Many thanks for your reply Iachek
I'm not sure how easy it is, but at some stage it might be cool for the Vicky 3 devs to get "dev post" settings, so your posts have a different background colour, and we can see in threads that you've posted - as I reckon I'm on a pretty safe bet if I suggested there were many, many people interested in what the devs have to share
In terms of the above comments, please
Also - one other thing - don't forget coasts worked very much like rivers in terms of infrastructure for getting products to markets - the British or Italian coasts, or Japanese and Chinese as well. Water was the key, as ships travelling on water are a very low-cost way to transport goods around. Whether it was salty or not eas less of an issue
Wonderful to read rivers already in the mix, and as with anything I'll suggest (this probably won't be the last thing, unless you tell me to be quiet
) please only pay any attention to it if it resonates at your end.
The reasons a player could want to subsidize an industry is to a) keep production at maximum, and b) make sure Pops who produce that good aren't starving. Whichever your motivation is for doing it, this guarantees the employees of the building are paid a wage at least high enough to be competitive, ensuring they don't go looking for employment elsewhere even though their employer can't pay them enough. As a result, the building continues to run at full employment (assuming you have enough qualified Pops in the state to work all available jobs, of course.)
Devil's advocate, and it depends on how you've got things set up (ie, if it's not setup like this, then don't worry) but if input prices plus whatever "business maintenance costs" (if any) plus subsidised wages exceed the price for the finished good (of finished good plus required return on investment, if this is greater than zero - or, for the business, if it falls below the opportunity cost of using the capital elsewhere), wouldn't the production still stop (but people could stay employed, just only on the subsidy part of the wage subsidy - not unlike the furlough scheme in Britain during the current pandemic)?
If this may be an issue, in terms of production subsidies, the "cost plus" approach could potentially be another angle (ie, guaranteeing producers a price for their goods of their costs plus X per cent - I've seen 10 per cent more than once). In the real world, this can be a bit problematic, as it can encourage cooking of the books to increase costs, but as long as you didn't train your AI to be dodgy accountants and/or inflate wages because of this, it could still provide a "one-click" solution to ensuring increased production without leading to the business having wage subsidies but still going out of business because other costs mean it can't compete effectively (which is actually not uncommon at all IRL).
Then, in terms of supporting the working pops, more direct initiatives like lower taxes, minimum wages, or direct delivery of goods/funds, and unemployment benefits (income tax offsets are probably a bit modern for the Vicky timeframe, although I've no idea of the history of the idea) can ensure that the working pops don't miss out.
With the approach we've taken we achieve the exact same effect as always contributing enough money to the building to reach the equilibrium point, but with a single click per building - or indeed one click for all buildings of that type in your country.
Definitely don't get me wrong - I'm a
huge fan of moving away from the good production price sliders
The implementation of things looks far more elegant than Vicky 2