StashAugustine posted:

is the other one gideon the ninth or are there more lesbian economics and/or necromancy books than i realized

fuf posted:

I'm blown away by how finished the leaked build feels (emphasis on feels because I didn't actually try and play properly).

Really good sign that it's this far along and we don't even have a release date yet. Hopefully that means there is a lot of time for polishing.

Groogy posted:

So I saw someone in this thread mention that the source had leaked together with the build? Is that the actual source or is it just the layman's term for the script files as "the source code"?

Baronjutter posted:

The whole international trade system, I'm not sure on it. I liked the idea when they announced that inter-block trade wasn't automatic and that there were now markets as that seems much more historical. I thought trade deals would then become deals that both parties would agree to. But since trade is entirely unilateral, you can simply send your goods or buy your goods from anyone, it sounds like one of those things that has a fairly optimal solution but forces the player to micro. I wonder if we'll be getting any automation orders like "sell 10 iron at highest price" which would automatically sell 10 iron to whichever market would give you the most money for it and it would update every few months or so.

I've seen screenshots where people's trade page has like screens worth of ongoing manual trade deals. It seems like a lot to have to constantly monitor and fuss over. Do I still need those 5 machinery? Oh poo poo the place I was selling grain to had the price collapse now I need to find a better market to sell to. Why am I exporting ammo but also importing ammo I don't remember !?

Stairmaster posted:

there also probably should be a noti for when a building can upgrade to a production method without a loss in profitability but I'm gonna give paradox the benefit of the doubt and assume that's just unimplemented atm.

Eiba posted:

Well, one issue with that is all the trades are "free" and just cost you convoy capacity. I don't think there's much "buy low sell high" going on. As far as I can tell making an import trade route just drives the price down in your market because there's more supply, while driving the price up in the other market. (And I know they're not actually free- but the cost is just the maintenance on your ports generating convoys so you're already paying for the convoys if you have the capacity.)

Baronjutter posted:

The whole international trade system, I'm not sure on it. I liked the idea when they announced that inter-block trade wasn't automatic and that there were now markets as that seems much more historical.

Lady Radia posted:

have folks playing the leak been sending their crash reports to pdx?

Tuna-Fish posted:

This is not historical at all. This era is the heyday of the independent tramp freighter. For most of the period, most naval trade was handled by individual ship captains buying things from where they are cheap and delivering them to where they are expensive, with no government or even corporate involvement at any point. It got really strange at times, for example during the opium wars the British instituted a naval blockade of China, and most of the ships they ended up having to shoot at to make them go away were British merchant ships who really didn't appreciate the government getting in the way of them making a profit.

A historical way to implement all of this would be to let all countries issue import and export tariffs/subsidies for specific goods, and letting countries build shipping industry buildings that earn money by having their fleets pick up and drop off stuff to try to equalize effective prices worldwide and take a cut from the spread.

Poil posted:

It's the least they can do.

Maybe it was all intentional to make a public test without people realizing?

guidoanselmi posted:

Uh how do you colonize? I have the tech but can’t see the option for colonizing a decentralized nation anywhere.

Eiba posted:

You also need your laws set up to let you colonize. I never played a county that had colonization laws, so I'm not sure if it's actually in the game, but I assume the option would be under diplomatic plays, either through the map mode or directly through diplomacy.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Someone suggested Paradox rolling with it and just releasing an Early Access version and I would pay for it.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Someone suggested Paradox rolling with it and just releasing an Early Access version and I would pay for it.

Baronjutter posted:

This is already the paradox model for the first couple years of a game's release.

Stairmaster posted:

https://twitter.com/gundamcel/status/1516473507512819716?s=20&t=hbegWQEwCrhOnvUFOH8Rag

Stairmaster posted:

how do you get steel going if you can't subsidize?

Zkoto posted:

They should formalise it then! I’m dying to play the drat thing, but don’t want to play the leak, it just doesn’t feel right to play something they had no intention of making public.

Eiba posted:

Regardless of its historicity, I think the current system is better than a free for all specifically because it gives the player agency. Having one big world market and letting you tweak it would make it a lot harder to tend to your garden and see what pulling one lever does vs another. That's always been my issue with the Victoria series.

My prior Victoria experience has always been: "My steel factory isn't profitable enough, I need to mine more coal." [Coal proceeds to disappear into the black hole that is the world market], "I have no idea if I've done anything meaningful." This leak has been a ton of fun because you can see your steel industry bounce back after making another coal mine. You need to a-historically isolate markets to give the player that kind of feedback, I feel.

And in terms of the historicity vs gameplay- This era also saw governments "building" industry by giving financial incentives to private corporations, or just giving land to the private railroads and so on. I would not want the building interface to be a bunch of abstract financial incentives. It's fine and good to just click a button and build a railroad. Likewise, the trade routes in this era may have been outside government control and actually the product of abstract financial incentives, but I see no issue with the player clicking a button to direct it, to represent all the complicated tariffs and subsidies a government would have to actually offer to make these things happen.

Good riddance to the simulations mindset when it comes to things like this. I like buttons I can click that just do the things.

Now, this trade system is far from perfect. It would probably be ideal if you could set up some rules for auto-trades. If you have x spare convoys and the price of an good is y% higher than the base price, establish the closest trade route. Or the one most effective per convoy. Or something.

I think automating it is going to be pretty hard with all the factors that already go into it. Convoys are something you probably want to manage, and different trade routes cost different numbers of convoys, in addition to the price of the goods in both markets. I kind of think the level of abstraction we have is good and they might want to lean into it- how much it costs doesn't matter, the price just goes up a set amount in one market and down a set amount in another market. Maybe you could dedicate a portion of your convoys to just "do your best guys," and let them be the tramp freighters picking up a smattering of expensive goods. But that would create a bunch of issues too, I think.

At the very least you should really be able to embargo countries as well as specific goods though. If there's a "damage relationship" button that uses influence, there might as well be an "embargo" button that does the same thing but also prevents them from establishing trade routes with you.

Deltasquid posted:

quote:

We have (of course) read many of the posts community members have made since playing the leak, both positive and negative ones. Fact is, no matter how in-depth or insightful, none of them identify anything that’s new or surprising to us. Many of the concerns raised were already scheduled to be addressed in the development plan up to release. Even the most positive posts about how fun and engaging the game is even in an unbalanced, unpolished state are tainted with the knowledge that this first impression is still a let-down compared to what it ought to have been. For this reason, none of the feedback we’ve gotten as a result of the leak is really actionable or of any real use to us. It has mainly served as a hit to the team’s morale and a distraction from finishing the game, and in fact made it harder for us to act on your feedback, tainted as it is now by all the factors mentioned above.