WW2 Economy System....Concept Thread

Howdy guys and gals

Im the developer of a WW2 game called Battle of the Atlantic which you might have seen here on ModDB.

Basically its coming along well and ive been plugging away for 3 years at it (not that what I have to show is 3 years of work but ive head to spend most of that time learning how to program. )

Anyway the last few days ive been scratching my head about how to implement an economy system for the game and I think ive come up with how I want to play it but I want some feedback on the concept first.

The game is set during WW2, you are the supreme commander of the naval forces of either the Axis powers or the allies during the Battle of the Atlantic. Historically of course it was the convoys, largely from the US which helped to keep Britain fighting. Because of this the game needs an economyor else its all pretty pointless.

I want the economy to be simple...I don't particularly want this to be a game for financial advisers, I want it to be more about the action. The Merchant men in the high seas and the men manning the Depth charge launchers and Ack-Ack guns on an Escorting Destroyer.

The resources I have in the game are as follows:-
Supplies - Food, Water, meat, Vegetables anything you need
to live.
Munitions - Guns and Ammo
General Stores - Anything not military related - manufactured goods - steel for
construction - concrete etc
Military Hardware - Tanks,Guns,Artillery, Trucks, Planes etc,
Fuel - Coal, Aviation Spirit, Diesel, anything that can be
used to power machinery, ships planes etc
Troops - Soldiers to fight the wars (Surprisingly!).

My plan as its stands for the economy is to have a number of resources at each port. These resources are for your use only, to keep your navy mobile. If a port gets low on resources and you can't refuel/rearm your ships currently stationed at the port, you need to arrange a convoy or some single ships to bring some resources from another port or by reassigning orders of a convoy or ship at sea to this port. This then forces the player to put to sea and thus put there ships into danger.

The port resources would be regenerated by incoming merchant ships and the player would gain say 5% of the convoy's or ships loaded
resources. So if a convoy carrying 100,000 tons of Supplies docks and unloads, the player would receive 5000 tons to use himself at that port and by resources being generated across other regions.

Then Ive divided the UK (only the Uk for the sake of prototyping for now) up into regions, based on current parliamentary maps, so South-east, North West, East Midlands etc. Each of these regions have a supply and demand, this would be scaled simply by Very high - to - Very Low and based on what is going on in that region.

The midlands, London and North east regions would need alot of supplies, General Stores and fuel. Due to the large number of factories, and output alot of Munitions, Military Hardware and General Stores for example....When Normandy landings (or if ) take place the south west will have a massive demand for Fuel, Military Hardware, Munitions and troops it would generally be producing quite afew supplies itself due to large amounts of farmland in that region.

A simple red - yellow - green colour code system would inform the player if a region requires more of a particular resource. Also an ‘admiralty mission' might be generated to give the player a mission to supply a particular region with one or more resources.
This system is very simple and pretty linear and to some degree I can take into account, rail transport and of course blitz bombing....supplies and general stores demand might shoot up and output go down a notch if a city in a region gets flattened in a blitz raid.

Having not really thought the economy through toughly until recently I currently have the game set-up so the player dictates what each merchant is loaded with and its cargo. I think with this system id need to make it so the computer determines resource allocation to the merchants and the player simply dictates the mission and the escort and how he's going to get his forces from A to B.
Would this work do we think?...im open to further ideas.

Regards,
John

Edited by: Bronco78th

I very much like the aspects you put in there. I wouldn't have anything to add or remove there either. One thing I would be careful about is though, to not put too much focus on the economy if you don't intend on having the supplies and munition being the main thing the player has to deal with. That means you will need to create the system a bit more inactively, making the player care about it, but not forcing the player to put his main focus on it.

That means incoming merchant ships and stuff should not happen too often, neither too little. The problem I see is that with the way you make it sound, the munition and supplies run out rather quickly. That would put the focus of the player on convoys or other ways to regain those resources. If that is what you wish to achieve, then this is the way you go. If not, then you need to make the system rather inactive. An example for that would be the possibility to send out own troops or ships to get supply/munition/whatever else a certain amount of times during a certain amount of time, which would then leave, carry out the task, and return with the resources they were supposed to get after a while. Obviously, this party would then be doing the task without the player having to interfere any further, meaning he would only have to send them out, and then get a certain amount of supply. If you restrict the player to doing this perhaps once a week (ingame time), or any other amount that seems suitable, you will have the player focus on resources, but not focus on it only - if you know what I mean.