Preliminary Rules

[Carthaginian]

I like those ideas, Rock, but for clarification... The CONSTRUCTION option states that the city can construct a shipyard/port/city 'away from existing facilities.'
1.) How long would this take- and I know we are at the 'SWAG' stage on times?
2.) Can a city build at it's own location?
3.) Can a city swap between specialties with a one year cooldown, or is it fixed when set?

[The Rock Doctor]

1.  Construction time of shipyards, I think, is set out in "Naval Infrastructure".  Ah, yes:  two game turns per level.  I don't have a piece in for ports; it'd be about the same.

City construction time shows up in "Cities".  Pay the start-up cost in an Economic turn, and in the next one (a year later), it can have economic output assigned to it.  That would also extend to industries, if large enough to support one.  Rather than having Brooklyn build Queens, it'd be New York expanding a bit.

2.  A city building at its own location would simply be captured as an increase in its own economic output.

3.  Some transition should be allowed...

[Valles]

Question.

Rule structure creates a default city size of $200; this is good and workable. It's also implied that cities don't have to be that size - that they can be smaller, or that they can grow beyond it.

What happens, in regards to production facilities, with a city that reaches $400? If it had Boutiques originally, does it still only count as one such, or two? Or is it possible to slot something else, like Construction, into the 'new' slot?

[The Rock Doctor]

That's a good question, and one I need to grapple with.  Again, I don't want to set up a system that encourages concentration of everybody's assets into a few easily defended cities...

[Valles]

Left to my own devices, I think I'd probably build 13 settlements, twelve 'small towns' and a single primate city wherein one would find, well, every industry except dirt-farming. This would carry the implicit risk that if the latter falls, Croatoa is no longer a viable nation, and frankly, I'm fine with that.

If a single $1600 settlement is too large, well, I'm fine with that, too. I'm implicitly intending that Roanoke was built in the very earliest days of colonization, and that even if it were desired, replicating the city's infrastructure would be impossible, so learning that it was never practicable is hardly going to be a shock. Depending how the map looks, I might or might not be able to get the same cultural effect by clustering individual cities into a 'metropolitan area'...

I suspect that the 'best' way to incentivize decentralization would be to just say that most of a city's defenses come free with its construction... and that those defenses do not scale with population size past the first $200. This'd mean that larger cities are either proportionally less protected than smaller ones, or that the construction and operation costs of their defenses come straight out of the national budget in a way that smaller ones don't.

Obviously, this won't stop roleplayers, but I think that's a feature, not a bug...

[snip]

an idea that struck me on this subject earlier. What if adding in the ability to have more then one complex is still determent by the $ value of the city, but the values at which they become available increases at some non-linear rate. This would give players the ability to have more then one complex per city, but it would hit a point where it would become more economically sound to build a new city for acquiring additional complexes. It does not introduce a hard cap, but more of a soft one.

[Carthaginian]

I agree- city growth should slow as it get's larger.
Frankly, in this environment space will be at a very high premium and the more room that you have taken up by people, the less room that there will be for industrial development. If you have a big city with a large population, it will eventually be so crowded that no new industry will be built simply because there will be no room left in which to build.

People cam be stacked on top of each other for thousands of feet- but factories... not so much!

[Darman]

an idea that struck me on this subject earlier. What if adding in the ability to have more then one complex is still determent by the $ value of the city, but the values at which they become available increases at some non-linear rate. This would give players the ability to have more then one complex per city, but it would hit a point where it would become more economically sound to build a new city for acquiring additional complexes. It does not introduce a hard cap, but more of a soft one.

So a city with a $200 economy can have 1 industry slot and when it reaches $450 (an additional $250) it gets a second industry slot, and when it reaches $750 it gets a third... like that?  Because then it makes more sense for you to build smaller cities to $200 and a little more rather than concentrate on a massive city with $1600 economy that only has 5 industry slots rather than 7 or 8 if you had spread the wealth around. 

My question was actually going to be about the Arsenals:

The arsenal option may offset the need for gun/torpedo R&D, as players will not be able to add new weapons willy-nilly. [Note: I just noticed this sentence]

-snip-

-Arsenal:  Can manufacture guns or torpedos in two specific calibres (in any mount configuration).  Production can be shifted from one weapon to another, but this requires a year of down-time to retool.

My understanding is that this limits the owner of that particular arsenal to just those two gun/mount types unless we purchase them from someone else.  And is this an unlimited amount of that gun?  Or its cost/weight as determined in SS?

[The Rock Doctor]

A single arsenal would only produce two models of guns or torpedos, but you could have more than one arsenal scattered amongst your cities - if I've got my analogies right, like Vickers and Armstrong in the UK.

I don't see a reason to restrict weapon numbers for the lower caliber stuff.  We could cap the ability to produce larger caliber weapons.

[Valles]

Further questions.

1. Will it be possible to increase dirt production with directed research, as well as by building new settlements devoted to it?
2. The terraforming description mentions the use of engineering details; are these military specialist troops who don't happen to be listed in that section, or a 'free' benefit of having the dirt farm in the first place?

[miketr]

A single arsenal would only produce two models of guns or torpedos, but you could have more than one arsenal scattered amongst your cities - if I've got my analogies right, like Vickers and Armstrong in the UK.

I don't see a reason to restrict weapon numbers for the lower caliber stuff.  We could cap the ability to produce larger caliber weapons.

Any restrictions with respect to changing over an Arsenal to produce other stuff?  Time?  Cost?

Michael

[The Rock Doctor]

Additional dirt farming may be an option, and since you're interested in building on land, some transportation infrastructure rules will be necessary as well.

There will be an engineering unit add to the marine unit listing.

I think Jamie asked about arsenal change-overs earlier.  I'm inclined to think it can switch to new weapons, with suitable down-time to develop and re-tool for the new weapon - figure perhaps a year transitioning between weapons.  Production of the arsenal's other weapon wouldn't be affected.

I wasn't looking to apply a dollar cost to the process.

[miketr]

I am still not clear on how the cities effect economics or how the resources are to work.

1) What do you get when you 'buy' a city?  How many people and GDP does it get?

2) Who chooses the resources? 

3) How much does is cost to upgrade resources production?

Michael

[miketr]

I think Jamie asked about arsenal change-overs earlier.  I'm inclined to think it can switch to new weapons, with suitable down-time to develop and re-tool for the new weapon - figure perhaps a year transitioning between weapons.  Production of the arsenal's other weapon wouldn't be affected.

I wasn't looking to apply a dollar cost to the process.

Must have missed that, thanks for the answer.

Michael

[The Rock Doctor]

No problem - I'm here to answer.

I am still not clear on how the cities effect economics or how the resources are to work.

1) What do you get when you 'buy' a city?  How many people and GDP does it get?

2) Who chooses the resources? 

3) How much does is cost to upgrade resources production?

Michael

1.  The $20 or less that a player pays for a new city is basically the cost of constructing its basic infrastructure.  The civilian sector builds the rest of it.  The potential benefits to the player are:

-Physical occupation of the area in which the city is located.
-Decentralizing his economy to additional locations.
-Once the city is large enough, an industry.

While I think the $4000 starting economy is equal to around 20 million people, we aren't going to track population in the game. 

2.  Players will choose the industry of any city they build during play.  They will probably also be choosing the industry of their existing cities as the game starts (I might roll some of them - still contemplating).  I'll determine NPC industries.

3.  At the moment, the only form of resource production upgrade is the notion of allowing multiple industries per city.  The cost for that is to be determined.

I envision the current industry system to accomplish a couple of things:

-Quantify that the player has or does not have access to key commodities, without getting into the nitty-gritty of how much he has and how much he uses.

-Limit weapons research and construction without applying dollar costs that are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty inconsequential to a player's budget anyway.

-Provide a bit of "color" to the player's nation, by allowing him to determine whether his focus is on military power, trade, or expansion.

If a player desires more industry, then his options are:

-Start with a number of small cities, and let the economy grow until those cities can claim industries

-Start new cities once play begins

-Grab other people's cities.