Fwurg

[Brend]

We have completed the rules update for technology transfer costs and technology pricing as discussed during the write-a-thon.

This change includes:

• 25% technology transfer cost
• 10% technology collaboration cost
• Repricing of all technologies according to Brend and Mercury's insights

After looking through the list of technologies, Mercury and Brend have updated most prices. We have update the prices of all technologies that ended up being more expensive than 500 , all fundamental technologies and techs of less than 1000 have not been altered. We did this to prevent ridiculously low prices!

Current projects will continue based on the old rules, unless explicitly requested as a retroactive change.

Please list proposed retroactive changes in this thread.

[Brend]

I would like to request a retroactive change...

I have made a list of all technologies only I have. The single exception (marked with *) is Echani Hyperspace Signature Damping which I researched alone, and then gifted to the Union. The following listing shows how much the prices have dropped for these technologies:

750

Accelerated Ecosynthesis

750

Atmospheric Conditioning

2500

Atmospheric Purification

500

Complex Financial Products

750

Corporate Logistics

2500

Echani Sensor Echo Projectors

2250

Echani Hyperspace Signature Damping*

500

Extra-dimensional Particle Collectors

750

Hemet Veolian Genetic Lineage Analysis

500

Holocommute Workstation Deployment

3750

Hyperactive Stromatolites

500

Orbital Docking Platform Optimizations

3750

Photosynthetic Rebalancing

750

Planetary Geoengineering

1000

Recessive Augmentation Inducement

750

Solar Radiation Management

2500

Surface Heating

In total, due to this rules change I have paid 24750 24000 too much for these technologies. I have a lot more technologies that I researched and then sold to others, but finding out how many tax I paid too much for those is just too much effort.

As my retroactive change, I request that I can put this amount of 24750 24000 in other technologies.

((EDIT: Corrected minor mistake))

[Mercury]

Brend researched a lot of technologies, and in many cases the costs were shared by selling them afterwards or by developing them together with others. It'd be a great pain to determine exactly what was paid by whom and how much was lost due to this change in those cases.

However, I think Brend has a valid point in the sample he lists, as these are technologies he developed on his own. Moreover, I think it is reasonable for him to request some compensation for this specific lost investment, taking into account the fact he likely lost more then he's claiming.

For this reason I support Brend in this request.

[Elmer]

Brend has researched nothing, it was all the work of the Veolian Commonwealth :P.

24750 sounds like a lot of money, but at the other hand, the Veolian Commonwealth has put a lot of tax and time in researches so I think with this rules change, the retroactive changes of Brend's faction are automatically large.

To be blunt, I don't feel like checking and judging at the moment, and I have no idea when I am more in the mood to do so. So I have faith Brend's proposal is fair and I will accept the judgement of the others here at the moment. (Not that I don't accept the judgement of others in other cases of course :) .)

[Fedor]

That seems like a lot of money. I find the reasoning for the refund to be valid, and I agree with it.

[Gerben]

As this is change that effects all technologies, I also have a request based on the same reasoning as followed by Brend.

I have made a list of all technologies I have researched alone. The following listing shows how much the prices have dropped for these technologies:

1750 Sensor Vessels

As my retroactive change, I request that I can put this amount of 1750 in other technologies.

[Chriz]

I have no problem with returning the tax that was spend too much on technologies. However the technology licensing does make this iffy.

Since people payed 1/5 of the technology in license cost I believe that if Brend receives half the tax back from the technology he has to repay half of the license cost to everybody who bought a license as well.

[Brend]

I don't exactly see why I should be forced to change my business deals. Previous retroactive changes were never conditioned upon IC agreements, and I don't see a reason this one should. People did not pay for 1/5th of the technology, they paid for me to terraform their world.

Besides, the fact that people are eating up terraformation like it's cake seems to indicate that I could've easily asked for a contribution of 2/5 of the research cost per license; making the licensing cost for others exactly the same. This is also true because it appears that I'm not actually licensing techs to 5 factions, but to 3.

EDIT: During the calculations, it seems that "

750

Hemet Veolian Genetic Lineage Analysis" has slipped in somehow. That shouldn't be there since it didn't change in price. The final sum would then be 24000 , I have updated my previous post.

[Brend]

After some more thinking, I still think that I shouldn't be forced to change my IC deals based on the 'what if this was true from the start'.

I can't say with any certainty how things would've gone if these rules were in effect from the start, but I can say that I would've charged more than 1/5th of the technology development cost: the fact that you can license the technology saves you the transfer cost. In fact, I would probably end up at the prices that have been paid up till now:

Let old be the old price of the tech, and new be the new price of new = old / 2.

Old licensing cost was determined OOC as old / 5. I estimate the new licensing cost OOCly by taking into account the saved transfer costs and discounting them a little. This ends up being new / 5 + new * (0.25 - 0.05). This can be simplified to new * 2 / 5, which is equal to old / 5...

If we continue the 'what if' line of thought (which I think is not a good idea), Chriz would also have to give up his Biogenesis technology and pay me licensing costs, as I researched it together with him because it was too expensive to do alone. We split the development cost 50/50... So with the lowered prices my share now covers the whole tech! Of course, he can also argue that he did so with his own part, and that would be true; but the Veolians wouldn't have sold him any (they're enormous asshats like that).

Though all of the above is a bit of a moot point to me: I feel that the IC deal is not 'you pay 1/5 of the technology', but 'you pay X so I'll use the technology on your behalf'.

Anyway, I'll hear what the others have to say about this and will, of course, act according to the consensus.

[Elmer]

I think that forcing someone to retroactively change IC deals can be a bit iffy, especially in this case. Maybe some day it is very logical to do so, but it is not this day.

(In fact, following Brends reasoning, my faction should get money from the Praetorian Empire for delivering the to the Praetorian Empire for their fleets. Yes is logical when you go down the road with this what-if scenario).

[Stuiter]

I do not know how long that deals takes.
But I would indeed like to finish the next recycling developments.

[Chriz]

I believe I was a bit harsh and vague with my previous post. My point as I stated it was directed at Brend but I wanted to discuss the point of licensing cost and how it affected the technology price in general.

My point is that currently technology is the only thing that is possible with licensing. Before the transfer cost this was not an issue since this only had effect on the ownership of the technology. Now the licensing is actually a method of transfer cost evasion. This in fact makes the group of terraformation technologies better than other technologies with the new rules.

I believe that even before the transfer cost the licensing was already worth something since it gave the owner of the technology some extra flexibility. Now the licensing possibility has added value as well since it saves you transfer cost. This is why I believe that the terraformation technologies should actually be priced higher than they are now. Something like 75% of their original price.

I believe that we should recognize the value that licensing has in general for future technologies as well. I think we have to amortize this part over 4 players as we did before.

[Fedor]

For the technology of Racial Recycling Infrastructure Affinity, currently being researched by the Hiocan Society, clearly collaboratively, which started right around the time of the rule change. Under the new system the technology would only cost a total of 4900 to research with all 5 currently involved, instead of the 7000 at the moment. It's very easy to calculate the difference then. I propose that for this case all the involved (Stuiter, Chris, Gerben, Brend and me) get to spend 420 on research at the end ( (7000-4900)/5) ).

Or would you then have to go about calculating it for all the past projects and do we just not want to bother with it?

[Brend]

I will post a proposal to handle the unique 'apply technology on someone else's behalf' situation of terraform in the coming weekend.

It is possible to retroactively change running projects, but I believed it to be too much effort for the small gain. If someone else does the bookkeeping, I'm not against it. But only for running projects please.

[Brend]

I have the following proposal to handle the 'apply technology on someone else's behalf' situation. Instead of folding that ability into the technology itself, let it be a follow-up technology costing 50% of the technology it upgrades. This way, we'll have the best of both worlds. Cheap technologies, and the option to use your technology to help someone else.

This would add 14 technologies (one behind every technology that allows itself to be used on behalf of others).


If no one objects, I'll add the necessary technologies next week (with the bulk update), and make a new retroactive change request afterwards.

[Brend]

I have added "Generalized <tech>" for all technologies that allowed application on someone else's world.

This is the second official notice of rules change!

[Brend]

Based on these new generalization technologies, I would like to request a retroactive change...

I have made a list of all technologies only I have. The single exception (marked with *) is Echani Hyperspace Signature Damping which I researched alone, and then gifted to the Union. The following listing shows how much the prices have dropped for these technologies (included are the full costs I have paid for generalisation):

750

Accelerated Ecosynthesis

-375

<generalization>

750

Atmospheric Conditioning

-375

<generalization>

2500

Atmospheric Purification

-1250

<generalization>

500

Complex Financial Products

750

Corporate Logistics

2500

Echani Sensor Echo Projectors

2250

Echani Hyperspace Signature Damping*

500

Extra-dimensional Particle Collectors

500

Holocommute Workstation Deployment

3750

Hyperactive Stromatolites

-1875

<generalization>

500

Orbital Docking Platform Optimizations

3750

Photosynthetic Rebalancing

-1875

<generalization>

750

Planetary Geoengineering

-375

<generalization>

1000

Recessive Augmentation Inducement

750

Solar Radiation Management

-375

<generalization>

2500

Surface Heating

-1250

<generalization>

In total, due to this rules change I have paid 17500 too much for these technologies. I have a lot more technologies that I researched and then sold to others, but finding out how many tax I paid too much for those is just too much effort.

As my retroactive change, I request that I can put this amount of 17500 in other technologies.

(Side note: me and Chris have reached an agreement on the our cooperative Biogenesis research and the accompanying Generalized Biogenesis. He will take this retroactive change opportunity to drop the Generalized Biogenesis, and the Veolians will transfer 1000 to the Praetorians to simulate the IC 'buyout'.)

[Chriz]

Since these are OOC rule changes I believe it makes everything simpler and better explainable if I add the 1000 to my refund pool instead of handling it with a IC transfer.

To be honest the huge changes make things kinda messy anyway let's not make it more confusing by acting like it is handled IC as well.

[Brend]

Fair enough, but in that case it is 937 , as that was the exact amount of the Praetorian's share of the technology (minus the 0.5 ).

Then, I demand to get 937 less back (because I have to pay for the share the Praetorians drop)! Making the total amount I want to get back 16563 .

[Chriz]

Fine by me. I would propose adding this 937 for the Praetorian Empire to the refund here: Refund Military rules.

[Brend]

Can someone check this and see if they approve? I'd like to have this handled asap.

[Elmer]

Although it is a lot of money, I am not against it. Especially since the refunded money will be used for technologies anyway :).

[Gerben]

As stated earlier I'll be taking a refund of 1750 , which will be invested in Technologies. See my earlier post in this topic for details.

[Brend]

After some thinking, I'd like to place my refunds into:

2513

Cold Orbit Megadome Adaption (I have already placed some tax into this one IC -- this is just finishing it)

2000

Generalized Cold Orbit Megadome Adaption

4000

Hot Orbit Megadome Adaption

2000

Generalized Hot Orbit Megadome Adaption

The remained of the 16563 , which is 6050 , I want to place in the technologies needed to get the second zone upgrade in the industry when these become available.

I'm willing to put a delay on all of these, but I think that this won't be problematic if done immediately. The technologies are way ahead of what anyone would want to build at this moment, and the second zone upgrade still has to be approved before I can even use it.

[Chriz]

I have no problem with the investment in the additional terraformation / megadomes technologies since it seems you will be the only one researching them probably.

However for the second zone upgrades I believe that there are options for cooperative research, since multiple factions will be interested.

I have no problem with your faction paying your share from this pool of .