Corporations / Companies

[Holton]

Why: Politics and War's strength over other games in the genre (nationsim) is its diverse economic gameplay. There is no singular right way to play for every single nation or alliance - the economic gameplay should and does shift based on certain criteria.

 

Differing tax rates for example, city builds, infra levels, loans, grants, we've even seen the rise of player-made "banks".

 

So building upon this inherent strength of the game, I think an addition of in-game corporations would be not only interesting but add an entire new layer of depth to economic gameplay.

 

 

 

How: So every player would have three options: Create a corporation, Invest in a corporation, or Nationalize the economy (not participate in Corporations). In order to accommodate all styles of economic roleplay, all three should provide benefits. This way we could implement a new feature and the communists/fascists wouldn't have to break immersion. There could also be a separate alliance tax on corporations.

 

     1. Creating a Corporation - Again, similar to the baseball team, you start off small and grow through investment. You would have the option to either privately invest and grow your corp totally under your control and 100% of the profits (benefits) would go into your pocket, but so would the expenses. Corporations give you an income proportional to your investment - based on the current Market index.

 

     2. Investing - I feel like this option should be open to all players as long as they haven't Nationalized. So even if you have a corporation you can invest in others. In order to invest, the creator of the corporation must either allow you (or your alliance) specific access (sort of like a reverse-embargo?) or take his corporation public and allow anyone to invest in it. This allows corporations to grow at an accelerated rate and potentially generate higher profits, but the profits become split proportionally among investors. You may also buy/sell shares of corporations amongst other investors (or if this would be too complex, you could simply "cash out/liquidate" your share of a corporation(s).) Investing gives you income proportional to your investment, proportional to the profits of the Corporation.

 

     3. Nationalizing - The "I wanna roleplay my Communist nation" option. Choosing this will disable the options of investing and creating a corp, but it will also give you a flat-rate boost to your economy. You can disable this option any time should you wish to invest or create a corporation. Once you enable this, you automatically "liquidate" all of your stock in any corporation.

 

 

 

There could be additional features added into this idea to expand it but I'm trying to keep it basic for the initial pitch. I also purposely left actual numbers vague as I'm not initially sure how best to balance it.

[Holton]

To expand a bit - corporations would be tied to the resource market index.

 

So initially your returns would be, say, 0.5*Market_index per day. So right now that'd be an extra 8,000 for a basic corporation.

 

Each upgrade would boost the income so:

 

1st upgrade - 0.75*Index per day which would be about 12k per day

2nd - Index per day, so ~16k per day

3rd - 1.2*Index per day

 

etc.

 

The idea isn't to create a money-sink that never gives returns. This would be a mechanic that could potentially involve multiple people collaborating to bring in actual additional income that would impact their bottom line. Sort of like treasures do now but it would be a buyable thing that you would have to build/work at and not limited within an alliance (per se).

Edited March 10, 2017 by King Foltest

[Edward I]

Sounds like extra load on the server and a pointless increase in the money supply in-game.

 

The point of baseball was to be a time sink for hyperactive players, not a serious source of revenue. If you want to invest in other nations, give them a loan and demand they pay you back with interest. The game already has actual, publicly-traded companies (banks) that invest in actual resources. I don't see why you want an abstract simulation of something that already exists added.