Licenses, Agreements, AI Fake Economy Agents

[ewger]

License

I think it maybe very important to increase the role of authority in the game. This can be done by introducing so called license mechanism.
Once bought they can be automatically renewed.

For example, player wants to transport cargo form industry that belongs to nearest city authority. In that case he won't be able to build a transport station without buying a license in concrete authority.

Their can be four types of license for each kind of transport (or even cargo, I'm not sure).

Company's rating at the city also will play a great role in license cost. (For example, extra ecological taxes may also be introduced for pollution or pollution related service).

The main idea of this is to make player to keep positive balance with some extra money. Otherwise he will lose his licenses.

Agreements

Or other way contracts may be introduced in to the game.
They can be automatically signed and renewed.

For example, you have just build a route to transport goods, but before your station start to receive any cargo player has to a sign an agreement with Industry (AI Economy agent).

Industry dialog should have a special type for agreements with default and special agreements. Special agreements may not be automatically signed. Industry may set a low limit for cargo rating, fine for latency, bonus payment conditions, cargo amount pro month, etc.

Player will have to pay even more attention to routes speed, reliability, etc

AI Fake Economy Agents

Economy agents (EA) help to balance economy. They market objects, have money, shares and can influence a balance of the game. (Initially designed to support the balance).

See http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=30955

There are map EA and fake EA.
Player can click map EA and directly interact with it (for example, an industry). Fake EA can be interacted only indirectly, in stock exchange or by fund rising program when player searches for investments in his routes projects.

I want to make a list of such companies that can be mentioned in game partially own or fund industries.


All kind of industry giants and etc.

World trade

As a matter of fact fake EA can introduced a very intriguing change in to the game play. Player can contact trading company (a map EA), clicking on the building in the down and sign a contract for limited period of time.

A contract is a sort of task to transport a huge amount of cargo to concrete waypoint on the map. Player will have to create a network of routes, to reroute all possible cargo of that type n the map - to get a more profitable payment for transport service then usual.

This is a sort of logistic challenged.

PS

I think its very important to develop a staged game play model. In such model the risk to get bankrupt stays for a long. On different stages of the game (measured by age of the company) player will face more difficult task to solve. He will need to keep his balance very positive and plan company budget for a long period of time.

This should prevent an "investment" rush from the very beginning of the game. Player will have to play in more intelligent way and analyze financial state of the industry (stock exchange statistics), not only production rate and distance, before constructing a route. It should be possible to prognose some "random" events of the company. Thus micro economy processes should become more transparent and obvious for player.