WesWorld

The recent discussion on infrastructure got me thinking.

For example lets take Mexico. Despite being the third largest country in all of America (North & South), its practiclly impossible for me to construct another factory. I cant use its large population for that purpose.

In Navalism we have rules where we take into account the population of a country for building infrastructure. I would propose we have something similar here, at least for countries with limited infrastructure.

Im not really good with words so Ill try to explain how my system would work.

Lets take Country X with population of 100 million and 5 factories. For every factory 10 million people would be deducted. For every 10 million remaining the country would gain 0.1 infrastructure points. So Country X would gain 0.5 IP per quarter. So if X builds another factory now it would gain only 0.4 bounus IPs.

A limit of say 100 million could be placed so if say Country Y had a population of 150 million and 5 factories it would only gain 0.5 IP not 1.0 IP.

Basiclly what it does is give large countries with limited infrastructure a way to increase their infrastructure.

Thoughts?

Factories are an abstraction of economies. Mexico has never had the economy to produce big warships or warships in large numbers. Besides that, why would you need the ability? The United States isn't going to allow a nation on its border to come to a mischief.

I know Mexico doesnt have the economy. But what if they decided it was neccesary? This is WesWorld after all, with Iberia still holding central America. If I wanted another factory it would take me 7 years to build one at max production. This rules would let me use the population of the country to build said factory.

You could always get outside help like some SATUMA nations, Chile, and Byzantium.

Go to the United States, I'm sure they'll be willing to help fund an extra factory if you give something in return. Besides which, economies have other factors besides population involved.

While our own rules make it difficult for a small nation to build factories (and fairly easy for large ones to build them), it's reasonable to expect that some nations are going to have a much larger naval shipbuilding industry - which is the only thing our factories represent - than others.

A collaborative project is possible if the right partners exist - SATSUMA's COSINE is an example of this, although we devious Asian powers need to sort out how El Derretir is affecting our activity. I wouldn't count on SATSUMA helping Mexico - no real strategic benefit to it - but more friendly states like the USA or Atlantis are worth approaching.

There are a couple of ways we could consider tinkering with our economic rules:

1) Change the scale at which we divide our economies into "factories". A smaller "factory" would produce less material, but would take less material and time to construct, and it would pay itself off much sooner (that is, not the 20 years it takes currently).

For example, if we changed a factory from:

"A unit of industry costing 10 IP, that produces 1000 t or 0.1 IP per quarter"

to

"A unit of industry costing 5 IP that produces 500 t or 0.05 IP per quarter"

...then India would go from 11 to 22 factories, without actually changing its overall capability. What would change is that the allocation of factories between ship materials and infrastructure points could be fine-tuned. It would also mean that India could build its economy in many small steps rather than a few large leaps.

One could also scale at 1 to 4, 1 to 5, or 1 to 10 without the math getting complicated.

2) Re-define our infrastructure to cost "tonnes", rather than IP. Then convert the factories into a single economic capacity (India's 11 factories become a capacity of 11,000 t). Spend a ton to invest a ton in warship material or a ton in an infrastructure project. To expand the economy itself, for every 80 t you invest back into your economy, the economic capacity increases by 1 t the next quarter.

That 80:1 ratio, incidently, is consistent with the current math of Wesworld: A factory currently costs 10 IP = 80 factory-quarters of production if the factories are "dedicated"... = 8,000 t of warship material.

3) I suppose we could consider some formula that would allow heavily populated nations to generate a bit of IP from the scale of their civilian economies, provided we understand that this only creates IP and not warship materials. In that case, I could consider some formula where "X milion people = 0.1 IP", but we'd have to balance it out so that large countries don't benefit too much and small ones see at least an occasional point or two. Maybe something logarithmic.

Long post, I know, but it's lunch hour and the sidewalks outside are melting, so I need something else to do.

I like the third suggestion. It keeps the present rules as they are, but generates extra IP to simulate economic growth.

Heh, Mexico has more Factory's than Turkey, try feeling my pain!

Psst...Wes...Three is not more than six...



Notional IP curve for my suggestion #3 above:

Population under 1 million: 0.1 IP every other year
1 - 4.99 million: 0.1 IP per year
5 to 9.99 million: 0.1 IP every third quarter
10 to 49.99 million: 0.1 IP every other quarter
50 to 99.99 million: 0.1 IP per quarter
100 to 499.99 million: 0.2 IP per quarter.

The population would include colonial possessions. Our most populous nations, India and China, fall within this last range - effectively, it's liking providing 1.6 additional factories for these nations, not likely to upset the apple cart too much. Data for other historical nations should be available, and we can estimate something for fictional nations.

No "bonus" production. Points may only be spent on slips, docks, ports, or factories - not warship material.

I have a website that details historical population figures. I just have to find it.

Quoted

3) I suppose we could consider some formula that would allow heavily populated nations to generate a bit of IP from the scale of their civilian economies, provided we understand that this only creates IP and not warship materials. In that case, I could consider some formula where "X milion people = 0.1 IP", but we'd have to balance it out so that large countries don't benefit too much and small ones see at least an occasional point or two. Maybe something logarithmic.

Pretty much what I was trying to say. I like your proposal. Mine would have been a bit more generous and would only have benefited countries with less than 10 factories.

BTW I am trying to get outside help. Problem is that Atlantis is a bit busy right now. But the US might help.

http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/populhome.html

DF: I'm not for something that one-sided. I have less than ten factories, but I couldn't agree to something that would leave the larger nations in the lurch.

Exacly why I like Rocky's proposal, its not so one-sided.

Rocky's idea sounds good to me. I agree we don't need more warship materials and restricting the use of extra points to infrastructure sounds very good.

Myself as Argentina with a population of 12 million in 1931 would get 0.2IP a year on top of what my factories produce. Removing the bonus would make sense.

Great site for those population stats, I never realised how fast the Argentine population grew.

Ditto I get 0.2IP a year.

I've presently got a population of something like 15million.

Well since it was an alternate universe, I put the Japanese population at 75,936,000 for 1921 in the thread here almost three years ago on August 17, 2003 (Not sure how I did it but I did not use Japan's 1921 figure).
Despite that, current population will put Japan in the 4th category (50 to 99.99 million) whether I use the actual population of the Japanese Empire at this point of time (which would include Korea, Taiwan and Manchukuo) or use the Wesworld population (which does not include Korea, Taiwan or Manchukuo).

Well the basic concept is decent. China may not need to divert resources to excavators for dry docks if they can simply stick 50,000 workers on the task.

I also wonder if, since this measure is linked to population bodies, shouldn't the infrastructure bits be linked to that population group?

For example, (as I recall) the Dutch East Indies runs ~30million, Kongo should be ~15-20million, Ubangi-Shari ?, Suriname ~500,000, and the Netherlands ~11million. The additional labor in the Kongo should not be allocatable outside the Kongo. So I think that if this is implemented you should have to allocate by geographic region.

Sounds good to me.

Interesting. I can agree to that I believe, though rough logical population estimates will have to be taken of the purely fictional nations and some nations that are doing better than historical...and those that are doing worse as well.

Atlantis and South Africa I think already have rough estimates on their populations.