[FRDF] Player owned industries

Development discussion about Transport Empire. Other discussion to General forum please.

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PJayTycy
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Post by PJayTycy »

Hyronymus wrote:Are you being chased by a mean crowd, Pjaytycy? You're style is a bit hostile tonight but I don't think you intended that ;).
I know, I'm just a little angry at myself because I had to miss the part of the meeting I cared the most about.

Thanks for clearing things up for me !
Hyronymus wrote:What's left open is a TTD-like approach. As you said, you will be paid for transporting goods anywhere you take them
...
Goods can be transported to any place on the map. No matter where the goods are sent the player's company will always receive money for transporting the goods. The amount of money does vary though
...
nobody said transporting it to the other end of the map would pay more
OK, so the amout of money you receive does vary, but it will not be based on a buy/sell (supply/demand) method and *maybe* based on distance. If we have not decided on the algorithm to set the price you get for transporting goods to another place, I would kindly ask to reconsider the point about the buy/sell thing.

From reading the log, I get the feeling the economy behind the system was not really considered, just the wording of "buy and sell". I agree it is irrealistic for a transport company to actually buy and sell the goods, but the economy system behind it is really nice. You might rephrase it like this "your local mangers now the street-value of X at the origin and the destination, and based on that, they automaticly set the transport fee as high as possible while keeping it interesting to the involved industries".
Hyronymus wrote:It was decided that a player's company can never own industries because it's unrealistic.
That's a pitty, but I'll go with the majority...



Hyronymus, thanks again for clearing this part of the meeting up for me, and if I sound angry, I'm mostly angry at myself.
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Post by Hyronymus »

Don't stay angry too long, there's always someone to blame (not me :roll: !!!). Let's see if more people want to discuss the economics system you like again next sunday.
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Post by Steve »

Did you read my argument about Buying and selling? Showing that it doesn't factor time into the equation so you can take 15 years to transport some coal and you'd get paid the same on the other side.
Now, in a "you get paid for transporting" system, you have to deliver it fast if you want to get paid, meaning you have to be efficient.

And owning industries doesn't really make sense overall. Especially if we don't have buy/sell.

We did decide that 7 is more likely to be a Sandbox mode, so in a proper game you won't be able to deliver anywhere you like. Similary, 8 is a harder difficulty setting.
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Post by jfs »

4. Industries have favoured destinations for their goods
I'm suddenly wondering if this wasn't phrased clearly enough.
I wrote "destinationS", plural. Every industry has a list of destinations its produces goods can be taken. For each of those destinations, a "reward per unit" is given, this reward will be different for the different destinations. And of course, taking too long to transport something will make the reward drop. (Is "reward" the right word to use here?)

If there was only one favoured destination, it would be almost exactly like a contract. With multiple destinations, the player is still given more freedom than with a contract, but is also given an incentive to build a more realistic network. ("Realistic" in the sense, that the production of every forest goes to one single sawmill. Contracts will certainly avoid that. Favoured destinations will avoid that to a degree.)
Also note that the list of favoured destinations might not include every potential destination. In the case of non-sandbox mode ("option 7" is off), this will mean the listed destinations are the only possible destinations. If option 7 is on, the game is sandbox-play and the economy is disabled anyway.
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Post by Hyronymus »

Bonus suits better I think but I'm glad you replied to point out the fact of several destinations being offered to the player's company.
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Post by PJayTycy »

For reference : the *complete* discussion of the buy/sell mechanism at the meeting :
22:45 <@ChrisCF> 2 we can't do (at least, not without a futures speculation plugin, which is beyond our scope)
22:45 <+Steve-> ChrisCF, well some people are insistant on 2 for some reason. ~
22:46 <+Steve-> But i think my argument on time mattering in transporting, making buy/sell innappropiate. ~
22:51 <@ChrisCF> 2 is impractical, and might allow teleporting if not treated carefully.
22:53 <@Hyronymus> 2 wasn't a choise by anyone either
22:53 <@Hyronymus> also a drop
Excuse me for getting the impression the issue was not discussed seriously.

First, a response to Steve who is worried about timed delivery: if we want to really play out the advantages/disadvantages of different transportation methods, time to deliver really has to be part of the equation. One of the things mentionned in the featured discussions (I think by zuu) : was that it should be economically wise to transport coal by train (not by plane), while for other goods, that are more influenced by in-time delivery, the plane is a better option.

The "street-prices" would represent the price for full quality / fresh / ... goods. Each good should have a rate by which its value drops over time. For example, coal-value could drop very slow (eg : 1% each month), while banana-value would drop very fast (eg: 10% each month). When buying/selling goods, you count with the current value, not the current "fresh" - price. After a certain amount of time, a good would be considered rotten, and just disappear.

You might say now: well, in that case we have to keep track of the "age" of each and every load of cargo that is present in the game. That's true, but you have to do that for all the systems if you want to reward players because they deliver fast.



I'm now going to try to find out why Chris links this with teleporting.

[edit]@Hyronymus : I'd rather clear this up at the forum, because I won't be at the meeting next week (snowboard-holiday)[/edit]
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Post by ChrisCF »

If the player is buying and selling goods, it might lead to players buying the goods from one place, and selling them in another, thus "teleporting" them, as opposed to actually transporting them across the map properly.

More importantly than this, if the player is doing the buying and selling, you have to decide how to account for them. They are usually treated separately from capital accounts, meaning that as well as calculating transport rates, you need to calculate a price for the goods to record it on the books, and allow it to fluctuate fairly. You're looking at a full-scale commodities market. It also poses the problem that if sensible values are assigned, the player might not be able to afford to buy the goods in the first place - bad enough dealing with running costs without having to pay $3k for every tonne of copper you want to move.
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Post by PJayTycy »

Thanks for clearing that up Chris.
ChrisCF wrote:If the player is buying and selling goods, it might lead to players buying the goods from one place, and selling them in another, thus "teleporting" them, as opposed to actually transporting them across the map properly.
No, you are thinking about "buy the goods, put them in a magical bag, sell the goods", like most strategy games work. That's not what I meant. It's like this: when the goods are loaded on a train, you buy them, when they are unloaded, you sell them. It's not a seperate activity for the company, just a way of determining the transport fee.
Chris wrote:as well as calculating transport rates, you need to calculate a price for the goods to record it on the books, and allow it to fluctuate fairly.
The idea is this buy/sell mechanism determines the transport rate. So, it would be recorded on the books in the same way as the transport rates are recorded for other economy systems. As far as I can see, there are now 3 proposals to set the transport rate:
  • Based on distance
  • Based on contracts
  • Based on supply/demand (aka "the buy/sell method")
I think we can have all 3 of them in our game and let the player decide what he wants for his game.
Chris wrote:It also poses the problem that if sensible values are assigned, the player might not be able to afford to buy the goods in the first place - bad enough dealing with running costs without having to pay $3k for every tonne of copper you want to move.
In theory it's no problem to just give the player the price difference when his trains are unloading. Two practical problems remain though :
=> What if the train crashes? Who pays for the lost goods? Maybe we can ignore this and assume some assurance company pays. How does this work in real life / TTD ?
=> What if they transport it to a region with a lower price and they can't even pay the price-difference ? In this case, I would just deduct the amount from their account. The same like we probably will have to do with running costs / maintenance when a company has 0$.
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Post by ChrisCF »

Well, it sdtill doesn't make sense to me, since IRL you are paid for moving the goods, no transport company buys the cargo it carries.

Some of the problems that are still unresolved:

How do you manage the value of the goods themselves? Without the buy/sell mechanism, you can ignore them, since you don't deal with it. Given a mid-price, how do you decide how much the player has to pay? How about the price you get when selling them on?

If the goods are lost in transit, you tend not to get paid at all, because your insurance company pays the supplier or the receiver of the goods for money they haven't received. How do we deal with this? Do we add insurance payments to your running costs? Given that premiums go up after you claim, how much do we add for incidents? How much do we take off the premium for not claiming at all? How do we increase the insurance value as the company grows?

A better pricing model might work something like this:

The source industry has three lists of destinations. Contracted, preferred and declined destinations. Contracted destinations are those with which the source has formed a supply contract. These will pay well, since both sides will pay you to keep the contract running smoothly. Preferred destinations are those that, while there isn't a contract, there is still a bonus available on transporting there. Declined destinations are thosewhere the journey is such that neither side is willing to pay the cost of transport, and you're stuck with a load if you try and haul it there. This might be for long distances, or industries which have contracts with a rival source. The few places left attract a "normal" fee on which the others are based. If you "flood" an industry with supplies, your payment rate starts to decline - rather like a "bulk discount".

Buying and selling the actual things you're moving needs to stay out, unless of course you're happy to code up a working stock market for the game ;)
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Post by Hyronymus »

I can see why you want a division between destinations but a threefold division seems a bit too far fetched to me. Why not give the non-preferred destinations the properties of TTD's pricing routine and the preferred destinations a new pricing routine, assuming there is a contract between industries. I still think it makes more sense if the producing industries only have lists of which supplier they prefer. It seems the other way round to let suppliers decide where their supplied products go to me.
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Post by uzurpator »

OK - I have a proposition:

Maybe the industry will simply show how much will it pay for transporting an unit of cargo to a given reciever - and settle for an algorithm how is it done later?
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Post by Hyronymus »

Sounds good. Instead of explicitly mentioning a transport route is favoured we could as well use easy to understand features to indicate whether it is favoured or not. You could either use green, amber and red text or smileys to inform players about that.
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Post by ChrisCF »

As I said, you really need those four (count 'em) categories, otherwise we go down the Too Damn Easy route. You need to exclude some destinations from accepting goods, on the basis that they aren't willing to pay through the nose to have transported across the country what they can get down the road. Then there's the "normal" fare, which covers a few non-descript connections. Add to that a group of bonus destinations, of which one or two pay out really well, and you have a system which should work nicely. Unless you have some destinations where you don't pay out for goods unless it's difficult to get hold of, you face the problem where people can generate long drags which make huge profit, instead of concentrating on integrating their services across the map, which is one of the aims we should be looking at.
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Post by Hellfire »

I just stumbled upon this. It might not be so relevant for player-owned industries, but in the related cargo discussion, some decisions apparently have already been made. (is that a correct sentence?)
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Post by Steve »

I don't see a system allowing more than one economy model working well. I think just having the lists of destinations as proposed above, with some the industry likes some it dislikes.
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Post by PJayTycy »

ChrisCF wrote:If the goods are lost in transit, you tend not to get paid at all ... your insurance company pays the supplier
So that's easy, we don't have to do anything. If the load doesn't arrive, the player gets no money. Including the whole insurance thing is not needed.
ChrisCF wrote:Buying and selling the actual things you're moving needs to stay out, unless of course you're happy to code up a working stock market for the game ;)
I might try to create a small prototype.
ChrisCF wrote:4 categories
...
If you "flood" an industry with supplies, your payment rate starts to decline - rather like a "bulk discount".
...
You need to exclude some destinations from accepting goods, on the basis that they aren't willing to pay through the nose to have transported across the country what they can get down the road.
You are pointing out the same results I want to achieve, so I guess our views don't differ so much. Especially your point about flooding the market would be an inherent feature of a buy/sell economy.
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Post by Hyronymus »

I would certainlt welcome a prototype, Pjaytycy. To me it really feels like if we're creating a mix between a market simulator and a train sumulator.
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Post by Steve »

Hyr has a point. From the survey that Zuu posted about, i think most people are interested in building routes rather than dealing in the stock market. We should concentrate on making a system that is user friendly, whilst being powerful and flexible. Ultimately, the TTD method (which was decided in the meeting iirc) gives optional longer routes, as buying and selling has no reason to give bigger pay offs over longer routes. Longer routes = more track building.
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Post by PJayTycy »

Steve wrote:From the survey that Zuu posted about, i think most people are interested in building routes rather than dealing in the stock market.
In Zuu's summary stock market = buying/selling company shares.
The stockmarket Chris mentionned = setting cargo prices on the map.

The transportation economy in Zuu's summary ended in 3rd place.
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Post by ChrisCF »

PJayTycy wrote:The stockmarket Chris mentionned = setting cargo prices on the map.
Still, if you look at a real situation, the goods don't come into the equation anywhere other than that they sit on your trains and in your lorries for a while - the buying/selling is negotiated between the industries, and all we have to worry about is payment rates, for which we can always calculate some arbitrary figures based on preference, distance, and cargo type. ;)
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