Enable R&D of Raw Materials

[Yimmy]

Technological improvements in mining, forest management and oil extraction occur frequently. Activating R&D of raw materials provides a means to permanently improve experience related to raw materials. Training provides temporary improvement of quality, but it expires when the resource is exhausted.

[saffgee]

I have long argued for a quality vs quantity slider.

I know you are proposing a deeper, more meaningful interaction and I don't want to hijack your thread, but I just feel that a slider would be a quick and dirty way of adding some spice to mining.
eg. You are proposing to buy a mine of 65 quality that contains 1,000,000 tonnes of Ore. By maximising the slider to "quantity", you can turn that mine into a 45 quality mine of 1,500,000 tonnes. By maximising to the "quality" setting, it becomes a mine of 85 quality and 500,000 tonnes. Something like that should be easy to program.

[Yimmy]

Saffgee:

You wrote:

I have long argued for a quality vs quantity slider.

I know you are proposing a deeper, more meaningful interaction and I don't want to hijack your thread, but I just feel that a slider would be a quick and dirty way of adding some spice to mining.
eg. You are proposing to buy a mine of 65 quality that contains 1,000,000 tonnes of Ore. By maximising the slider to "quantity", you can turn that mine into a 45 quality mine of 1,500,000 tonnes. By maximising to the "quality" setting, it becomes a mine of 85 quality and 500,000 tonnes. Something like that should be easy to program.

Your idea is one alternative. It could supplement R&D; I don't think it is a substitute for the ability to do R&D.

Players who develop lots of factories, and lots of products across multiple cities would find the sliders feature could result in the frequent replacement of raw materials resources. I often end up with as many as ten logging camps, seven gold mines, four minerals, three iron and coal each, etc. I spend too much time already replacing existing mines because of resource exhaustion. Implementing your suggestion would result in constant replacing of raw materials resources to receive high quality, or playing with low-quality resources.

Replacing raw materials resources is one of the more annoying parts of the game because, once the alert is received indicating the resource is exhausted, I monitor the resource until all existing stock is depleted. Sometimes I have as many as three resources exhausted at once. I could always clear existing stock taking the write-offs, but that isn't the style of game that I play.

I find the random placement of resources with varying quality adds a little more challenge and interest than choosing the same quality by reducing quantity. A player wouldn't have to change the sliders -- leaving things as they are. Leaving things as they are still leaves the need for R&D to improve permanently a resource's quality.

[saffgee]

Replacing raw materials resources is one of the more annoying parts of the game because, once the alert is received indicating the resource is exhausted, I monitor the resource until all existing stock is depleted. Sometimes I have as many as three resources exhausted at once. I could always clear existing stock taking the write-offs, but that isn't the style of game that I play.

You're right, that part is annoying - I myself use warehouses to suck out the last drops of the old one and setup a new one to replace it at the same time into that warehouse; my factories all point to the warehouse and when a mine flags as depleted (but still has stock) again all I need to do is bulldoze the very old dead mine and buy a new one to replace the depleted one, and so on. This problem would be important to fix before we discuss any enhancements I guess.

That said, I do like your idea of using R&D to improve raw material quality and quantity. Potentially this can tie in with a difficulty system for mining. Much like shale oil & gas in the real world, a specific tech level would be required to start mining a certain resource. Eg: If we assign a difficulty rating to each resource, then we could end up with a NatGas resource at 85 quality and 65 difficulty. Only when your tech allows you to access 65 difficulty can you access this resource. This could tie in with a time factor, so early game difficulties are set between 20-40, then midgame 40-60, then late game 60-80 and so on. This can be determined by the tech levels you research. Eg. Strip mining gives a bonus of 10 points, bucket wheel excavators add another 10, and so on. There can also be techs that enhance the quality of what you mine.

Lots to play with here, but I think it needs to be a system that is easy to adopt and above all easy to add to existing programming structures.

[Yimmy]

Saffgee:

Your comments about calculating difficulty of mining indicate that you have a more thoughtful and cerebral approach to enhancing experience and quality than I. My poll focused on the expansion of the existing R&D to provide options for improving quality relating to resources. I thought that should be a fairly minor adjustment because the change would use the existing R&D structures and concepts already in place.

[David]

FYI, the scripting system currently supports:

Unlimited Natural Resources=<Yes,No>

If you set this to Yes, when a natural resource firm (mine/oil well/logging camp) has used up its reserve, instead of stopping its operation, it will continue to produce the natural resources with a new recurring cost.

The recurring cost of producing a single unit of the natural resource will equal to the original cost of acquiring natural resource site, divided by the original reserve amount, and adjusted for the current inflation.

Natural Resources Price Premium=No

Use this line to disable the Price Premium system for natural resources.

For more details: https://www.capitalismlab.com/scripts/s ... ial-rules/

[Leviticus]

Personally I would rather see an expansion to the Exploration and Production side of resource extraction. For example, instead of everyone simply knowing where the deposits are, a company would first have to sample ground to determine resource type/quality. Then invest in an appropriate form of extraction (open pit mining, drilling, rigs etc). You could also perform research for a better chance of finding certain resources if you'd like to specialize (like researching an Oil Location technology would increase chance for oil to be found, or make it easier on the player somehow to find a specific resource)

In the real world, significant money is spent just finding these resources, I think the first step in modifying the resources in the game is to change how they're explored.

[David]

Personally I would rather see an expansion to the Exploration and Production side of resource extraction. For example, instead of everyone simply knowing where the deposits are, a company would first have to sample ground to determine resource type/quality. Then invest in an appropriate form of extraction (open pit mining, drilling, rigs etc). You could also perform research for a better chance of finding certain resources if you'd like to specialize (like researching an Oil Location technology would increase chance for oil to be found, or make it easier on the player somehow to find a specific resource)

In the real world, significant money is spent just finding these resources, I think the first step in modifying the resources in the game is to change how they're explored.

Thanks for your input.

We have the following types of mineral resources in vanilla Capitalism Lab:
Aluminum
Chemical Minerals
Coal
Gold
Iron Ore
Oil
Silica
Silver

I've a few questions:
1) What kinds of exploration technologies and methods are used for them?

2) What does the exploration process entail?

3) How to determine success rate of an exploration?

4) Are you looking at changing the mechanism to the following?
In the beginning of the game, there will be a number of natural resource sites available on the map. After they are all depleted, the player has to invest time and money to explore new sites instead of just having new natural resource sites popping up automatically.

[Leviticus]

I've a few questions:
1) What kinds of exploration technologies and methods are used for them?

2) What does the exploration process entail?

3) How to determine success rate of an exploration?

4) Are you looking at changing the mechanism to the following?
In the beginning of the game, there will be a number of natural resource sites available on the map. After they are all depleted, the player has to invest time and money to explore new sites instead of just having new natural resource sites popping up automatically.

Hi David,

1) For most resources, the exploration process typically starts with geologists. Geologists analyze data like sediment patterns and tectonics to determine likely spots for a specific resource/mineral. For example, geologists are crucial in locating ideal spots to drill for oil using off-shore rigs, as it's incredibly expensive and time-consuming to get it wrong. The next step is usually a core sample, or drilling, to determine the accuracy of the geologists' guess. A core sample is a literal chunk of the ground they extract and process to determine the density and quality of the mineral in the sample. Usually, the results of the core sample is the data the company uses when determining cost feasibility for a mine.

However, this can change from resource to resource. For example, the act of pumping oil out of the ground from 300m below the surface is very different from strip mining 10m of topsoil to find the bauxite ore that makes aluminum. I think the simplest way to implement an exploration technology in Capitalism Lab would be to simulate a core sample, where a company invests time and money into getting results of a dig in order to decide whether it's worth it to build a mine/rig there.

2) An example of how this might look would be that the player has a menu and interface much the same as they would if they were buying a plot of land. A player can select a plot of land that they own to perform a core sample, which would cost a flat fee, and receive the results of the core sample in 6-12 months as a notification, and possibly an info bar (like over buildings) over the plot of land, telling the player the results.

3) I think you could enable a whole new type of R&D in the R&D centre called "Exploration" or "E&P" that enables research projects that can: a) increase your success of finding a specific resource (Selecting Oil Exploration research would increase your chance to find Oil in your core samples) or b) reveal an area that's likely to have a specific resource (You can call this a "Geological Survey"). I think the success rate of exploration should NOT be guaranteed, I think that on average a player should have to take a sample 2-3 times before finding the desired resource with an adequate quality.

4) Yes I think that would be a great idea. Perhaps not even have revealed natural resource sites at the start, but Government-controlled firms producing resources. That way, the impetus to find more resources to supply the game's world is on the player, or an ambitious AI.

[choum]

for me the real interest is about forest management. With a good tech the forest should never run out of trees! renewable ressource!