Building times?

[SanderR]

To add to the 'realism'. I want to know what you guys think about 'Building Times'. Meaning: In real life it actually takes time and money to build an appartment building, a factory, a warehouse, a farm... . You don't point to a spot and say I want that building over there, and magically it appears. it takes time to build.

By adding 'building times' to buildings you create a new element of planning. Let's say it takes 9 months to build a factory and get it up and running.
This is 9 months you invested your money in something but don't see a return right away. This delay forces you to be more creative and plan ahead.

What do you guys think?

[counting]

Well, time factor is generally neglected in Capitalism games. Not just for setup, but for transportation as well. There are lots of time factor related issue can be added.

And I think currently in game it's assume we are "buying" buildings instead of actually building them. Since there's no actual construction and real estate businesses and market, this process is simplified. In real life, the setup time usually doesn't refer to actually building construction time (startup companies usually just buy properties. If you want to setup factories in rural area, it's bad for logistics, only really big corporations have the resource to do that. Big factory complex is very different from small factory). Setting up the internal layout, also takes time. So if we would to include time factor, then we should properly introduce construction businesses and real estate trading market into it, even the lease for industrial/commercial buildings, it might be a complete expansion pack.

But for game mechanics wise with pure delay factor, if players are forced to slow down by artificially introducing it, than it will slow down corporation expansion drastically (AI will be slower as well, so the whole industry ecosystem slows down), and a normal game that only last decades might stretch a lot longer several times (the first chain delay 9 months, the second one doubles it, and the next expansion doubles again, the delay grows exponentially). Financial wise, what would happened if a company go broke during construction? Can we tare down the building and get part of the funds back? And how do we account for it's fair market value during construction? Also, this might force new players to go for retail or any business that doesn't require setup time to begin the game (since early head start is really important), which is kinda counter productive for a sandbox game for diversify gameplays.

[SanderR]

This is interesting.

It's true it will be a totally different game. But that was the point. I was just wondering: would it make it more fun? will it bring an extra challenge to the game?

to answer your question: what would happen if a company goes bankrupt during construction. In my opinion: The same thing that happens in real life. it just sits there, until somebody else buys the lot, tears the building down and construct their own facility on it. You can't tear down a building a 'get money back from it'. What you get out of the materials will be absorbed by the work that it takes to break down the buiding. It would probably cost even more.

[counting]

This is one of the reason why I think a proper construction mechanism has to come along, if we really want to introduce construction time delay, many unexpected problems will rise if the mechanism doesn't exist.

As for more challenging, I am OK with that. It just needs to be calibrated right, so game plays can stay "balanced" with degree of freedom at the same level. One trick might reduce the impact is to allow small factory to have zero to none delay as before, and the larger the building the more delay it has. This way small manufacturing businesses can still start up early, but if you want to scale up, the time cost would be greater (This would still slow down over-all ecosystem establishment time, but a bit less). Also a recycling mechanism would be needed, otherwise I imagine we would see half-way done buildings filled the city landscape by not-so-cleaver AIs.