How should exclusive transport rights work?

[pickpacket]

Right now player A can spend £X to buy exclusive transport rights for one year in Exampletown, and seconds after player B can spend £X to do the same. The result is that they've both spent £X, but B walks away from the transaction with the exclusive transport rights for Exampletown.

Should it work this way? Intuitively I would expect that player A would have the rights since they bought them first, and player B would have to wait until the 12 month period is up to do anything about it.

For the sake of discussion I'd like to leave the idea of "grifting" outside of this. Let's assume that the option of purchasing exclusive transport rights is only enabled in competitive games. If you have it enabled you expect it to be used as a weapon in some way or other.

I see three alternative ways to do this:

1. As it is now.

Advantages of this:
- If player A buys the rights in a town where player B is active then player B can buy them back in self defence.

Disadvantages of this:
- If player A, who in this case has a fat stack of cash, buys the rights and player B buys them back then a tennis match of economic starvation may start in which player A who has the bigger funds will walk away victorious.
- It's not intuitive at all. New players are surprised that someone else can buy the rights away from them when they've spent the money on it.
- Player B can't pre-emptively buy rights in their favourite cities as protection, because some other player can just pull that rug from under them at any time.

2. Exclusive rights can only be bought when nobody has it.

This has, as far as i can tell, the reverse advantages/disadvantages of option 1. An added advantage is that the smaller player B can cause meaningful disruptions in player A's operations by buying exclusive rights in A's towns. Something that isn't possible if A can just buy them back right away.

A possible third option is that you can buy exclusive rights either when nobody owns them or when you do. It would allow you to effectively extend the rights indefinitely without having a window where someone else could snipe them from you. I fail to see how this would be fun.

Other ways?

Yes, there are a thousand other ways to do this. The price can be based on stake of activity in the town, or somme company can have preference if it's more active, or there may be conditions of cargo transported for a certain time before being allowed to buy exclusive rights... Indeed, a thousand different ways.

But the suggested 2 (or 3) alternatives are very simple to solve, if I've understood the code correctly. Of course leaving it as is has no difficulty at all.

As you may understand I would prefer option 2. If I sign a contract with the local authority I expect that contract to hold; I truly don't expect another company to be able to unilaterally rescind an agreement it's not part of.

[jfs]

Option 3:
Multiple companies can have "exclusive" rights at the same time.

Additional flag for option 1 and 3:
When a second company buys rights while someone already have them, they must pay what they normally would, plus what the company currently holding the rights paid.
(If a third company wants to join the fray, they pay normal price plus what company 1 and company 2 paid.)

[Eddi]

the main problem of option 2 over 1 i see is that once someone snatches the exclusive rights in your core town from under your nose, all you can do is sit around for a year...

the main question to ask is: if this is meant to be a weapon, how can it be balanced?

option 1: if it's kept to be a ping-pong game about "bigger pile of money" (or someone gets bored), the weapon can be balanced by the price. e.g. the player with the higher local economic input can purchase the rights much cheaper
option 2: if "whoever comes first" wins the rights, the problem is one player could open the biggest few town windows, and purchase all the rights before any other player has a chance to react. a counter to that could be a "bidding" process that lasts one month, and whoever bids highest (maybe secret, maybe open) gets the exclusive contract.
option 3: if "multiple people can buy it" is implemented (which probably needs a renaming, like "transport concession"), it could involve bribing officials if a contract is already running. possibly combining with the price difference from option 1.

[jfs]

Summary of some brainstorm ideas on chat:

Require a certain level of town rating (reputation) before you're able to purchase exclusive rights.
Make that threshold above the rating you can achieve by planting trees and bribing the authority, and above the default rating for companies with no history in the town: You must have earned the trust of the town before you can buy rights.
To keep the exclusive rights, you must maintain your town rating above a certain threshold, if it drops below the threshold two months in a row, you lose the rights, get none of the fee back, and won't be able to buy the rights again (because you're below the threshold for buying the rights too.)
While you have the exclusive rights, the town has higher expectations of you, so you will lose more of your rating with the town if you don't service it well enough by transporting enough cargo.

All of this together makes it much more difficult for a competitor to make inroads on an already established company in a town. The new company would need to first build a reputation with the town, and then after buying the rights also keep being a significant force within the town.

[odisseus]

Require a certain level of town rating (reputation) before you're able to purchase exclusive rights.
Make that threshold above the rating you can achieve by planting trees and bribing the authority, and above the default rating for companies with no history in the town: You must have earned the trust of the town before you can buy rights.
To keep the exclusive rights, you must maintain your town rating above a certain threshold, if it drops below the threshold two months in a row, you lose the rights, get none of the fee back, and won't be able to buy the rights again (because you're below the threshold for buying the rights too.)
While you have the exclusive rights, the town has higher expectations of you, so you will lose more of your rating with the town if you don't service it well enough by transporting enough cargo.

I like these ideas, but I'd like to suggest a couple further improvements.

First, the price should be dependent on the size of the town. The town council wouldn't want to grant exclusive rights to a company which doesn't have the means to provide sufficient transportation.

Second, it should be possible to buy the exclusive rights only if your company already does some transportation in the town. This would hinder players who do it just for the sake of trolling, in contrast to those who actually compete for the passengers and cargo. Note that this requirement isn't the same as the requirement to pass a rating threshold, as there are game scripts which override the rating system by awarding the highest possible value to everyone.

[Nhoel]

Another option is exponential increase in cost to buy the exclusive rights back. However this is what some game designers call a "win more" scenario, whereby someone who is already winning is the only one who will come out on top and "win more".

I do agree though that as it is now violates the principle of least surprise in designing anything (applications or games).

[jfs]

I feel like "Eternal Love mode" is fundamentally incompatible with the competitive gameplay where you will want to buy exclusive rights anyway, though. But yes, having recently active stations in the town could also be a requirement, especially since towns would need to start tracking some more data about companies' activity anyway, if these ideas are implemented.

[pickpacket]

As I noted there are thousands of ways it could be done

if "whoever comes first" wins the rights, the problem is one player could open the biggest few town windows, and purchase all the rights before any other player has a chance to react.

(I responded to this on IRC, but I'll repeat it and expand on it here)

This point is valid I think that exact problem already exists, however. Someone buys the rights, you buy them back, they buy them again, and now you can’t afford it so you have to wait a year. And as you said: if your company topples over because you can’t transport anything in one town for a year it’s not a very good company.

I’d argue that buying exclusive rights can be used as both weapon and defence. Buy them in your core town pre-emptively and you can have peace of mind there (but not with the current solution). Buy them in someone else’s town and you’ll throw a wrench in their cog wheels. As opposed to funding road reconstruction which is an entirely offensive weapon.

Buying rights in a town you’re not yet active in is also a great way of elbowing your way into that town’s market, which is especially hard otherwise if other companies are already active there. Something I actually attempted to do in the Battle Royale event mentioned in another thread. I bought the rights in two towns, and a bigger player bought them back in one of them. I had to save up money for another month or so before I could buy them again, and that bigger player could just have bought them back from me again at that point (but right at that point the buyout frenzy started and I was aggressively dog-piled on and bought out as revenge ). After this event that player had the rights in one town where three other companies had big stakes. All of these companies were big, but not even close to that giant in terms of stacks of cash.

Require a certain level of town rating (reputation) before you're able to purchase exclusive rights.

There are a lot of ideas revolving around town rating. I think all of these are problematic because first of all they remove the possibility of forcefully getting into a town and stealing cargo out from underneath the feet of the competition. Secondly town rating goes down when you build stations. If I have a good rating and decide to extend my service I'll temporarily tank my rating even if I've historically had a very good relationship with the town in question.

First, the price should be dependent on the size of the town.

This is a great idea. I hadn't even checked and just assumed that this was actually the case.



The two alternatives I proposed (only buy when nobody owns it, only buy when either nobody or you yourself own it) are (I believe) extremely simple to implement. If I'm correct I've isolated it to a single line of code to modify. That's not an argument for either of them in itself of course. I just thought it worth mentioning.

More importantly I believe that the first of these -- to only be able to buy rights when nobody owns it -- hits a sweet spot. It feels intuitive, it's usable both as attack and defence.

[Auge]

Hello

But yes, having recently active stations in the town could also be a requirement

I like especially this idea. Not servicing a town(s needs) should exclude a company from the race for exclusive rights. But this can lead to the situation, that a town will never be reachable for companies because a single company purchases the exclusive rights all the time.

Perhaps the exclusive transport rights should only be granted up to a given distance from the town centre or for predefined types of freight.

Tschö, Auge

[pickpacket]

This discussion went in exactly the direction I assumed it would, which sadly doesn't match where I wanted it to go

To reiterate: there are a thousand ways this could work. Each with their own merits and flaws.

My main gripe with the current solution is that it's un-intuitive because I (and new players I've talked to) assume that buying exclusive rights gives me exclusive rights for a year, just as described, but instead it just loses me money because someone else will buy it from me. My stance is that exclusive rights should be both defensive and offensive, and have the possibility of deeply unfair competitive practices just like road reconstruction, cargo sniping, canal blocking, etc. If there's a social contract against some or all unfair practices then there's no reason to use exclusive transport rights at all.

I presented two alternative small tweaks that I feel would improve it:

1. A company can only buy exclusive transport rights when nobody currently has them.
2. A company can only buy exclusive transport rights when nobody else currently has them.

The questions I really should have asked more clearly is:
- Would any of these alternatives be an improvement over the current functionality?
- Why or why not?

Sorry for not being a lot clearer about this from the start. Even the topic suggests a totally open-ended discussion. A discussion I'll gladly have, btw! It's just that I want to know whether I should make a pull request on this or not, but I don't want to limit the discussion to github.

[Pinstar]

The price of the rights should be based on the volume of goods being delivered or picked up. If player A has a ton of stations in example city moving thousands of goods per month, that should be a hefty price tag, well above what the current price is.

Let's say player B buys the rights anyway and economic activity grinds to a halt because player B has no actual stations in that city.

Let player A buy the rights back after a full month has passed. The price for player A will be dirt cheap because nothing was moved in the month they lost their town. Once they buy it back, player B is going to need to shell out another small fortune if they want to buy them again.

Exclusive rights should be meant for genuinely contested cities, where both players have a legitimate presence and are fighting for supply.

The "Screw this player in their main city" move is meant to be the road resurfacing project.

[LaChupacabra]

I think that in order to answer the question: How is it supposed to work?, it would be worth asking yourself: What is it supposed to do?

In offline games with AI, this can make it easier for an AI company to go bankrupt or reduce its cumbersome way to compete for the same resources. However, it is tedious, because every year you have to renew this exclusivity. On the other hand, in online games, in its current form, it is unfortunately only a legalized form of trolling and destroying other companies and someone's fun, especially smaller companies by the larger ones. Therefore, on all servers (apart from random ones) it is disabled.

The changes you're proposing, while not bad, won't change anything or almost anything alone in this regard - it needs to be a slightly more comprehensive change, otherwise it will still be hostile to other companies or players. In terms of realism, it will still be a simulation of mechanics taken from the world's most corrupt and pathological economies. Company X has been serving the entire city and surrounding enterprises for many years, it also has very good reviews, but it doesn't matter, now it can't, because Company Y bought exclusivity, and did it only to destroy Company X. Of course, you can still it will also be called competition when it happens between companies of a similar level. I don't know about you, but I don't like such realism and this form of competition - I don't feel satisfaction from destroying and I don't like waging wars under the title "who makes life more difficult for whom".

I would prefer this function to be used to protect own interests, to reserve space for own company, not to destroy others. Then it would be a useful feature in online games as well. The way I see it is that the exclusivity that the player buys from the local authority applies only to the city (passengers and post) and only if no other company supports this type of connection (active station or inactive less than 1 year old). In the case of enterprises, this security should be purchased individually for each enterprise in its management, and not as it is currently for all, where the player does not intend to use many or none of them, and by purchasing exclusivity restricts the ability of others to play. As odisseus wrote, costs should depend on city size/production level. To prevent one player from owning the entire map, the amount of exclusivity could be limited (optional). In order not to have to come back and renew the exclusivity every now and then, buying it several times should extend the period. The same could be true of advertisements. The use of Ctrl + Click could allow you to buy exclusivity unlimited in time (cost x100). There should also be an resign option.

Enterprise menagement - ETR 2.png (136.36 KiB) Viewed 1094 times

[kamnet]

This may be a bit more complicated, but what about... ?

If a town is not serviced by any other company, you can buy exclusive rights for a year and they do remain exclusive to you. If a town is serviced by another player who has not claimed exclusive rights, when you claim exclusive rights then you begin receiving some or all of their profit, but this comes at a much higher cost, perhaps as described in the previous post.

A third option would be if you wish to buy exclusive rights in a town and another player has claimed them, alternatively you can propose buying out all of the stations that are currently owned by all the other players in the town. Any players that agree will immediately lose those stations and they become yours, and those players will not be able to place a new station for one year. You do not receive any of their vehicles or orders. The other players who lose their stations will then need to sell off, warehouse or move their vehicles elsewhere.

[Eddi]

2. A company can only buy exclusive transport rights when nobody else currently has them.

i'm sorta leaning towards this, if you feel the bidding process is too much to implement

however, i would add the option to bribe the town into removing/transferring the exclusive rights before the time is up (with the usual consequences if the bribe is found out)

and combine that with whatever price calculation that you can think of. plenty of suggestions have been made in this regard.

[pickpacket]

On the other hand, in online games, in its current form, it is unfortunately only a legalized form of trolling [...], especially smaller companies by the larger ones. Therefore, on all servers (apart from random ones) it is disabled.

I believe that this is the exact intention of it, tbh I understand that you may not think that it's fun, but I would assume that you don't think other types of trolling and sabotage aren't very fun either. Which is fine, of course! I don't like it in general either, but when playing a real cut-throat competitive game I would not only consider it fair game but expect it. Sabotage can sometimes add fun to the game.

[pickpacket]

2. A company can only buy exclusive transport rights when nobody else currently has them.

i'm sorta leaning towards this, if you feel the bidding process is too much to implement

however, i would add the option to bribe the town into removing/transferring the exclusive rights before the time is up (with the usual consequences if the bribe is found out)

and combine that with whatever price calculation that you can think of. plenty of suggestions have been made in this regard.

I like this idea. I think it sounds very flexible and fun. I'll have a look at this. Bear in mind that my computer is absolute s*** and it takes about an hour to compile the game That's why I haven't gotten very far with the adding-beards-to-company-managers thing, because I'm a lot more likely to break the code several times before making much progress.