Fwurg

[Brend]

At the moment, when someone specialises a zone with a corporation, this is noted down twice: the zone type is updated to reflect the new situation, and the Specialised field is set to the corporation.

This is clearly undesirable from both a player and a modelling perspective:

• Players have to update two fields, and errors can easily be introduced by accidentally updating only one of the two.
• Modelling it in this way forces redundancy into the system, which has to be handled by all tools and queries.

So, I want to resolve the issue. There are two obvious solutions: pick either the Specialised field, or the zone type.

The advantage of using the specialised field is the immediate link between corporation and zone. Furthermore, the introduction of new corporations does not require making new zone type pages. The disadvantage is that the difference between a normal zone and a corporate zone is difficult to see out of context, so the Specialised field always has to be passed along as well.

The advantage of the using the zone type is a clear link between zone type and zone production. It also allows us to express zone specialisation as a 'special project' of sorts where the zone type is morphed into something else. The disadvantage is that the introduction of a new corporation requires the addition of a zone type page.


Personally, I am in favour of using the zone type approach as the flexibility of using 'zone type transformation' projects is very high (and we effectively already use it with the banking corporation).

Thoughts from other people that care about this? (If I have no responses, I'll probably start whacking things within a month -- it's a big job and I need to build up some courage)

[Chriz]

I actually believe that only using the specialised field is more desirable. Since for economy queries you will have to use the zone in context anyway with all the variables linked to it. I do believe that it is useful to make the fact that a zone is corporated more visible in the templates without a new zone type.

I am not really fond of all the new zone types since they literally do not add anything new.

[Brend]

It's true that the new zone types add little value for the most part.

How would you implement a banking corporation in that way?

The only option I see for such things would be using the Product linked to the corporation that Specialised the zone as the output of the zone -- which would effectively make zone Specialisation a special kind of upgrade that allows mutation of the zones properties. Just like zone upgrades already do, now that I think about it; we just model them very limited.

[Chriz]

Cant you add the specialised project to the Corporation as an extra field? I believe that should work as well.

[Brend]

Cant you add the specialised project to the Corporation as an extra field? I believe that should work as well.

I don't follow. Please elaborate.

[Chriz]

Oops, I mean product instead of project.

[Brend]

That makes sense ^_^

[Elmer]

I don't really understand what you mean here. (Also because I don't use corporations yet, so I never had to update my zones for corporations.)

When you have a default zone, like one of my zones:

Code: Select all

<data !zone #Zone 1>
Description [wiki]: Zone 1 on [[]]
Faction [ref]: Teprogrenaian Consensus
System [ref]: Parumecaetes System
On [ref]: [[]]
Limitations*:
Type [rule]: unclaimed zone
Production [wiki]:
Production Breakdown [wiki]:
Upgrades [rule]*:
Specialised [ref]:
Specials [rule]*: 
</data>


Does it mean that at this moment you both have to update the first line !zone #Zone 1 on [[]] and the line with Specialised [ref]:?

Personally, I think it is most logical to only update the specialised [ref]: field. But please use the option which gives you the most options later :).

[Brend]

What I mean is the that currently you have to update 2 fields to make a specialised zone (from an already developed zone -- you can't specialise an undeveloped zone). I have highlighted both fields in the example below:

<data !developed zone #Zone 5>
Description [wiki]: Zone 5 on [[Mirda]]
Faction [ref]: Veolian Commonwealth
System [ref]: Smi-Halek System
On [ref]: [[]]
Limitations*:
Type [rule]: VAC Coolant Utilities Zone
Production [wiki]: 780(:utilities+corp)
Production Breakdown [wiki]: 100 base, 50 upgrade, 40 atmosphere I, 10 oceans, 10 homeworld, 170 racial, 10 recycling, x2 corporation
Upgrades [rule]*: Improved Production, Industrial Recycling Facilities
Specialised [ref]: VAC Coolant Branch
Specials [rule]*:
</data>

Because there are two fields it is easier to introduce errors: you update one and forget the other. What I want is to have players only update one of these fields. So, which field should they update?

Both fields will allow tools to derive all the necessary information, but they have different advantages and disadvantages. Note that this is purely about how to model the data; both ways can have templates show what we want, and both ways generate all data.


My original favour was for having new zone types: since zones specialised by Vaspa Industries (a corporation) do not actually create anymore, it stands to reason to have it be a new zone type. After all, it no longer produces , but some other good that first needs to be recombined.

This is especially noticable with any Banking Corporation (from the Complex Financial Products tech): they specialise an Open Market Zone such that it 1) loses its capacity to support trade fleets and 2) generates instead of . aren't even close to specialised .

But Chriz raises a good point about most zone types not adding anything. However, his solution of adding a Product field to the corporation isn't really satisfactory either, since a banking specialisation not only changes the output product from to , but also removes the trade fleet support.

I am unsure of how to handle this; it seems that we want to prevent massive growth of near-useless zone types while also keeping the ability to express the strangeness of the banking specialisation. And we should also keep an eye on future possibilities...

[Elmer]

Ah, now I get it :).

But going for the new zones type doesn't that mean you have to manually add the new corporation as a zone type every time somebody makes a new corporation? I mean, if I make a Teprogrenaian Shieldings corporation, I don't want to go into the wiki and define Teprogrenaian Shieldings as a zone type in order to let the wiki recognize my update on my planet. I just want to go to my planet and say 'Teprogrenaian Shieldings' in the datablock and be done with it. (In fact, I don't want to have all the troubles of updating the wiki like this all the time for every little thing at all, but I get why this is the most practical solution, none of us get paid to do this after all :).)

So when you can simply make a wiki page for your corporation, and the zone datablock understands the new corporation without further hustle, I don't really see the problem of a massive growth of near-useless zone types. Or do many zone types mean long waiting times as the wiki queries will become slower?

However, if you manually have to add every single zone type from every single corporation as well, I don't think this is the solution, especially as you have to make a new zone type every time a funny guy makes a new corporation.

[Brend]

I mean, if I make a Teprogrenaian Shieldings corporation, I don't want to go into the wiki and define Teprogrenaian Shieldings as a zone type in order to let the wiki recognize my update on my planet. I just want to go to my planet and say 'Teprogrenaian Shieldings' in the datablock and be done with it.

Yes. In the ideal world one could do that. But since your already making a corporation page anyway, I don't think its that much more effort to copy-paste the zone page as well...

Besides, in the ideal world I would also have an 'Apply turn report' button with my turn report that updates the wiki for me ^_^

So when you can simply make a wiki page for your corporation, and the zone datablock understands the new corporation without further hustle, I don't really see the problem of a massive growth of near-useless zone types. Or do many zone types mean long waiting times as the wiki queries will become slower?

No, having many types does not mean having longer waiting times.

However, if you manually have to add every single zone type from every single corporation as well, I don't think this is the solution, especially as you have to make a new zone type every time a funny guy makes a new corporation.

Meh. I don't want to have to update the tax tool everytime someone makes a new corporation, nor do I want to update the trade template by hand. But every time a 'funny guy' makes a corporation I go and do:

1) Open up fwurg-lib/fwurg.economics.corporations.js, update the list for the new corporation.
2) Open up fwurg-lib/app.tax.js, find the translation table and update it for the new corporation.
3) Update the tool on the site, and check if it works.
4) Go to template:trade, update the template with the new specialised good.
5) Usually I then go and check that they actually updated the wiki correctly, because I'll get the 'The tax tool is broken' poke when they break their zones.

To be honest, I don't really care about the amount of work involved. For starters, a lot of work is already involved in this, and secondly corporations aren't created that often.

What I do care about is making the right choice here, and not having to rewrite half of the tools and templates afterwards because we decided to change the rules in a way that can only be supported by the zone type solution.

EDIT: Though if we can somehow find a way to make the banking thing feel good, the Specialised field is much simpler for players... I just don't see how to do that yet.