[patch] Remove interest rate cap & refinery from edge cap

[Luukland]

Hello,

This patch has been designed to work on network games. Patch is based on the latest stable 0.7.5, title says already what it does. This patch has been made primarely to make the game a little bit harder.

Changes:
- will make it possible to set interest rate anywhere from 1% till 255%.
- Inflation will also increase just like in normal OpenTTD, remember to turn inflation off, if you use values above 20%.
- Will make it possible to set distance from edge oil refineries from 48 tiles till max 255 tiles.

Patch can be used by server, without clients having to patch their version of openttd. The patch is in use by some of the openTTD servers.

~ Edit warning 20% interest, inflation (Thanx rubidium)

[Rubidium]

With 255% you'll explode the prices of stuff.

In 170 years, with 255% inflation, so factor 3.55 you increase the prices by approximately 3e94 (a 3 with 94 zeroes), which is way more than what fits in a int64. Anything above roughly 20% will cause massive problems after 170 years of inflation (assuming the prices start at 1), e.g. with 20% inflation your maximum amount of money is about 10% of building an industry, i.e. you can't build an industry (with the base costs unmodified). So anything even close to or over 20 would be unwanted as it makes the game unplayable after a while.

[Eddi]

ideally the interest rate for bank loan should be a multiple of the inflation rate.

example:
easy: 2% inflation on income, 3% inflation on costs (x1.5), 10% interest on loan (x5)
medium: 4% income, 6% costs (x1.5), 20% loan (x5)
hard: 6% income, 9% costs (x1.5), 30% loan (x5)

values might be subject to balancing...

currently, the inflation on costs is 1% higher than the inflation on income, which makes it actually easier on higher inflation rates

[Hirundo]

I fear http://vcs.openttd.org/hg/openttd/trunk ... 415c253b98 may have broken this patch, at least to the point that it may no longer work with unpatched clients.

[petert]

Fortunately it will still work with their current version, 0.7.5, but they won't be able to update.

[peter1138]

ideally the interest rate for bank loan should be a multiple of the inflation rate.

example:
easy: 2% inflation on income, 3% inflation on costs (x1.5), 10% interest on loan (x5)
medium: 4% income, 6% costs (x1.5), 20% loan (x5)
hard: 6% income, 9% costs (x1.5), 30% loan (x5)

values might be subject to balancing...

currently, the inflation on costs is 1% higher than the inflation on income, which makes it actually easier on higher inflation rates

I fear that making the ratios the same for each difficulty level offers no real difference except to raw prices. If the ratios should increase with difficulty then it will actually become harder.

[Eddi]

yeah, i had that same feeling right after i wrote that...

how about:
Easy: 2% income, 3% cost (x1.5), 10% loan (x5)
Medium: 2% income, 4% cost (x2), 15% loan (x7.5)
Hard: 2% income, 5% cost (x2.5), 25% loan (x12.5)

the loan rate will be problematic in the beginning of the game, the cost inflation will be problematic towards the end of the game

[michael blunck]

I fear that making the ratios the same for each difficulty level offers no real difference except to raw prices.

Well, no. It does. Even in the equilibrium state, ie income == cost.

easy: 2% inflation on income, 3% inflation on costs (x1.5)

income 102
cost 103
profit -1 -> -1%

medium: 4% income, 6% costs (x1.5)

income 104
cost 106
profit -2 -> -2%

hard: 6% income, 9% costs (x1.5)

income 106
cost 109
profit -3 -> -3%

regards
Michael

[planetmaker]

Actually... Eddi is right. Things are not that linear though. The interesting thing for a player is neither the income nor the costs themselves nor their difference, but the ratio of their respective increase which gives them their effective purchasing power.

Prices relative to the income are then (Eddis proposals and exisiting values):

Code: Select all

       ratio = (cost / income)^(n-1)
	   3%/2%  6%/4%  9%/6%	4%/3%	5%/4%
year	easy	 -	 -	  medium	  hard 
1.	 1.00	1.00	1.00	
2.	 1.01	1.02	1.03
3.	 1.02	1.04	1.06
4.	 1.03	1.06	1.09
...
10.	 1.10	1.21	1.31
20.	 1.21	1.46	1.75
50.	 1.63	2.59	4.04
100.	2.65	6.72	16.30	2.63	2.60

So, yes, higher difficulty levels make the game currently easier - at least wrt to income and costs

[Eddi]

I fear that making the ratios the same for each difficulty level offers no real difference except to raw prices. If the ratios should increase with difficulty then it will actually become harder.

planetmaker is right (i hope), because it's not the ratio of the interest rate that matters, but the ratio of the exponential factors. so (1.09/1.06)^n and not (0.09/0.06)^n


but exponential functions have to be carefully balanced, else the game gets unplayable after 170 years of inflation