FreeOrion

This is almost more of a brainstorming question, but it needs to be figured out for v0.3, so it gets a design thread.

Preface: Make sure you're familiar with the v0.2 economy from the design doc. If you haven't read it or don't know, please don't comment. Put another way: RTFA.

Right now, we have mechanisms that determine industrial capacity and research capacity. What we don't have is money. We haven't talked about it in anything except vague terms. The question for this thread is:

Do we need it? What are some uses of it? (paying leaders? accelerating things? paying off other empires? events?)

How should it be generated? (taxes on existing production? pillage? natural/local resources ala EU2?)

If we have things to spend, will we also then have expenses? Military expenses? This is far-reaching and I don't expect to have lasting answers to it, but we need to figure out how this should fit into the game.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

We definately need money. I think taxe should be the biggest source, maybe loans from the galactic bank and from other empires too. I didn't like how in MOO3 there were like 3 levels of taxes and all. Just keep one galactic bank, one galactic treasury.

I agree that we need money. Otherwise, will trade among nations produce industry? Something else? Money just seems simplest.

I think you need money and expense. It seems to me that this is a useful tool for balancing systems.

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If it was easy then we all would be doing it!

We could also use money for ransom payoffs from pirates, or even ransom requests from other normal game races( one race's spies kidnap another race's princess or high ranking official).

We could have a traveling trading race, which sells tech from various races, requiring money or tech exchange.

If there is some galactic senate, there will probaly be taxes due.

Perhaps some kind of charitable monetary gift to gain favour among other races, ala Intergalactic Red Cross/Crescent, etc..

I think those all fall under the category of 'events.'

The questions we have to answer are the specifics of the economy: what sort of units are we looking at? should it simply be a percentage of production? of research? should you be able to have just a 'money colony' like you can have an industrial one? (called 'tourist' or what have you?)

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Money provides a medium in which to trade things, for starters. If you want a tech, but dont have any useful enough tech to trade with the other race, but have plenty of money, you can buy it. Also, you could buy ships off other empires if you needed a quick boost to your fleet (war going badly and what not). Expenses should also be included as a balancing agent (stop you getting too much too quickly)



Agreed.



Hmm... good question. Well I think it should be a percentage of industry (say 10% for arguments sake) and a smaller percentage of research (5%: Real world examples show that economies that spend a lot on research reap a lot of benefit from doing such). As for the Money Colony idea, sure. Why not? Call it a Financial Sector Planet, commerce planet, trading hub etc.

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Chris Walker
| c.walker (at) mgt.hull.ac.uk |

WorldForge.org

Yeah, those are pretty much event related; just answering the first part of your query.



Still scratching my head over the rest of your query.



I think some type of taxation is a given, just how much is the key, and where else to receive monetary income. I presume some can come from trade with other races. Do we have the races set trade amount, or is it variable based on economy, race relations, pirates, etc.

If we stockpile resources, we could attach a monetary value for various types that could be sold to generate money (rich planet mined to generate income).

Perhaps build(or find) a galactic wonder that attracts paying tourist.

I think that money could definately be used for military (acquisition, repair, buying new tech from others). Used to buy buildings, pacify native races, buy info (spies), etc.

Taxation on populations and trade is probably the main focus. By what is discussed here resources is the query point

Comes down to the amount of specific resources (how complicated the model is) and what role they play. Do you go for complexity or simplicity here that is the question

Id like to see some sort of medium complexity to it to allow a diversified game type.

Well, I assume (and I know how dangerous that can be ) that all races in the game will have some sort of economy. Their citizens labor to produce things for their 'empire' - factories, ships, pink fuzzy toilet seat covers, etc... It shouldn't be that important whether a given race is capitalist, communal, or some wacky economic system I haven't even heard of. All labor has a certain value, as the labor used to make pink fuzzy toilet seat covers could have equally been used to make a capital ship or research a new super home entertainment system for the masses.

"Money" could simply represent the abstract value of a unit of labor. The amount could be arbitrary. As long as the abstract value was tied to some concrete measure of the empire's potential, this should work fine. In other words, income should be tied to research/industrial capabilities if feasible.

If money was viewed this way, it could be used to rush production (pay overtime or divert factory usage), it could be given as a gift in diplomacy ( "you can redeem these tokens for free rides and stuff at an of our races' theme parks. Do you like us now?") or even used to speed up research ( the X-prize comes to mind from real life)

I know that this is a Moo2 style system, but if kept abstract (perhaps sliders?) it should help avoid micromanage hell but allow an additional path to power.

The 'Ling

I would also favore a fairly simple taxation system.

Each industrial point has a given value. A player sets the percentage of money he wants to deduct from his industrial production. The taxed money can be invested in funding the research (overhead cost), his social network, his army and so on.

So a player could for example use his huge industrial base to build up an enormous fleet. Over time the overhead of this fleet (either paid in industry points of in money) is eating up an increasing marge of his empires budget.

He might even end up with a military he can't afford the upkeep anymore (USSR like).

I don't know if we really need money; they could be just an unnessesary complication of the resource system. Trade would work fine without them, only with RP and PP. What money seem to be basically is a stockpile for stuff. The game could feel more dynamic without them; I think we should think twice before including them; in a way it can spoil the game if a player accumulates a large amount of money and mess up things... remember, KISS. Money is only needed if there is something really important that can't be done by something more simple, IMHO.

Money is essentially a buffer you can use to redistribute production/farming etc, either by directly buying production (as in Moo2/Civ) or as grants to planets which boost all output bt a factor (as in Moo1). IMO its vital you have some way to do this in the game, some way to jump start new systems.

The other thing its very useful for is paying for empire-wide things, which cant easily be sourced from one particular planet, such as: fleet maintenance, spies etc.

So the only remaining question is : where does it come from? Either : Tax system outputs directly (as in Moo1), or make money generation a part of the system economy (e.g. banks, starports etc).


Money is just a general abstraction of RP and PP (and food and minerals if you like). Its far less complicated to have one generalised tradable/relocatable resource than to keep track of several independent ones. If you make players trade PP or RP (or any resource), then PP and RP become money to all intents and purposes, but youve got different sorts of money which must be spent on different things.

Sure, you have the incongruity of being able to turn food into minerals (albeit to a limited extent, if youve designed the model correctly) but, to be blunt, so what?

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The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.

I won't deny that it is an useful abstraction; however, what I'd hate to see is abuse of it. It doesn't matter how you call it, but how it behaves. Now if you allow infinite stockpiling of money at no penalty, that means you allow infinite stockpile of anything you can turn money into, be it PP, food or RP. Now if a player somehow accumulates a great stockpile of PP or anything else that he can use instantly, that can be really annoying. Aftrall, we have a fixed time for research just to avoid things like that, don't we?
I think one or more of the following would be nice:
1) The money stockpile gets reduced by a constant or variable percentage each turn, possibly based on the amount relative to the size of the imperial economy (calc-ed as PP per turn) and maybe otehr factors (traders racial trait e.g.);
2) Buying/Hurrying is not nessessarily instant;
3) You can't convert money into PP or RP or food, or whatever directly, you need to actually buy it from someone else. But that doesn't make complete sence... Maybe a limit on how much you can convert per turn would be more appropriate. That's actually the same as 2)

EDIT DELETED by myself

Moo1 handled this really well. What you did was give money to a system, which boosted output from that system, i.e. it doubled the output for as long as the money lasted.

So if the system was producing 50 RP and 50 PP, and you gave it 300 money, it would produce 100 RP and 100 PP for the next 3 turns. No instant buying, no magical genaration of food or minerals, just an enhancement of your system's existing outputs.

I agree that there should be some penalty for excessive stockpiling - possibly simulate some kind of economic downturn if your stockpile exceeds some multiple of your empires GDP, and you start losing a proportion of the money you collect to inflation/devaluation/something or other.

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The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.