[RFD] Company rating

[PJayTycy]

This is not a comment on a specific part of the FRD, but more to start a discussion about company ratings.

How many ratings does a company have?

• One general
• One for each city
• One for each industry

What should have an influence on the rating (from the FRD) ?

• The amount of transportation to/from a city
• The number of industries owned (eg: a big employer has a better public image then someone who imports all goods from somewhere else)
• The number of tourist attractions owned
• The amount of pollution its industries+transport creates
• Bribery
• Destroying trees
• Running for governor/mayor
• HQ offices
• Having trains pulled by steam engines after the steam-era
• Visiting a dock with a cruise ship
• Training of employees
• Advertising

What will be influenced by the rating (also from the FRD) ?

• The possibillity to build stations/tracks in a city
• The distribution of cargo among different transport companies (part of the transportation choice)

Isn't this a little ridiculous? So many influences, and only 2 effects. What do we want to achieve with adding the company rating? Forcing the player to build HQ's? Forcing the player to provide a good service?

[Hyronymus]

I strongly agree with the long list of influences. Aren't these influences just the necessary ones:

• The amount of transportation to/from a city [or industry]
• The amount of pollution its industries+transport creates
• Bribery
• Destroying trees
• Training of employees
• Advertising

[Zuu]

Idea (from FreeCiv): Have a trustary rating for each company. When a company makes less nice things like fool a city or an AI, drop the trustary rating. (in FreeCiv if you break an aliance youre trust rating drops, and you will never realy be able to recover the trust rating.)

But maybe thats not that good in a Transport game as in FreeCiv.

The result is that you cant fool all cour compitors and still get contracts with them. But mayby that can be done by droping the company rating.


Suggestions for what should be affected by (global) company rating:
* Probability that an industry wants to create a new contract with a company.
* How willing towns are to do stuff that the company asks for. (airports, ?)
* How willing AI transport companies is to do diplomatic stuff with that company. (Infastructure sharing, etc.)

[Steve]

Most of the influences are good, with the following exceptions.
* We can own tourist attractions?
* Governor/mayor is unrealistic unless you plan on letting the player actually make the decisions.
* Steam engines: I presume that's a bad thing? I'd rather take a nice fast, reliable, economic electric train.
* Training of employees: Personally, i would train my employees anyway...

You may only have 2 things that are influenced there.. but they are important things that the company will need to take care of.

The actual general ratings could be split up into transport type. Just because your trains run on time doesn't mean your planes can fly. Per city and industry is good though.

[Arathorn]

I'd suggest that there is some rating for the whole country you're playing in, and a rating for different local authorities (LAs).

Let me elaborate:
1. Before you start, you don't have any ratings.
2. As soon as you start building somewhere, you'll get a rating from the LA. People all around the country hear about it, so automatically all LAs give the same rating to you.
3. If you start building in a different LA, you start off with the general country rating, but while building the LA gets a different view of you, and your rating there will change.
4. People around the country will hear about what you do in the LA and your country rating changes.

So there are two ratings: one for the country and one per LA, the country rating is an average off all the LA ratings of the LAs where you have done anything. The LA rating is the country rating modified strongly by your deeds in that LA.

Your LA rating should be dependant of things like the amount of landscape changes done by our company (the more, the lower the rating), consumer satisfaction of people in the LA, advertising.

Your rating at LA's should define what routes you will be allowed to build.

As for industries, I'm not sure if it was decided wether we would work with contracts, maybe your industry rating (wich is based on your reliability in dealing with other industries) would affect wether an industry would like to do business with you. If you are bidding with a competitor on a contract, the industry may just decide to make a deal with the company with the best rating, but if the company with the lowest rating offers a much lower price, it may decide to deal with them.

[Hyronymus]

I like your suggestion, Arathorn but one small thing. What if your rating in your first city (Citytown) is extremely bad. According to your the LA rating of Citytown will also be the starting level in all other cities, making it very hard if not impossible to get started there. Why not use a formula that thinks of towns where you didn't conctruct anything yet as 100% LA-rating towns. A map with 19 'untouched' towns and the already mentioned Citytown with LA-rating of 87% will then result in a nationwide rating of

Code: Select all

((19)*100) + 1*87)/20 = 99,35%

The general formula would be:

[Grunt]

On the other hand, we could introduce a (for lack of a better term) "visibility rating", which starts at 0% and increases as your company becomes more well known. This rating would determine how likely one individual rating would affect other individual ratings; e.g. if almost nobody has heard of your company, few will care if one city doesn't like your service very much, but if everybody has heard of your company and a city doesn't like your service your overall rating would drop noticeably. This could of course lead to systems which would determine a city's influence e.g. cities with larger population would have more of an influence on overall ratings.

[ChrisCF]

That sounds rather like the ratings in Loco, where your global rating is 0. Certain things might become open to you onloy if you have a given global or local rating. Your first venture into a town starts you off at 50% (fair starting point). A requirement for passengers by bus might be global:0 and local:0 - for trains, this might require local:30. Getting anything by air might require a global rating of 20% (this way people can't cheat in getting their ratings straight off), meaning you have to stay on the ground first.

[Steve]

Meeting Decisions:

- Global rating, town rating, industry rating, station rating. Each effecting each other slightly.
- When your new in a town, you start with your global rating.
- Global rating is a rough average of other ratings.
- List of things that influence rating:
* The amount of transportation to/from a city
* Bribery
* Destroying trees
* Visits to a station by special vehicles, such as cruise ships.
* Advertising
* Destroying of town buildings/roads
* Mass change of landscape
- Things influenced by rating:
* The possibillity to build stations/tracks in a city
* The distribution of cargo among different transport companies (part of the transportation choice)
* Building on the local authority's ground.

Status: Nearly closed. Need finalisation on influence list.

[jfs]

* Visiting a dock with a cruise ship

This could be generalised into "Some vehicles have a special impact on rating when they visit a station (eg. a cruise ship visiting a dock)", such that any kind of "cool things" can be made

[ChrisCF]

Since explicit pollution is gone, I would suggest a desirability for vehicles. Rather than explicitly noting that Pacers are disgusting little things, rate them as having a low desirability, since it's not just pollution - passengers just hate the things anyway

[Grunt]

That would mean, of course, that the older a vehicle was, the less desirable it would be - who wants to ride around in a fifty year old passenger car, anyways?

[Hyronymus]

Desirability should rise for steam engines after the 1970's though. Maybe it's nice to be able to put certain engines aside for museum usage (going OT in a fast pace now).

[Steve]

Desirability should rise for steam engines after the 1970's though. Maybe it's nice to be able to put certain engines aside for museum usage (going OT in a fast pace now).

Why should it? I want a fast electric train, not an old, smelly steam train!

[Hyronymus]

Because I thought the option of a higher rating for riding an old steam engine through a town made it to the current FRD.

[SHADOW-XIII]

How many ratings does a company have?

• One general
• One for each city
• One for each industry

what about one for each station ? this splits last two options into more complex areas

What should have an influence on the rating (from the FRD) ?

• The amount of transportation to/from a city
• The number of industries owned (eg: a big employer has a better public image then someone who imports all goods from somewhere else)
• The number of tourist attractions owned
• The amount of pollution its industries+transport creates
• Bribery
• Destroying (any destoying) or land leveling
• Running for governor/mayor
• HQ offices
• Having trains pulled by steam engines after the steam-era
• Visiting a dock with a cruise ship
• Training of employees
• Advertising

and what about steam tourist trains in late eras ? I think this needs to eb more complex ... let's see now ... travelling with steam engines is of course quiet expensive latetly but it is great tourist attraction ... so I think any train that is 1-2 years new give boost and any that is 30/40 years and more give boost

What will be influenced by the rating (also from the FRD) ?

• The possibillity to build stations/tracks in a city
• The distribution of cargo among different transport companies (part of the transportation choice)

money income to ?

[PJayTycy]

2 comments:

We can own tourist attractions?

At that time I was kind of 100% convinced players would be able to own any industry. Never imagined somebody would not want that. But, that part has been decided against, so I guess the tourist-attraction influence is gone too (it was not on the meeting-list too).

I would suggest a desirability for vehicles. Rather than explicitly noting that Pacers are disgusting little things, rate them as having a low desirability, since it's not just pollution - passengers just hate the things anyway

That would be part of the loco's stats and influence the transportation choice, but how/why would it influence the company's rating?

[ChrisCF]

You mean it's not patently obvious?

[Grunt]

If your company has a reputation for using old, smelly, useless vehicles, people will shun it in favour of a company that uses nice shiny clean new vehicles. Simple as that.

[PJayTycy]

If your company has a reputation for using old, smelly, useless vehicles, people will shun it in favour of a company that uses nice shiny clean new vehicles. Simple as that.

OK, I agree the "image" people have of a company will decrease when they drive around in old smelly vehicles. But, this should not eliminate the vehicle from the transportation choice. If you put the "vehicle appeal" in the company rating too, I have the impression we are accounting for it twice.

eg: There are 2 possibilities for my route:
A: company rating = 80%, estimated time = 2 months, cost = 100$, vehicle appeal = 75%
B: company rating = 40%, estimated time = 1 month, cost = 70$, vehicle appeal = 50%

The general vehicle appeal would then be part of the company rating, but the vehicle appeal of the current train should still have an influence on wheter the people will choose it or not.