Tech disruption

[robinh]

Regarding tech disruption. Can it be made separate for different products? It should be very noticable with all electronic products where you need a totally new generation every few years. However things like tissues, steel, beverages, etc. don't really "age" very fast.

[David]

I think you have brought up some interesting topics. So I am tempted to give my personal comments.

My comments: things like tissues, steel, beverages do get improved over time. Basic researches that improve material attributes and other more subtle improvements are also very costly but they may be less apparent to users.

And the tech level is a relative value within each individual product class and tech levels are not compared across different product classes. So a beverage product with a tech level 200 implies that it is superior to products within the same product class of lower tech levels only.

[robinh]

I understand.

But still, looking from a different perspective - if I stop researching, Smart Phones or CPUs are surely going to get outdated sooner than Tissues or Citrid Acid...
Or, if you build a steel factory, why should the product quality drop considerably in just a few years?

[David]

I understand.

But still, looking from a different perspective - if I stop researching, Smart Phones or CPUs are surely going to get outdated sooner than Tissues or Citrid Acid...
Or, if you build a steel factory, why should the product quality drop considerably in just a few years?

You have brought up a good point.

I think there are 2 reasons for the current method: 1) for consistency and easier for the player to understand and not having to deal with one more attribute and add to further complexity of the game 2) steel, for instance, contributes little to a product's end quality level, thus its quality rating matters less.

[robinh]

Well, steel quality may not matter too much for the final product, but it matters when you sell it as a semi-product and compete with a seaport for example. While the seaport produces a constant (even if not constant there is always one seaport selling steel) supply of say 50 product quality, the player's product quality is constantly dropping unless you invest into research.

I think tweaking the tech disruption level would actually lessen the complexity because you wouldn't need to keep constantly researching all the products and semi-products you make. If you're producing for example Smart Phones and Tissues, it's obvious you need to invest a lot more in the research of smart phones to stay competitive.

[Belisarius]

Definitely a good idea ...
things like citric acid or grape juice haven´t changed a lot since the 90s ... not to mention the production process of wine, which AFAIK hasn´t changed much over the last 100 years (aside from the introduction of machines maybe, to be able to produce larger quantities). Technological changes that have been made probably don´t have had a big influence on quality (if any at all)and the grape juice or wine that you buy today isnt (much) different from the one that you bought during the 80s (aqt least if you didn´t buy some of the wines that were affected by the Glycolwine-Scandal in the 80s )
In contrast you have new CPUs with better technology coming out each year and would have a hard time, trying to sell anyone a computer system with components that have the technology of 5 years ago (unless you would offer them cheap as hell)

[David]

How would you like to call this potentially new parameter for each product class?

And where would you like it to be displayed on the interface?

[robinh]

I think a simple "Technology disruption rate" would be fine.
Now it can either be some numeric value, or I think it would suffice to have three levels. It would be difficult to define an exact rate anyway.

So we could have:
Fast disruption: all electronics, mobiles, computers, cameras, cars, motorcycles
Slow distuption: apparel, beverages, food, furniture, jewelry, leather goods, tobacco products, watches
Average disruption: the rest in between

Now of course it could vary inside the product class. Sports Watch would be in the fast category while a Silver Watch in the slow and so on...

[David]

Two additional things came to my mind regarding tech disruption:

1) If we were to implement variable tech disruption rates, the R&D progresses will be affected too. Currently R&D result takes into account of tech disruption. So with variable tech disruption rates, the player will see different R&D tech increases for different products for the exactly the same period of research time. This may confuse players.

2) For low tech products, their product quality ratings are already less affected by tech than the quality of the raw materials.

Please the below examples:
CPU - production technology accounts for a overwhelming 95% of the final product quality
Steel - production technology accounts for only 40% of the final product quality

So currently in the game, tech disruption already affects steel much less than it does with CPU.

[Cozar]

I would like to see tech disruption altered to be based off of the r&d efforts of the individual game. Technology levels should be capped at 100. Research that would exceed 100 will instead disrupt the technology. Thus, if nobody has started researching cars, then I can move into the industry with the default tech level of 30, but if someone has already made a technological breakthrough instead of them having tech level 120, they would have 100 and my tech level would degrade to 10.