This thread is about my project (more info: http://www.dmdware.com )

What do you think is better than selecting supplier buildings individually for each of your buildings? Picking which corporation (player) supplies your buildings for each resources? e.g., you buy cohl (coal) from Albatross Corp. so trucks will deliver from any building of Albatross Corp. that has cohl.

But the price of cohl is set individually at each building that produces it, so isn't there room for abuse? Like, if I set an unreasonably high price per unit of cohl and a player doesn't see it when they purchase from your company en masse. So isn't it better to pick suppliers building by building, so that you can see what price each one is selling at? But then again that's unrealistic, because that's not how it's done in real life.

Maybe there should be a set price that each player sells each kind of resource at. But doesn't that create problems if the player wants differing prices at two buildings? Mmmm, it probably won't matter. I've realized that the game city probably won't span very disparately anyways because the workers can't travel far yet (because the pathfinding per day only goes so far as the unit can travel, so you can't travel for several days in one direction). But I'll change this some time in the future.



In general, what can be done to make this game more fun?

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This is a turn-based game. It is playable by Java on any operating system. And will be available for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone.

You get a certain number of turns each day to move your units and build stuff, adjust prices, and produce units.

It is a persistent online world.

A somewhat recent uproar in Australia about a chain supermarket charging different prices for the same goods at different locations resulted in the supermarket chain standardising prices. Whilst I don't necessarily think this would have an impact game-wise, a potential does exist to have similar complaints levelled by players. If you do decide to maintain different prices at different buildings you might design an interface "Shopping cart list" by where you have the choice of selecting by distance, price or a combination of both. Factoring those requirements against the costs of obtaining the goods could result in a situation of convenience versus savings. This effective set of choices would go a long way to alleviating future complaints about unbalanced pricing issues.

I think I'll standardize prices.

Do you think transporters should be able to do deliveries for other companies or should each company have its own trucks for its transport? In this case the demander transports all requisite supplies to his buildings, instead of suppliers tranporting to client demanders.

As for resources, do you know if there is such a thing as iron castings? Steel castings probably have many uses but not iron, right? Pig iron / wrought iron is used to make steel, which is then cast into steel castings. And does it go Pig Iron -> Wrought Iron?

Also, the majority of buildings in a city are apartment buildings or commercial buildings and not industrial. Even though industry is such a huge part of the economy (in the game). I should add many types of apartments and homes for the labourers to buy. Building private houses should be another form of income in addition to rent from apartments. How do I get more uses for apartments? I should assign each labourer permanently to an apartment room that they'll go back to from day to day.

The answer to this might come down to how deep your economic factors are as well as such issues like: do assets (trucks) have the ability to be shared by players?

In this case the demander transports all requisite supplies to his buildings, instead of suppliers tranporting to client demanders.

Any reason you couldn't do both? For larger orders you might utilise a company's delivery truck, where as with many smaller orders you might use a collecting truck.

If trucks get shared by players this would have time costs associated with it, but could also be used to alter the economic costs of delivery i.e. a middleman delivery company.

I would probably want more information than what you have posted as I don't know what constraints you are operating on or whether this is more an aesthetic question.

What would be the determining factor?

If a truck can deliver resources to a client that purchases resources from you, it should do it.

If your truck can deliver resources to you from another player, it should do it.

I guess that's how it will work.

But in the case of delivering to your clients, there's the added cost of fuel and driver wage, which you can't just add to the client's bill because they didn't agree to it originally when they signed a contract to purchase X resource from you.

As for the middle-man idea, how about each time a client purchases X resource, it will queue 1.) your own trucks, 2.) the supplier's trucks, and 3.) middle-men trucks in order of least monetary cost. But in your case it's just fuel and driver's wage. What if it's cheaper to pay the supplier or middle-men instead of paying for fuel and driver's wage (even though monetary cost only counts the driver's wage).

So in the case of using the supplier to deliver the resource to you, the supplier will be treated as any other middle-men and it will check that player's price for transporting.

So should transportation charges be based on distance travelled plus a fixed base fee?

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I redesigned the game. Please tell me what you think.

http://steamcommunit...706&searchtext=

" In the future the corporation has become the dominant form of social organization and all responsibilities held by governments are now held by them. "

Corporation-States is an online turn-based strategy game with a unique economic system. Resources and buildings form an inter-connected web of production and exchange that revolve around the labour produced by "empzens" (Employee-Citizens) or "labourers". Players get a turn each day to move and produce all their units and buildings and to buy and sell resources.

Labour is needed to extract mineral ore at mines, which must then be transported by trucks (which use up fuel) to smelters, which turn it into metal. Players who owned the buildings choose at what price to buy resources and at what price to sell their products. You choose where your labourers work. They can even work at the buildings of other players. The owners of buildings decide how much labourers get paid for doing work there.

Labourers have to consume Consumer Goods at a certain rate in order to survive, which are produced by Shopping Complexes. They also need to rest at Apartments to regenerate their labour. These actions involve exchange of money - paying for Consumer Goods and paying for rent. When a labourer accumulates enough Consumer Goods he can split into two, giving you more labourers to command.

Roads must be built to connect the buildings for trucks to transport resources between them. Trucks are produced at Factories and must be driven by labourers.
Powerlines are needed to connect buildings into the power grid and Zetrol (Oil) pipelines are needed to pump Crude from Derricks to Refineries.
Travel overseas to colonize more land and even travel to other planets through "jump gates".

All this in a persistent, online world that connects all the players together.

You start off the game with $100 and a supply of resources to get you started but you can purchase more money (Currency) through PayPal. The resources are initially global and can be used anywhere but after your initial supply runs out they will be localized and must be transported between buildings.

You will build tanks, droids, ships, space ships and recruit soldiers from your labourers to fight wars and conquer other players.

This is no longer relevant in my redesign. Players don't make contracts now but manually purchase resources each turn and transport them by trucks. And now players act as merchants, buying resources at suppliers and selling them at demanders. For this a player will set a price at which he sells and at which he buys at his buildings. So it goes like this:

Building produces -> player buys from building -> player transports to another building -> player sells to building