[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Forking code.

[Lobo Gris <molv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2003.08.21 07:06 Thomas Strub wrote:
 >
 >When you have communism and all the stuff is property of the state, that
 >works in the way you describe. But when you have people with own
 >property its possible to buy some stuff from them. (Or from companies)

Hmmm....Are you suggesting that may be this behavior can depends on the 
government?...that could be an interesting idea. In this case, we would have to 
give other additional advantages to communism and monarchy, so to equalize the 
situation. But I still have some objections, as I will explain below.

 >
 >> But with actual rules, you can cheat this condition in two ways: 
 > 
 >> - build a unit or a wonder that doesn't need iron, and, at certain moment, 
 >> change the production to legion, so the shield_stock is transferred to the 
 >> legion, even if we never had availability of iron.
 >
 >Thats a matter of rule. Think there are easy rules when you change
 >production. (Or selling improvements /disbanding units)  
 >
 >When you disband your legion which costs 16 shields, 8 wood, 16 iron you
 >get at least 14-15 iron, 5-6 wood, when we say that shields are the
 >working power of the people you can't get them back. (You need new)
 >

Well, in what I'm doing there exists a concept called power of labour (p.o.l., 
may be the correct english expression is working power, as you are using), 
which is the limit of speed of production. Normally, the power of labour is the 
size of the city, but can be incremented (for example, with factories). But the 
special case of freeciv can be easily achieved (there exist a function that 
returns the p.o.l., so it is easy to change the returned p.o.l. value based on 
rulesets). The alternative that you suggest (p.o.l. = shields produced, also 
for a game with materials) does not fit good with materials, but if there is a 
ruleset option which changes from one mode to another, both can be easily 
tested.
I have thought before about the possibility of recycling the materials of a 
disbanded unit/building (with a small penalty). That is a good idea.

 >When you "sell" a colosseum you get most of your stones back and some of
 >the rest. Think of recycling materials. You only lose the workforce
 >which was needed to create the stuff.

Hmm...in that case, may be we can add the action "disband" or "recycle" for 
buildings too. If you sell it, you get money (as in actual rules). If you 
disband, or recycle, you get materials.

 >Buying raw materials:
 > - I don't see a problem of buying them. There are enough private
 >   travelling salesmen who can bring you stuff. Even when you are in an
 >   embargo situation. When you give them enough money you can get all
 >   you want.
 > - Other possible explanation is that you buy the stuff from your people
 >   and companies. You only see a part of the political economy.
 >   

Yes, a good point. But my objection is that you still are getting (for example) 
iron without controlling resources of iron, and this is one of the most 
interesting new possibilities of a game with materials (the strategical 
importance of regions of the map with rare resources). May be if we think in a 
way to integrate both views...

For example, I am imagining the trading of materials in a way transparent to 
the player (so the playability doesn't suffer). In this trading system, when a 
city buy a given kind of material, automatically this material is substracted 
from:

- the given material stock of a city that you control
- the given material stock of an allied city

There are cities that exports materials (or food, which is not considered 
material because has different properties), and this is configurable for each 
city (you give the maximal amount/percentage of material/food production that 
you want to export).

But when a city sells something, obtains another thing. And the best is to 
increase the trade of the city (a transfer of money from the buyer city to the 
seller has not sense if both cities are under the control of the same player)

Another further idea (ideas and more ideas) is that the server traces all the 
trading of materials so to implement a kind of offert/demand system to 
calculate the trade that the selling of a given material produces and the cost 
of buying it, so the exporters of rare materials get more trade, and the buyers 
pay more money. If you are a big or monopolic productor of oil, you can control 
its price by limiting its exportation :-)

¿What do you think?

 >Buying manpower:
 > - Think of the Manhatton Projekt or the building of the Pyramids. When
 >   the state gives enough to his people they work harder or more people
 >   work for the state.
 > - With enough money private firms build nuclear misseles for their
 >   state instead of doing their usuall stuff. Think of WWII where in
 >   most countries nearly no consuming goods where produced and the
 >   states spent _lots_ of money to build military stuff.
 >
 >I think with spending money it's allways possible to increase the speed
 >of production.

Once again, a good point. But once again, we must think in a way that did not 
degradate the materials game. I think that buying a unit/improvement/wonder 
must generate an exportation of the total materials needed, from own and allied 
cities. If the materials needed are not available, then you can't buy the item.

 >As player i don't like to buy ore in city X, move it to Y to make Iron
 >out of it. And many steps later i have a cruiser. In an working economy
 >that works automatically because the people who are involved into that
 >process get paid for doing that.

Yes, I agree. My intention is preciselly to avoid this kind of things.

 >And i wouldn't say that it's a bug that you have "gold" before currency.
 >I think one big step for a civilisation is the begin of trading stuff
 >against other stuff. Money is nice because it's easier to compare stuff
 >with each other, but not that big step. And the "gold" is the trading
 >stuff from the state.

Yes, I agree with that. But this was just my point: I was thinking originally 
in a system where the material (or food) used as money ("gold", in terms of 
freeciv) depends on the technological advance of the player. But I see that 
implementing this idea could be very problematic.

 >I think that i would be possible to make freeciv a special case of a
 >game with multiple materials. But i don't see where so sophisticated
 >rules increase the fun of the game for the players. 

If these sophisticated rules does not affect the playability, then we are 
adding some very interesting strategical economic features.

 >P.S. It would be fine, when you would use a maximum line length of 72
 >characters.

I think it is better if the receiver client wraps the lines at the length the 
user wants, other way, the result could be very unhandy (suppose I wrap my 
outcoming lines to 72, and another one wraps its incoming text to 70: the two 
remainging characters would be alone in a new line)