jonnyincognito said:
If you thing the ability to create stockpiles is unrealistic, then instead of making an arbitrary limit (also unrealistic in my mind) the real solution is to cut back the amount of resources available in the game. The reason huge stockpiles exist is because there's more resources available then your countries IC can use. Joshua
The ability to create stockpiles isn't unrealistic -- nations do it all the time, and have through history. In large industrial economies stockpiles resource stockpiles exist due to at least three factors:
1.) intentional decisions by the government to stockpile essential resources for emergencies, military or otherwise
2.) decisions by private industry to maintain stockpiles as cushions against production demands, uncertain supply or fluctuations in resource cost
3.) the "pipeline" effect -- there is always a certain amount of resources in the process of transit and/or processing between supplier and user. The longer the distance of transit, the larger the stockpile.
However, unlimited stockpiles is another thing entirely. There are natural limits on the ability to stockpile resources, the two most basic being storage facilites and inventory economics.
The question is, what is an "arbitrary limit" and what is reasonable? Perhaps unanswerable. In HOI1 the 100,000 cap was definitely arbitrary, and was just as unreasonable as no cap at all.
Reducing the amount of available resources isn't really realistic, either. In fact, a good argument could be made in HOI2 that there aren't enough resources available -- many areas that produced resources in real life during the period have no resource values at all in the game. Also in RL the question wasn't always about resources not being available, but about not having the need or ability to gather and process them. For example, in the US there was far more coal and iron ore and other metals lying around available for mining than there was ever a need to mine (and this is still the case). They could have been tapped if necessary, but it wasn't necessary. Since in the game the resource value of a province is automatically gathered at full value in your home territory whether you need it or not, there really isn't a way to represent the capacity of actual gathering/production and the choices that attend it. I'd love to see a game system where the player was allowed to make some choices about expanding or contracting resource production, with an attendant cost. Say, some factor to dissent for failure to gather at full capacity (unemployment) and the option, with appropriate expenditure, of increasing resource production in a given province by expanding mines, wells, power plants, etc.
But, given game play decisions, this level of detail isn't supported or likely. That's why, IMHO, some flexible system of determing resource stockpiles actually seems like the least arbitrary solution. I'm thinking something like this:
1.) Each point of base IC gives you 1000 tons of inate stockpile
2.) For each point from center towards "free market" you have a -.05 modifier; for each point from center towards "planned" you have a +.05 modifier. This represents the tendency of free market economics to reduce excess inventory and the ability of planned economies to require greater stockpiles.
3.) For each point from center towards "hawk" you get a +.10 modifier and for each point towards "dove" you get a -.10 modifier. This represents government intervention to prepare strategic stockpiles for the advent of war.
So, your actual stockpile may fluctuate, but within a range of base IC x 1000 x -.75 to +.75 depending on your economic and military policies.
So, for example, a pure free market economy with extremely dovish policies would have a relatively small stockpile, while belligerent planned economies could accumulate a much larger one.
Anyway, the whole exercise is probably just academic, but at least it's fun to discuss.
So,
. This FIXES alot of problems. If you can think of any real problem that it creates let me know; I haven't thought of one yet. And making people mad doesn't count; the whole purpose of the game is to recreate, in broad terms, the actual environment in which we can pursue alternate realities.
