New business sectors?

Suggestions for new DLC projects.
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Which one or more sectors you wanna see in the game?

Construction/Building business
106
16%
Transportation business
118
18%
New financial types (Banking, bonds-selling, insurance etc.)
116
18%
Show business
35
5%
Energy Development
135
20%
Tourism industry
54
8%
Utility sector
81
12%
Other (post it in the comments)
12
2%
Non of the above
3
0%
 
Total votes: 660

therealevan
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by therealevan »

megapolis wrote:
therealevan wrote:
megapolis wrote:C'mon, guys, it's just a game. If you want to simulate a whole variety of banking products that are available in the market today, you will need a new game.
That is a narrowminded statement. Banking and business goes hand and hand with each other.
You're a messiah! You opened my eyes! In case you did not notice, we already have a bank in game. That's more than enough. Otherwise there should be dozens of banks that offer a whole variety of banking products. And insurance companies because for example Citibank (openminded person should have heard about it) in Russia does not offer a single investment product that is not bound with insurance. If we should have insurance then of course we should have reinsurance companies. I don't see insurance without reinsurance. Don't forget about debt collectors etc. etc.
It appears that I have struck a nerve, I apologize for offending you, it wasn't my intention.

This is purely my opinion, please don't be upset at me for this post. (Thomas perhaps you can give some further input on this as well)

In regards to in game 'banking', the only mechanics we have for actually banking is withdrawing a loan from the Government at a rate that is not fixed with only one perimeter. The principal amount from what I have observed is not reduced over time, so you will pay X amount of principal + current interest rate for however long until you get it paid off. The only two things that change is the current interest rate set by the government and the amount you owe per month. I'm not saying we need to have a financial industry expansion, I would just like to see there be more options for loans.

1) Rates should be fixed
2) Principal amounts should be paid down as you make monthly payments
3) Rates should be negotiable (principal loan of X amount, the bank will give you a higher/lower interest rate based on your corporations needs/assets/whatever)
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counting
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Re: New business sectors?wi

Post by counting »

therealevan wrote: regards to in game 'banking', the only mechanics we have for actually banking is withdrawing a loan from the Government at a rate that is not fixed with only one perimeter. The principal amount from what I have observed is not reduced over time, so you will pay X amount of principal + current interest rate for however long until you get it paid off. The only two things that change is the current interest rate set by the government and the amount you owe per month. I'm not saying we need to have a financial industry expansion, I would just like to see there be more options for loans.

1) Rates should be fixed
2) Principal amounts should be paid down as you make monthly payments
3) Rates should be negotiable (principal loan of X amount, the bank will give you a higher/lower interest rate based on your corporations needs/assets/whatever)
If we are talking about mechanism of lending interest rate to private sector, and the types of amortization schedule to business secured loan, most people will be amazed by how complex they are determined by the interactions between different financial organizations and how many types existed in real life. The "Capitalism Play Book" isn't written or defined overnight, but actually "evolved" over centuries from various sources and differ in regions. The bottom line is, debts are just like "normal products", can be "packaged" and "organized" in any form the lender want, as long as customers are willing to "buy/borrow". As for what kinds of mechanism could be introduced in game, honestly without a financial infrastructure and mechanics to generate relevant background and context, all of them would seem artificial or redundant.

But adding more flavors to the lending process, or increase the degree of freedom in corporate debt controls could be interesting and fun. Current loan mechanics is a very abstract and continuous model (In real life, secured loan for business usually has a very long payment period). It's like a company monthly searches for a perfect liquidity financial market where it can instantly re-evaluated and transfer all its current debt to the optimal lender with an equilibrium interest rate with a new contract (thus only needs to pay the interest due in that period without principal), and keep the principal rolling indefinitely. In real life, it's a bit more complicated, and companies either need to pay a lot more to lenders due to contracts, or pay less due to prime rate or subsidies sometimes, even the lending contract itself can become a product itself (a type of swap). In general, all the financial tools and organizations provide the function of reducing risks, fluctuations, and defaults. The end result is that the liquidity although not infinite but greatly increased (in fact, some tools and mechanics are not recent but centuries old), and corporations can usually get the capital they needed in time with relatively low "cost". Most nation's central banks even track and provide statistics of current market lending interest rate.

(If you are interested, world bank gathers information and published global statistics as well, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FR. ... /countries)

So for now, assume we replace the current model with a contract amortization schedule loan mechanism, then loans will be more staged-like. And since total business assets usually don't changed gradually over a very long period of time, if a player wishes to keep his/her cash level, he/she will need to go to the bank interface regularly to re-evaluated and re-borrow with new contracts to fill the principal payment due monthly. In plain sight, it would seems redundant with a disadvantage where player attention is more demanding, but there would be some advantages as well. First, the amount of financial leverage could be increased beyond simple 100% asset backed secured loan. Since new loan contract could have a higher or lower lending interests over time. An company with 100m business assets could choose a contract of 50% backed higher than market interest rate=20% of 200m loan, or 100% backed with normal market interest IR=10% of <100m loan, or even a prime loan IR=5% if player's personal cash can guarantee the principle. Second, the real nominal payment can be integrated automatically via multiple contracts and given out a gross total interest rate in financial report, so player's doesn't actually need to remember all the numbers. And finally with an additional "auto re-amortized" option allowing players to determine whether or not he/she wishes to constantly keep the principle amount re-apply for a new contract and "re-fill" automatically (with re-evaluated current market interest rate and company business asset), this modified mechanic can be nearly the same as current simple mechanism if a 100% backed full auto re-amortized loan is taken and auto re-amortized is checked, but if players deviate from norm, or choose to optimize cash-flow by manually update contracts, they can have much more options and probably better leverage

Ultimately, I think a more solid financial infrastructure is still the way to go. With a modified mechanism described above, it would be easier to add features like competing banks with different lending interest rate, or loan shark where a very small business can get unsecured loan with extremely high interest rate to start its business, or just various types of debts that have different amortization schedules, even bond-like lending from other corporations, defined by "bond trading market" (or intensest swap derivatives).
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megapolis
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by megapolis »

I see two reasons why any banking services should not be added to the game.

First is gameplay issue. This game is about building a manufacturing empire. B2C empire if I can call it that way. For these reasons there is a lot of things that were cut from the game. For example I don't see anyone who's complaining about instant building in game. Game developers just cut this end for gameplay reasons. For the same reasons they introduced community buildings but cut their functionality to a state of a placeholder. Central bank was introduced for the same reason as instant building - to make a game more dynamic. I am pretty sure that game developers did not intend to make it look real. They just made a nesessary placeholder and cut end.

Second reason is that even existing central bank is excessive. To be honest, lending money to a player is pure gambling. If I was AI, I'd never lend myself a single virtual penny.

Generally when you offer something to AI it is good. Just because AI will accept or decline your offer according to strict rules. When you take something from AI it is always bad because you don't follow any rules. You can even bancrupt your own company and make AI lose its money that were invested in your stock.
counting
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by counting »

megapolis wrote:I see two reasons why any banking services should not be added to the game.

First is gameplay issue. This game is about building a manufacturing empire. B2C empire if I can call it that way. For these reasons there is a lot of things that were cut from the game. For example I don't see anyone who's complaining about instant building in game. Game developers just cut this end for gameplay reasons. For the same reasons they introduced community buildings but cut their functionality to a state of a placeholder. Central bank was introduced for the same reason as instant building - to make a game more dynamic. I am pretty sure that game developers did not intend to make it look real. They just made a nesessary placeholder and cut end.
Actually the instant building mechanism had been considered even before the release of CapLab, and players have brought up this subject multiple times since, I myself have proposed a initializing setup mechanism. Also renting buildings, instead of "build" buildings have been proposed before. And as voted, although it's not been implemented (yet), players at that time did want a more realistic mechanism
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... t=41&p=182

And the community buildings' functionality has been proposed, and the recent preview of expansion pack has shown how similar interface may look like
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =16&t=2481

Also, the borrowing mechanism (central bank showing on the map is more of a real estate mechanism than financial mechanism) is almost exactly the same since the original Capitalism (even pre-date Captialism 2). It's even part of the money supply/demand factor under high economic simulation setting.

The real issue here is not about "adequate" mechanic, but provide ideas or discuss the possibility of adding new mechanics in "EXPANSION PACK". Also how it could work and adding new depth tino the game, and make it truly deserves the name "Capitalism", rather than like you said just simply a B2C manufacturing simulation game.
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counting
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by counting »

megapolis wrote: Second reason is that even existing central bank is excessive. To be honest, lending money to a player is pure gambling. If I was AI, I'd never lend myself a single virtual penny.

Generally when you offer something to AI it is good. Just because AI will accept or decline your offer according to strict rules. When you take something from AI it is always bad because you don't follow any rules. You can even bancrupt your own company and make AI lose its money that were invested in your stock.
You've actually brought up a very crucial issue if we wish to build a more solid financial infrastructure - Risks.

This is a factor not just bother "virtual simulation AIs", but actually plagued real life economists and lenders alike for millenniums until this day (still a very hot academic subject, how to quantify risks, and from recent great recession, we are certain we don't know the half of it). Real life does provide a solution for the system to work, using adaptive index of credit rating, and "secured loan". The former depend how expensive you could get this "financial product" - interest rate, the later decide how much you can borrow - loan limit. If you can't pay up and default, your assets will belong to the lenders and they can recover their losses. This is also the reason behind loan shark's interest rate with unsecured loan, with high enough interest rate, it becomes a statistical problem, how many percentage of the borrowers expect to default, how high the interest would be set to recover the loses (medieval lenders learned the hard way lending money to monarchs, thus move away from simple loan sharks, and evolved the system of investment, modern banking, long distance exchange, accounting principles, and finally the whole Capitalism infrastructures)

In game mechanic wise, I've proposed a mechanism before, creating a matrix of trust index, and friendlyness index between AI-to-AI and player-to-AI. Similar to Civilization game AI mechanics. This could form the basis of contract. And when there's contract mechanism in place, the upper structure of "lending contract" can be established accordingly.
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... ract#p9186

Still the first step, I proposed in previous post, is just a modified mechanics of a more relaxed "borrowing" with different asset backed percentage with multiple discrete "loans" instead of the current continuous one. Which could add financial leverage more of a "fun" factor, without involving contract and minimum risk assessment with pseudo "rating system" depend on asset backed percentage (which include the current simple mechanic with some default automatic options). It would be an easier first step toward "financial infrastructure" (The discrete mechanics is laying the road for it to be more like "financial product")

BTW, the game system itself is the ultimate law enforcer, players can't fight it (unless there are loopholes like in current stock market mechanism), it can cease assets when default. Current "central bank" did just that, declare you bankrupt and force you to pay interest without player control involved. You can play the bad boys card, but be prepared to suffer the consequence. However, you did bring up a fair question when dealing with secondary market, it's all quite simple when it's just primary market with a separate AI only stock market. A whole different thing and game theory problem with secondary financial market.
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megapolis
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by megapolis »

Well, I still have a lot of objections to these ideas.

First. I am really afraid that adding new aspects into the game will create an unplayable monster. Look at Digger, Arkanoid, Tetris, Xonix. They are simple, elegant and quite challenging. Increasing amount of areas covered by the game creates a big problem.
a. In case of a "hard game" you have to be good at every aspect of a game just to break even. Totally unplayable thing. Run a game day and pause for an hour to make all nesessary actions.
b. In case of a "soft game" you have to be good in just a couple of aspects of a game to break even. But once you master all of them, you'll create a monster and the game will become totally unplayable again.

I am afraid that current version of Capitalism is about the high limit of a game that can still be called elegant. Every new aspect could lead to a monster.

Second. Being AI I still won't lend myself a penny under any circumstances. I already mentioned it before but now I will try to explain it from another point of view. In real life lending money is balanced by supply and demand. In current game I lend money for ridiculously low rates. I see that the only subject in a game that profits from it is myself. There should be a significant change in game balance rather than introduction of new methods of robbing the bank. I want to think twice before pushing "Borrow" button.

Third. Probably a sum of first two. Let's think of a game as of a real-world company. New venture passes through several steps in its life cycle. I'll omit some of them focusing on two main steps. First is rapid growth. It is a moment when investment in every new product, factory, store pays off more than any other action. For the game it is introducing new features or aspects of a game. Second is cost cutting when the market is already full and there's no place to expand. For a game it is polishing the game, fixing bugs, exploits and game balance. If the venture grows too big during first phase it won't survive during the second phase. Like many other gamers I really like global strategies. I can name a lot I played but none of them survived the second phase and are full of bugs that were ruining the game. I know that one day Capitalism Lab will be abandoned by developers and I don't want it to end like other games: full of bugs and totally unplayable. I want Cap Lab to be a Tetris. Simple, sometimes naive but still playable even 30 years later.
megapolis
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by megapolis »

counting wrote:The real issue here is not about "adequate" mechanic, but provide ideas or discuss the possibility of adding new mechanics in "EXPANSION PACK". Also how it could work and adding new depth tino the game, and make it truly deserves the name "Capitalism", rather than like you said just simply a B2C manufacturing simulation game.
Apparently that's the main point. Sorry, I am just on a wrong subforum. ;)
counting
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by counting »

megapolis wrote:
counting wrote:The real issue here is not about "adequate" mechanic, but provide ideas or discuss the possibility of adding new mechanics in "EXPANSION PACK". Also how it could work and adding new depth tino the game, and make it truly deserves the name "Capitalism", rather than like you said just simply a B2C manufacturing simulation game.
Apparently that's the main point. Sorry, I am just on a wrong subforum. ;)
Still, the point of discussion are also about how good a mechanism really is, or even doable, in an expansion pack. More often, an idea is interesting and good, but in order for it to work is a totally different thing or impractical as game mechanics. Like in computational experimental economic model, I could run millions of agents for days and weeks each with its own adaptive behaviors and observe the emerging phenomena from their interactions, obviously it's interesting, and very realistic could be used as comparable data to answer real world question, but I doubt it could be fitted into current game mechanics. Or super complex AI decision rules required deep search steps in order to beat human in competitive situation, they are all theoretically possible, but I doubt them to be "fun".

However, IMO, a elaborate financial infrastructure mechanism to make the game feels more in-depth, should still fall within the "doable" domain. Just the question of how detail should it be.
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counting
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by counting »

megapolis wrote: I am afraid that current version of Capitalism is about the high limit of a game that can still be called elegant. Every new aspect could lead to a monster.

Second. Being AI I still won't lend myself a penny under any circumstances. I already mentioned it before but now I will try to explain it from another point of view. In real life lending money is balanced by supply and demand. In current game I lend money for ridiculously low rates. I see that the only subject in a game that profits from it is myself. There should be a significant change in game balance rather than introduction of new methods of robbing the bank. I want to think twice before pushing "Borrow" button.

Third. Probably a sum of first two. Let's think of a game as of a real-world company. New venture passes through several steps in its life cycle. I'll omit some of them focusing on two main steps. First is rapid growth. It is a moment when investment in every new product, factory, store pays off more than any other action. For the game it is introducing new features or aspects of a game. Second is cost cutting when the market is already full and there's no place to expand. For a game it is polishing the game, fixing bugs, exploits and game balance. If the venture grows too big during first phase it won't survive during the second phase. Like many other gamers I really like global strategies. I can name a lot I played but none of them survived the second phase and are full of bugs that were ruining the game. I know that one day Capitalism Lab will be abandoned by developers and I don't want it to end like other games: full of bugs and totally unplayable. I want Cap Lab to be a Tetris. Simple, sometimes naive but still playable even 30 years later.
Well, Capitalism is already pretty huge in its scope, with quite high learning curve. Even making a mod to balance its profitability would require excel to calculate them. But ironically, I don't think it's because it reaches a too complex to be fun level, but "uneven" mechanics. Right now, it's mostly focus on bottom-to-middle level production area, and it's very difficult to run B2B business (it's doable, I've shown in my post, I called it the middlemen problem) and very few service industries. I believe the issue is mostly due to the lack of contracting mechanism, and non-adaptable AI behaviors (lack of learning mechanism). There's also a lack of financial super-structure, as well as a lot of fundamental services. One player suggested a couple of weeks ago about introducing very low start-up game play, is a reflection of this issue, we lack bottom level mechanism. We have a middle level corporation, but it doesn't scale down, just up. This directly create an interesting question, the corporation in real world are distributed like exponential curve, where there are just a few giants, and lots of dwarfs, right now the game mechanics only support the game play of giants from the beginning, and dwarfs will be crushed. With current mechanic of economy of scale, you will fall out of competitive edge, simply by just joining late. Unlike real world, where new entrepreneurs can certainly beat giants due to giants although big, but always run into diseconomies of scale. With good capital market, new corporation should be able to rise up and take over the old inefficient ones. Also giant corporation will run into course gram problem, where its product spread far and wide, but cannot react quickly in tight corners where SMEs (small-medium enterprises) actually have competitive edge.

And I agree these problems should be solved, with a more solid foundation, instead of patches with complex equations. That's what I was talking about with so many words. Capitalism is set on a not so low level and uneven foundation. Regardless what the financial sector would ultimately look like, it certainly shouldn't be a blank and full of loopholes like current stock market mechanic. One of a good way IMO, is to take the first lesson of monetary economics, treating money like products, a special kind of product, and using similar mechanics as normal product price finding to setup the financial market supply and demand. It will be different, but still with the same theme as the core game.
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Parkerrush92
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Re: New business sectors?

Post by Parkerrush92 »

If somebody can send me the link to the list of consolidated threads, I would be happy to create a summary, and to simplify and connect all of the separate parts.

Parker
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