Refining the Rules

[disorganizer]

I can also agree with thr 5g/tc.
SaaM: we should maybe implement it step by step though. To many different fields are changed and so many people may get confused (see demogame I).

 

[Strider]

Things that we need to get done:

1) Create a certain amount of gold that circles around in the Demogame. We can not have gold coming from no where and going to no where.

2) We create a thread welcoming newbies to the demogame and describing the game at best possible. The demogame is confusing and we need to make it simple.

3) Create more jobs....

4) Have food and cloths NEEDED for the demogame, but have it where they do not need to buy food and cloths manually.

 

[disorganizer]

Are clothes really needed ;-P ?
In fact, it should also be a difference if someone buys a knights armor for example or just a normal suit.
The normal clothes should wear out MUCH faster.

Anyway: Who would keep track of it?
We should not force people to buy things. But of course, you could say: "why should i hire you? You dont even have adequate clothes!" Or just make regular coth buying a prerequisite for special jobs or something.

 

[Shaitan]

Originally posted by Strider
Things that we need to get done:

1) Create a certain amount of gold that circles around in the Demogame. We can not have gold coming from no where and going to no where.

2) We create a thread welcoming newbies to the demogame and describing the game at best possible. The demogame is confusing and we need to make it simple.

3) Create more jobs....

4) Have food and cloths NEEDED for the demogame, but have it where they do not need to buy food and cloths manually.

#1. We will always have money coming in and going to the big cloud of the economy. There is not an RPG in the world that defines all of the aspects of an economy because it is not important and is a herculean amount of work. That said, we can and are keeping a certain amount of gold in the system. This is done by determining the average amount of gold per player (easy to do from the account summaries) and adding gold when appropriate.

#4. There is absolutely no need for this or any other tracking of minutiae. Your character's normal needs are met by default. We have the restaurants and clothiers for the special times and desired items, otherwise you eat and dress normally. There is no difference between this and requiring people to poop. Or maybe we could have a poop subscription service? If you want to set up an automatic deduction for food and clothing then you are simply reducing salaries. There is no role playing benefit or economic benefit to this.

I agree with #2 and #3.

 

[disorganizer]

Now what about bringing the following things on the way VERY fast:

"tax for jobs"
a business can use its tax-money to pay employees. if the shop pays less money for the employees than the taxes demand, he has to pay the difference. contracted businesses are not considered employees
examples:
* the pub spends 40% of the income on employees, and so it does not have to pay taxes.
* the firm xyz only spends 10% on employees, so it still has to pay 10% tax, even if the business has contracted another business for 20% of the income.

welcome thread
well, this is obvious


we could consider that PHASE-I of our rulechanges.
if we got them going, we could try to find a consense on the other points. but those 2 points really need urgent action.

 

[Shaitan]

Make that "Cost of Goods Sold - labor and materials" and you've got me on board. Allow up to half of the normal profit loss to be applied to labor and up to half of it to be applied to materials when purchased from a player company. Labor and materials are the two largest factors in the cost of goods sold.

 

[disorganizer]

why not the full profit loss?
we could comply on your proposal changed to "full profit loss".

 

[Shaitan]

It would be the full profit loss if you had employees and a resource supplier. This would encourage both the hiring of employees and the development of resource manufacturers and suppliers.

 

[disorganizer]

But it would be a disadvantage to service companies.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by disorganizer
But it would be a disadvantage to service companies.

Not neccessarily. Even service companies need to buy things to do business. A delivery service would need carts and draft animals. the carts would need periodic maintainance. The animals need to be fed. All companies can use bank and bookkeeping services. These are not employees.

 

[disorganizer]

Ah! So the raw-material part is also for service usage. GOOD.
i comply.
in the pub example (just to check i understood it):
40% to employees, 10% to bookkeeping, 50% to owner.
this would lead to no reduction of the income, as of those 20% 10% are payed for services and >10% for employees.
and the counter-example:
40% to employees, then 10% would be the "tax"
and another:
5% to employees, then 15% would be the "tax"
and another:
5% employees, 5% service, then the "tax" would be 10%


EDIT:
we should have a tax-office which checks regularly if all businesses do their calculation right.
a 20g/tc office-head would suit this rpg well

 

[Strider]

Originally posted by disorganizer
Ah! So the raw-material part is also for service usage. GOOD.
i comply.
in the pub example (just to check i understood it):
40% to employees, 10% to bookkeeping, 50% to owner.
this would lead to no reduction of the income, as of those 20% 10% are payed for services and >10% for employees.
and the counter-example:
40% to employees, then 10% would be the "tax"
and another:
5% to employees, then 15% would be the "tax"
and another:
5% employees, 5% service, then the "tax" would be 10%


EDIT:
we should have a tax-office which checks regularly if all businesses do their calculation right.
a 20g/tc office-head would suit this rpg well

I agree..... Also instead of just standing here discussing it we need to act on them..... Anymore idea's?

 

[Stuck_as_a_Mac]

okay.. all of the points made here are excelent. i disagre with shaitan regarding the need for food and clothes, but thats fine. we need to act. now. im currently writing a report on roman rulers, so i dont have the time. we need someone to take the key points made in this thread and outline them in another thread. then we need to get the citizens of the RPG to agree on them, put it in poll and hit quorom. After that, we implement them, mabey with another free gold thing to get people buying again. So, lets get busy on an outline.

 

[Strider]

Originally posted by Stuck_As_a_Mac
okay.. all of the points made here are excelent. i disagre with shaitan regarding the need for food and clothes, but thats fine. we need to act. now. im currently writing a report on roman rulers, so i dont have the time. we need someone to take the key points made in this thread and outline them in another thread. then we need to get the citizens of the RPG to agree on them, put it in poll and hit quorom. After that, we implement them, mabey with another free gold thing to get people buying again. So, lets get busy on an outline.

I'll start working on doing this tonight....

 

[Shaitan]

We don't need a poll or quorum. We need 3/4 of the game managers to agree to implement the rule changes.

 

[Strider]

Originally posted by Shaitan
We don't need a poll or quorum. We need 3/4 of the game managers to agree to implement the rule changes.

Yup..... Also I'm working right now on getting ideas all together (I'll say which one's I agree with in that same post)

 

[disorganizer]

Dont try to implement all at once. Only the ones where there is general agreement first. Otherwise it would end like the start of the rpg

 

[Strider]

1) Automation: Automate the bank (I disagree with this one)

2) Have a set amount of gold in the demogame. Demogame managers can then control the demogame economy. (I agree)

3) Have clothing & food business's have a subscription(mainly delvering food & cloths for a fee) The differance places can offer differant prices for certain types of food etc. (I agree)

4) Stricter laws on "futuristic items." Only the stuff that is needed to run the demogame is allowed. This can be done by:

1) items which are known to any of our known nations (ingame) can be sold
2) items which are not yet to be produced by ourselves (we dont own the tech) receive a much higher revenue reduction. the seller only gets for example 10% of his net-income because it is an imported item. also, as soon as we get the technique to know it ourselves, the price MUST be at least 1/3ed.

this way we would have fancy new items to sell, but would also punish the seller and with that automatically increase the price of the product.
this should also apply to resources which exist in the game, but we do not have in our area of influence!

example 1:
the futuristic weapon shop wants to sell catapults.
* as long as none of our neigbors knows mathematics, the shop can not sell those.
* as soon as one of our neighbors gets mathematics, the shop may sell the item, but only receives 10% of the sales price. So if the price is set to 900 gold for the shop owner, he only gets 90gold for the sale.
* as soon as we ourselves get the tech, the shop receives its 80%(i think) of the selling price, but has to put that price to 1/3 of its previous amount immediately! So in our example the price would be set to 300 gold automatically.

example 2:
a shop wants to sell incense
* as long as none of our neighbors has it in its radius, this is not possible
* as soon as one of our neighbors has it, the shop gets 10% as above
* as soon as we have it, the shop will get its 80%?.
with resources not in the game, this will be handled differently. they will be considered available (like stones, wood etc).
as soon as a raw produces buys a tile and produces the raw-good, the raw-product must be baught from him! (I agree)

5) Add sales tax (I agree)

6) Limit the number of companies and shares of company's you own (I disagree)

7) Start making people have access to items that they sell (or make them have the material's to do it):

Farming: Requires a Grassland, plains, or floodplains tile. Price: 400g per tile

Lumbering: Requires a Jungle or Forest tile. Price: Jungle: 600g
Forest: 400g

Mining: Requires a mountain or hill tile. Price: 500g

Fishing: Requires a coastal/lake tile. Price: 400g

Luxeries: Any tile own that has a lux/resource/bonus will cost an extra 200g to exploit IE:

Stuck owns a lake that has a fish on it. He wants to make use of that fish. (to earn extra money from the tile) He pas 200g and he receives a ? amount bonus to that (I would suggest 2 for the fish) (I agree)

8) Lower the 100g freebie money. (I agree)

9) Have a charge to travel around the country (I disagree)

10) Sphere of Influence

This is my own contribution. I’ve been discussing this privately with a couple different people, trying to come up with something to propose. The most workable solution is to have sphere’s of influence throughout each province. That is, if a business is set up in a city in a province, it can service all citizens in that province. If a person lives in a province they can move freely about that province. This should be just fine. If I’m at the Marillion and want to stop at the Rebel Pub in Bavaria that might be a decent trek in virtual life but I’ve got 50 years to do it.

When provincial borders are crossed, make actual travel necessary. Bodyguards, caravan, whatever. Make goods more expensive to get to another province. Give a chance that robbers hit the caravan, etc. Maybe reduce profit by 20% per provincial border crossed. 10% if there’s a road, none if there’s a railroad.

The reason that a province is used instead of a distance (3 tiles or whatever) is because it’s workable and simple to keep track of. With a straight distance or city defined sphere, business owners will not check that a citizen is registered as living in the “right” area before doing a transaction. Citizens will get confused about what businesses they can and can’t go to. Provinces are easy to check and easy for citizens and business owners alike to conform to. Another reason for provinces compared to another system is we are playing on a BIG, BIG, SUPER BIG world. We will eventually have many, many, many cities. There is no way businesses will be able to expand to more than a few which will then restrict RPG citizens to those few cities. There also wouldn’t be country living folk like me and Cyc if you had to live in a city to do business there. ( I agree)

11) I. Units
A. When any unit is built, there is a citizen who will be selected to be that unit.
B. If a unit is built that defends a city, then there is no counterpart.
C. When that unit dies/becomes defensive, then the citizen just retires, but can be hired again.
D. If a unit occupies a city then the counterpart gets a small bonus.

II. Management
A. When the military becomes to big, then generals will be appointed to comand a certain number of units.
B. Another job will be a unit monitor. He/she will monitor all of the units and who is there counterpart. ( I agree)

12) Create a welcome thread to the RPG mainly laying out the rules and making it simple to get into. ( I agree)

13) example1:
shop pays 40% of income to employees
shop pays 10% of income to other firm for raw-material or service
with those numbers (both >=10%), the shop would pay no "tax"
example2:
shop pays 20% of income to employees
shop pays 5% of income to other firms
with those, the shop would pay only 5% as tax. 10% for employees are used, but the production expense is only half used.
example3:
shop pays 5% for employees and 5% for other firms
the shop would pay 10% (both 10% caps only half used)
example4:
shop payes nothing for employees and other firms
it would pay the full 20% tax (I agree)

14) Take this idea one step further (and a bit easier). Money paid for COGS (taxes) can be used to pay expenses (bookkeeping, employees, suppliers, etc) instead of going to the big cloud.

You sell a drink for 100g. 20g is normally COGS. Instead of going to the cloud that 20g may be kept as long as you are paying at least that much in expenses.

More realistic would be to allow half of COGS to be kept to pay expenses but that adds to the complexity and the incentive to hire employees is only half as great.
quote:Originally posted by disorganizer
gonzo:
exactly my point. thats why i hired people for the pub from the beginning with a fixed percentage of income.

shaitan:
i think we should offer the following possinility for the taxes:
* the income-reduction should be subtracted from the income of a company after salaries have been payed, not from the salesprices
* if a business goes under a certain g/tc level, no taxes are payed.
now to an example for that:
the pub sells a old drink for 100 gold.
splitting schema is 10% to bookkeeping, 40% employees, 50%owner
now:
20gold to income-cut, 80 is net income
8 to bookkeeping, 32 to employees, 40 to owner
my proposal:
10 to bookkeeping, 40 to employees
50 is income, 10gold to income-cut, 40 is net income
the net-income goes directly to owner/shareholders/biz-account

good, eh?

another idea:
of shareselling companies, tax not the income but the output of the shares! (I agree)

I think that is all... If I forgot any then tell me

 

[disorganizer]

Strider: well, the only ones we were complying on totally were shaitans 20% for work and material ideas. Which you completely seem to have left out?

 

[Strider]

Originally posted by disorganizer
Strider: well, the only ones we were complying on totally were shaitans 20% for work and material ideas. Which you completely seem to have left out?

Give me an example.... I didn't see a thing about 20% anything...