Nationally and privately owned factories

[KonradRichtmark]

Since every factory in V2 will keep track of its own income and pay its capitalists and workers (rather than all income being pooled and divided between the whole country), would it make sense for the game to keep separately track of which factories are privately owned and which are nationally owned? It wouldn't require anything more than a simple flag per factory marking it as either nationally or privately owned.

If a factory is nationally owned, the share of its income that would ordinarily go to the capitalists in the state would instead go into the national treasury. Except for perhaps a small slice, since capitalists (at least according to how they've been stated to work in DD6) would not only represent factory owners but also high-level business managerial personnel increasing efficiency.

This would allow for actually modeling the change of economic system in the game with effects on existing factories, rather than just determine how new factories spawn. Going laissez-faire would not just prevent you from building new national factories, it would also privatize existing national factories. Going planned economy would nationalize all privately-owned factories you currently have. No longer would it be possible to switch systems at will by setting ruling party to temporarily allow building that one factory you want and then switch away. Or, it would, but that factory you just spent big money on setting up would slip into the hands of the capitalists the next day when you bring back the laissez-faire party.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

It's a great idea, but it would be a huge departure from the base and it's safe to say we won't see it.

In Vic 1 at least, every factory was state run, a clear nonsense, but I suppose it worked well enough. V:R's changes were welcome but not nearly enough.

Any change would probably require some means of subsidising certain industries and hoping your capitalists respond to it; most gamers probably don't have the patience for that.

 

[Bezborg]

I'd say this is more or less covered by your form of government? If you're laissez fare, factories will pretty much tend to themselves, the capitalists running the show, if not with a bit of your subsidy input... If you're planned economy, your input will be a lot more substantial in terms of investing as well as reaping the benefits production-wise... (as I understand it from the DDs)

As for the international element, we have yet to learn about that from the developers, something about bonds if I remember correctly...

 

[KonradRichtmark]

I'd say this is more or less covered by your form of government? If you're laissez fare, factories will pretty much tend to themselves, the capitalists running the show, if not with a bit of your subsidy input... If you're planned economy, your input will be a lot more substantial in terms of investing as well as reaping the benefits production-wise... (as I understand it from the DDs)

If you're doing either extreme (laissez-faire or planned economy), yeah. But if you're doing either of the in-betweens (interventionism or state capitalism), it would be relevant to know which factories belong to the capitalists and which to the state. And relevant to distribute the profits of both types differently.

 

[OHgamer]

remember folks, the more intricacy you put into economic functions like this suggestion, the more the game engine is going to have new sets of numbers to crunch on a daily basis.

Would it be more "realistic" to have separate sets of income and costs between public and private factories? Yes, it most likely would.

Would it be worth the creation of several new sets of daily calculations the computer would need to do for each factory to differentiate between the costs?

If you have a high-end computer with a fast processor, probably wouldn't affect too much, but those who have lower-processor speed computers might find the game slowed down enough from these additional calculations to make the game seem "too slow".

 

[Bezborg]

If you have a high-end computer with a fast processor, probably wouldn't affect too much, but those who have lower-processor speed computers might find the game slowed down enough from these additional calculations to make the game seem "too slow".

Well that's the age-old question for game developers, isn't it? Which is determinant...

You're saying that V2 owes it to the old(er) processors?

(I'm just asking the question, no pun intended,I've myself had an extremely crappy computer up until a couple of months ago... The good old scrap bucket probably got me hung up on Paradox games in the first place...)

 

[OHgamer]

Well that's the age-old question for game developers, isn't it? Which is determinant...

You're saying that V2 owes it to the old(er) processors?

(I'm just asking the question, no pun intended,I've myself had an extremely crappy computer up until a couple of months ago... The good old scrap bucket probably got me hung up on Paradox games in the first place...)

Well, you want to maximize the potential customer pool, so if the min reqs are too high, and people have to go out and buy a new system just to play the game, you do risk ending up losing potential customers who may not have the latest hardware because they do not have the money to go out and buy a new computer system on top of a new game.

Of course, if the min reqs stated end up being too low compared to what would be considered "comfortable" playing speeds by players, you risk shrinking the pool of purchasers in the first year of game release further. See HoI3 for an illustration of that problem and the headaches it has caused since.

So if its a choice between simplifying processes and making them more complex just to make them more "realistic" with only limited affect on actually how the game overall is played, I think its better that Paradox follow the KISS principle - Keep It Simple Stupid.

 

[CaptRobau]

Ideally V2 should run on a system that was bought when EU3, the grandmother of the engine, was released. Three years is a reasonable range of computer systems.

 

[KonradRichtmark]

remember folks, the more intricacy you put into economic functions like this suggestion, the more the game engine is going to have new sets of numbers to crunch on a daily basis.

Would it be more "realistic" to have separate sets of income and costs between public and private factories? Yes, it most likely would.

Would it be worth the creation of several new sets of daily calculations the computer would need to do for each factory to differentiate between the costs?

It would, I think, for implementing what I'm suggesting would hardly take up any computing power at all. Sure, there would be one piece of code for a private factory and one for a nationally owned one, but it's not like both pieces would be simultaneously executed for every factory. Rather, whereas you'd simply have "execute code A" in V1, you'd instead have "check whether A or B applies", and then "execute code A/B". Assuming that codes A and B would take equally much computing power, the only net addition would be to check whether to do A or B, which would just be a simple if-clause, i.e. "If flag = 1, go to A, if not, go to B". Simple checks of whether a statement is true or false hardly cost any computing power.

 

[Subcomandante]

The level of abstraction is still very high. Profits are pooled on the state level now. Highly profitable privately owned factories will end up paying for the losses of their low profit competitors across the street, even in the most rabid free market imaginable. I suggest changing this first. Or live with the abstraction and roleplay it.

 

[Phelan]

I'm a scientist in economics and we actually progamming mirco and macro economic models. Even we must find the apropriate abstraction level for our simulations, though our software is not intended to make fun:rofl:

Its not always the better choice to make a model "more realistic". You have to find a compromise.