Corporations

iceman · 2013-11-16 22:55:58

This is a fun little idea that would definitely not work thematically, but I think would work fairly well mechanically. Maybe a future expansion or mod (or DLC for $49.99!!!)?

Any player (or players) that have enough money can buy a Corporation, giving them the Corporation Headquarters and Warehouse. The Warehouse would have a 40x40 building space, while Headquarters would be 50x50. The cost would be something like $25k, so most likely a single player wouldn't be able to own a Corporation (especially since they would have to defend it). Every corporation would produce one or more tool or house object, and other players would be able to buy tools from the corporations for a cheaper price (giving money to the owners, of course).

The default setup would be to let corporations produce tools for 95% of their regular price, then sell the tools at whatever price they want. The owners have to give the corporation funds (to be stored in the Headquarter's safe), and set up some sort of ordering schedule. The schedule lets the corporation automatically buy the desired amount of objects every hour, as long as it has required funds. For instance, it could be set up to fill the stock to 40 ladders every hour. If there is no stock left, players are unable to buy from the corporation.

By spending money in scientific research, a corporation could learn "Trade Secrets". A "Trade Secret" reduces the cost of production by a certain amount - the more money spent in research, the bigger the discount. However, "Trade Secrets" are stored in your Headquarters and are like paintings, though. Anyone who tries to rob your headquarters can see which ones you have, and if they are successful they steal all Trade Secrets, as well as any of your corporations funds. If a player is successful in robbing a corporation, they keep all the funds and can give the Trade Secrets to a chosen corporation - this opens the door to corporations hiring mercenaries to sabotage other corporations for them. If they don't give the Trade Secrets away, they are instantly converted to cash.

Warehouses store all of the current stock of a Corporation. They are a bit smaller than Headquarters (although still bigger than houses), and so are a more tempting target for individual players. A player who manages to break into the warehouse of a crowbar-making Corporation is lucky indeed .

For building both Warehouses and Headquarters, players must still complete a tool-free self test (to prevent them from putting a safe behind 49 layers of concrete). Only one owner may edit the house at a time. All normal house objects can be used (although some might be changed, such as Pit Bull to Security Guard and Panic Button to Alarm). If they want to, the owners can include "Workers" in their design, which would function like family members do now, letting them use Alarms and pick up Shotguns, although they would be optional in the design. Any objects that the corporation produces would cost the production cost, of course

I think that this could provide an interesting end game for players - instead of just sitting in their fortress, they could try to run a business, protecting 3 buildings instead of 1, undercutting rivals' prices, and more challenges. I think it also could be interesting for partners in business. You would constantly be wondering if your partner would suddenly decide that you (or rather, your pocketbook) have outlived your usefulness and change some small part of your Headquarters design to kill you during the self test. Maybe the source of the contention is that, even though both of you get equal amounts of the profits earned, a partner has been taking ladders out of corporations stock for his own robberies. Or maybe - well, who knows what sort of shenanigans might occur if these were in the game

John The Baptist · 2013-11-17 07:40:40

Umm... You do realise the entire point of the game is to protect your house?
In fact, the name itself refrences the law the game is based on.
Besides, if 5 people decided to set up a corperation and a warehouse, they would each need to invest $5,000 just to get it set up...
So anybody rich enough to do this probably has all the tools they need.
This also has the potential to be abused like crazy if people manage to invest enough into trade secrets.
Lets say a company makes explosives, and the cap for trade secrets is a further 45% discount.
This means they will now cost about $950 to make.
They can then be sold for $950.
And with $5000 your can buy 5 explosives to be able to break through 5 layers of solid concrete.
Meaning if somebody had $10,000 and a dead wife, you could buy saws for $200 then hack through all the tricks and traps using saws and explosives, then making off with about $3,000 with no way for the other person to defend themselves.

Axious · 2013-11-17 14:55:05

I think this idea sounds awesome. There may be a few things to work out obviously, but I think a more in depth endgame like this would fit very well when balanced properly. It would be sweet to be able to buy like 10 security guards for a big corporate building, equipped with different weapons (that maybe shoot different distances and have different costs), and maybe even have them walk around on paths to make the game more difficult (and more fun to rob). After all it should be much more scary trying to rob a corporation than a house!

iceman · 2013-11-17 15:17:37

John The Baptist wrote:

Umm... You do realise the entire point of the game is to protect your house?
In fact, the name itself refrences the law the game is based on.
Besides, if 5 people decided to set up a corperation and a warehouse, they would each need to invest $5,000 just to get it set up...
So anybody rich enough to do this probably has all the tools they need.
This also has the potential to be abused like crazy if people manage to invest enough into trade secrets.
Lets say a company makes explosives, and the cap for trade secrets is a further 45% discount.
This means they will now cost about $950 to make.
They can then be sold for $950.
And with $5000 your can buy 5 explosives to be able to break through 5 layers of solid concrete.
Meaning if somebody had $10,000 and a dead wife, you could buy saws for $200 then hack through all the tricks and traps using saws and explosives, then making off with about $3,000 with no way for the other person to defend themselves.

I know it doesn't fit in with the game's theme AT ALL. In fact, I said that at the very beginning of my post. Still, it would be interesting as a mod, because mechanically, it is very similar to Castle Doctrine.

It would definitely need to be balanced, but even what I said would be fairly expensive to get a corporation set up. Like you said, you can get 5 people to spend 5k each. This just buys the buildings, though - they still need to defend it. Lets say they each give another 1k - this leaves both buildings defended with 2.5k worth of defences, and the total cost is up to 6k. Then, you still need to buy the tools. Lets say they're making explosives, and they expect 5 people to buy an explosive an hour. So, to get started, they need to each buy an explosive - leaving the total cost at 7.2k each. Assuming they sell their products at almost full price, they're looking to each make almost $12 for each explosive sold. At that rate, assuming EVERY HOUR they sell all 5 explosives, they'll make their money back in five days. And let me remind you that their $6k worth of explosives is being stored in a Warehouse that cost just over starting money to make - if ANYONE manages to rob them, they'll be set back by $6k. If you decide to balance this by increasing the starting price of a corporation or limiting a corporation to two partners, this gets ugly fast.

Also, I wasn't planning on trade secrets being an almost unlimited resource - they'd be like paintings, having a limited supply. Their main purpose would be to give one corporation just *that* much of an edge over another corporation selling the same resource. Plus, if you charge something like $10k for 1% discount, not very many people are going to get anywhere near 45% discount (even if it were possible).

Axious wrote:

I think this idea sounds awesome. There may be a few things to work out obviously, but I think a more in depth endgame like this would fit very well when balanced properly. It would be sweet to be able to buy like 10 security guards for a big corporate building, equipped with different weapons (that maybe shoot different distances and have different costs), and maybe even have them walk around on paths to make the game more difficult (and more fun to rob). After all it should be much more scary trying to rob a corporation than a house!

That's what I'd be hoping for - robbing corporate headquarters or warehouses would feel a lot different from robbing a house - much harder (just by the size - 40x40 is almost twice as big as 30x30, and 50x50 is almost 3 times bigger), but with a much bigger payoff. Although stuff like security guards having different weapons and secuirty paths would be awesome, I was trying to keep my suggestion as close to the base game as possible

Last edited by iceman (2013-11-17 18:30:15)

joshwithguitar · 2013-11-17 20:08:21

iceman wrote:

The cost would be something like $25k, so most likely a single player wouldn't be able to own a Corporation (especially since they would have to defend it).

I find this talk about $25k being a lot of money quite funny in a game where someone just spent $15k just to kill my wife and children knowing full well that she had hardly any money on her and after me giving no one any reason for that kind of revenge.

largestherb · 2013-11-18 00:47:57

i have often wondered about upgradeable houses, but it definitely adds a whole new level of balancing issues where the rich become too powerful.

i kind of giggled too at $25k being called a lot of money in this game :s cheapest houses i have planned out lately are around $30,000 in wood with minimal storm-bracing.
it is nice with the new/returning players though, seems to be a lot more money slushing around to be robbed in fun and exciting ways! i'll have to try and save up and build something neat~

oh, has anyone figured out merril lewis yet? that dang dog keeps walking on the buttons!

Last edited by largestherb (2013-11-18 00:58:52)

jasonrohrer · 2013-11-18 16:02:34

Fun stuff!

Obviously, the game and server are open source and in the public domain, so it's sitting there ready for as elaborate of a mod as people can dream up.

HOWEVER, I also want to point out that mods without programming are totally possible. For Halloween, we had a really great skin, but it can go way beyond that, assuming that you want to run your own server for the mod so that you don't have to be compatible.

You can start from scratch and redefine the houseObjects from the ground up, complete with totally new states and assign properties for those states (keeping with the list of existing properties that the code recognizes). Then, you can edit transitions.txt and define your own transitions.

On the server side, you can edit settings.php to give all your new objects prices. You can also edit the various "names" source files, that the server slurps-in at setup time, to specify your own name pools for players and family members.

Example: imagine a pre-internet hacking game where player names are 3-part modem phone numbers (like 212 675 0098), and houses are actually computer systems with ice, and various tools are cracking scripts.

AND, to let players in, you can run your own TicketServer, which you can use to generate free tickets for your friends, or you can even hook up your own FastSpring payment system to it and charge money to join the server. Like I said, it's in the public domain, so you can do whatever you want with it without my permission (including charging money for whatever it is that you do with it).

iceman · 2013-11-18 19:20:39

You mean I can make my dream of a server that cost $1 per life, and that let's you cash out anytime you want to, real?!?!? THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!

jasonrohrer · 2013-11-19 13:13:18

Oh, yeah, that wouldn't be very hard to do.

It has certainly crossed my mind... however.... I feel like I need to get the game perfected and launched before I consider doing something like that!

(It would certainly handle any and all suicide-based exploits).

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2013-11-16 22:55:58

Corporations

#2 2013-11-17 07:40:40

Re: Corporations

#3 2013-11-17 14:55:05

Re: Corporations

#4 2013-11-17 15:17:37

Re: Corporations

#5 2013-11-17 20:08:21

Re: Corporations

#6 2013-11-18 00:47:57

Re: Corporations

#7 2013-11-18 16:02:34

Re: Corporations

#8 2013-11-18 19:20:39

Re: Corporations

#9 2013-11-19 13:13:18

Re: Corporations

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