only to economic type application or refinement... Social techs would be good for changing this. allowing a lower tax government that concentrates strictly on military spending)

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#123 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Krikkitone wrote:A simple comparison of economy size v. government debt could give a nice 'soft limit'
I was thinking of using total scrap value as measure of economy size, so that the major penalty (auto-scrapping of infrastructure) couldn't exceed what you actually had on hand. Of course for this to hold true, chance of bankruptcy has to hit 100% sometime before debt exceeds the scrap value....

Of course, there's lots of ways one might design the default penalty. We just have to be a little careful that the consequences can't be too light or too crazy.
(essentially the player during any turn can see what the 'bill' will be for Research and can decide to underfund it... not getting any of the surplus research)
Yeah I think that would be a good feature.
(perhaps people may spend a small fraction of their wealth on the surplus research...which should then go only to economic type application or refinement...
It's an attractive idea, but the devil is in the details. There is a question of what a colony does if it has built all the infrastructure and upgrades available. Perhaps 'civilian' research spending is a possibility here?

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Krikkitone
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#124 Post by Krikkitone »

It's an attractive idea, but the devil is in the details. There is a question of what a colony does if it has built all the infrastructure and upgrades available. Perhaps 'civilian' research spending is a possibility here?
Actually I was thinking of it spilling back into Consumer goods, but some amount going into research might be good.

(as a general rule I figured the fraction of 'private money' spent on development would go down as the fraction of maximum possible development went up... a similar but inverted system could work for 'private research'..which in any case should probably be low.)

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skdiw
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#125 Post by skdiw »

Make it more flexible by allowing the money to be taxed into the imperial funds. We are assuming the money are going into consumer goods anyway even before all things are built. There is no reason to make pop happier why that are working at maximum. It's not like the player recieve any benefit by cycling back into the consumer so why would a player do that? The taxations for a max developed planet should be controlled by AI for max efficiency. Tax from that point = money - maint - unrest.
:mrgreen:

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#126 Post by EntropyAvatar »

I want to look at the productivity curves for each type of focus and the game implications.

We expect that average production per population is going to go up significantly over time so the player can build all the fancy new stuff. The steepness of this curve is something we will have to work out. I'll assume for now that it's steeper than linear.

If we keep a near-constant ratio of minerals:production, then the demand for minerals will follow a similar curve. Since we probably don't want to force the player to drastically increase the percentage of population employed in mining, this means the mining productivity curve should be at least as steep.

The amount of food consumed for each unit of population has got to be pretty constant. A person just doesn't consume exponentially more food as technology marches on. So what kind of productivity curve do we want for food?

1. A flat curve: This means that the percentage of the population devoted to farming is almost constant. It also basically rules out useful farming technology. If an omega-type plan is used, farm-world wealth will be basically flat while wealth of other worlds grows rapidly.

2. A linear curve: Farming population decreases over time. The main use of farming tech is free up population for more productive uses. Growing biomass to convert to minerals is not attractive late-game because mineral production is so much more efficient, unless conversion tech heavily favours food. Farm worlds dwindle in number and are still left behind economically, but not as drastically.

3. Same curve as industry/minerals: Farming population needed to support the larger population becomes miniscule over time(assuming adequate investment in farming technology). However, significant farming may still exist if diversion of biomass to support industry is researched. A single farm world could feed a very large empire, but if that world was captured/blockaded it would take time and much money to replace that food production.

Umm, more stuff along these ines is coming, but I should actually eat some lunch on my lunch break :wink:

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skdiw
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#127 Post by skdiw »

EntropyAvatar wrote:I'll assume for now that it's steeper than linear.
Obviously you arent very good at math (y=999x ?). Whatever, we know what you mean.
EntropyAvatar wrote:If we keep a near-constant ratio of minerals:production, then the demand for minerals will follow a similar curve. Since we probably don't want to force the player to drastically increase the percentage of population employed in mining, this means the mining productivity curve should be at least as steep.
I much rather see min as one of the limiting factor to industry production. So those rich planets and min techs are always important.
EntropyAvatar wrote:The amount of food consumed for each unit of population has got to be pretty constant. A person just doesn't consume exponentially more food as technology marches on. So what kind of productivity curve do we want for food?
Ax+B. hehe :D As tech gets better, B drops and A improves slightly. Remeber that we might have droid/combots in the game. In terms how food should grow over the game, well, the s-curve of course!
EntropyAvatar wrote:1. A flat curve: This means that the percentage of the population devoted to farming is almost constant. It also basically rules out useful farming technology. If an omega-type plan is used, farm-world wealth will be basically flat while wealth of other worlds grows rapidly.
I thought it's more pop = more food = more money?

I like option 2.5. We should bring ppl's suggestion from "food..." from brainstorm thread into this so we take care of it once and for all.[/quote]
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#128 Post by PowerCrazy »

I think it would be a nice tactical situation to make mineral and food planets rare. i.e. in a typical 50 planet empire you'd have maybe 5 mineral planets and 5-8 food planets. Thus these are VERY important planets. And you would have to spend money on these planets for defenses, and starbases, and strategic fleet deployment... And of course you'd have to balance the money spent via industry and economic development.
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Krikkitone
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#129 Post by Krikkitone »

2. A linear curve: Farming population decreases over time. The main use of farming tech is free up population for more productive uses. Growing biomass to convert to minerals is not attractive late-game because mineral production is so much more efficient, unless conversion tech heavily favours food. Farm worlds dwindle in number and are still left behind economically, but not as drastically.

3. Same curve as industry/minerals: Farming population needed to support the larger population becomes miniscule over time(assuming adequate investment in farming technology). However, significant farming may still exist if diversion of biomass to support industry is researched. A single farm world could feed a very large empire, but if that world was captured/blockaded it would take time and much money to replace that food production.
That's why I favor 3, with a mineral : food conversion such that late game, natural Gaia worlds act as the second choice after 'Ultra rich' worlds.

plus with ~10% of your population always on farming, under a focus system, you want something to do with it.


There is one other option that I could see and that is the abolition of food in favor of 'life support costs'... essentially making food part of terraforming/environmental/housing techs... but that would really mess with our model.

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#130 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Krikkitone wrote:There is one other option that I could see and that is the abolition of food in favor of 'life support costs'... essentially making food part of terraforming/environmental/housing techs... but that would really mess with our model.
If the decision hadn't already been made on food, I would drop it in a second (just having an environmental support value or something), and put in something more interesting. Maybe trade as a distinct resource, or energy.
plus with ~10% of your population always on farming, under a focus system, you want something to do with it.
That's a good point. I think it means that the focus system numbers have to be changed. Players would be pissed if they see population working on low-return stuff they didn't ask for.
That's why I favor 3, with a mineral : food conversion such that late game, natural Gaia worlds act as the second choice after 'Ultra rich' worlds.
One possibility that I kind of like is improving mineral efficiency over time in industry. So then you would have linear farming and mining productivity curves (with possibility of conversion and/or factories consuming food) and a steeper-than-linear industrial productivity curve.

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#131 Post by EntropyAvatar »

skdiw wrote:
EntropyAvatar wrote:I'll assume for now that it's steeper than linear.
Obviously you arent very good at math (y=999x ?). Whatever, we know what you mean.
Well, y = x^2 is eventually steeper than y = kx for any k. And y = 2^x is steeper still. You are right though, that I was only considering linear with a moderate slope.
I much rather see min as one of the limiting factor to industry production. So those rich planets and min techs are always important.
Mineral supply is still a limiting factor. But if a factory-worker's mineral consumption grows faster over time than the miner's speed at digging them up, you end up with fewer and fewer factory workers and more and more miners. Essentially minerals become the only limiting factor on factories and you will never have more than you need.
Ax+B. hehe :D As tech gets better, B drops and A improves slightly. Remeber that we might have droid/combots in the game. In terms how food should grow over the game, well, the s-curve of course!
I'm not following you here. Maybe you could explain exactly what you mean by Ax+B. Also, what exactly should follow an s-curve? Farming productivity?
I thought it's more pop = more food = more money?
If farming productivity is constant over time, then the amount of food each farmer produces will be constant over time. Assuming the payment for food is also constant, then on a planet of farmers, the planet's wealth will only grow when the population goes up. This is in contrast to an industrial world, where each unit of population makes more and more stuff as time goes on. So you are correct, it's just that wealth on other types of worlds will go up much faster than that.

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skdiw
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#132 Post by skdiw »

I meant food consumption = Ax+B, x = pop. And food productivity = s-curve. We can make food take up ~ 50% of pop at start then ~10-20% pop when all techs and all developed.
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#133 Post by Aquitaine »

skdiw wrote: Obviously you arent very good at math (y=999x ?). Whatever, we know what you mean.
Please watch your tone. This is a good discussion, but blatant disrespect is against forum policy and I'm quite a jerk about it.

Thanks.

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Last edited by Aquitaine on Mon Oct 13, 2003 2:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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#134 Post by EntropyAvatar »

skdiw wrote:I meant food consumption = Ax+B, x = pop. And food productivity = s-curve. We can make food take up ~ 50% of pop at start then ~10-20% pop when all techs and all developed.
I think food consumption per person should be pretty much constant, so B=0 in your terms. Otherwise, Ax+B seems to say that food consumption per person would depend on the population.

If we are trying to achieve 50% population in farming to start and 10% at the end, then available technologies should increase the typical farmer's productivity by about a factor of 5 in total. Probably somewhere between x5 and x10 would be a good target, though we could go higher if late-game use of biomass in industry is used.

I think for mining we are maybe looking at x10 to x20 increase in productivity.

Manufacturing is a bit harder to say. I'm thinking x20 to x50 increase. Does anyone know what the typical increase in per-worker production would be for a normal planet in Moo2? Any gap between mining productivity and manufacturing productivity gains should be met by techs that increase efficiency of mineral use in industry.

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Krikkitone
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#135 Post by Krikkitone »

Well, I Very much disagree with 50% of the population on farming to begin with... especially on the HW. It really messes with the feel of the game.. but enough on that rant

MOO2 standard Industry
Beginning
3 (slightly less because of pollution)
End
3+1(AutoFactory)+2(RoboMiner)+3(DeepCoreMine)+1(AstroUniversity)+1(Microlite)
=11
*2 from morale+1 from Recyclotrons

=23

so about * 7-9

One thing to note as you increase productivity per person you either have to
increase productivity per facility (which leads to a change in the 'growth rate' of a facility ie how much should be reinvested...a very key balance value)
OR
increase facilities per person (which if it changes by different amounts for different resources will have definite consequences)


In any case I feel those values for industry are good 20-50x (assuming a good long tech tree)

I do feel that minerals and food should match though... because otherwise food production seems doomed to become an after thought mid late game (as it was in MOO2 after Weather Controllers +Terraforming...basically enough to stop the auto placement from wasting people on it.)

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