Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

We have given a lot of thoughts to the commodity design but at the end we think it may take out fun from the core business operations rather than adding to it.

It seems that the player already has enough operational details to take care and fluctuation commodity prices and community exchange, while will make the game more realistic, it may also overwhelm the player with too much details.

So we will keep the current natural resource game system as it is, with minor fine-tuning on the parameters.

Having that said, we will be happy to revisit this after the release of the first version of Cap Lab and see if there is any possible way to implement it in an elegant way that won't further complicate the game.

In terms of fine-tuning the natural resources, do you think the current costs of natural resource sites are too low or too high, or just about right?

In other words, do you think mines/oil wells/logging camps are too easy or too hard to make money, or just about right?

In real world it's not practical that a city would allow companies to rebuild and demolish their mines many times before the site is depleted of the resource. Mines and oil wells could be built to last until depletion always, and companies could be able to optionally buy a limited amount of the resource on a site if it's free at the moment, so that he won't have to save up so much. This is good for a player who's company specializes in jewelry for example, if a gold site costs over 100 millions and it's not imported. A beginner corp will lose their shirt. Same thing with some oil wells, very expensive. When the bought amount is used up, the company ceases to be the owner of that mine and it's for sale again. When the bought amount nears depletion the company could have a privilege to buy more of that resource, maybe an information window could appear at the end and the game asks whether he wants to buy some more to not to lose the mine.

I liked the idea of a commodity trading system. Without it, the mines should have the potential to out put higher quality goods through filters or washing processes for any of the natural resources. It's currently the only thing that can vary so wildly from one site to another without the player having the ability to improve the quality through better research. going from high quality chemical minerals in the pharmacy industry to an empty mine with only low quality deposits on the map is nerveracking.

David said : "We are going to make significant changes to natural resources in Cap2. Currently all natural resource types have their quality values initialized to a random value between 40 and 100."

Raw Material Purifty
I suggest to add "Raw material Quality Purify Function" to the game, it will be a very valuable concept for manufacturing industries. As we all known, the natural resources quality are ranged between 40 to 100. If a mine with quality 100 is used up, it will be a terrible experience, that the new supply will be lower quality raw material but with higher logistic cost.

For example,

2 units (QR 50) Gold + manufacturing unit + purifity tech. (TR 70) = 1 units Gold with QR 85 [( QR 100 - QR 50) x TR 70/100]

Use 2 units input and 1 unit output method is going to balance the game fair.

I really like the sound of a commodity market but working along side the current cap 2 system would be better. My knowledge isn't great on the commodity market but it would certianly add to the game perhaps in the early to medium stages of the game where it's still more viable to purchase rather than get into the nitty gritty of heavy industry.

On the Oil and quality option, it realy depends on where you want to take the game. In the real life there are different qualiteis of oil and thinking baout it more you now have these shail oil mines and probally in the near future even more places where oil can be extracted. Again i've mentioned the following in my previous posts. If it is that the oil will only be used by the corps in the game then oil is just that, and may aswell be left as it is. As your products overall quality depends on the quality of the raw ingredients. If it is that you add other factors like Cap 2 civs been able to purchase oil, been able to sell to airports, docks and so on then again quality could be re-defined ie poor quality oil could be used for industry and maybe the highest quality for aircraft industry. Kinda industial oil say 10 value whilst perol is 60 and 100 been keresen which aircrafts use.

I personally would like to see other uses for oil outside of indusry more than changing the values ect as you then have markets that maybe restricted dependant on the oil you have. IE 20 value oil only be used for certain products whilst 100 could be for the aircraft industry but with a refinery you could then make lesser values say for petrol for cars, diesel for lorrys ships , oil for cars, oils like wd40 which could be a product that can be sold in your shops. WD40 used in hoseholds for losening nuts and bolts to fixing squeakes in door hinges for example. This would give you more products types to sell and would allow for a refinery to be used to the full.

I would like to see that once a heavy industry has exhausted all of the raw material that the land turns to what we call brown field site. Not sutibale for anything untill deconamination or landfill has been completed. This would allow land prices to be effected but it would give you away of buying cheap land but then costing you lots of money to fix before it can be used. The great thing would be that, if you had a resource as it does appear in the middle of a city like in cap 2, once you mine it it would ecrease prices massively around that area. but it would also say give you away of fixing the issue in the future, ie you want to build now a large resedential commercial area you now have cheap land that costs initially but in the end could be very profitable.

On the Oil front, in the real world there's OPEC and it would be intresting that for example if I was in saudi I would have to join the Cartel, which would control price and volume, which may make you think twice before investing, Also in non OPEC countrys you could under cut.

My final thought is that the game needs pros and cons so you can upset the balance but also can readdress the balance. I've also mentioned in one of my posts that you can combat these things by allowing new sythetics and new industrys like electric cars which can run various differnt ways, part oil part batterys or pure hydrogen or just batterys or maybe by others and allow research so when theres a cartel in the resources you can, then reserach to find another alternative just like real life. You could even have a oil cartel and research techs and try and stop it from occuring without your knowledge and then move when your compertion has caught up. Just like real life.
I hope the above makes sense, apologise for any spelling mistakes.

I forgot to mention Gold and silver. Gold and silver must have different qualities as in the real world you can buy cheap 9 carat gold rings that are totally different to 24 carat which should effect the price of jewerly.

I'm unclear on aluminium but definatley gold and silver do differ greatly. I think it would be a huge mistake to change this as the assumption would be gold is just gold when it's not. Have you ever tried buying your mrs a 9 carat ring or watch and saying " don't worry love it's all the same "
Divorce

Same with diamonds and silver, luckly there is no diamonds yet in the game, and no divorce either.

I do know for a fact that when cheap gold is used in circuitry it's just not the same and the reliabity is reduced by a huge amount.

Again having different qualities of gold and silver allows for different tactics to be played in the game, 10% gold allows you to sell your items at a much cheaper price than say 100 % but i remember when I had 100 % and sold the computer 40 % when we had a price war the computer gave up because the difference in price forced it out of the market because even when I was selling rings ect as cheap as I could I still made a good profit when the computer went into negative profit. Even though the computer had better tech values than me.

My thoughts, you can research all you like on techs but better quality raw materials especially in the jewerly industry will always beat a far superier tech, with a little help from a pricing stratergy.

ow just read this topic lol.

For anyone interested i added a post in the "Gold and Silver - constant quality or variable quality?" topic regarding gold/silver and the other recources

adj_boy wrote:In my opinion, all natural resrouce commodities should be available on a commodity market. This will take away the need for small scale manufacturers to set up a whole mining operation by themselves, or hope the AI would do so, or wait to get lucky at the industrial docks. It makes much more sense, and it removes the a lot of chore for starting manufacturers.

Likewise, when you invest in a mining endeavour, you should be able to sell off the surplus on the global market. Of course, the increased supply should (depending on the increase and existing demand) adjust the price level of the commodity. This will make the prospect of becoming a resource producer much more attractive.

Without reading all three pages of this thread in one session i agree with adj_boy. I think this way with raw resources would enhance the game. Maybe the price of oil could be depending on some facts like amount of products sold which needs oil as requirement for production, like cars and motorbikes, Maybe this typ of product could also create a city wide fuel demand.

For example if i sell 2.000 cars a year, they require fuel for usage and fuel is produced with oil. On the gobal market the demand for oil depends on the production of oil products and the demand of fuel. Mabye fuel could be a new product for the game and the player can also produce it?