Talk:Second Sphere Suggestion Box

Trade

By Peel
Trade operates on the following premises:

• It is a way of transforming spare production into cash.
• It is a supplement to a collaborative fiction game, not a core mechanic of SimBudget 2: The Revenge of Spreadsheets.
• It is not efficient. Production is production, not wealth.

There are two types of goods:

• Bulk goods are made with PIP, representing refined metals, clothes, computers assembled from foreign components for export, and so on.
• Complex goods are made with CIP, representing microchips, holoprojectors, vaccines, smallcraft rockets and so on.

Each IP spent on goods gives a certain return dependent on various factors:

• Tech level. Bulk good return varies with global tech level, and not by very much. Complex good return varies with civilian tech level, much more strongly.
• For some SP you can buy a space elevator which gives a bonus. Being already in space gives it for free as a compensation for vulnerability.
• Being catapulted could give a bonus in which case it would charge SP.

Trade Routes and Blockades

It would be neat to have some kind of mechanics involving these. Ideas:

• You have trade routes to defined hubs, like Londenium, Phezzan, etc. These are the routes your ships will be expected to be found on for those who want a hand at piracy.
• Rim exploration can discover new trade routes, which may be more profitable if the far end has something cool and rare to sell in exchange for tacky baubles.
• Blockades of course mean you can't profit from trade goods, but they also diminish your wealth output. Your PIP and CIP do not determine your entire industry, just that controlled by the government for military purposes. There is an additional mass of industry that contributes wealth through taxation and is hobbled by the cutting off of external markets and supplies (and which you dig into for wartime mobilisation).

Thorny Issues

• People will make money by building military units and selling them above cost, rendering trade superfluous.

• MJ suggests logistics penalties for TL and block differences, but that doesn't address in-bloc problems.

• Self-sufficient economies not meaningfully affected by blockades should be possible.

FBH comments:

You're not making trade attractive enough for anyone to bother with. If we have a trade goods system we should implement it like the one in LoE, with a return of about 1.5 or more WU per Trade Good. This makes trading real and important to players, and means that trade convoys being blocked is actually important rather than having a mechanic which either doesn't allow people to be self sufficient or means you hardly get any returns on investment.

• The problem with this is that it makes production better than wealth for generating wealth. The drawbacks to trade (piracy, blockades) as a method of wealth production are not going to come up very often. Peel 18:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)