User suggestion-alternative design-Natural resource firms

[David]

Suggestion from user cantdownloadit:

Natural resource firms to be cheaper to set up and much bigger reserves, but operate more on basis of leasing and contracts where you pay the site owner a fixed amount each month/a set amount for each quantity of the resource you extract - it isn't be realistic to set up a mine you know is only going to operate for 2 years.

Here is what I can think of in terms of how it might actually work in the game based on the suggestion:

Natural resource firms:
-You buy the natural resources for X amount of natural resources only. The actual total deposit is larger than X amount actually, maybe 5-10 times as much.

-When the amount you bought /leased has been used up. You can renew the lease/buy new quantity. Your mine will stop operation until you renew the lease.

-If you do not renew the lease after it has expired for one year, your firm will be closed down automatically and you will lose all the business units there.

Make this a new option on new game setup menu, instead of replacing the existing mechanism.

Do you guys like this idea?
Do you see any potential problems, gameplay balance issues, loophole?

Any ideas you want to provide to supplement it or you have an even better idea for this topic?

[anjali]

sounds good, maybe as suggested in other posts, have those spots fixed somewhere in a corner of the map and let it never run out, but have space for multiple mines on the same ressource thus multiple lease contracts per site.

regarding the lease ya could split it like
total ressources countracted = 100% value
25% of this value as a upfront lease pay,
25% as a monthly lease
50% split over harvested ressources
shutting down the mine early makes ya loose the 25% upfront pay as you re in breach of contract.

i.e. if the calculated price for timber is lets say $0.30 per unit and you got a lease for 5 years to harvest 600 million units
that would be $180 million,
$45 million upfront
$45 million split across 60 month as lease expanses (5 years)
$90 milion split across the units, that would be $0.15 per unit in this case
then either have a maximum harvest of 10 million a month maximum (that allows other companies to co-exist on the ressource market), you need more timber, simple get another lease for another 600 million units.
or apply a surcharge of $0.075 on the excess units (what ever you harvest more then the monthly limit) that way you still gonna pay the $0.30 per unit even if you finish the 600 million units in like 2 years but theres a downside o this one. when applying excess chargesand lets say after 2 years the harvest goes way below the contracted amount, you end up still paying the monthly lease and therefore paying more.

reason for this suggestion: 1st of all it makes sure that pure ressource blocking is not gonna happen due to upfront and monthly lease that gonna be paid no matter what even if no material is harvested. but i wouldnt put more then 25% on the upfront nor more then 25% on the monthly lease to make a ressource firm still profitable without having it on maximum harvest. but it still makes it heavily expansive if you only harvest a few units a month for your 1 firm. i think this percentages are a good balance and its easy to calculate for the casual player if its worth setting up a mine or not.

also i think that while you are changing the ressources, the quality should be removed from natural ressources i.e. have them all the same quality, either its oil or its just black water even iron ore i.e. gets refined first to have the pure material for production (allready read in other posts about this request) let it have quality 100 and reduce the weight of rawmaterials in production processes if neccessary else this would have a huge impact that everyone shows up with q60 products at start (i.e bed), or remove rawmaterial weight in calculations at all and it wont matter what quality you have in the mine as it doesnt matter. (farm ressources of course should keep there qualitty ratings as there its a question of training to raise it and its possible to train it up to 100)

[cantdownloadit]

I like how you expanded on it...

In my opinion the lease system is good because it reduces the huge initial cost... small companies with little cash can lease a lesser amount, bigger companies can lease a bigger amount ..

it might even be possible to have these "resource sites" linked in with the main game world map ? Such as having the copper sources in Chile and Indonesia, oil in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, diamonds in Australia and so on.

[intelJoe]

Suggestion from user cantdownloadit:

Natural resource firms to be cheaper to set up and much bigger reserves, but operate more on basis of leasing and contracts where you pay the site owner a fixed amount each month/a set amount for each quantity of the resource you extract - it isn't be realistic to set up a mine you know is only going to operate for 2 years.

Here is what I can think of in terms of how it might actually work in the game based on the suggestion:

Natural resource firms:
-You buy the natural resources for X amount of natural resources only. The actual total deposit is larger than X amount actually, maybe 5-10 times as much.

-When the amount you bought /leased has been used up. You can renew the lease/buy new quantity. Your mine will stop operation until you renew the lease.

-If you do not renew the lease after it has expired for one year, your firm will be closed down automatically and you will lose all the business units there.

Make this a new option on new game setup menu, instead of replacing the existing mechanism.

Do you guys like this idea?
Do you see any potential problems, gameplay balance issues, loophole?

Any ideas you want to provide to supplement it or you have an even better idea for this topic?

The biggest issues I have is that when I develop a technology/industry far enough and have serious demands for the product I sell. I notice my mines usually cease operations after about a year or so. Gold is a prime example of this. If I wanted to purchase the base mine, I could lease %10 of the original deposit like stated above. But I could also "invest" in a mine shaft or something similar. Or maybe the quality of the mine? That way the mine/logging/oil has a base cost of X for the land but if I want to "invest" on %50 or if I want to invest %500 the cost is multiplied. That way I am not having to re-link my deposits every year or so and there is some automation.

I'm not sure how everyone does it but I generally build a series of warehouse and have links to factories. Then my retailers link to the warehouses. That way I can have 1 or 2 retailers in every city link to the same warehouse. And depending on supply/demand it gives me the flexibility to build more factories. But often I find myself micromanaging the resources 20-40 years into a game, because the mines just give out that quickly.

I'd have no issue, especially late game, coming up with hundred's of millions or a billion or more funds to purchase a "high yield" mine. Which means I can focus less on micromanaging resources and more fun in the late game.

[megapolis]

Hidden resources are a good idea in general. With good reminders and automatic renewal options it will reduce Raw Materials micromanagement. It is a big problem when you need to build a new mine every 1-5 years (Gold/Oil).

Changes suggested by other players like splitting the payments will affect game balance.

[anjali]

dont think that splitting the prices would effect game balance. the current system does effect game balance (gold is like $900 per unit to mine, timber about $1,00 whiles you get this stuff from seaport for 1/3 of that price. you can only use the mines internal as selling the raw materials to npc's if you have lower prices then this ill make you loose huge amount of money and at break even point they dont buy it anyway. i tend to set up huge warehouses just to empty the mines of the A.I.s to get the rawmats cheap and they loose huge amount of cash this is imbalance.
price split up was just a suggestion, also could just charge for harvest but then you could just block every single rawmaterial spot and having no expanses at all to do so and force all A.I. to buy from you. also transport costs for some rawmaterials are way off .. like a gold ring across the world is like $2 whilest 1 oz gold (2 goldrings) is $100 and more, oil essily $60 per barrel transport thats twice the seaport price of the oil itsself

[WilliamMGary]

As CEO of a multi-trillion corporation one of our biggest issues is Natural Resource Management.

[jackerror]

i know it's not the subject but some ressources like Timber could be renewable. With a rational activity a logging camp could continue his activity continually. What do you think?

[cantdownloadit]

it may be that timber should be a "farm" resource not a natural resource as this is basically the same thing as a forest plantation -

with the restriction that it has to be built on edge of map where there are trees if you want production to start immediately, - if you build it on a none forest area then you have to wait xx amount of years until the trees grow before production can start.

[anjali]

it may be that timber should be a "farm" resource not a natural resource as this is basically the same thing as a forest plantation -

with the restriction that it has to be built on edge of map where there are trees if you want production to start immediately, - if you build it on a none forest area then you have to wait xx amount of years until the trees grow before production can start.

great idea, but would need an output of roughly 10m wood/month on a large farm else you end up with a ton of wooden farms in every city.
if done that way the overhead expanse of such a farm would have to be roughly $2.5 - $3 million in order to keep the $0.30-$0.40 production cost for timber to keep it balanced