Talent and Politics DLCs

[bailey5050]

Objective
The core of Cap Labs is a business simulation. In my opinion, this game is trending toward a slider game, meaning the player simply adjusts the slider in the telecom or insurance companies and does not really have any business, or strategic, decisions. I want to introduce more strategy into this game, or at least get folks pointing to this direction.

Also, I want to attempt to add some realism to the game. Some of the ideas presented attempt to make it feel like real life, or at least that is my hope.

There are two main DLC ideas that work together: talents and politics. Together, they provide more strategic decisions by expanding upon the simulated humans (existing talent system) and introduces a more advanced political system.

I use the term manager and talent interchangeably. Also, a business unit is a retail, factory, farm, warehouse, etc.

The Talent DLC
The talents DLC is geared to expanding upon the current talents and to make managing people part of the gameplay. The new attributes of the talents will affect gameplay decisions by the player and AI controlled companies.

Here is a list of the attributes for talents, to be blended in with the existing table.

+firstName
+lastName
+currentAge
+retirementAge
+Csocialability
+Ccounseling
+Cfocus
+IQ
+Ambition
+Corganization
+Cpr
+Fpr
+Fsocialbility
+Fcounseling
+Forganization
+CityAssigned
+Lobbyist
+Research
+Salary
+City

Let's discuss these attributes and talk about what they will affect.
1. Current Age - each person is assumed to be a college/uni graduate and should initially be set to 20 to 24.
2. Retirement Age - Every year, each manager ages (January 1). The retirement age is obviously when the manager wishes to retire. This value is not shown to the player and should be between 62 and 70.
3. IQ - the intellect of the manager. Based on the high school level and wage level of city. Wealthy kids are able to spend money to learn while “good schools” are able to effectively teach kids.
4. Ambition - how motivated the manager is in learning. Randomly based.
At this point, I want to introduce the concept of training the manager. Each manager can be trained up to two times. In the real world, a person can acquire more education (e.g. MBA in America). The player may elect to train the manager. If this happens, the manager is unavailable for 2 or 4 years respectively to simulate them going to a 2 year or 4 year program.

Both the 'F' and 'C' series of variables range from 1 to 100. 50 means there is no affect on the specific element while numbers below 50 add to the cost and values above 50 decrease the cost.

These values are modifiers to the base expense.

5. Csocialibility - this value affects the advertising cost and reach of the business unit. This value will increase/decrease the base advertising expense. If you wish to spend $100,000 on advertising and the manager's Csociability value is above 50, the actual cost will be less than $100,000 because the manager was able to negotiate a better rate. Conversely, if the value is below 50, the actual advertising expense is greater than $100,000. This concept is to be used for all the 'C' variables.

6. Ccounseling - this value affects the salaries

7. Cfocus - this value affects the construction speed and maintenance costs. See the Construction & Maintenance section below for more details.

8. Corganization - each unit within the building is more productive. Purchasing units buy a few more items, manufacturing units produce a few more units, etc.

The 'F' series of variables are not shown to the player. These are the potential of the manager and mark the ceiling of the attribute. For example, a manager might have a Csociability skill of 50. The Fsocialibility skill must be 50 or higher. So, the F[variablename] is always > or equal to the C[variablename]. This allows for training to have an effect.

Just to be clear, any 'C' variable has an associated 'F' variable. The 'C' variable is the current value and the F is upper limit.

Training
Let's look at an example. A manager has a Csociability of 50 and a Fsociability of 75 (this is hidden from the player). The player elects to train the manager. The IQ, ambition and university level of the city in which the manager (+CityAssigned) are the factors that determine how much gain the training will provide. Even with a second training, the manager will not reach 75 unless iq, ambition and university level are all 100. Note: the university level is used, making it a bit more meaningful to corporations.

Donating to Universities
Corporations should be allowed to donate to the university ("sponsor research projects") to increase the skill of the school, independent of the government.

Construction & Maintenance
Each business unit placed on the board currently appears instantly. I wish to change this. The new unit will be unavailable for X days. The money to build the unit will be removed from the player at day 1 but the building will not be accessible until X days. The manager will be able to affect (decrease X) so the building will be accessible faster.


Each building will have a maintenance cost. In real life, buildings need repainting, doors replaced, etc. The variables that affect the maintenance cost are:
a. Building size (the 4x4 units cost less than a 6x6)
b. Type of building class (retail buildings should have a higher maintenance than a factory or farm because you want to make the retail building attractive for the public to shop.
c. Traffic index - to be used with wage rate. In real life, the lower income areas of a town have more graffiti and petty crime. These buildings get destroyed quicker and need more money to repair. In a retail shop, you have more people browsing in the store (doors opening/closing more often, etc).
d. Wage Rate - to be used with traffic index.
e. Crime rate - to be used with both traffic index and wage rate. (See Crime for more details)

Crime
Crime will increase maintenance costs for all business units and reduce sales for retail stores and warehouses selling e-commerce.

Factors of crime:
1. Highly populated - more humans means more crime.
2. Lower wealth areas of the city - poor people might need to steal food for their families.
3. Pollution – pollution lowers the land value. Wealthy people live in high land value area. Thus, pollution is not a root cause of crime but does have an impact.

The mayor AI should place police departments in high crime areas.

9. Lobbyist - used in the Politics DLC
10. cPR – used in the Politics DLC
11. Research - The current research ability used already by talents in the R&D centers.
12. Salary - how much the talent makes a year.
13. City - the current city the talent resides in. The city value will be the city for whatever the business unit the manager is in charge of. If there is no business, the city will revert to the city where the HQ resides.

General Rules
1. If a business unit does not have a manager assigned to it, the assumption is the HQ is managing the day-to-day operations and there will be a penalty. This penalty should encourage players to hire managers. The penalty will increase the costs by a variable amount (variable changes every month) and the sales will suffer (sales force not motivated/fully trained when corporate runs the store.)

2. Whenever a talent is hired, a newly created one in the pool of talents so there are never zero talents for AI and human players to select from.

3. The attributes of the talents is based on the university level of the city. Since talents can be assigned to any city, their salary should be based on their current skill level. After training, their salary should rise.

4. If a manager is used a lobbyist (requires the Politics DLC), a new spot in HQ should be added called “Lobbyist.” To achieve this, the HQ will need a second floor added. So, second floor of HQ only allowed if the Politics DLC is enabled.

Transferring Talents
If you wish to transfer a talent from one business unit to another, you will pay a fee of $100,000 to move the talent and their family to their new home. The fee is designed to prevent players from constantly swapping talents.

Note: The managers' attributes would apply to freight businesses, too. Freight companies will have labor, maintenance, overhead and capacity costs.

Optional Twist
Each freight company could take x days to ship items, based on distance and their freight quality rating. This is an idea I have not fully fleshed out but it would add another dimension besides cost when choosing which freight company to select. The downside, and potentially huge programming challenge, might be having to store all the items being shipped in data tables. A player would need to view the items “in transit” to their business units.

Service Businesses
We already have two service businesses: insurance and telecoms. To explain this concept, I will only use the computer repair shop with the understanding that this technique can be applied to any service business.

A computer repair shop buys inputs from company A and "manufacturers" these inputs to “computer repair services”, which is then sold to the customers in the sales unit. So, the purchasing inputs might be circuit boards, gold, perhaps anti-virus software (assuming the DLC is enabled). These purchasing units link to a manufacturing unit which produces the service. The sales unit sells the service. The demand for computer repair is based on average(last 3 months sales of computers) sold by all companies (no local competitors are included).

Note: The managers' attributes would apply to service businesses, too.

Freight
I wish to copy the advertising model for this feature. There are three standard freight companies (land, air and sea or whatever names you wish to call them). They compete on price. Each freight company has a capacity they can handle, much like the telecom infrastructure concept. These AI controlled freight companies will constantly expand their capacity to ensure there is enough supply of freight for all the companies.

A player may start their own freight company. The screen will be very much like the telecom screen. You can decide on how much to invest in capacity and set your price.


Interface for Talents
To have access to the manager feature, one must set up a headquarters and create the HR unit. A new button should be created called 'Managers.' From this, one can view current managers, hire/fire managers and reassign. One can still use the talents for R&D as is but you must have an HR unit set up in your HQ before you can use these extra features. Once this is accomplished, each business unit will have a “Manager” button a player can click, even those units built prior to setting up the HR unit.

The Politics DLC

Automation
In real life, we have robots replacing humans. I am sure we all can see this happening in our countries.

The Effects of Automation on a Single Business Unit
1. Currently, wages are $2,000 per month and rise with inflation. When the player chooses to automate, the wages are cut in half (or x%) but still increase with inflation because the techs and remaining employees still receive raises.

2. When a business unit is automated AND it is a retail store, the sales drop slightly. There is a category of person that feels automation takes jobs away. These folks may simply shop somewhere else. To simulate this in the game, a slight drop in sales.

The cost of automation might be $1,000,000 or something large to simulate a company installing robotics. The benefit is the business unit competes on lower cost since its labor costs has been drastically cut.

Automation is a choice the player can make and a new attribute for the AI CEO needs to be added “Automation” to indicate how likely the AI would automate its business units.

Government Contracts
The government currently spends money. The government would have a list of items it wishes to buy and the players and AI controlled corporations would submit bids to satisfy these requirements.

There are four variables that determine who the government will choose:
a. Success rate - what is the company's completion rate on prior projects?
b. Time - for those past times the company was chosen, how quickly did it fulfill the contract?
c. Cost
d. Talent lobbyist (from the Talent DLC) – the higher the value, the better.
e. Bribes (see Bribes below)

The types of products the government chooses to buy will be any finished goods. I hope this will allow for the mods created to be used and still work flawlessly.

Bribes
A corporation should be able to donate money to a politician in order to have a greater chance of receiving the contract. Just because a corporation does donate, it does not mean guaranteed success.

Note: If the mayor is a player controlled AND the government accepts only the player's (and the player's subsidiaries) bids, the approval rating of the mayor will drop because the media and other whistleblowers will report the corruption.

Labor Strikes
There are three classes of worker (as presented here): executive (in HQ), manager (talent) and business unit worker (labor for each business unit). In real life, the average worker gets angry when the CEO makes over 1,000 times what they make. In game play terms, if the executives in the HQ make over Z times what the average worker makes, there should be a chance of them going on strike. The strike affects only one business unit (at random). If a strike happens, the player or computer AI can:
a. Do nothing - unit produces nothing.
b. Agree to a pay increase for the workers at that unit.
c. Automate – this automates the business unit and ends the strike.
d. Decrease the CEO pay

Every “turn” the workers are on strike, there is a small, but growing, chance that another business unit will strike. If option d is selected, the workers have a large chance of returning to work.

The idea is not to pay the CEO an extremely high salary and attempt to simulate real life.

Note: A corporation can increase the wages above the market rate. This should have the affect of boosting the efficiency of all units in the business unit because the employees are more motivated. If the wages are increased above the standard rate, they can not be decreased for X days. We do not want the player to constantly be changing wages and, in real life, people would not tolerate getting a raise and then losing the raise.

The increase wage button would be visible on each business unit. Optionally, the HR department could have a global variable that increases the wages for all business units.

Laws
This is really the heart of the Politics DLC. Here are types of examples:
1. The government wants to ban product X in Y years. The game already has this feature for certain products. I am just expanding it. Banning one product might, but not always, means another product will grow (gas powered cars to electric cars). Another example might be soft drinks are banned because the government wants everyone healthy.

2. The government awards cash for the first company that develops product X. (think vaccine for a virus)

Interface
The interface of this will exist in the HQ with a new unit called Chief Lobbyist. There will be a buttons for each function. The chief lobbyist is a talent and should be paid as an executive. If a chief lobbyist is demoted to a business unit manager, the salary would be reduced accordingly. Conversely, if a business unit manager is promoted to chief lobbyist, they will expect a huge pay raise.

Gameplay Implementation
After accessing the HQ and assuming a Chief Lobbyist has been hired, the player is able to select the raw material, semi-product or finished good and choose whether it should be banned or un-banned (product is banned already).

The player is then presented with a required "donation" to the politician to make this a law. The amount will be based on the magnitude of the law, the political party the politician belongs to, the support rating of the politician, state of economy, the Chief Lobbyist's 'lobbyist' skill and size of company asking.

Banning raw materials will fail more often, other things being equal, than a finished good because raw materials are used to make many products.

If the law is successfully passed, it will take X months before implemented to give all companies a chance to react. If the mayor is player controlled and passes all laws presented by the player's company and rejects all laws by AI companies, the approval rating will drastically decrease due to corruption being reported by the media.

Since all products (raw material, semi-product, finished good) are potentially being used (ban/not ban), I think this will work with all mods.

Multi-National Companies
As companies grow outrageously large based on market share and sales volume, consumers will want a change and start buying from other companies. In the real world, people are deleting their Facebook accounts and do not buy from Amazon because they feel these companies are too big. To simulate that concept in the game, there would be triggers that affect demand by x percent (demand decrease). The Chief Lobbyist's ability Cpr (Public Relations) would negate this demand decrease. An example: player company triggers threshold and demand for its products/services is reduced by 3%. The manager PR rating adjusts this 3% by 50%, thus making the effective decreased in demand to 1.5%. This cpr is a global variable and affects all business units.

Final Comments
I want to make this more of a strategy game by creating layers on what already exists rather than more slider-based DLCs. However, these are just my suggestions. Please excuse any typos or grammar mistakes.

[foran]

Support !

[mdemircan2]

Support

[David]

I would recommend that you create a poll for your suggestion to gauge the community's interest in it. There would be a higher chance that the dev team will implement it if the interest level is high.

You could see some examples of the polls in the Suggestions forum at http://www.capitalism2.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=14

Since this post contains a fairly long list of suggestions, it will be helpful to create separate polls for different topics of the suggestions.