Very interesting so far, any specific plans for multiplayer? Could you actually make it a persistent MMO?
Economics engine
Author
There will be multiplayer. I don't have hosting but I'll add a "persistent" mode with player registration so people can host their own MMO servers. The only thing I will host is a matchmaker/game-finding server on AWS. I'll release the source code for linux so people can host their own dedicated servers. But real-time would require too much computing power to be massive.
Author
But I'm not sure I can make it work. I've yet to produce a proof-of-concept working economy.
Listening to the audiobook of "Basic Economics".
So much of a city is not refineries and mines but apartments, houses, office buildings and skyscrapers. To make it visually realistic, most of the city has to consist of these buildings. This is the SimCity approach.
If I lean more towards RTS though, it's more about resource extraction and manufacturing. It's a caricature.
If I make it like SimCity, I have to do a lot of pathfinding optimizing to make it able to run in real-time. This is probably impossible.
Looks like you're still largely undecided about some aspects, would be nice to hear more about the core gameplay mechanics to get a clearer idea what you have in mind for this game.
Author
The differences from most RTS are:
- workers are AI-controlled
- buildings have inputs and outputs
- physical resources must be transported (after global cache is used up)
- labour is a resource
All exchanges involve money and prices and wages can be adjusted.
It seems like a broken mechanic though because I'm having to calculate default prices so that the economy doesn't break, so that players don't go bankrupt and workers can buy food and pay rent.
So much of a city is not refineries and mines but apartments, houses, office buildings and skyscrapers.
I need to know what kind of businesses are in office buildings and skyscrapers though, to make them functional.
I will not get to fulfill all my ideas at once but I intend to develop my tech incrementally over the next decade and more.
This is how I want States and Corporations to look
The differences from most RTS are:
- workers are AI-controlled
- buildings have inputs and outputs
- physical resources must be transported (after global cache is used up)
- labour is a resource
All exchanges involve money and prices and wages can be adjusted.
It seems like a broken mechanic though because I'm having to calculate default prices so that the economy doesn't break, so that players don't go bankrupt and workers can buy food and pay rent.
About calculating prices - what about just taking actual prices or approximately realistic values, and then let players to fiddle around and see what to balance from there.
As far as I understand the general concept - players will be able to choose what kind of business they wanna run, like logistics, resource extraction, manufacturing, or purely trading or a combination.
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buildings have inputs and outputs
Building and it's functionality could be separate, on a very basic level it was done in "Towns" where you build building and then choose what it's functionality will be by putting stuff into the building, so building a factory for example means you need to build a a big enough building to fit, say, production line or whtvr. This might open other possibilities, like planning ahead, say you wanna have a big factory, you can build it big enough to incorporate more equipment later on to avoid building another one, or ability to reequip that factory or upgrade the equipment inside and so on.
Author
About calculating prices - what about just taking actual prices or approximately realistic values, and then let players to fiddle around and see what to balance from there.
I'd have to add enough buildings/resources and simulate enough units at a time to make it realistic. You'd need a realistic demand for a supermarket for example to make up for the costs of employing all the people and electricity and filling all the shelves. One other thing is what kind of timescale to use, for collecting rent, harvesting crops, workers attending jobs, resting, shopping.
I want to use BSP for the insides of buildings. I could precompute it in a building editor and paths between the different areas. What if factories were actually functional, and you could see workers attending to an assembly line? Or running a nuclear powerplant? This game is like a living encyclopedia. Needs a lot of research though.
Dams aren't even in SimCity
Author
I'd have to add enough buildings/resources and simulate enough units at a time to make it realistic.
I only have plans for 15 buildings. Anything else would have to be added by other people or wait until after States and Corporations. That's probably 20 years away though. But I don't know. I've been working on Corporation-States since 2011, maybe 2010. 2008 if sketches count as work. I have several other projects planned and most aren't about economics.
Food (consumer goods) is a generic resource and so it can't have a real price. So is factory's "production".
Author
Sure, I could let players fiddle around with prices/wages to see for themselves, but most would probably quit from frustration if I didn't already start them off with a working economy. I'm just thinking what would happen if I just released Corporation-States with the prices/wages as they are and let them fiddle. They wouldn't be able to adjust the prices fast enough on iphone/ipad/android because I only have a plus and minus $0.01 button and in the ratings it would say the game is broken because all the AI's go bankrupt until one remains with all their property, or the workers starve from too high prices or are unable to pay for rent. Sure I guess it's no big deal, just set the prices such that it pays for all the inputs plus some profit, and make sure workers are getting enough per unit of time to be able to afford enough to pay for food and housing.
If the essentials are in abundance and what's produced is more than is consumed, then there should be a variety of non-essential goods that workers would want to pursue and pay for.
You have my respect for trying to tackle such a complicated project. I have been idly thinking about something like this myself, from an edutainment-type angle.
As for citizen's behavior and the difficulty of pathfinding, might I suggest a little hack that would make things both more efficient and more realistic at the same time: Let citizens reevaluate their behavior only rarely. Let them use the same path to work, buy the same set of goods over a longer period of time, even when the roads change or the prices change. This can make your simulation more efficient, and it is actually how most people behave in the real world, so it will make things more realistic.
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