Time... and some other stuff

[bundyaxl]

There should be a progression of time in the game. Similar to other tycoon games, I've mainly played the transportation ones.

Anyway, no electronic components until the 40s-50s. No cell phones until the 80s. No TV's until the, whenever they were made, you get the idea.

This next bit might not work with the current system, but basically we need more products. I think I heard something is in the works, not sure.

In 1900 you would be making 1900s model products. Then you need to research a new model year to produce newer items.

This would give you a different way to compete instead of just technology. Especially if you are fairly even.

Also implement a random breakthrough mechanism that one of those model years will give you a good tech boost and be a commercial success. Kind of like an iPhone type of situation.

Then there could be more products that are phased out similar mechanism to the cell phones currently in the game. TV's would also be good, go from crt, then come out with lcd.

I also just put up a post with a class system, discount, standard and luxury. I was thinking have the first person to invent a product or class get's the tech bonus for it. Or at least for a certain time. This would work a bit better for products that split from each other. Like TVs go from b/w to color to lcd, plasma or led and other technologies. So the a company can only get a bonus in the first TV tech/product they research once it splits off to types. So one company would get the tech bonus on lcd, another would get it on led, and another on plasma so you would be more likely to have the big 3 companies competing in the tv business. Cars might work, have a company specialize in race cars, or luxury cars, or SUV's or family mini-vans.

Another item is the manufacturing equipment. I don't think the game really addresses that, it's kind of lumped in with training almost. But basically you start with the basic 1900s tech. Then when you design your new model year you can also choose to design a new line as well, can also be done later for old products. So you pay to retool your facilities every few decades. So you can play the jump between the labour driven manufacturing to the automated manufacturing and see differences in costs of say electricity (when it gets put in) and labour. When you do these upgrades you will see bigger jumps in efficiency, the training will be more of a lessons learned or quality system kind of thing, so that will be a general efficiency the way it is now. New equipment would bump you up say 200% over the base going from manual machines to automated. Then computerized automated will bump it up like 300-400% or whatever. There's a lot of old factories, especially car factories, but a lot of them have state of the art equipment. That should even be an option when you set up a factory, the more you pay for equipment the more nice tooling and fancy robots you get increasing your capacity and quality. This can be handled in the game by having different units for the firms. You would have to replace a manual manufacturing unit square with an automated one, then your training level for that square would go down a few notches since the people are still experienced, but they need to learn the new machines.

We should also be able to adjust the wages. Just a simple average wage for the firm, maybe an average for hourly and salary or something. And of course have the auto-adjust to a percentage of the market average. Your wages would affect training levels due to turnover and other factors. So if your a minimum wage discount product producer. Your training levels can't be higher than 2 or 3 on highest training spending due to turnover and quality of worker.

Alright, discuss, I'm grabbing some food.

[WilliamMGary]

Anyway, no electronic components until the 40s-50s. No cell phones until the 80s. No TV's until the, whenever they were made, you get the idea.

You mean something like this: http://www.capitalismlab.com/enhanced-p ... ation.html ?

(Cigarettes sales also falls out of favor in the 20th century not sure why that's not listed)

This next bit might not work with the current system, but basically we need more products. I think I heard something is in the works, not sure.

I think (pray) that this is part of the mod system that is being developed. In JASM v.01 (http://capitalismfans.com/download/view ... -v0-1.html) the developer was able to "Replace" in game products so the natural progression (hopefully) would be a mechanism which allows users to add additional products to the game. Would be interesting to know the challenges they're having enabling this. I envision a tool like they did for The Sims where you upload the image; give the program some details and it spites out the required information for the game.

In 1900 you would be making 1900s model products. Then you need to research a new model year to produce newer items. This would give you a different way to compete instead of just technology. Especially if you are fairly even.[/quotes]

Sounds like R&D which is not as obvious but an argument could be made (or you could use your imagination) that this is actually what's happening. I don't think I've ever seen technology, brand, overall rating be equal with technology disruption turned on [http://www.capitalismlab.com/technology-disruption.html]. Have you tried turning this on?