I'd also like a bit more detail on what "American Industrial Revolution" means exactly. Crude cars, smokestacks everywhere, and almost everyone has a radio to hear news and advertisements?
Perhaps more importantly, how does making money, upkeep, and debt work in relation to each other? If we spend all of our money right now, for instance, is that a good idea, risky, or guaranteed to mean we can't pay the workers on time?
A little older on the setting era, yet for some reason television already exists. At the moment it's a very limited market.
I won't let you go into debt, but you need money you can sell part of your company on the stock market. Rather than having individual shares, you can just sell a % of your company, and that % will be multiplied times the net worth, and you get that much money. Of course, sell too much of your company and you risk being taken over.
Is there any point in owning an entire supply chain? It seems not, with raw materials costing less then the labor and maintenance of a new facility.
That was just a basic number I got from the top of my head, though I will probably still use $10,000 as a starting point. As technology improves however, factories and such will start consuming more resources and putting out more goods, and because you sell things at a 25% penalty(including produced goods), owning a supply chain will reduce the amount of money you need to spend on materials. To illustrate, owning an iron mine won't make your factories any more profitable, but owning factories will make your iron mine more profitable.
Ok, a few questions:
- what is the rage, on the world map, of broadcast towards? Also what about frequency bandwidth?
- for that mater, what is the scale of the worldmap, kilometres per pixel and what's the population and GDP of the different states?
- How much is the money worth in buying power. it says dollars, but the value of one has varied a lot historically.
- it looks like there'll be no tracking of cities in this?
- more exacting detail on the tech level would be nice.
Range is indefinite. It reaches as many people as it needs to.
Scale doesn't really matter either, it's just one of those things I'm abstracting out for the sake of simplicity. Shipping over land is cheaper than shipping overseas, but all overseas shipping costs the same, and all over land shipping costs the same. If you really need a scale, then 1 mm = 1 km.
Buying power is sort of abstracted too, but I actually have a value for this one. $1,000 is the average yearly wage for an unskilled worker.
I doubt cities will really come into play. It would be fun to have them, but it would also be hell to keep track of.
Tech level is late industrial era, with advancing communications, better steel production, new chemical processes, etc. Plastic has not yet been developed. If you mean how technology in the game works, when a research institute produces enough science, it is turned into a technology. Technologies can be something like "+5 Improved Manufacturing", which increases a factory's output by 5%. This technology can be sold or applied to your own factories.
Basic production numbers are as follows:
FactoryConsumes: Metal
Produces: Manufactured Goods(Weapons, Cars, Appliances, etc.)
Expenses: $10,000 L; $10,000 M; $10,000 R
Income: $120,000 G
Chemical PlantConsumes: Raw Chemicals
Produces: Consumer Compounds(Medicine, Appliances, Fuel, etc.)
Expenses: $20,000 L; $20,000 M; $20,000 R
Income: $210,000 G
Extraction FacilityConsumes: Nothing
Produces: Raw Materials(Metal, Chemicals, Lumber, etc.)
Expenses: $10,000 L; $10,000 M
Income: $80,000 R
Shipping YardConsumes: Nothing
Produces: Service(Shipping)
Expenses: $10,000 L; $10,000 M
Income: $60,000 S
Broadcast TowerConsumes: Nothing
Produces: Service(Information)
Expenses: $10,000 M
Income: $40,000 S
FarmConsumes: Nothing
Produces: Food(Meat, Grain, etc.)
Expenses: $10,000 L
Income: $35,000 S
WarehouseConsumes: Nothing
Produces: Service(Storage)
Expenses: $10,000 M
Income: $20,000 S