David wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 11:42 am
Sounds like a good design direction to me. Are there any specific aspects of the game you intend to emphasize in your mod? For instance, I recall reading a post a while ago from a user who was particularly fond of farming and stated the intent to create a mod focused on farming.
There are
three major shortcomings in the product set in my opinion of the current CapLab build that makes the user (me) feel the game is somewhat lacking in scope:
The
Petrochemical Industry is almost completely lacking in the current build. It's one of the biggest if not the biggest industry in the world. Modern World is far ahead in this aspect already and has some interesting concepts going around but lacks Real World's Gasoline for example. I want to streamline it, combine these two elements while greatly simplifying it to make it much more accessible. Currently there's no real chemical industry to speak off in-game and it is actually hard to make money from oil early-on
Where my black gold at yo?
The
Pharmaceutical Industry is another major asset missing in the current build in my opinion. Pharmaceutical industry should be highly tech intensive but provide great potential for profit. Thanks to the new Tech feature introduced with digital age we can set up some nice technology mechanics to make highly tech-intensive products. It is also not part of a product mega class so this will be a unique class on itself with this change that provides a slightly more unique gameplay experience.
Currently
Semi-Products is a strange in-between doesn't know what it wants to be type of class . I intend to split it up by type of material and expand it a little by fleshing it out more and giving it some interesting semi-products classes. Currently it has
flour, plastic, electronic components and
engine in the same class for example and the same talents being competed over for their development. That makes no sense. What does a Flour scientist know about Engines or CPU's for example? So these are better suited as
Organic (materials), Chemical (materials, Electronic (materials) and
Auto-parts (semi) as new classes just as a proposed example that will contain their respective semi-components.
These
3 major changes are intended to expand the scope like a content pack but not make the list blow up with small variations of every possible product in existence for them.
Some of my design goals are to keep the product range small but increase depth, so I intend to never let there be more than 6 active products per class (that is part a mega class, if it is not and it is a stand-alone class then the max range is 9-12 depending on class and real life product diversity/marketsize, but always maintain that less is better) to keep things simple for the player and those are the numbers that retail stores and the UI seems to favor as well.
I intend to expand and diversify the semi-product class and make it to feel like there's a bigger and deeper manufacturing component which emphasizes the development and production of sub-components but nothing to crazy. Just a little depth so CPU's aren't magically printed from silicon for example
or how Electronic Components are a substitute for almost anything mechanical/electric ... Introduce some more tech related research as well for the more tech intensive products so that the development of Smart Phones doesn't cost the same as developing the next generation Canned Corn
I want to use the regular Product (Tech) mechanic to represent the outward style and consumer preference factor in products by consumers. Canned Corn should lose tech points each year for example because peoples taste preference change and Product (Tech) therefore represents the investment into the understanding of consumer experience and preferences whereas the new Tech feature introduced by Digital Age will emphasize the actual real research of actual technologies that are incorporated into the product, if that makes sense. This is an idea I'm floating with but am not sure if I will fully implement yet. It's interesting at least
Some small additions and changes to some product classes to flesh them out and not feel lacking like sports equipment currently does to me with only 3 products and not being part of a bigger mega-class really hurts it from a gamers perspective. So I'm going to combine it with Toys in its own Mega-Class and add some coolness to the product sets so to speak
I feel that with the bigger mods there's way too much product variety and it really hurts the early game where you can infinitely expand into new products before you even face a competitor. The mid to late game the cities are also overcrowded with buildings of every possible imagination and I feel it's way too much. The goal is therefore to keep everything as simplified as possible through abstractions but just flesh out what is missing and add a little depth.
On a separate note, another user was very into the idea of combining key elements of CapLab and Tropico and started a lengthy discussion on it:
viewtopic.php?f=50&t=7670 While this departs from the current game system too much and cannot be accomplished by modding alone, the ideas seem interesting enough to warrant more discussions. What are your thoughts of them?
Such an idea sadly needs an entirely new engine to support. I do think Tropico is a very interesting game and could provide an interesting economic simulation experience if it was properly expanded upon. The idea of having citizens act as independent agents combined with economic theories and simulations could provide really interesting interactons and economic models. Sadly most normal PC's won't be able to really handle the taxing processes that are required to flesh out such a beautiful concept and it would require a really deep and long development cycle to create something workable. You're no longer abstracting concepts at that point but trying to create individual actors which will act and turn to reality the abstracted concepts in a behavioral way. That's a huge task and goal to achieve. It's something I've thought about a looong time as well and had wished for it to exist but I understand that it is incredibly niche and hard to develop.
If there's anything that I think CapLab really still needs as added content before it is a complete game in scope it's the
petrochemical industry, transport & packaging and Utilities and Realistic Resources.
Petrochemical Industry is relatively self-explanatory I hope and should be relatively simple to add as well with current mechanics.
Transport & Packaging, is badly lacking at the moment but would complete the whole vertical integration when you allow a product to be produced, packaged and shipped by your own company. It would make the user feel like he's got real dominance when he has achieved that goal. It just feels wholesome in a way. Transport could be greatly abstracted yet kept interesting if you kept it relatively simple, I'm thinking of Trucks, Trains and Ships servicing lines between cities and the actual city itself. The current inter and intra-city transport mechanic actually somewhat supports this with individual calculations going from Firm to Seaport (Truck), Seaport to Seaport (Ship), and Seaport to Firm (Truck) again. Trains could be used if two cities were on the same continent and you could use a separate Rail-station building that acts as its own Seaport on land so to speak that even allows landlocked cities to have import/exports and add to that needed city variety that isn't always sea/riverside. Add in some interesting packaging mechanic (ask if you want more info) that also has an effect on branding and you can produce and ship your product from the mine all the way to the consumer.
Public Utilities and Realistic Resources, would go a long way in making each city unique and memorable when resources are more restricted and are actively explored for. Currently every city has EVERY resource and multiples of each resources available for exploitation which actually currently discourages having lots of cities for this aspect to shine in-game. Farming could also be much more unique when it is restricted depending on climate and then again circumvented interestingly enough through bio-factory farms that artificially grow crops at an increased cost with more electricity/water spending.
These three aspects tie in with each other and would go a long way in making the Import/Export and scope of the game much more interesting and provide needed variety from the classic game experience and flow.
But the absolute biggest
missed opportunity both gameplay wise and business wise in CapLab so far is ... (in my opinion)
Multiplayer and a Master/Educator Suite support for Educational Purposes.
What do I mean with a Master/Educator suite? Far reaching user tools such as a Map/City Editor and in-game mechanics that allow a game master to actively alter in a multiplayer game the environment to create interesting ways for the simulation to play out and act as a Judge/observer. Manipulating things such as Economic Boom Bust Cycles, actively choosing game events to happen to players to simulate troublesome times, alter seaport goods, Set inflation and interest rates, change the settings mid-game at will and influence thus in a deep and meaningful way how the simulation plays out.
When combined with extensive multiplayer support where large teams of players can work together in a single corporation you could have lots of teams competing against each other in a really big economic simulation with real business concepts at play. This would be really useful in schools and universities where the educator can take on the role of judge/observer and setup the game in the way he wants the simulation to run with teams of students competing as corporations against each other in real-time competitive play. When properly fleshed out, you would have teams of students playing out the different corporate roles such as:
Chief Executive Officer, in charge of the overall team strategy (Team Leader)
Chief Operational Officer, in charge of primarily making sure the firms operate smoothly and stay profitable (Secretary)
Chief Technical Officer, in charge of R&D and Transport (& Packaging possibly)
Chief Marketing Officer, in charge of Marketing (Possibly also Packaging if that became an element of Brand)
I remember playing a reaaaally shitty version of an economic simulation game at my business school about 7-8 years ago where we competed in teams of 5 in a web-based business simulator. Its base set of features was so poorly lacking I wish I was playing base Capitalism 2 instead at the time and it did remind me to actually re-install it back then
. That web-based simulation was also almost completely arbitrary because you had no clue on how the mechanics worked and there were so many exploits it was stupid to even play that game. One exploit was to literally sell back all your inventory to the supplier in the last game round to maximize your ''cash score'' ... which makes no fucking sense from a business perspective having a store completely empty on the last turn of a simulation to boost your score (because inventory was somehow not counted). Our team ended 2nd after we decided NOT to do the exploit gimmick by majority vote, the other team which actually performed worse overall won the game at the last turn by '"Cash score'' and they got a $100 prize ($20 a person) after they exploited the score mechanics... ah well at least we had our dignity and didn't sell out which each of us thought was more important than $20.
In any case, that web-based simulator was shit and couldn't hold a candle to Capitalism 2 let alone CapLab, but it was multiplayer (sortof) and marketed as ''educational'' so to speak
so our school spend a couple of G's on it each year and forced us to play a worse version of Capitalism in order for us to experience ... real business in a simulated environment.
I think CapLab actually has HUGE potential if it properly fleshed this part out of the simulation and marketed it properly as a business simulation for educational purposes. Adding support and tools for teachers to alter situations in-game and have student teams perform and compete against each other would be so much fun at schools as a business sport. Trying to find strategies to outwit your opposing teams and exploit the game's business environment would become a crucial tool and memorable to the players. The educator could set up interesting scenarios and traps such as maps with cheap labor cities that can produce goods for the cheap but because they are in ''dangerous and unreliable'' environments in the world, teach students that suddenly ... yep your products are now suffering from import/export tarrifs or worse are even blocked entirely due to trade laws or international incidents such as a sporadic virus outbreak
. Maybe you thought you were smart to setup a mine in a cheap African mining city ... or played it save and set up a slightly more expensive one in a safer location but did you take the precaution to build a proper warehouse to bridge the temporary disruption in trade or are you left starving without resources now for a while because of your shortsightedness? Those are all interesting scenarios that an Educator would be interested in playing out with their students in order to teach them some sound business principals. I think that has potentially a massive market in the educational/governmental sector if done properly.
In any case I've written enough for today
Hope this piqued your interest.
Signed,
Brutus
