Electrical Grid

[David]

We would like seek you guys' opinions on electrical grids, which consists of Electrical Substations in the game (see this post for more details about Electrical Substations: http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =16&t=2348)

Which of the following game design approaches would you prefer?

Approach 1)
Only the government can build and own electrical grids. Private companies are allowed to build and operate power plants only and they must sell their electricity generated from power plants to the government owned electrical grids.

All consumers buy electricity from government owned electrical grids.

Approach 2)
Private companies are permitted to build electrical grids in a regulated manner.

And there are 2 options for this:
a) a city only issues a license to a single company for operating a single electrical grid for a specific period of time

b) it allows multiple companies to set up their respective electrical grids in a city. Consumers (both industrial consumers and residential consumers) will have to select which electrical grid they want to buy electricity from. The player will have to constantly monitor the reliability of electricity supply and switch to a different electricity supplier if the current one fails to supply electricity reliably. And this will inevitably increase the amount of micromanagement.

There are various game design challenges and issues with this approach (and either options within this approach) as private companies may go bankrupt which will create crisis in electricity supply. To prevent that from happening, a complex set of gameplay rules will have to be introduced in the game, which will inevitably reduce the accessibility of the game, and is thus not desirable.


Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

[smith121362]

Where I live, We have quite a lot of choices as to what company we buy our electricity from. But all the electric lines in my area are owned by Concor. All the electric companies pay Concor X amount per kilowatt to deliver their product to their customers.
I would suggest approach #1 except private companies sale their electricity to customers and pay a fee to the government for using their power grid.

[counting]

Personally I would like all "events" and elements to be procedurally generated, instead of random number generators. Blackout in real life does come from unprepared electrical grid where business profit trump stability of energy demand. And fail could be FUN if the depth of the game mechanics are breath taking (what can I say, I am a big fan of Dwarf Fortress).

Hence I am more toward making energy sector a more complete mechanism than just a little add-on feature to the core game. In my opinions they can be expansion like, where the base game only have simple options in game setting, where you can choose from government supply (analog to seaport), also with the options of how many high government guarantee the "quantity". A 100% government owned electrical grid would be analog to option 1, where government "supplement" all electricity inefficient. A lower percentage given more freedom to private sector, and company will have to rely on stable energy sector to operate, less than 100% electrical supply only result in less production rate (this has nothing to do with 100% government owned, a well-established private sectors can be more efficient than government), instead of total shutdown. Another separate option could exist an upper limit to how many electricity grid can sustain, thus "total buildings" within a city will be limited (hence an interesting solution for AI building spam late in the game that could slow down the game execution speed), combined with government grid quantity, this could put a limit similar to seaport limit, where players have to invest in energy sector or politics to expand the electric grid to further the city's energy capacity. BTW, the electrical grid in real life usually is inter-connected, hence once a grid is down, others will hand over the load, it's a common practice for electric companies to sell excessive power to each other (which is different from manufacturing product, since there is only just one final product across the whole sector, electricity is just electricity). And there are protocols to make sure the compatibility of electrical grids. This feature should be included if we want to make a full feature for energy sector. In a sense, there are energy "bank" firms who operate as storage to smooth the fluctuation of power production, similar to warehouses, but quite different as storing manufacture products, and they usually rely heavily on government subsidies, and lot of power companies have their own storage for they are regulated to guarantee peak consumption to prevent blackout. This is usually part of the contract in industrial electricity use where a blackout will cost not just electric companies their credit, but they have to pay financial damage to their clients. (Although insurance can cover these damages, but we don't have similar mechanism in game yet)

In general, I don't like simplified options where it barely registers as a new feature. And it could be a test ground for the whole service industry business mechanism, where overhead really is "procedurally calculated" and effect the game play in meaningful way.

[David]

When there are multiple electricity suppliers in a city, do you think we should require/allow individual firms to select electricity suppliers? Or let the player select it on a corporate level (i.e. select an electricity supplier to supply to all firms owned by the player's corporation)?

How do you see the issue of increased micromanagement which may result from this?

[counting]

About firm level auto-link, well, we already have mechanismto similar, so it could a default option at firm level, and a logistic officer to apply all automatically if necessary like managing media firms links with CMO, or with apply all training budget to human resource office. I don't see it has to be either or. It could be part of the early game micro giving players more ability to manage overhead, and later on using officers, like a regional VP to help dealing with the excessive decision makings. (Although the AI has to be at least competent or they would create more problems than they solved. AI officers now really not that much of a help sometimes)

The rest questions are, first, how many computational resource these kind of options might caused, if every firms even AI controlled required these conditional linking mechanism, it might increase the lag a great deal for less powerful PC at maximum setting. Second question is how realistic that CEO level decision concerning electricity usage, and it really depends on what business you are talking about, and how realistic the energy consumption is simulated. For example, during manufacturing, would the electricity usage simulated at the level that while idle, it only consume the basic lightning amount (can players mothball operations, to even shutdown basic consumption?), but while at peak production rate, consumed the required amount accordingly and possibly causing blackout just by having too much industries in one city like in Simcity? Currently a car factory consumed as much overhead as a mill grinding flour, which although simplified simulation, drastically unrealistic. If we consider this level of simulation at energy sector, then the need for micromanagement isn't the question of a having a neat option, but necessity. Although it's reasonable not to simulate done to every detail, but a rough estimation with certain equations, and it could still create the illusion of a complex physic world underneath the numbers. Finally, We are talking about city simulation, hence environmental simulation and political simulation might also be part of the equation, where pollutions, climates, or policies, etc can cause changes in energy generation/consumption. These all required certain "decision making" which might be fun and unexplored by most business simulation games.

IMO, micromanaging sometimes isn't a bad thing, over-simplified and the appeal of a sandbox game might get lost in the process. Although I admit, it's a crucial factor in game design, with exposure to causal gamers is a great concern, especially when mobile gaming is a trend most recent game developers have to face, but I don't think Cap Lab fall into that category any time soon. It still remains quite "hard-core" for the most part. Ofc, whether you guys wish to keep it that way is an entirely different matter.

[Nazka231]

We should definitely have the option to have both, the default grid and our private grid. My family has a small hydraulic power station in France and you typically sell the electricity at a fix rate/range with a winter rate and a summer rate.

With the general grid we should see that like with renting building. You have a demand for it, the more you build power stations the more you drag down the price. But you also have to think about the future the next 5-10 years, so you have to plan and build enough power stations for that and not become stagnant by being totally focus about the present level of demand.

I definitively want to have the option to have both public and private by using the link already in the game or some option like ([ ] Use also the other grid (private or public) if this one (public or private) is down or is not enough).

Also there is another solution for the public grid that I really like. Imagine 3 companies each with one power station on the public grid. One set a low price, the other a medium and the last a high one. The city and us select always the lowest. If the whole city only need one power station then the one with the lowest price will make money (possibly) but not the 2 others. They won't sell anything. Now if the city need 2 power stations then the 2 (at a low and medium price) will sell electricity. The medium one will be smart enough to have a good price not too much or people will automatically go elsewhere but not also not too low. With this it provide freedom of price while having a strong enough market to avoid exploit of blackout (unless you kill all the other opponents) because you have this main public grid and people automatically buying from the lowest to the highest. And if for instance the power station with the lowest goes down with a city that needs 2 power stations then people will go with the medium and high price.

For instance if you have 3 power stations with each at $5, $10, $15 per MW (GW?) and everybody on the grid needs 2 stations, the price will be (5+10)/2 for everybody (because everybody is sharing the whole power of the public grid). If the $5 one goes down it will be (10+15)/2. And if a big company comes massively in this city dragging the demand to 3 power stations then it will be (5+10+15)/3 per MW.

And as I said before, in the public market if someone take the whole market and start to increase the price too much, it will create more and more opportunity for anybody else to come back in this city..

With this solution you have all advantages. Concurrence, freedom of price, public and private grid, and the utility effect with a share grid: people will automatically go with the lowest price to the highest depending the demand.

[Nazka231]

IMO, micromanaging sometimes isn't a bad thing, over-simplified and the appeal of a sandbox game might get lost in the process. Although I admit, it's a crucial factor in game design, with exposure to causal gamers is a great concern, especially when mobile gaming is a trend most recent game developers have to face, but I don't think Cap Lab fall into that category any time soon. It still remains quite "hard-core" for the most part. Ofc, whether you guys wish to keep it that way is an entirely different matter.

To add about that, Capitalism Lab is definitively a hard core game. There is actually no other game with accounting mechanics like that or other things. You had maybe the Railroad Tycoon series with a little bit of the demand and the stock exchange but it's all. So it is definitively a (the most) hardcore game.

And thanks to that, just to add a little bit of flavour without adding too much complexity, I will be happy to have different kind of power plants with different advantages (like hydraulic power plants giving bigger amount of energy than solar and wind power, with different efficiency, etc..). And also to have tech research that increase the efficiency of each. (Like heavy industry and any other utility company, the main way to increase gross revenue and earnings is by being more and more efficient through research because the product by itself is only electricity).

[counting]

I think game mechanic wise, there is also a problem I called "limited entrepreneurs" problem in the game. With just 30 and now 40 AIs, even in the future 50, it's still a very limited numbers who can rise up to take the empty spot left behind by an bankrupted company. The game simulated this problem by have so called "local providers", however in energy sector, this might be more difficult to do so, since when a major power company when down, the "backup" may not have the capacity to switch hand immediately, and sometimes may not even have enough capital to do so. It's even possible to "run out of" energy-focused AIs for a while, before some AIs switch their focus. And during this "fluctuation" period, or energy recession period, everybody suffers.

I think it's an aspect of the game related to B2B businesses, and a lot of service sector might encountered as well in the future if we didn't come up with a better way to solve it.