Small UI issue

[Palna Thoke]

I have a problem with this specific part of the UI

For me at least, it took some time to understand what is going on here. I was confused at what was meant by the / between Productivity and Employee. First i thought it was to divide up what stood below in Yearly Productivity and Employees. So to me at least it was a bit confusing.

How i understand it now though is that it basically means: Yearly productivity per employee. (What i guess is meant by this is the efficiency of the work being done in the building)
However, there is a problem with this as productivity itself is defined as Output/Input per time or in this specific case; labor efficiency: Production/Employees per a given unit of time (in this case per year). So the word productivity has already taken into account the input (in this case employee).
This means that the UI is basically telling us that the building produces 8.6£ per employee per employee per year - so mathematically: ((8.6£/Employee)/Employee)/years
Which obviously doesn't make any sense.

I suggest instead writing yearly Production/Employee or yearly GDP/Employee at the top instead. Or even better you could just only keep Productivity and then when the player hovers explain that this is calculated in the yearly production (GDP) per employee and that it is a measurement of the efficiency of the building.

Anyways just a minor nitpick

(Also just as a last thing, what do you guys think the arrows indicate? That production is going up slightly and the number of employees is going up a lot? Or maybe something else?)

 

[Palna Thoke]

Another thing. Unless these numbers have a reason for being different, for some other i reason, i think they should be more alike:
- Their measurement of times should be the same: so either week or year - not both
- They should count on the same basis. So either per person basis (as the average annual wage) or the total (as the weekly taxes). This way we can compare, how much are they paying in taxes to how much are they earning.

 

[wilcoxchar]

They do have a reason for being different. Taxes is a measure of what the government is directly earning so needs to be a short term number to be relevant to the player, while wage is less directly relevant to the player on its own and is more associated in comparison to productivity so needs to be in a time scale that is the same as productivity. If productivity is outpacing wages, then you have wage stagnation and workers are not being paid their true worth, creating extra surplus for the company and therefore profit for whoever owns it, but also it could be a means of creating discontent among politically conscious workers as they recognize they are not earning their fair share. If wages are outpacing productivity, then it is creating a net loss for the company and productivity is stagnating, which means it is inefficient and you need to boost productivity, but also means it is an attractive place to work so will attract more workers and create upward social mobility for POPs as they are earning more than they're worth.

 

[alexti]

View attachment 730520

Another thing. Unless these numbers have a reason for being different, for some other i reason, i think they should be more alike:
- Their measurement of times should be the same: so either week or year - not both
- They should count on the same basis. So either per person basis (as the average annual wage) or the total (as the weekly taxes). This way we can compare, how much are they paying in taxes to how much are they earning.

I think there is a good reason for them to be different. In occupations where wage can fluctuate significantly, average annual wage gives a better idea of pop revenue. Weekly tax is useful to estimate government revenue. It wouldn't make much sense to do it per person because it would just force us to multiply it by the population. It seems that the average annual net income might be a useful number to add to this interface. Another useful number is probably percentage of the total weekly tax this state contributes

 

[Jorlem]

Another thing. Unless these numbers have a reason for being different, for some other i reason, i think they should be more alike:
- Their measurement of times should be the same: so either week or year - not both
- They should count on the same basis. So either per person basis (as the average annual wage) or the total (as the weekly taxes). This way we can compare, how much are they paying in taxes to how much are they earning.

Any thoughts on how they are aligned? Given how the numbers are positioned relative to each other, I suspect it might be easier to read if the Weekly Taxes number had two decimals like the Wage number, with the decimal points lining up vertically. As is, it is somewhat reminiscent of this similar issue: